oms

You may have miss-interpreted me. I am not one for iron discipline I encourage my students to enjoy themselves although I do push them hard to do the work and get on and achieve. If anyone is lagging then I will go out of my way to give them extra help.


I think I may have answered my own question as I am sitting here at this time of night reading and marking students assessment scripts as this time of night having done so all evening and I am not even half way through!

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John Peckham

http://www.astutetechnicalservices.co.uk/

Sorry OMS,
again with John on this. No iron discipline is not the be all and end all, agreed. But and it's a big but, respect is the key and most people respond to having some rules and boundaries to follow. So many colleges use maths teachers and physics teachers to teach the tech cert, but surely the best way to get the ideas across is to have someone who can relate the science to real life 'cos they've been there. Isn't it right to expect the same level of attendance, punctuality etc as at work. That is what I expect.
It's not quite the same arguement as the one (in this thread) about who makes the best engineers, but to teach I'm 100% convinced that our students do well because all of the lecturers and assessors are/were working sparkies, not academics.
Most of us find the shift into teaching to be hard work and sometimes poorly rewarded financially, but that's not the reason we do it. When the lad or lass who got a an F at GSHQCSE or whatever it is now can work with numbers confidently and grasp some fairly complex issues, that's when it's worth it. The lightbulb moment I'm sure that's why we do it.

Just as an aside, are there many lecturers, trainers or assessors using this forum? Would a thread for teaching, learning and help with teaching qualifications etc be helpful?

Does my last post make more sense now ?

People learn different things, and they learn them differently - there is no one size fits all - in the same way there is no one way into this industry that is better or worse than another.

Sparks turned engineer aren't better or worse than engineers with different formations and backgrounds - sparks turned tutors aren't better or worse than any other tutor. In all walks of life, there will always be good, bad and indifferent.

Isn't the job of the teacher to enable knowledge (rather than learning) - which is a much more esoteric concept - and to do that, I suggest that the whole education process needs to change, and change radically.

I'm sure you both do a fine job of teaching - I'm just not sure that you are responding to a set of circumstances that in themselves are flawed - ie we are teaching the wrong things.

Regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option

Or the right things to the wrong people.........
Or........sod it, never wanted to be an educationalist or philosophise too much, just pass on what you can to those who want to know.
Just as the lightbulb moment makes us realise why we do do it, trying to teach the wrong things to people who don't want to be there is soul destroying. Ask any teacher anywhere in the world. Unfortunately the system is based on esoterical concepts and not generally on giving the people the skills they want and need to do a good job, whatever that may be. WE as employers know what we want our apprentices to learn in order to do a good job. There is a place for the higher level stuff but it's not what most employers or learners need.
Great to have the debate though OMS, btw do you have any input into the training needs within your organisation? No reason, just wondered what perspective you're looking at this from.
regards
Marc

Regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option

As always really good points OMS. A bit of background which I hope will help to explain my point. The organisation I work for was set up by local employers to train apprentices. The provision already existed at local colleges but was sh*t. Now things have indeed moved on and yes different skills or even the different skill levels required change over time. A few years ago the tech cert was "dumbed down" not enough sparks around you see. Now, as you say when companies are looking to promote sparks to design etc, they don't have the depth of knowledge. Now things are going back up a little, you do have to work to get through. The problem is that the system takes a while to respond. The employers think they know what they want at the time, and are right, but the challenge for the system will always be delivering in "real" time. If you know how much is involved in changing quals and how long changes take to come through the reality of changing all the time just doesn't add up. In theory I suppose we should just set high levels or introduce an "electrical installer" L2 qual for those who don't want or are not capable of doing more. This is an idea that's been around for a while, but never comes to fruition,(yet).
'Tis a vexing question.
regards
Marc

regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option

OMS, are you venting?.

I responded differently to different teachers from the lads in my first college. When we get together from time to time we have different versions of how we were influenced and which lessons stuck in our brains.

Zs

LoL - perhaps, just a little, madam

best regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option

OMS,
I guess this is like the comment you have made to me in the past WRT 2 core SWA & termination, and why it is often heard at the counter in the wholesalers these days that 2 core SWA is now "illegal".

I don't know the solution does anyone?

I try my best when teaching, but, the same as all areas, finance is the king, to heck whether we turn out competent individuals as long as they pass the exams, and we hit the teaching budgets all is well, especially in the private sector.

I have had a young guy with me recently subbing on a few install jobs, good guy, but, trained in the "modern" way, which makes him very limited in understanding and experience, his fault, no, the fault of the system, yes, but, it seems that the guys are being blamed for the way they can get trained?...

regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option

You have to teach what is in the syllabus as the students need to pass the exams and assessments. However I try to add a bit more but also have to watch the time. I try to make things interesting and meaningful by showing photos of real installations and take examples of all sorts of things in from my black museum to illustrate topics. I have to thank one particular forum veteran for my big Christmas box of goodies that drew lots of OOOs and f**k me when I passed around some samples of overheated cables. Also the forum's farming expert for a lovely example of an old 3 phase VOELCB.

Some nights I find it hard to motivate myself after being at work all day but you do have to make the effort and do a good job as the students (or the tax payer) have paid good money for the course.

