Alan Thompson - Thoughts on Education

As a young teacher who had dabbled in 'programming' - harbouring an obsession with evolving computer technologies (that persists still) - I have always been an early adopter of technology. Coming from an era when my first dissertation was researched in a library using microfiche, when my first school reports were type written (on an actual typewriter!) with comments written in black fountain pen - when tablet technology and ubiquitous connectivity emerged in the market place, I (and many others like me) recognised this as a pivotal moment in education. A moment where technology transformed the classroom through connectivity, clever Apps, online interaction, AI, ubiquitous knowledge, and gamification.    Classrooms were transformed into connected places where device use was commonplace, and a whole pedagogy emerged to harness the incredible new tools that we had at our disposal. And it was good - the notoriously slow evolution of teaching and learning took a quantum leap f...

"We're born with millions Of little lights shining in the dark And they show us the way One lights up, every time you feel love in your heart One dies when it moves away "             All the Little Lights -  Passenger   ( All The Little Lights lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC )   What an incredible gift children are. From the excitement at the first news of conception, the journey of raising children can and should be a wonderful adventure for parent and child. How fantastic the miracle of creating new life, and how awesome the responsibility of creating an environment where children can flourish.    I have a vision of childhood as a sacred, sanctified space. A place where children can feel safe, loved, and capable, and where they can confidently seek out and develop their own unique giftedness. A place where learning is seen as worthwhile, rather than an instrumental means to an end, and where adults and parents, each w...

As a naturalised 'Eastern-Caper', one of my favourite drives is the route from Graaf-Reinet to Bedford. It is there that I feel that I am in the absolute heart of the Eastern Cape. I am struck by its vastness, its beautiful vistas of quintessential terrain. Aloe-dotted rolling hills of incredible biodiversity provide a multitude of changing vistas as one transitions from the dusty Karoo towards Bedford, and then on to the pristine coastline. Most striking of all for me are the big skies and wide open spaces.   How odd that when we think of landscapes we tend to imagine them as places of nothingness, as if the richness of nature and the beauty of  creation has no meaning without clustered humanity being the centre of attention.    Timothy Ingold, professor of Social Anthropology at  the University of Aberdeen   once expressed it thus:  “the landscape tells - or rather is - a story. It enfolds the lives and times of predecessors who, over the genera...