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ONLINE COMMUNITY
FRENCH LANGUAGE & CULTURE HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY MATHEMATICS PHILOSOPHY & SOCIETY SCIENCES & COMPUTING ART & WEBDESIGN PRIVATE TUTORIALS
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There are two organising members of the Co-operative, and we have appointed four Invited Teachers who work part time to complete the team. More teachers will assist us as needed from our own selected panel, and special Guest Teachers will be invited in for single classes from time to time. JOHN Davies MA Oxon SHAN Jayran BA Hons. UCL; Cert OET.  JOHN Davies MA Oxon(Teacher, Founding Member of the Co-operative) My teaching practice heavily emphasises building student confidence. Experience has shown that if students feel happy that they can do the work, they almost always do, with surprisingly little difficulty. Conversely, if they do not feel confident, the world’s best teaching of course content is of little avail. Before shifting careers into teaching fifteen years ago, I worked for ten years as a Town Planner, which supplied a unique insight both into the processes of government, and the development of human settlements. History, a lifelong passion, provides a wonderful opportunity to look at the great transitions which have shaped the world we live in; to briefly concentrate on three, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. At other times I have been, among other things, a transatlantic yachtsman, an aerobatic pilot in open-cockpit biplanes, a Hebridean crofter, a national festival organiser, speech writer to an Member of Parliament, and a reasonably successful self employed businessman. I am last but not least, the fortunate survivor of twenty-seven cardiac arrests, five of which left me medically dead. They had to put a special revolving door in the underworld just for me. I’ve had a long and interesting life, and it isn’t over yet! My teaching experience includes twenty years with the Open University, including helping to commission the Faculty of Social Science’s flagship online course. I have also taught successfully at “A” level and GCSE. My qualifications include an M.A. in Politics and Economics from Pembroke College Oxford, (including a very strong modern history component), an M.A. in Government from Manchester, and Master of Civic Design from Liverpool. This last conferred exemption from the final examinations of the RTPI (Royal Town Planning Institute). More detailed profile to follow. SHAN Jayran BA Hons. UCL; Cert OET. (Teacher, Founding Member of the Co-operative)I've happily piled up many long years of formal education, including professional training in online education. I've been a teacher since I was 9 when I was asked to teach younger children at my village school. Since then I've taught foreign doctors how to talk to English patients; Western philosophy to Buddhist monks; and of course I have taught a great many young people essential English skills, how to study almost anything properly and enjoy it, and how to jump the hoops of the exam system. My approach to learning is that it is confidence based; without confidence learning simply can't happen. Home educating also taught me that learning is only reliable if the learner is willing and interested; forced learning is forgotten incredibly rapidly. Finally I have learned that online education works, and works beautifully. But the technology is only as good as the people who apply it. Flashy gimmicks are superficially impressive but soon show themselves up. The technology will actually ruthlessly expose sloppiness. More than anything online learning relies on a sound community system so everyone can communicate easily! JOHN Davies (Teacher, Founding Member of the Co-operative)MA Oxon DETAILED HISTORY SHAN Jayran (Teacher, Founding Member of the Co-operative)My approach to learning is that it is confidence based; without confidence learning simply can't happen. Home educating also taught me that learning is only reliable if the learner is willing and interested; forced learning is forgotten incredibly rapidly. Finally I have learned that online education works, and works beautifully. But the technology is only as good as the people who apply it. Flashy gimmicks are superficially impressive but soon show themselves up. The technology will actually ruthlessly expose sloppiness. More than anything online learning relies on a sound community system so everyone can communicate easily! BA Hons Philosophy UCL (University College, University of London) 1976; Cert TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) International House, London 1977; Assertiveness Training Facilitator (1 year training with Anne Dickson) 1980 Cert OET (Online Education and Training) Institute of Education, University of London 2000; Four years posttgraduate research, University of London, Sociology of Religions. I have been teaching for 30 years. My foundation training in English for foreigners was an excellent introduction as it is completely practical and results based with little fuss or pompous theory. I taught at the Pitman School of English London, and then on an inner city project with teenagers, the Martin Luther King Memorial Trust. In 1981 I chose self employment. I set up and ran a women's health retreat for five years. A major part of this project was a program of courses in personal self development which I either designed and presented myself, or organised others to present. This part of the project was so fascinating that in 1985 I set up H.O.G. to concentrate completely on these courses. H.O.G. grew so fast I developed a national committee to run it and it rapidly diversified. From personal interest, I began to use my assertiveness training a lot more in my work and developed into a private counsellor. By the '90s I was successfully established as a private teacher and counsellor, plus supervising a large and complex national network. I became a mother in 1991 and began running courses for children and families. These centred on personal support for parenting, home education, and tutoring. In the late '90s I began PhD research and over five years or so presented a number of postgraduate seminars, and organised a specialist research Colloquium. I then trained as an online educator and trainer (ie. I trained to actually do online education and to train other teachers in it). I also took to webdesign with enthusiasm. My first online course was a high level academic one, with invited international scholars. By this time we were home educating our son and I was also steadily researching the best software to use with families for online courses. I ran several private projects until I felt I had the right balance of resources. In 2001 I retired from H.O.G. and we moved from London to the Forest. Suddenly I was swamped with tutoring and teaching again as families increasingly felt dissatisfied with a one-size-fits-all school system. I also worked voluntarily as a home education adviser. Our son's home education was one of the best choices we ever made. But when our son turned 12 we felt that he needed more stimulation and structure than a purely home-based education was giving him. We couldn't find anything geographically near us that was small scale, individual in approach, and fun! So we ended up creating First College.
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