7 Tips for Planning an ICT Lesson with One or Two Computers

What if you can only have access to one or two computers for the whole class for much of the time. Does that mean you cannot do anything of any value? Not at all. Here are seven suggestions for how to make the best of the situation.

Draw up a class rota of who will be using the computer(s), and in which lesson. Your planning may not entirely work out in practice, because of factors like absences and power cuts and so on. However, it is easier to ensure that all pupils have been given the same opportunities to use the computers if you have a rota than if you don’t.

With the ICT co-ordinator or other teachers, identify the areas of the ICT Programme of Study (PoS) -- or your own scheme of work -- that you will be able to cover. This is not to say that the ICT PoS is a sort of pick-’n’-mix, but that it may be possible for different teachers to cover different aspects of the PoS in order to ensure that it is completely covered.

Devise generic activities that can be applied to a variety of situations, such as internet research skills and copy/paste.

Devise activities that require pupils to share a computer. Computers are excellent for encouraging collaborative learning and higher-order skills such as modelling.

Adopt the approach of showing the pupils as a class how to do something on the computer, and then practising it in that lesson and subsequent lessons.

Plan your lessons in a way that computer-based work and non-computer-based work are similar in terms of intended learning outcomes. For example, to take the copying and pasting idea again, all pupils could be engaged in finding suitable pictures and pasting them into their written work, whether they are working at a computer or not.

If you are in the fortunate position of having a computer suite and computers in classrooms, it may be possible to teach the whole class a computer skill all at once, which they can subsequently practice in the context of other subjects and/or lessons.

Did you find this article helpful or useful? It was first published on 15th February 2008.



E Is For Everything -- But Why?

Is the 'E' necessary?There is an unfortunate tendency for e-learning evangelists to try and come up with as many e-words as possible when promoting the benefits of e-learning. Why?

I suppose the idea is to generate excitement, and to energise one’s colleagues. But to my mind, this is mere gimmickry.

I’ve seen it done with the 'C' in ICT as well. That stands for 'communication' or 'communications', but I’ve known people to embellish and complement it with 'collaborate', 'co-operation' and the like.

(Curiously, I have never seen it done with 'd', as in 'digital', or any other letter.)

If that is all there was to it, this tendency would be merely annoying. However, I believe it has a subtle -- but real – derogatory effect, in two ways.

Firstly, just as it is often the case that a piece of writing is diminished in direct proportion to the number of adjectives used, so is the authority of a discipline lessened as more and more attributes are generated for it. It seems to denote a certain lack of confidence: you don't see geography teachers babbling on about how good, great or gritty their subject is; you don't hear historians trying to convince people that their area of study brings happiness, or that it reduces harm or hubris.

To quote from Hamlet, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks".

Secondly, and worse, it can actually do some positive harm. As long as the myth is propagated that e-learning is different to learning, or that an e-portfolio is fundamentally different to a portfolio, some teachers and their principals will quite happily continue as if the e-revolution has nothing to do with them. Worse, concerns over e-safety could easily mask the fact that all teachers should feel responsible for children’s safety, and that there is not a subset of safety that can be delegated to the ICT staff.

As far as I am concerned, the sooner we drop the 'e' from everything, the better.

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An earlier version of this article first appeared on 29 July 2009.

If Your ICT Provision Were a Restaurant...

Presentation is important tooA lot of restaurants provide free 'extras' that help to make the experience enjoyable. So, as an interesting little exercise, if you're an ICT co-ordinator or ICT subject leader, what do you do to make people's experience of ICT more pleasant?

The kind of things restaurants do, depending on the type of cuisine, and the individuality of the owner, include:

• Placing fresh iced water on the table without your having to ask for it.
• Placing bread on the table.
• Placing bread sticks on the table.
• Putting a plate of olives on the table.
• Supplying you with 'bottomless' coffee.
• Supplying you with 'bottomless' fresh orange juice.
• Giving you a square of chocolate when the bill is presented (as a sweetener?).
• Giving you a complementary drink along with your bill.
• Opening the door for you as you leave.
• Shaking hands with you as you leave.
• Presenting ladies with a rose.

What do all of these have in common?

• They are 'extras'. One could argue that good food and service are to be expected and therefore, in a sense, need not be commented upon. However, extras are, by definition, things you were not expecting, and therefore nice to receive.
• They do not involve huge effort or cost on the part of staff.
• They are the kinds of thing that are most likely to generate word-of-mouth recommendations.

So, if you were to adopt this philosophy, what kind of 'extras' might you provide to other teachers wanting to make use of the educational technology facilities? Remember, this could be quite important in encouraging reluctant teachers to use the technology in the future. Here are a few of my suggestions.My philosophy is that someone ought to be able to use the facilities from scratch, and walk out with a print-out of their work five minutes later. Therefore, these first suggestions are all geared towards that (although that is not the only consideration).

• There should be guest log-ins available, with the details on a card that is attached to the computer or laptop.
• Printing should be easy: no need to have to think about which printer to use, for instance, unless the choice is blindingly simple, eg between monochrome and colour.
• Instructions should be available -- on the walls, on the desks, perhaps even on the computer itself.
• Assistance should be available if needed, perhaps from a classroom assistant or a technician.

I also believe that your working environment should be pleasant and welcoming, so I should recommend one or more of the following:

• Get rid of all those notices telling people what they can't do. It just creates a depressing, negative atmosphere.
• Make sure the keyboards are clean. When I use the tech facilities in a school, I don't expect to have to use an alcohol-based hand wash afterwards.
• Make sure the monitors are dust-free, as far as they can be. Why should people have to risk eye or skin irritation?
• Make sure the environment is clean and pleasant. When I work at home I am not surrounded by screwed up print-outs on my desk and floor, so why should I have to be in that environment in a school?

You might say that these things aren't your job, and I'd agree. But I'd argue that it is your job to make sure they get done. Your role may be that of a 'technology evangelist', working alongside teachers and encouraging them to use the technology rather than having a direct part to play in the provision of such facilities. Even so, your job is going to be that much harder to do if the physical environment is deeply unpleasant.Incidentally, in case this post seems predicated on the existence of a computer lab, pretty much the same arguments apply in other circumstances. If, for example, you have banks of laptops and no computer room at all, you would still want to make sure that, for example:

• The laptops are clean.
• They are fully charged.
• They come with instructions for using the laptop itself, including log-in details...
• ... and instructions for using common programs like the word processor on your system.
• A number to call if assistance is needed.

Of course, none of these are 'extras' as such. So extras might include, say:

• A private area where staff can work at computers without having to worry about students looking over their shoulder.
• Providing staff with the most up-to-date and/or advanced facilities.
• Making tea, coffee and biscuits available.
• Having USB sticks to give to staff on which to save their work, security considerations permitting.

If none of these appeal, perhaps the 'extra' is simply a pleasant and friendly attitude. If staff feel that they are in a sharing, collegiate environment, rather than invading someone's private domain, they are much more likely to return.

For more ideas, read the series called 31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader.

An earlier version of this article was originally published on 15 September 2009.

Benchmarking and Customer Satisfaction

If part of the purpose of your job is to spread the use of information and communications technology, it's a good idea to start collecting statistics in order to benchmark your performance.

This article looks at a fairly simple approach to benchmarking which does not take long to implement, but which can be extremely useful.

It is true that you could content yourself with collecting statistics on how many people are using the educational technology facilities, but I regard that as necessary but not sufficient. For a start, it tells you nothing about the quality of what people are doing, and it is more than likely that if you start to insist on high standards of work, or even merely that colleagues do not use the computer facilities as a fall-back when they don't have a lesson planned, you will start to see a fall in the amount of usage -- at least in the short term.

Furthermore, there is little you can do about increasing the usage until you know why people use or don't use the facilities. Hence, some deeper probing is required.

A very good "way in" is the customer satisfaction survey. If your school or organisation has a history of poor performance and bad experiences in this area, you may feel that to carry out customer surveys would lay yourself wide open to criticism, and therefore be the last thing you'd want to do. In fact, in those circumstances finding out what people like and dislike  about the service on offer is even more essential.

