I was a little taken aback this week after talking to my sister-in-law who is a primary school teacher in the north of England.
The LEA she works with has provided an LP which is great but she was saying that her head is keeping tabs on teachers by checking their lesson plans for the week on a Sunday night.
In itself, not a problem – visibility of work can lead to sharing, collaboration and all that lovely stuff.
What gets me is the secretive, Big Brother approach where the staff only found out the head was doing this after the head dropped hints in casual conversation.
Has anyone else had this sort of experience? Are you a head or head of department who sees this as a valuable management technique?
Speak your brains!
2 Comments until now
At least they’ve got (some) management “buy-in” for the Learning Platform. Most SMT wouldn’t know a Moodle from a Google! But if they did, they’d be ignorant as per it’s primary function. which is not tracking staff!!
Unfortunatly you’ll find most Colleges and Uni’s using their VLEs/ LPs for all the wrong reasons, in similar situtations to your post.
Someone summed it up neatly for me earlier this year, “a VLE/LP is more of a teaching platfrom than a learning platform “.
Now lets get that eportfolio up and running!
Firstly, thanks for the comments, Kev.
I love the distinction between a learning platform and a teaching platform. Our partnership schools are just beginning to get to grips with their platforms so are a little behind the curve when compared to the local uni’s. For the mo, the use they are being put to is streamline the teaching process.
Hopefully within 12-24 months they will get more comfy and start opening up discussion forums a little more, using surveys, collaboration and, as you say releasing the e-portfolio.
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