Friday Mindset #190

Happy Friday!

Every so often we get an email like this. Always makes us laugh…

We haven’t replied 😳

OK. Enough of this nonsense, what else? Well, let’s dive in…

Something we're reading...

This document is a thorough, deep review and analysis of where we’re up to with classroom learning. It’s the Deans for Impact’s second edition of The Science of Learning.

It’s beautifully put together, theme-by-theme and topic-by-topic. Each idea has a summary of existing research, plus a ‘pitfalls’ section, warning against oversimplification, assumption or error. Section 4 covers motivation, a subject dear to our hearts at the moment, and does it really well.

And there’s lots more. Download it! Essential reading folks:

We’re also really enjoying Nir Eyal’s Beyond Belief, which operates in the same space as Derek Sivers’ Useful, Not True. Here’s a pic to give you a sense of it - we’ll cover it properly in a future newsletter. It’s great for students:

Brilliantly succinct and useful.

Portal Talk...

Slight change of pace today. We usually use this section to show you updates and features on the VESPA Portal, but today we are handing over to a friend.

So much of the feedback we get from schools around "Systems" comes down to one main theme - protecting students' attention long enough to get work done. Usually the biggest threat to this is sitting in their pocket. By the time we meet these kids at GCSE and A Level, we're often left picking up the pieces of broken attention spans, which is why we were glad to come across SafetyMode. They tackle the problem head-on and earlier than we do, working mainly with students aged 8–14, getting to them before the habits set in.

SafetyMode - #1 parental control app for a safe smartphone experience

In a recent Mumsnet survey, 77% of parents said keeping their child safe online feels like an impossible task, and only 1 in 3 (34%) rated the parental control apps they currently use as very effective. As a school, you're already feeling the tension between technology's benefits and its risks every day -and so are the parents in your community.

That's why SafetyMode built the OtherPhone - a safety-first smartphone co-designed with Mumsnet, who helped shape the features and tested them with their parent community. It gives children access to the benefits of smartphone technology within a safe, controlled, anti-addiction environment. SafetyMode has just released a free guide -"Phone Safety for Teens and Kids"- well worth downloading and sharing with your parent communities:

👉 Download the free guide here

Want to know more or see SafetyMode in action? Get in touch with the team directly at [email protected] to request more information or a demo.

OK, back to the portal!

That’s exactly what we’re here for: helping students build the behaviours that turn good intentions into better results. If you’d like a closer look, or want to know what VESPA would cost in your setting, here the usual ways to contact us:

Something to try...

The focus for subscribers this week is effective independent learning, and this week’s resource is an introduction to the problems we often encounter when we’re trying to encourage students to work more independently.

So you’re getting two things today, folks - a short video in which Martin explores ‘the peeled orange problem’… yes, a slightly obscure title, we admit… and a list of possible behaviours that might constitute a solution; a more precise guide to what effective independent learning is.

So let’s have a look at what we’ve got here…

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