There is another dimension to this as well. In general, although people are often happy to criticise someone or something when in a crowd, and anonymous, they are usually much more considered when asked to do so in writing, and with their name attached to it. In one of my jobs, the IT service was constantly being criticised by Headteachers: not directly to me, but to my boss. As well as being upsetting for me, it was also upsetting for my team, who tried to do a good job and, from feedback they received whilst in school, thought that they were. Once I'd implemented the customer survey regime, my boss and I had a couple of the following sorts of conversation before the unwarranted criticisms stopped altogether:

Boss: At the meeting today, the Headteachers were complaining that your team take ages to respond to a call for assistance, and never complete the work properly.

Me: That's strange, because according to the customer satisfaction records we've been keeping, 95% of the schools rated our service as excellent, and the rest rated it as very good. Was there anyone in particular who was leading the complaints?

Boss: Yes, Fred Bloggs.

Me: Hmm, that's a bit odd. Looking at his last completed customer survey sheet, he said "An excellent service. The technician was really helpful and fixed the problem with no interruption to the school's computer network at all." Would you like a copy?

Now, there was no intention on my part to stifle criticism. However, I think that if you are going to criticise someone, especially when potentially people's jobs are at stake, you need to be very specific about what was wrong. The trouble with educational technology is that people have come to expect the same level of service as they enjoy from the electricity board. And so they should, but they do not always understand the wider forces at work. Thus it was that when an internet worm knocked out computer systems all over the world, my team got the blame! When things like that happened, the Headteachers would complain in their meetings with the boss that the IT service is useless, not realising what the real causes were. Given that on no occasion, as far as I know, did any of them contact him out of the blue to say "The IT service is fantastic today!", the impression the boss had was that we were not doing our jobs properly. The implementation of the customer survey approach counteracted that by being very specific, and by providing hard evidence of how Headteachers found the service in general over the long term, as opposed to how they felt immediately after the most recent virus alert.

OK, so how do you conduct a customer survey? I would suggest that you ask people to complete a very simple form, and sign and date it. Then transfer the details to a spreadsheet, which won't take long once you have created the spreadsheet in the first place. You will then be able to generate useful statistics.

The questions themselves will differ according to the nature of the service you are running, of course, but if you are an ICT Co-ordinator (Technology Co-ordinator) I would suggest the following items be put on the form:

1. Name of teacher
   
   
2. Class
   
   
3. Date
   
   
4. Subject
   
   
5. Was the room tidy when you entered it?
   
   
6. Was the system too slow/fine?
   
   
7. How easy was it to achieve what you set out to achieve? Very easy/very hard
   
   
8. Please add a brief explanatory note, especially if it was very hard.
   
   
9. Any suggestions as to how the facilities or service could be improved?

As you can see, a very simple form, which not only helps you to obtain some information in a consistent manner, but also indicates pretty clearly what your own concerns are --  the room being left tidy, for example.

I’d strongly suggest you assign numerical values to the responses (EG 1 = Very Good) and use a spreadsheet to collate and analyse the responses, because it is easier to calculate averages where necessary.

Run this for half a term, and see if you can spot a pattern emerging. If so, it will help you to prioritise future developments.

How helpful did you find this article? Please leave a comment. If you like the customer focus approach, you will probably find this article interesting too, and this one on the Framework for ICT Support.

An earlier version of this article was published on 16th September 2008.

A Commercial Approach to Promoting Educational Technology

I do believe there is a lot we can learn from the commercial world when it comes to promoting the use of educational technology in schools. In this article I draw on the example of how one company's approach to getting repeat business may hold lessons for the ICT leader.

The company in question is one called Viking Direct, a huge office supplies company in the UK. We tend to buy quite a bit of our stationery from there because (a) it's usually cheaper than other places and (b) you can often get same day or next day delivery.

We recently received a catalogue from them which had this printed -- not merely stuck on -- the front cover:

"Mr T Freedman

On 3 February 2008 you ordered a pack of folders at £7.49 per pack. We have a special private sale price for you! Just £6.29 per pack. Just quote reference number ..."

Now think about that for a moment. What has Viking actually done?

• They have kept a record of what I bought and when, and at what price.
• They have printed an individual catalogue for me, obviously through the magic of mail-merge.
• They have used their knowledge of me to try and tempt me back.

So imagine a message like this in a colleague's inbox:

"Dear Joanne

On 3 February 2008 you took a group of Y9 pupils into the computer room, where they used KoolFX to help design posters. We've now upgraded to KoolFX 2.0, which has 30 more wizards and is even easier to use. If you'd like to bring your class in again, just click here to go straight to the online room-booking system."

If you think such a thing might work, the mail-merge bit is pretty easy. The hard part would be collecting the information in the first place, because if you ask some people to give you too much detail when they want to book the use of a computer room, you may just put them off bothering. I would suggest doing one of the following:

• Have a very simple electronic booking system, where very few questions are asked, and most of the answers or even all of them can be answered with drop-down menus. The information you need is teacher's name, age or year of group, the software to be used, the purpose of the session, and the date.
• Install network monitoring software that will capture much of the information required automatically.
• At a pinch, ask for the information and enter it into a spreadsheet, say, yourself.

You may also need to "sell" the idea, otherwise it can seem very Big Brother-ish. There are two good reasons to monitor how the system is being used:

• To ensure that the software you purchase is actually the software that teachers want to use.
• To ensure that the system is being used cost-effectively, ie that you haven't wasted lots of money on resources that people don't use.

I know both of those reasons sound the same, and in fact they are alternate sides of the same coin. But there is a subtle change of emphasis. In the first case, the issue is, to get commercial again, customer satisfaction. In the second, it is about best value.

The example given here is quite simple: you are asking for what is known in the business world as a "repeat order". Repeat business is a very good thing to have, as any business person will tell you. A key thing to bear in mind is that if you set your sights on repeat business, you have to invest time and effort into the customer's very first experience of using your services.

Otherwise it could well be their last.

This is a slightly amended version of an article first published on 14 May 2008.

My First Blog Post

As far as I can ascertain, this was my very first blog post. (Not my very first online writing, which had been published around seven years earlier.)

The sad thing is that nothing has changed -- except for the fact that I now receive even more of these inane messages!

22:13 2002-05-22

Make a note of thisToday I had a great email. It started: "Hi [firstname]," and then went on to tell me how this product could make me loads of money.

I should have thought the first step in making pots of money is to find out basic things like your target's name, and perhaps the second thing would be to make sure the mail-merge works.

That's one company that won't be getting my custom (along with all the others whose emails are automatically dumped in my Trash folder -- but that's another story!)

8 Point Room Check

Use a checklist to help keep the facilities in tip-top conditionHere's a checklist you can use to help keep a computer suite in tip-top condition. Make sure the students know you will be checking as well.

Room number ____

• Are all the computers working?
  
  
• Are all the printers working?
  
  
• Do the printers have paper in them?
  
  
• Have discarded print-outs been cleared away?
  
  
• Are all the mice working?
  
  
• Are all the monitors working?
  
  
• Is the network working?
  
  
• Is there a student User ID list handy in case someone forgets their details?

This article was originally published on 14th October 2006.

Be Very Afraid 2008

What's it all about?

On 27 October 2008 I attended my first ever "Be Very Afraid" event. Established by Stephen Heppell a few years ago, the idea of this occasion is, as I understand it, to give us teachers and educationalists a kick up the rear end -- in the nicest possible way, of course!

The premise, in a nutshell, is that kids can do, and are doing, fantastic things, and we ought to know about them. Well, that has always been my guiding principle, so the idea of the event appeals very much. So, did the reality live up to the promise?

I made several videos with children and young people at the event. Here they are; judge for yourself.

Before attending the event, I'd been under the impression that the focus would be on brilliant things the students were doing with educational technology. As it turned out, much of the students' ed tech skill set was pretty low level in my opinion. But the remarkable thing (which I don't regard as that remarkable, to be honest), was the extent to which the students were self-taught. Also, the uses to which they were putting their skills and the technology were noteworthy.

