FELTAG: Further Education Learning Technology Action Group: Recommendations (16 June 2014) , http://feltag.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/FELTAG-REPORT-FINAL.pdf Accessed 7/5/2015

This report gives some good rationale for my own project, in terms of how it fits in to the wider debate of technology in teaching and learning.

The FELTAG report was commissioned to make “practical recommendations aimed at ensuring the effective use of digital technology in learning, teaching and assessment in Further Education and Skills.”p4

What the report has to say about Learners:

“Learners must be empowered to fully exploit their own understanding of and familiarity with digital technology for their own learning.
FELTAG’s research and conversations consistently referred to the under-exploitation of learners’ skills, devices and technical knowledge when it came to the use of learning technology…..More effort needs to be made to engage and empower learners’ use of digital technology – and the use of their own devices – in the learning process.” P5

“The work of FELTAG addresses how digital technology can personalise learning, enabling people to take greater control of how they learn, when they learn and how and when they are taught and assessed.” p7 (Although using technology for any formal assessment has not been part of my remit, allowing more control over how and what students learn has been directly affected by the use of Pinterest in their learning.)

There is little money in the pot for innovation into institution led VLE’s therefore Pinterest is a ‘small-scale local innovation’:
“Educational organisations have small margins for building investment funds, so this innovation requires them collectively to orchestrate small-scale local innovations if they are to reap the benefits on a sustainable scale” p14-15

“The FE sector is keen to innovate, and is already doing it, but on a small scale and in a fragmented manner without strategic support”

Does it matter that these small-scale innovations are outside the ‘walls’ of the institution, therefore subject to uncontrolled change?

What problems are there for the students if the ‘fragmented manner’ of these small-scale innovations mean that they are constantly having to learn new technologies for each teacher they encounter?