Congratulations to L8R (later) and Frank Flynn

Last night I was fortunate to attend the Royal Television Society awards ceremony at The Savoy in London as a member of the Primary and Secondary Multimedia and Interactive Jury. This years' guest speaker was Prof. Ted Wragg of Exeter University who spoke of the necessity for teachers to bring creativity and innovation to the classroom. He spoke of children being 'switched on' to learning with the metaphorical switch and in the same way, 'switched off' too.

Ted cited an example where he observed one student teacher conducting a lesson about optics - during the opening introduction, Ted observed the children slipped into comatose-d state - that is until, as if from nowhere, he presented them with a pinhole camera. At which point, the children became visibly excited and ecstatic. The response by the teacher... "Okay, calm down, calm down... there's nothing to get excited about here"

Ted continued by explaining young children are naturally inquisitive, and despite not yet understanding the scientific terms to explain something, naturally observe, question and explain. They are what you might say naturally 'switched on'. As teachers, we therefore only need to provide an environment which allows pupils to fulfill this desire for learning and Ted Wragg suggested that we achieve this by being creative and innovative teachers. As Stephen Heppell writes in the Education Guardian, following a dialogue with some of the world's most innovative teachers...

"Everyone was doing exceptional work despite, rather than thanks to, their various national curriculums. They all shared similar tales of "too much stuff", too tight targets, no space to innovate, and of a rampant managerialism that seemed to be crushing the creativity out of all but a few. It was as though the innovations driven forward by ICT had frightened the life out of their various policy-makers with a resulting mess of regulation and prescription to keep the lid on progress"

There is real desire by teachers to be everything that Ted Wragg evangelises about but we need to change the culture which pushes against this.

Frank Flynn of the BBC was awarded the Royal Television Society Judge's Award for his long-standing contribution to Educational Television. He continues to be a key player in the Digital Curriculum initiative and following Ted's speech, was rather fitting that he should be recognised in this way.

Congratulations also to the L8R (pronounced 'later") team who certainly knew how to acknowledge the winning of the Multimedia and Interactive award.