Articulate and enthusiastic

But the thing which stood out for me was how articulate and enthusiastic the young people were. You'll see this for yourself when you watch the videos. The eleven year old girl, for example. I was actually at that stand for close to an hour, and while she was explaining everything she had done, in minute detail, the ICT advisor from the area was chuckling away in the background, every so often giving me a look as if to say, "You;re going to be stuck here all afternoon!"

Or take the seven year old boys. They were dead tired, and their teacher had to do most of the talking, but even so they had a good stab at saying what they'd been doing.

And a thirteen year old girl from Juliette Heppell's class was so articulate that I asked Juliette if she worked in a very expensive private school. As it happens, her school is an ordinary school in an ordinary area in west London.

Why I enjoyed the event

I enjoyed the event for several reasons.

First, it was a great chance to talk directly with young people, all of whom were delightful.

Second, it's wonderful to meet kids -- and teachers -- who are excited about what they're doing, who have not been ground down by thoughts of league tables and the other 5,000 things that schools have to worry about these days. (Last year I did a back-of-an-envelope calculation and worked out that there were at least 40 ICT-related initiatives or sets of rules and regulations presented to schools over the last few years; I say "at least" because I stopped counting at 40.)

Third, it afforded an opportunity to meet up with people I know, although the chats I had with them were fairly brief because we all wanted to talk to the young people and their teachers.

One of the things that made the event successful was its laid-backness, if that makes sense, and you can see from the photo what a fantastic opportunity it was for professional development.

Anyway, grab a cup of tea and settle down to watch the videos. That will take you around half an hour, which I think you will conclude was well-spent.

The videos

Video 01: An 11 year-old girl talks about her project on The Vikings

Video 02: Two 15 year-old girls talks about their project on disability

Video 03: Two 13 year-old pupils talks about their international project on people aged 1 to 100

Video 04: Juliette Heppell describes her school's project and its benefits for the children

Video 05: A student describes how she intends using the IT skills gained in her textiles classes, along with her artistic ability, to make some money!

Video 06: Two boys describe their work with Google Earth

Video 07: Two 11 year old boys describe Praise Pod

Video 08: Two 7 year-old pupils talks about their work with Nintendo dogs

Video 09: More on the Nintendo dogs project, and its outcomes in terms of numeracy and business savviness!

Some photos from the day

Praise Pod (Video 07) : Pupils learn interviewing techniques, and can zap your interview to your phone.

Nintendo dogs (Video 08) : The children decorated these bags as part of their project work.

Artwork/design (Video 05) : Amazing artwork, which has the potential to earn money.

 The Vikings (Video 01). The children made the videos and slideshows, and uploaded them to the website. Could your pupils do that?

And now, a challenge...

Here's an idea for an in-service training activity for you and your colleagues.

Watch two or three of these videos and then discuss:

1. What was it about the projects that got the pupils so enthusiastic? Are there any common factors?
2. If you have identified a few common characteristics, how might you  try to reproduce them in your own situation?
3. What steps can you take to enable your pupils to explain their projects as articulately as the pupils in the videos?

Acknowledgements

Thanks to:

Stephen Heppell and Lys Johnson, for organising the event.

Anna Rossvoll and her pupils

Juliette Heppell and her pupils

Ben Jeddia and his pupils

Vicky Dassoulas and her pupils

The Praise Pod pupils

The Art/Design student (To see more of her work, look out for her website, "To be continued", which will go live in due course.)

Northfleet Girls School

Lampton School

Anagh Coar School

Elrick Primary School

Kings Road Primary School

To read the Nintendo dogs blog, visit http://topdogs.edublogs.org.

Please note that I have deliberately divorced the school names from the videos, and omitted the children's names. We obtained permission to take video and photos from the teachers concerned.

Visit the BVA website.

This article was first published on 30th October 2008.

Reflections on Handheld Learning: Authenticity vs Karaoke, and Magnificent Failure vs Benign Success

Malcolm McLaren

I was saddened to learn of Malcolm McLaren's untimely death due to cancer. I wrote the following article after the Handheld Learning Conference in 2009, and have republished it as my tribute to him.

#HHL09 Malcolm McLaren is not, perhaps, the first person that would spring to mind in the context of education. Yet, as one of the keynotes at the Handheld Learning Conference 2009 he had much to say that was highly relevant  - in an irrelevant sort of way.

Let me deal with that last comment first. I think that if there is one danger of conferences is that, if the organisers are not careful, the delegates end up in a kind of echo chamber in which all they are doing is, in effect, reinforcing what they all believe to be true anyway.

For me, this was no more apparent than in those sessions in which the presenter eulogised about the benefits of handheld devices.

Yes.

I know.

That's why I came.

Go tell it to a bunch of people who haven't had the opportunity to think about it or find out about it yet!

What conferences need is at least one 'outsider' who does not know the rules and conventions, and who can therefore break them. Or, at least, challenge them. That's why a few years ago I booked a journalist called John Clare to speak at the Naace conference, a gathering of the sort of people who attended the Handheld Learning Conference. Clare, a sort of intellectual Luddite, had one or two people walk out of his lecture, and another person subsequently voicing the view that it's only a matter of time before Holocaust-deniers will be brought to the podium.

In other words, his talk was a huge success! It got people talking for days afterwards, and even grudgingly admitting that he might be right.

Thus it was that McLaren had people tweeting each other and anyone else who would listen, asking what the point of it all was. Well, I'll pull out a few key things he said, and give you my own take on it all. Whatever you may think, one cannot deny that the atmosphere in the room was electric. That was partly because, I think, it was pretty amazing to have such a cultural icon addressing us in person, despite his somewhat avuncular (or, in Steve Wheeler's phrase, affable grandfather) appearance. And also, possibly, because one dared not think what he might actually say.

McLaren described his schooling. To cut a long story short, by any usual measures he was an abject failure. However, McLaren believes that it is important to be a magnificent failure rather than a benign success.

Yet, in our modern society, that is hardly presented as an option. Rather, we live in a karaoke world in which we can revel in our own stupidity, in which we want instant success without working for it. We have lost (and this is my interpretation) the understanding of the truth behind the old show biz joke that it takes 20 years to achieve overnight success.

McLaren likes the idea of the flaneur, the observer who is at the centre of everything yet invisible to all. He spoke of the need to understand the artistic value of banality.

For me, McLaren put into words what I have been unable to, or at least not nearly so eloquently. For example, for a long time now I have been taking photos of 'boring' subjects. The way I see it, lots of people take photos of 'interesting' subjects; who is recording the boring everyday stuff? I also took a similar stance in an article about a video, in which I asked why everything has to be so interesting all the time. 

So what does all this have to do with handheld learning? The key, I think, can be found in his comment that by working on his creative side, it helped him get along with himself; it helped him to find out who he was.

That is a very profound, and very moving, statement. We have fantastic technology now, technology that can liberate us in all sorts of ways. For example, as I mentioned in a recent article, technology has had some profound effects on our lifestyle over the past few decades. But what a missed opportunity if none of this stuff leads to, or contributes to, inner liberation. Look at the Attainment Targets for ICT in the National Curriculum, and you'll see that the higher the level, the greater the emphasis (either explicitly or implicitly) on efficiency and evaluation and all those kind of left-brain activities.

Why is there not an attainment target which encourages creativity, even if it leads to a solution that doesn't work?

McLaren finished by saying that the romantic pursuit of learning has died. The technology we have should be used to rediscover the idea of the flaneur, and art for art's sake, not a career.

He warned: don't take information for granted just because it's free. Don't become so reliant on technology that you don't know how to read a map, or spot a lie. Technology is not a replacement for applied learning.

I'm not sure how long McLaren spoke for. I believe he overran his allotted time. I, for one, could have listened to him for much longer.

This article was first published on 8th October 2009.

More Shock Tactics: Making ICT More Exciting

If you're in charge of teaching information and communications technology, what can you do in order to inject even more life into the subject? Here are 12 ideas to get you started. And when you've read these, you might like to look at Shock Tactics: 7 Ideas For Teaching With Technology.