What counts for me is not the feedback I get from the C&G IV, EV, Oftstead or my line manager assessing me it is the feedback I get from my students.

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John Peckham

http://www.astutetechnicalservices.co.uk/

All the best teachers I have met have been online so I guess the answer to the original question of "where have all the teachers gone?"
Well you find them on the internet.

This new teaching tool (well new to me) does not replace practical experience but as far as theory goes the internet is where you meet the best teachers.

The encouraging thing is that although many may have left City and Guilds and the college treadmill they still discuss openly online and are approachable also.

Just my tuppence worth.

Edited: 13 July 2012 at 01:13 AM by postman

I know that a text out of context is regarded as a pretext but in this case i'll make an exception....

Lol, one thing you mustn't do is give some of these chaps the tools, they'll strip out the colleges IT equipment and sell it on ebay

First comes respect of authority and personal discipline. It makes sense when you think about it. The best learners are those who want to learn, they want to learn because they have the personal discipline to accept the house rules and get on with the task at hand.
Many employers take on those who have been demobbed from the services, why? because they have learnt discipline and obeyance to the 'house' rules.

Its time to forget all this modern philosophical educational ideology and provide some straightforward teaching and learning. We have more or less lost a generation of skills set in this country. So its now a question of how to proceed

The students i have come into contact have been failed GCSE student who have made themselves unavailable for A level studies. Not because they weren't capable of further study but because they had no personal self control and discipline. So who on earth is going to teach that?
My partner says that the problem starts with the parental control. The post war generation of parents had more or less lost the plot and passed this ignorance onto their offspring. Now the offspring have children, who have inherited the ignorance and they send their children to school and the teachers get blamed for not having the necessary control.; they fail their GCSEs, end up in a FE college where the lecturers get castigated for not being able to produce the perfect set of exam results without the obligatory fudge.
As one young lady said to me once. " I have decided to give up your class so that I can go into full time drugs"
I knew my classes weren't that exciting but......

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Why do we need Vernier Calipers when we have container ships?

http://www.leghrichardson.co.uk

"Science has overcome time and space. Well, Harvey has overcome not only time and space - but any objections."

And that John, is the point I've been trying to make - the syllabus is fundamentally flawed - finding different ways of delivering it is just perpetuating the problem.

Take something simple like basic electrical concepts and a bit of simple thermodynamics. I learned more from assembling a simple tank with an immersed electric element in it, along with a few chunks of celotex, a couple of thermometers, a few litres of water, a stop watch and a voltmeter and ammeter.

Get the students to build it (and don't give me all that crap about elf'n safety) and then get them to experiment with it - let them decide what they want to get out of it - will it be a simple relationship between volts, amps, power factor energy and power - will it be a simple demonstration of newtonian cooling, will it be something that triggers an understanding of "losses" in systems - will one of them have the idea of chucking in a abit of food dye and observe mixing or stratification effects - the outcomes are endless - and the point being is that each student will actually learn something from that experiment - it may be different things though - and curriculum and examination needs to reflect that.

As another example give then two forty gallon drums, a pile of plywood, battens, etc and get them to build a bridge between the drums that can support say 3 people - equip them with a few basic mass, force, distance ideas and see what comes out - with no training, you'd be suprised how the designs evolve into box girder or lattice structures - throw in links to notching joists, drilling holes in the centre of the depth and away from the mid point - jump on the good ideas and get the group to expand on them - give them homework that makes them research ideas - not bring them back with 3 pages of neatly printed answers downloaded from Wiki.

You've just done 2396 - did you learn more from going "off piste" and designing the installation the way you thought it would work and then snipping out the relevant parts of the design to answer the questions - or did you just answer the questions. Which approach teaches you more - did you feel the questions totally missed the point about design, and sent you straight into calculation - did you honestly learn anything from it - or was it an exercise in box filling to meet a curriculum.

I looked at it and I can tell you what i think - and i can tell you how I would have gone about - I also reckon I could easily have failed it, based on the narrow marking criteria and in parts, the sheer repetitive nature of the questions - ther eis only so many ways you can present an adiabatic expression, believe me.



Indeed John, pity is, the money is being spent on the "wrong" course

And breath, and breath - relax

regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option

I believe JP feels he spent his money on the wrong course, and going off piste was the better option

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http://www.niceic.biz

That wasn't my point though - regardless of what the quality of delivery was like, my question was actually did you design it first - and then answer the questions - or did you just answer the questions. Having looked at the questions, there is a fundamental difference in either strategy in my opinion. the questions are not asking the right things, are repetetive and don't actualy address issues of design - generally only of calculation - which is a fundamentally different thing.

Regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option

Well I'd just like to add that I did the 2391 with very little testing experience previously.

The course was evening classes and the students seemed like quite a difficult bunch to teach in fact a few just wanted to argue with the lecturer all evening.

We spent two evenings looking at test boards and eight going through past papers.

I booked a week off work and spent it going over past papers again and again and realised that the same questions keep coming up.

Due to me studying in this way I passed first time and as far as the test board goes I talked to people online who told me what to do and I passed the practical first time.

Now I did learn a lot about testing, I did learn how to test properly but passing the exam itself was simply a matter of doing past papers.