Big Brother is teacher training you

‘“Gabriela, I want you to ask Kieran a question please,” [the head teacher] Benigno says into a microphone that conveys the instruction to the teacher’s earpiece. She’s noticed the boy turning round in his seat [on her monitor connected to two CCTV cameras]. “Target language,” she barks, and the teacher immediately switches from English to French. “Pupil talk!” is the next instruction – it’s time for the teacher to stop talking and involve the pupils.’

From today’s Independent newspaper here, and well worth a quick read all the way through. For me, it wasn’t so much the use of technology as the observer giving instructions rather than waiting till after the lesson to give feedback that surprised me. PGCE qualified language teachers getting exactly the same feedback as someone on a TEFL course was also a present surprise.

Any comments from the teaching-technology-is-always-a-good-thing crowd?

Tags: News, Quotes

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 12:14 am and is filed under CPD, Lesson observations, PGCE in TEFL, Teacher training, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.