• Do the unexpected. For example, show how you can do modelling with a word processor.
• Delegate the responsibility. Ask the teachers in your team to each take a unit of work and be responsible for creating a package for it: lesson plans, resources and in-service training for the rest of you.
• Do a different unit. For example, if delegating responsibility for units already happens, don't do the same unit this year as you did last year.
• Collaborate with other teachers (1). For example, ask a business studies teacher to come up with some ideas for teaching copyright protection. They're bound to have a different -- and therefore refreshing -- take on it.
• Collaborate with other teachers (2). Put together an ad hoc team from a couple of subject areas, take a theme, and see where it leads you.
• In one school I taught in, a group of us from the English, Economics, Geography and History departments put together a unit of work dealing with the origins of some common words in the English language. It was fascinating, and the students loved it. We all brought a different perspective to the topic, which served as a vehicle for teaching a whole range of things. The main thing we all had in common was that we all worked on crosswords in the lunch break!
• Put the students to work. Ask them to devise a lesson package for some of the work. For example, ask them to produce 2 lessons on the effects of technology in society. The reward for them would be for it to contribute towards an accredited project, or be included in their e-portfolio.
• Teach a different age group. If you usually teach 10 year olds, do a swap with a colleague and take their 14 year olds. Having to teach the subject to a different age group will force you to rethink your approach.
• Use a different medium. If most of your resources are text-based, change the balance: can you find a few podcasts and video clips that could form the backbone of the unit instead?
• Use a different approach. Instead of teaching unit 1, unit 2, unit 3 etc etc ad nauseum, try devising a really interesting scenario that can form the basis of a project spanning several units, and several weeks.
• Give a different kind of assignment. For example, ask the students to work in teams to produce a game designed to teach people how to keep safe online.
• Get out more. That's right: see what other schools are doing. It might give you some ideas.
• Read more. Sometimes, for example, the school reports published by Ofsted, the English inspection body for education and related services, highlight good examples of using or teaching ICT. Read educational journals, both print and electronic. And, of course, continue to subscribe to Practical ICT in order to be able to read articles such as this one.

This article was first published on 25th September 2008 under the title Shock Tactics.

If you enjoyed reading this article, you may find my book useful:

Go On, Bore 'Em!: How to make ICT lessons excruciatingly dull. This looks at ten reasons that ICT lessons are often described by kids as 'boring', and what you can do about it.

Review of the Flip Video

Since the introduction of the Flip Pocket Video Recorder a couple of years ago, several variations on the theme have been put on the market, both by rivals and Flip themselves. I thought it might be interesting to read what I said about it, and what it might be used for, back in June 2008.

Big ambitions?Here's a classic case of buying a solution in the hope of finding a problem for it! I have often toyed with the idea of purchasing a video camera and taking it with me on my travels, but the effort and cost have always seemed to me to exceed the likely benefits.

However, the Flip Video, which arrived on the shelves in Britain only very recently, changes all that. True, there have been other, similar, devices here for some time. But none of them, in my opinion, matches the sleek good looks of the Flip.

Elaine and I have been putting it through its paces, and would like to share the results, and our thoughts, with you.

The Flip has a number of advantages over a traditional video camera, or a still camera that can shoot video. It has clearly been designed with the YouTube generation in mind, because the process of shooting, editing, saving and uploading a video is just so easy.

Let's put it this way: I have a firm principle that if you can't get something usable out of a device or an application within 5 minutes then it's too complicated. The Flip comes with a quick start guide that is, in effect, a sheet of card with instructions and illustrations on each side. I gave it a quick glance just in case it warned me of dire consequences if I set it up in the wrong order (it didn't) and to find out where the batteries went (I was trying to open the compartment with the on-off switch). Other than that, everything was straightforward, and within a very short time I had shot and edited a couple of videos and uploaded them to TeacherTube and YouTube. Spielberg: move aside!

I think this ease of use is important because it changes the rules. I may be a creative person, but if I want to quickly record my actions or your thoughts, I don't want to have to do a course in video editing first and I certainly don't want to risk losing or damaging a camera costing hundreds of pounds.

The editing facilities are limited, but that is just how I like them. There is an option to mix your videos using a sort of template and add a musical soundtrack, which is fun but irrelevant for my needs at present. More useful is the ability to use sliders to mark the start and ends of a video clip and snip it to exclude the bits you don't want. If you save the original video in its entirety you could, I suppose, carry out this process several times in order to create several useful short clips. However, if you're going to do that you would be better off using a proper video editing application. The “snipping” feature is really meant to be used only to get rid of the start and end bits which will not form part of the final product.

In trying it out, I wanted to see what the quality of sound and video would be like outdoors, or in noisy environments. It strikes me that the whole point of a device like this is to be able to slip it in your pocket or bag and use it as and when you like. In a school context, you'd want the children and young people to be able to work outside, such as in the playground, the street, or a science field trip without having to mess about in Audacity to sort the sound out once back in school.

I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised. For the most part, the sound in the clips here was fine – there was just a few minutes of an chat in a restaurant where the background clatter of crockery and cutlery made it difficult to hear Elaine. You have to get fairly close to the device, say about a foot, to ensure audibility.

Plus points

 
• Easy to use: there is basically one big red button to press!
 
• Very small and light
 
• Comes with the software built in...
 
• ... And installation is automatic
 
• Sound and visual quality are very good, especially before saving for the web
 
• Very easy to transfer videos from the device to a computer: use the pop-out arm to connect it via a USB port, and the software does the rest.
 
• Basic editing is very easy...
 
• ... As is uploading to YouTube or generating the code for embedding the video if it's uploaded to an unnamed web service such as TeacherTube.

Minus points

 
• I find it hard to stop recording, for some reason. Elaine thinks it may be because my fingers are big. She has no such difficulty.
 
• Storage capacity is 60 minutes. It would have been nice to have the option of reducing the quality or using an SD card to expand capacity.
 
• Just slightly too expensive to make class sets of 10 or 15 a viable possibility.
 
• Because everything is so automatic, it is not immediately obvious where the videos are being stored. It would be good to have a version which is geared for school network use.

Here are the results of our experimentation. Each of these lasts just a couple of minutes.

Return from a shopping trip

I wanted to see what the results would be like if I recorded in an urban environment. I sound puffed because I was lugging a huge amount of shopping with one arm.

Interview with me about articles and books

Interview with Elaine about uses for the Flip Video

Further uses for the Flip video

Here are some other possible educational uses we came up with:

 
• Ask teachers, technicians and support staff to record brief commentaries explaining what their job entails. These could be stored as part of the school's Careers resources.
 
• Ask pupils or staff to record a brief running commentary on a task they are carrying out.
 
• Carry out quick interviews.
 
• You could record interviews with people about an issue, and instruct different sets of pupils to use the “snipping” facility to edit them to reflect a particular point of view. This would be a good introduction to the concept of propaganda.
 
• Record pupil presentations...
 
• ... And use them for reflecting back to the pupil how they appear to an audience, for the purpose of improving their performance.
 
• Ask pupils to create brief “bulletins” about the work they're doing, for parents to be able to view, and/or for their e-portfolio.
 
• Ask pupils to record their thoughts on what is good about a piece of work they have done, and how it might be improved.
 
• Pupils could use the snapshot facility for extracting a suitable still shot to illustrate an essay, blog post or e-portfolio entry.

You'll find some other interesting ideas here and here. And Mark Warner has written an interesting review here.

If you can think of any that haven't been mentioned (I'm sure there are lots), please leave a comment in order to expand our horizons in this area.

This is a slightly modified version of an article which was originally published on 27th June 2008.

Too Overbearing By Half

There is a danger in overselling your services.

Being too overbearing simply does not work.

I have recently stopped going to 'my' gym, and started going to an unfamiliar one instead. The small increase in travelling time and the extra cost in terms of parking are more than compensated for by the peace and quiet I enjoy as a result of switching.

So what's all this about, and how does it relate to educational technology?

Let me deal with the second question first, because I wish to keep your attention. Many subject leaders of ICT in schools (and sometimes Local Authorities and other organisations) have a remit to encourage colleagues to use educational technology as well. To do so, one has to tell people about, and demonstrate to people, the benefits. But there is a fine line between doing that, and being completely insensitive -- and thereby disrespectful -- to the other person.

