Neil Dougan

As a full-time educator working in Higher Education it is important to keep a keen eye on innovative practices and on how I can improve my own teaching practice and in turn improve the lectures I deliver to students. When I was teaching at Edge Hill University something happened that changed how I looked at current teaching practices. I was teaching in the University’s brand new £18 million media center and I noticed as I walked through the teaching corridors and looked into the floor to ceiling clear glass classrooms that the lecturers were only using the SMARTboards to display YouTube videos and while actually instructing reverted to dry markers on the whiteboard. This practice seemed perverse in its Luddite approach to technology in a building that was meant to represent and enhance 21st Century digital technology.
That thought stayed with me when I began lecturing in Bolton and when the Education Project assignment arose in the PGDE course I thought to base it learning the SMARTboard technology, adapting it to Film and TV content for lessons. I begin researching into the subject and arranged what became an intensive extended session with a specialist in SMARTboard software. I had used it before when doing my CELTA certificate but the purpose in this session was to find a way to capture the moving image of film and television in SMARTboard and use it in my classroom for specific teaching purposes. The specialist is an educator himself and not just a technician so he was motivated to adapt the educational tool to my needs. Between us that day we achieved that.
My aim for the project at that point was to develop my skills in the software and continue to adapt it to my film and TV lecture content. Then I would offer to impart this knowledge and skill to my five fellow lecturers in the Media department. I mention this as a prelude into my eventual Education Project and it is connected and overlapping.