Sustainability in the Curriculum: University of Manchester

I was recently invited to sit in on a meeting of the Community of Practice at University of Manchester which is thinking through how to embed Sustainability across the curriculum. This area of thinking and study is massively relevant as it connects with each and every human and living thing on the planet. How we move into greater synergy with our environment and life supporting bio-systems is an emerging field which is complex and multi-disciplinary.

The Medium is the Means: The Industrial Educational Complex

We now are in an age where we must deconstruct everything in terms of the forces of industry and economics. This includes the industrial educational complex, the dominating force of finance in organised learning. Marshall McLuhan is very well known for developing communications theory, and is famously attributed with the expression “The medium is the message”, which speaks of the different affordances which each medium has for communicating information. Speaking has different affordances from writing, radio has different affordances from television, clay has different affordances from paint… Read more…

Interview With An Educator: Professor Ray Miller

This is an interview and conversation with Professor Ray Miller, who has spent his life teaching psychology and thinking about philosophy. The recording was made in The Chocolate Tree in Edinburgh and explores his views and interests around education. The idea is simple, have an informal conversation and see where it leads. Read more…

Presentation on the Free Education Network for John Morrison

As part of a pop up lesson by John Morrison who works from Napier University, here Alex Dunedin talks about the construction of the Free Education Network website as a way into examining the resources available for learning in the landscape. This presentation was a part of John Morrison’s pop up lesson at Summerhall in Edinburgh where he is trying to prompt his students to take on a challenge suggested by and linked to the community. Read more…

Interview With An Educator: Colin MacLean

This is an interview with Colin MacLean which took place in the Curious Tea Rooms in Edinburgh over coffee to explore the various perspectives he holds around the theme of education. Here you can find out about and enjoy the seasoned comments of someone who has spent many years in the civil service and in educational roles. Read more…

John Morrison: Pop Up Lesson in Summerhall

John Morrison does a pop up lesson in Royal Dick Vet Bar, inviting George Wilson to talk about MD20 demographics, which speaks of the most deprived people of the population. With a focus on uptake of higher education by care leavers, the discussion explores various aspects of the social, cultural and economic aspects which might influence participation in education. Read more…

The Big Idea: Community Open Online Courses

What is learning? This is the question I have been exploring through the development of Community Open Online Courses (COOCs), where anyone and everyone can contribute to the curriculum and decide how and what they want to learn. Initially, answering this question from an institutional perspective, seemed easy enough to do – there are a plethora of accreditation routes, standardisation measures and statistics that can be used as evidence. But, we all know that the structure of formal education can leave people as diminished by their experiences as it does enriched. Read more…