Back to the gym. It's not the gym that's the problem, but the restaurant. If you order a cheese sandwich, you get a sort of roll call of every other type of sandwich you could have instead. A request for a coffee is answered by a list of all the health benefits of smoothies. Wondering aloud if you might try the fruit salad, you get a long-winded explanation of all the ingredients therein, why they are healthy and how the fruit was hand-picked from a local farm only hours earlier. You get what you want in the end, but not before having to waste time listening to someone you don't wish to listen to, and without feeling that you have to summon up reserves of assertiveness merely in order to enjoy the light refreshment of your choice. And in the shortest possible time.

Consequently, I have decided to vote with my feet.

Several conclusions can be drawn from this in the context of ICT:

Firstly, I can read. Therefore, I can read the menu. I don't need someone bending my ear about all the things I could have. Does your school have a menu of ICT services that colleagues could enjoy? If not, I think you should make that a priority: not only will it be informative to those colleagues who wish to be informed, it will save you from being an insufferable bore to those who don't.

Secondly, there's an implicit assumption that I am not well-informed enough to make a sensible choice by myself. At least, one could infer that. By the same token, to look at this in an educational technology context, if someone tells you they'd like to word-process their worksheets, do you respond by suggesting they may like to consider desktop publishing them instead? I did once, and was unable to understand the negative reaction I received. It's fairly safe to assume that someone who is intelligent and qualified enough to be a teacher is able to decide what they'd like to do with their own worksheets. And if you do harbour any doubts about that, you can always refer them to that menu I was talking about.

Thirdly and finally, I think it is generally acknowledged that there is nothing worse than an evangelist. As an ex-smoker, I suddenly lurch somewhere to the right of Attila The Hun when anyone inadvertently blows cigarette smoke in my face. Nobody is more tedious than the couple who have just discovered a new holiday resort and insist on showing you -- and describing in great detail -- every single one of the 400 photographs they took whilst on vacation.

Similarly, if you start to get the feeling that the staffroom starts to empty when you enter it, and bookings for equipment either dries up or starts to be done on teachers' behalf by trusted students, perhaps it's time to ask yourself if, perhaps, you've been coming on a little strong lately.

This article was first published on 23rd September 2009.

The Bug Force

It's quite obvious that there are forces at work which deny rational explanation -- at least in terms of the laws of nature as we commonly perceive them. This can be seen most readily where any kind of proofreading is required. Is there anything we can do about it?

All joking aside, should we always be encouraging students to produce perfect work? And if not, how many errors are acceptable?

Now, I don't want to detain you longer than necessary, so I'll come straight to the point: the short answer is "no". True, you can take a proofreading course, seek advice in a forum, have an extra pair of eyes, and seek advice from the experts. Nothing makes any difference, ultimately, because you're dealing with the unknown. The real  issue is this: how many errors are acceptable? I'll come back to this point shortly.

What proof do I have that proofreading is the playground of a malevolent spirit? Simply this: no matter how many times you proofread a document, there will always be one more error. This is even enshrined in a "law" of computing, albeit in a different context:

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug.

You, or someone else, will discover the flaw. Eventually. My research into this phenomenon over many years has led me to the inescapable conclusion that you will discover it in one of the following types of circumstance:

• When you have printed off 400 copies.
  
  
• When you have just mailed it in response to a job advertisement.
  
  
• When you have just emailed the third version of it to an editor you have never worked with before.

Does this mean that you can never create a perfect copy? Not exactly, but even if you manage to thwart the forces of non-good at the proof-reading stage, the gremlins in the software you use will launch a second wave attack. How else would you explain things like:

• A document that looks perfect on screen does not retain all the contents of the page when you print it out.
  
  
• Page-numbering develops a mind of its own.
  
  
• Sometimes, if you try to place a caption beneath the picture instead of above it, Word goes berserk. For example, once it caused the two paragraphs under the caption to disappear altogether.
  
  
• Once, a colleague said that her document included a copy of a spreadsheet which looked fine on the screen, but kept printing out with most of the left hand column missing.

Is there anything you can do about it, being serious for a moment? After all, one doesn't like to be completely fatalistic. Well I do three things:

• Run the spell-check.
  
  
• Read through it one word at a time (and boy, is that tedious!).
  
  
• Cajole someone else to read it.

Ultimately, none of this will make much of a difference (see Lubarsky's Rule, above), but at least you will not need to castigate yourself over it.

So, being realistic, what this really boils down to is: how many errors are acceptable? This is a serious question, and one which I don't think tends to be addressed in schools.

Students are encouraged to produce perfect work for their e-portfolios or coursework. But that is unrealistic. What we ought to be doing is encouraging them to make a judgement about the acceptable number and type of errors given the nature of the piece of work in question, the audience for whom it is intended, and the purpose of the exercise.

There are, I believe, viable alternatives to the proverbial view that if a thing is worth doing it is worth doing properly. Consider the following:

• If you do something perfectly, there may well be an opportunity cost involved, ie the cost expressed in terms of the next best thing foregone. For instance, is it better for me to obtain a grade A in my Art exam and fail everything else, or to obtain a scattering of Bs and Cs across a range of five subjects? The answer will depend on a number of factors, such as whether I want to get into Art college or become a vet.
  
  
• We owe it to our students, in our any time, anywhere  society, to nurture a "good enough" attitude. Don't get me wrong: I am a perfectionist, as no doubt you are too. But there comes a point (three in the morning, perhaps, or the third draft) where we all say:
  
  "That will have to do, and if they don't like it, they can do it themselves!"
  
  
• In a related way, there is also the Law of Diminishing Returns. After a certain point, the benefits from continuing to work on something are outweighed by the costs in terms of fatigue or opportunity cost (see the first point).
  
  
• Sometimes, imperfection is good. Once, for example, I completely messed up something I was doing whilst demonstrating some software to a class of teachers. They actually found it reassuring, and it gave them confidence. The logic was along the lines of:
  
  "Well, if an expert like Terry can make a stupid mistake like that, it's ok for me to do so too without beating myself up over it."

I don't know the answer to the question: "How many errors are acceptable?". It's a judgement call. Our job as educators, I suggest, is to help students make that judgement as part and parcel of the skill of writing and presenting for different audiences.

This article was first published on 1st August 2008.

Postscript

I received an email recently from Cate Newton of the SR Education Group. Cate says:

"The Bug Force" is an excellent article for writing, editing, and proofreading.

My interest in proofreading and writing for students sparked an article that was just published on our website, Guide to Online Schools, here: http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/tips-and-tools/proofreading. We are trying to build up useful resources for students of all ages and this is our most recent. We’ve compiled a list of the most useful grammar, proofreading and writing style guides on the internet into one, easy-to-navigate article.

I've looked at the article and I have to say Cate has probably undersold it. It is full of links to writing and grammar guides, and looks immensely useful. The only caveat I would add is that it is mainly (though not exclusively) for a non-British audience. So whilst the processes and general principles of writing and proof-reading no doubt apply everywhere, you should exercise caution when looking at non-UK grammar texts, as there are significant differences.

In this context I should recommend Grammar Girl. This is an excellent podcast full of useful tips, and advice on common errors. And although the podcaster, Mignon Fogarty, is either American or Canadian, she usually gives the British version of grammar and sentence construction -- which is, of course, the correct one ;-).

Does any of this matter? I think so. Just because writing for the web is, arguably, less formal than other writing, and blogs are fine for publishing off-the-cuff thoughts, writing should still be error-free as far and possible, notwithstanding my comments in the article, and pleasant to read.

The internet – empowering or censoring citizens?

I attended a fascinating talk at the RSA last September. In a lecture entitled “The Internet: Empowering or Censoring Citizens”, Evgeny Morozov questioned whether the internet really is the means to inevitable freedom and democracy it is often portrayed to be.

‘So what?’, you may ask. From an educational point of view I think this is an important topic for discussion for two reasons. The first is that, in general terms, we should take every opportunity to ‘force’ students to think for themselves. When I was a teacher, I usually adopted Oscar Wilde’s stance:

“Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me. I always feel that I must be wrong.”

Students need to be encouraged to seek questions, even if the answers are not as readily forthcoming.

Matthew Taylor and Evgeny Morozov at the RSA

Secondly, in every ICT course, apart from purely skills ones, there is a section on the effects of technology on society. By examining issues such as whether or not the internet is automatically a means of distributing power more evenly in a society, the teacher would be addressing the spirit (if not always the letter) of that section.

Morozov challenged the view of the people he refers to as ‘cyberutopians’ that connectivity + devices = democracy. Some states, he pointed out, are using the web to crack down on dissidents.

In his talk, the link to which is given below, he described a number of ways in which some countries are using the power of the web to curtail, rather than to extend, democracy and freedom. If you think about it, it is obvious that web 2.0 applications are not inherently good or bad, so why would it be so surprising to discover that countries use them for their own ends?

In this context Morozov spoke of the ‘spinternet’. The idea is that when deletion of content is, in effect, impossible, the next best approach to dealing with what we might call off-message sentiments is to use political spin to defuse the issue.

The general and simplistic view seems to be that once every young person in a country has an ipod, they will miraculously turn into democrats. This ipod liberalism, as Morozov terms it, represents a deterministic view. It seems to me to be pretty insulting too. After all, if someone gave you an ipod, would your principles and beliefs suddenly fly out of the window? I realise that that is a somewhat simplistic counter-argument, but no more so than, it seems to me, the argument itself.

In any case, a more realistic approach would be to recognise the existence of cyberhedonism: most people are not interested in politics, as shown in this illustration:

 Online politics

And perhaps we need to borrow from Maslow and draw up a hierarchy of cyberneeds (see illustration below). In this paradigm, internet users start by satisfying their basic ‘needs’ – for pornography, file-sharing and video downloading – before progressing to less self-centred activities.

Hierarchy of internet needsTowards the end of his talk, in an almost throwaway comment, Morozov vividly illustrated the power of the web in the ‘wrong’ hands. In the past, he said, a totalitarian regime would have to torture an activist to find out the names of his associates. Now all they have to do is go on Facebook.

Of course, it’s easy to point the finger at totalitarian regimes, but even in countries like the UK and USA, power is not evenly distributed on the web. For example, half of Wikipedia’s articles are accounted for by only 10% of its users (Clay Shirky has drawn attention to this sort of thing as well). There is nothing nefarious in this, of course, but it’s salutary to bear in mind that, according to Morozov, the average person stands only a 2% chance of being mentioned on the front page of Digg. Hardly an even distribution of influence.

It seems to me that a number of questions might fruitfully be discussed with students:

What do you think of Morozov's arguments?

Is the concept of a hierarchy of cyberneeds a useful one?

Does it exist?

Where would your students place themselves in that pyramid?

Where would you and your colleagues place yourselves?

If web 2.0 applications can be manipulated by governments and even individuals, how can one guard against being taken in?

Is being digitally literate enough?

One of the key points to come out of a discussion about these issues would surely be that of identity? Morozov focused mainly on the use of Web 2.0 applications by non-democratic governments, but the truth of the matter is that you actually don’t know who you’re ‘talking’ to in any online space unless you do a bit of research and cross-checking. How do you know that the word-of-mouth recommendation you have just received is genuine?

How do you know whether or not the person ‘bad-mouthing’ a particular product is working for a rival company?

How do you know if an Amazon book review is genuine?

And is it not crucial, therefore, that we take some issues out of the ‘niche’ area of e-safety and bring them into the mainstream, or widen the definition of e-safety to include such issues?

Further reading:

Read Matthew Taylor's blog post about this (which centres on the political rather than educational implications of Morozov's address) and, especially, the comments. I especially like Taylor's conclusion:

The web is changing culture, relationships and organisations. Its effects are real and important. Sometimes they are good and sometimes not. The exaggerated claims of those who say the internet is inherently a destroyer of organisations and hierarchies or that it is bound to lead to greater democracy and collaboration are an unhelpful distraction from the important study of the internet’s real impact on real lives.

The internet society – time to get real

Listen to Morozov's talk

This article was first published on 30th September 2009.

In Praise of Silliness

I am all in favour of the experiment by an ATM company in London which sees instructions in rhyming slang on some of its cash machines.

People tend to be too serious, and sometimes you can achieve quite a lot in terms of making people think, or even improving learning, through the interjection of a bit of mild humour.

I’m not suggesting that these ATMs will educate people, but that a similar principle might be introduced into the school environment. When I was running an ICT department in a school, I sometimes used to put up silly notices along the lines of:

Is you is or is you ain't printing? If so…

(From the song Is you is or is you ain’t my baby?)

OK, so it didn’t produce guffaws, but then it wasn’t meant to. Just about every ICT suite has notices saying what you can’t do, what is forbidden. The overall effect is to put people on edge, in my opinion. You can grab people’s attention with an unusual and slightly humorous headline, and then state a few rules. I believe that the light-hearted opening puts them in the right, ie receptive, frame of mind.

Humour is fine to use in other places too, especially when the work can get pretty intense. I tweaked a spreadsheet once so that at the top, in the title bar, it read:

Mr Freedman says: Get on with your work!

I also had a button which said

Click here in case of an emergency.

Inevitably, clicking on it caused a message to pop up stating:

This is not an emergency! Stop messing about!

My coup de grace, however, was recording myself saying "Stop that and get back to your work", and assigning the sound file to one of the windows events on a stand-alone computer. It was quite humorous to see the reaction of a pupil experiencing it for the first time!

Of course, it goes without saying that such frivolity will not work if you have not already established classroom discipline and have really interesting work for the students to do. My aim was to try to replicate a workplace environment, in the sense that in a normal, healthy work environment people work, have a bit of a break, exchange some banter, and get on with their work. Why should school be any different?

Related article: Fings ain’t wot they used to be.

This article was first published on 26th August 2009.

But Where Are The Kids?

This is a modified version of an article written and published in 2009. I am reproducing it because it is still relevant, and I shall be referring to it in articles in the near future.

One of the big absences at most educational conferences, as far as I'm concerned, is children and young people. Let's be honest: you would have no idea, walking into most conferences, whether you were attending an event about education or one about how to improve the market share of widgets.

Youngsters remind us why we're thereIt is hard to get this right, without a doubt -- not least because of child safety considerations -- but the more I think about it the more important I think it is to involve young people in conferences in meaningful ways. After all, it is they who, in management-speak are our clients and, in marketing-speak, our final consumer.

I've been to a few conferences recently where young people were involved to a greater or lesser extent. First, take the Naace 2009 Conference. There were children in evidence, but in my opinion in an utterly tokenistic way. I don't mean this to sound as critical as it does. When I organised the Naace conference a few years ago, it was generally regarded as being very good indeed, but there were no youngsters there. In hindsight I regard that as a mistake, and think I should have worked harder to include them (we did try, but it was logistically difficult, because of the distances involved, to liaise effectively with local schools; also, I think it requires a more imaginative mindset which is easier to nurture once you're away from all the deadlines and other headaches involved in planning a large conference).

The youngsters were there to help represent their schools, which had been invited in order to receive the ICT Mark. Traditionally, this little ceremony takes place straight after the talk by the Secretary of State for Education, so that it is he or she who is, in effect, handing over the certificate.

Alright, the fact that there are children there reminds us that this is all about them, but it seems to me that here is a golden opportunity wasted. Why not go straight into a panel discussion in which the audience can ask the youngsters what difference, if any, the process of applying for the ICT Mark has made. If it has made a difference, the session might just be the thing that's needed to convince a wavering school that it ought to take the plunge. Also, and of more immediate importance and interest, it would help us see the process from the customer's point of view (I cringe from using such terminology, by the way, but it does seem rather apt).

On the subject of a panel discussion, last year's ASPECT conference featured a panel session in which a group of students of around 17 years of age really gave the assembled educational glitterati a run for their money. For example, one of them said, in response to a rather patronising answer, to a genuine question, to the effect that it was a nonsense to say that young people were left out of decision-making, "I notice that all the people in this room have been given briefing packs. But we haven't." Stunned, embarrassed silence: after all, you can't argue with something which is so visibly true.

The Dimensions conference run by the then Qualifications and Curriculum Authority went a stage further. As you arrived at the entrance to the building, students (from a school local to me (Mayfield School), as it happened) were there to greet you and point you in the right direction. They were also involved in a workshop about the BBC School Report event (which I hope to write about separately), took part in a panel discussion, generally helped out and, crucially, went around conducting video interviews of delegates.

In the workshop, two of the students were on hand to advise us oldies of what would be best to include in a news bulletin that would fire up the interest of people of their age (15-16). They were brilliant, somehow managing to combine brutal honesty with humour and courtesy. (Perhaps we adults could learn a thing or two from them.)

Here is the video they made of the day:

There are other ways in which youngsters can be involved. A lovely way of starting a conference, for instance, can be seen in the programme of last year's Game-Based Learning conference, the second day of which was opened by a performance by children from the John Stainer school. (That was nice for me on a personal level because I worked with the school a few years ago helping it to implement its Framework for ICT Support programme).

I think what I would ultimately like to see is youngsters involved at all stages of a conference:

1. Planning.
2. Attending.
3. Taking part.
4. Evaluating.

Difficult, perhaps, but surely a goal worth striving for?

A slightly different version of this article was first published on 7th April 2009.

FITS For The Purpose

If you had to think of one aspect of the development of information and communication technology (ICT) that is either not addressed, or which is addressed as an afterthought, you'd almost certainly
come up with the answer "technical support". Yet a moment's reflection is enough to make anybody realise that achieving the government's aim of embedding ICT in the curriculum would be impossible without a robust infrastructure and hardware set-up to support it. And that is, if you think about it, a fairly mundane aspiration. Once you start to consider the more visionary aspects of ICT in education -- building schools for the future, the classroom of the future, the Every Child Matters agenda and the
education, e-learning and digital strategies -- it surely becomes apparent that without a rock solid foundation, all such dreams will remain just that: dreams.

There is another wayIt has long been the case that the teacher in charge of ICT has been expected to keep everything ticking over with virtually no budget and very little time -- especially in primary schools.
Part of the reason is that the true cost is often hidden: such is the professionalism and dedication of teachers that they will often work before and after school -- and through their lunch break -- sorting out problems such that colleagues often seem to assume that the systems run themselves.

To add insult to injury, it's a truism that nobody ever picks up the phone to say, "the network was working great today!", and they don't make those sorts of comments in the staffroom either.
So, whilst the ICT co-ordinator is slowly but surely driving herself into the ground, the word on the street is that the systems are unreliable and the ICT co-ordinator is useless.

It doesn't have to be like that.

It's generally assumed that technical support is a purely technical matter. However, like any other aspect of school life there is a management side too. Whilst reliable equipment is obviously an important factor in the smooth running of the ICT facilities in a school, it's not the only factor. Indeed, in certain circumstances it is not even the most important factor.

There is a law of physics which states: nature abhors a vacuum. This adage applies just as much in human affairs as it does in the physical world. In short, if you don't have proper systems in place for ensuring that technical problems and maintenance are handled efficiently, a system will develop anyway. And it might not be the one you would willingly choose.

For example, how do staff let you know there's a problem with a computer? Chances are, they will grab you in passing in the corridor and tell you. Their faith in your powers of memory is truly touching, but the only outcomes of this so-called "corridor culture" are wrongly prioritised jobs and disenchantment.

For example, you fix a printer jam and put the little matter of the network crash on the back burner. And then, when you forget to act on one of these chance encounters, you start to get a reputation as someone who does not deliver.

A variation of the corridor culture is the senior manager syndrome: exactly the same scenario, but with a deputy headteacher pulling rank. That's how the deputy's colour certificates for the ping pong championships somehow get printed before the SATS revision material is uploaded to the school's
intranet.

In the long run, of course, the same problems occur time and again because nobody has the time to step back and look at how often particular problems occur, or in what circumstances. Basically,
there is no planned system, and no strategic overview, just constant reaction to one near-crisis after another.

There is another way.

Becta has devised the FITS -- Framework for ICT Technical Support -- programme to address all of the problems mentioned, and more. 

Taking a system that has been developed and refined in industry over twenty years, Becta has come up with a set of systems which can be implemented in a school methodically and even reasonably quickly.

There are ten FITS processes altogether:

• Service Desk
• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Change Management
• Release Management
• Configuration Management
• Availability and Capacity Management
• Service Level Management
• Service Continuity Management
• Financial Management

I don't intend to go though all of these processes in any detail -- there is hardly any point in attempting to replicate what Becta have already so admirably done. But it is worthwhile picking out one or two elements in order to give you a flavour of what's involved.

The important thing to note at the outset is none of these processes is a technical one, even though some of them involve technical aspects. They are all management systems.

Another point to make is that the systems you implement don't have to be hi-tec. Let's face it, a paper record of what equipment is in which room is infinitely better than no such record, and a way for staff to report faults, involving a form and your pigeon-hole, is far better than the corridor culture discussed earlier.

Finally, these processes are for the most part a menu rather than a sequential list. For example, your school's financial management for technical support may be perfectly sound, but change management may be non-existent.

Having said that, there is an inherent logic in the order, or at least parts of it. For example, you may think that setting up a service desk in the school office would not be as useful as hiring an extra technician to cope with network glitches, but in one school the helpdesk now deals with 60% of the calls that would have previously landed in a technician's lap (assuming they were sitting down long enough for it to land there).

Another example is the distinction between incident management and problem management. In essence, if a particular incident keeps occurring often enough, you've got an underlying problem. That much is obvious, but how does an incident get escalated to a problem?

I had an interesting example of this during a school inspection. One of the computer rooms was generally regarded as unreliable because the network kept crashing in that room alone. I asked the
technician what he was doing about it and he replied that he deals with it by rebooting the system. That is, to say the least, a short-term solution; but nobody in the school had actually gone much beyond recognising that there was an underlying problem and working out what its causes were. There was no plan in place to actually do something about it, and no doubt in ten years' time the technician will still be rebooting the network every couple of days.

The emphasis in FITS is on service and systems. Past attempts at dealing with technical support have focused on the question of how many technicians are required to provide a good service. Depending on how you work this out, it could be none or, more realistically, one, if you have a managed service; two or three, or, for a large comprehensive, an army of twenty. The truth of the matter is that any such estimates, which are based on the equation of how many computers a single technician can support,
are doomed to failure because the better the service, the higher the level of expectations: in short, you will never have enough technicians if you adopt this approach.

However, a deeper analysis suggests that a more profitable approach is to change your paradigm or world view. Once you stop thinking about technical support as a matter of dealing with hardware and infrastructure like cables and hubs, and start to view it from a customer perspective, the concepts of a service desk and a service level agreement suddenly don't seem quite so strange.

It is not often that I wax lyrical about the ideas which emanate from our official bodies. However, having seen five out of six schools transforming their technical support facility by implementing parts of the FITS programme (the sixth one did nothing for various reasons), I would say that FITS works, and that you should definitely look into it.

Unless you enjoy being harassed in the school corridor of course!

The FITS website may be found at:

http://www.thefitsfoundation.org/

An earlier version of this article was first published on 17th May 2005.

The Tyranny Of Relevance

#BloggersCircle In a recent address called 'What is education for?' to the Royal Society of Arts, Michael Gove bemoaned the fact that there is no government department in the UK whose sole remit is the pursuit of educational standards.

According to Gove, education is not regarded as a good enough end in itself, but as something which can help to achieve some other goal.

In his exposition of his views in favour of liberal education, he used the term 'the tyranny of relevance'. Although he wasn’t talking about Information and Communications Technology (ICT), this phrase did strike a chord with me. In the continuing debate over whether ICT should be taught as a subject in its own right, is there perhaps too much store set by 'relevance'?

I’ve noticed (although, curiously, I’d never consciously noticed it before) that whenever people tell me that they think ICT should be taught through the context of other subjects, they always cite 'relevance' as a factor. They almost always throw in a reference to kids having to suffer boring lessons on spreadsheets and databases. They seem to think that having lots of lessons on e-safety and plenty of opportunities to use blogs, Google and Wikipedia will somehow turn out youngsters who can use their knowledge of technology and ability to transfer their skills to excel in subjects right across the board.

Perhaps I have overstated my case slightly – but only slightly. Like Gove, I happen to think that the best kind of education is one in which students develop a deep knowledge of subjects. I like the idea of cross-curricular themes, and of making subjects 'relevant' both to each other and a wide range of issues and circumstances. However, I do not think you can achieve that without mastering individual subjects. To summarise, I regard the following statements (which are mine, not Gove’s) as axiomatic:

 
1. It is important for students to gain a deep knowledge of ICT, because only by understanding key issues (such as the difference between data and information) can they protect themselves against some forms of hype.    
      
   More positively, an understanding of how ICT can be used for 'provisional' activities, such as drafting and modelling, and an ability to appreciate the importance of precision in language (as required, for example, in 'sequencing' or programming, is essential for being able to avoid being subservient to a computer system’s apparent will.    
      
   However, even this is falling into the trap of looking for 'relevance'. Why can't ICT be studied and enjoyed for its own sake?
 
2. Far from being boring, spreadsheets and databases can be extremely interesting, even beautiful. I don’t mean just to look at, but in their design and construction.
 
3. Any teacher who makes spreadsheet or database lessons boring either has not had the time to develop interesting lessons, or does not really have a deep grasp of, and appreciation for, these areas themselves.
 
4. What we need are teachers who have a deep love of ICT. I think to achieve that we have to encourage teachers to join communities in which important subject-related (not necessarily education-related) issues are debated (such as the RSA or British Computer Society).
 
5. To help promote #4 we need to ensure that teachers have the time, and the authority, to develop teaching resources of their own.
 
6. As part of that, teachers should have the flexibility to be able to teach topics they have a deep interest in.When I started teaching economics, something I was especially interested in was road pricing. I usually spent around 2 weeks on that topic alone, but in doing so I was able to touch on a whole plethora of concepts that I knew would prove relevant throughout the rest of the course.
 
7. Finally, there needs to be an entitlement for top quality professional development, and the funds to back it up. For example, why shouldn’t teachers be able to apply for a ‘scholarship’ to attend national or even international conferences about educational technology?

I strongly believe that if we are to tackle the oft-cited lack of computer programming courses, say, or the sometimes perceived 'dumbing down' of ICT as a subject in its own right, we have to address the 'tyranny of relevance'.

The video of Michael Gove’s talk may be viewed on the RSA website.

This article was first published on 2nd July 2009.

The world according to Potter Part 2 -- Opposites Attract

There is an updated version of this article here: UPDATED! The World According To Stephen Potter

In this brief series I am looking at the concept of "one-upmanship", as developed by Stephen Potter, and exploring how the observations he made 50 years ago might still be applicable in the world of educational technology today.

Background

As I said in the first article in the series (which contains much more background information), his books are concerned with the study of how to be "one up" on other people. Although they are written very much tongue-in-cheek, they are clearly based on real-life observation. I first came across them 40 years ago, and have read and re-read them over the years for their humour. However, I find myself more and more discovering that a number of aspects of modern life may be found in these books, despite the elapsing of half a century, a fact which I believe puts them on a par with other classics such as Parkinson's Law and The Peter Principle.

To summarise, the 4 main books he wrote on the subject were:

• Gamesmanship, or the art of winning games without actually cheating
  
  

• Lifemanship, which was concerned with the application of the principles of gamesmanship to everyday life
  
  

• One-upmanship, which was a further extension of Lifemanship, and
  
  

• Supermanship, or the art of staying on top without falling apart.

In Potter's world, the practitioner of one-upmanship, or Lifeman as he or she is known having completed the Lifemanship Correspondence course, has one overarching thought: that if you are not one up then you are, by definition, one down.

Looked at in the cold light of day it sounds ridiculous, I know. But Potter very accurately described people and practices that you and I see almost every day of our lives. So suspend your disbelief and bear with me, as today I look at the law of opposites.

Presentational dissonance and self-contradictory names

As I have said in the past, in describing activities for which I coined the term "presentational dissonance", some practices are inherently conttradictory. Examples that spring to mind immediately are:

• Authors who write books about self-publishing -- for a publishing company, and
  
  

• A lecture I attended once which lasted well over an hour -- on the importance of participatory learning techniques.
  
  

• More recently, one might add those globe-trotters who visit different parts of the world to deliver lectures on the benefits of e-learning and the interactivity of Web 2.0.

But there is a far more powerful manifestation of this sort of thing: the conjuring up of names for initiatives which are really the precise converse of what the initiatives are actually about.

For example, three or four years ago in the UK there was a welfare initiative called "Supporting People". Under this initiative, the hours of work of wardens in sheltered accommodation were cut, and sometimes reduced to zero, thereby placing at risk some of the most vulnerable people in our society. When I enquired why this was being done, I was told that the organisation concerned had chosen to do it: apparently, it was not an inherent part of the policy itself. Well, maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't, but the point is that once Supporting People came on the scene, some people stopped being supported.

A more recent initiative, this time in the Health Service, is called Fit for the Future. Note the clever play on the word "fit", which in this context means fit as in healthy, and fit as in suitable. Apparently, in the future there will not be traffic jams, and there may not even be accidents and emergencies. Why else would my local Health Trust be using Fit for the Future as a means by which to axe perfectly good locally-based Accident and Emergency units in hospitals, and force people to travel to a modern hospital that can barely cope now, let alone when that happens? In other words, like "Supporting People", "Fit for the Future" seems to me to mean the exact opposite of what it sounds like it was supposed to mean.

But the prize must go to "Building Schools for the Future". I am not referring to the programme itself, which has achieved some success, but the name. If you think about it, it contains the seeds of its own failure, making success that much more difficult to achieve. After all, if one were to really start to think futuristically about education, one might hesitate to think in terms of schools at all. And as for building, would that even merit a mention, except perhaps as a footnote?

The Potter dimension

So where does Potter fit in with all this? Well, before I tell you, here is a little more background information which will prove useful to you. Potter's "day job" was English lecturer in the University of Oxford. So there is a kind of in joke running throughout the books whereby Potter gives spurious academic-sounding names to types of behaviour. I'll go more into this in another article, but to give you an idea of what I mean, he came up with such immortal terms as "Trojan Horsemanship", "Book Reviewership" and "Derby and Joanmanship" (with its associated phenomenon of "still-ridiculously-in-love-with-each-othering"). It will therefore come as no surprise to learn that Potter came up with a very apposite term for what I've just been describing.

In the Supermanship book, there is a riotous exposition of the natural one-upness of babies, and how to counteract it. In one paragraph, he says that as well as being undermined by the baby itself, parents will also start to be got at by external forces in various guises. He writes:

"Baby Literature makes itself felt first, and Baby Instruction. Many prettily got-up booklets start with the dictum 'Enjoy your baby'."

To this last point is appended a footnote which states:

"This is known in Yeovil [where the Lifemanship Correspondence College is based] as 'The Petrification of the Implied Opposite'."

If the term "Building Schools for the Future" is not a superb example of the petrification of the implied opposite, I don't know what is. Another example we might cite is "e-learning credits" which, when this form of funding first appeared at least, had everything to do with digital content and nothing to do with e-learning, and involved no type of credit in the usually-understood meaning of the term.

Implications for educational technology

So what does all this mean for the educational technology subject leader? I'm not interested in having a dig at the names of initiatives just for its own sake. After all, things have to have names, and the pithier and more evocative the better. But from the point of view of, if you like, the consumer (ie us), we have a responsibility to try and tease out exactly what any new initiative entails. Does it really mean what we took it to mean at first glance? What does the small print say? Is it deliverable? And is it even worth delivering? Can we deliver it with our existing policies rather than spending time and energy setting up new structures?

And let's be clear about this: some initiatives really do do what it says on the tin. Harnessing Technology is about finding ways of harnessing technology in the service of learning. The Hands-On Support funding of a few years ago was very much concerned with providing practical, in-class, support for teachers using educational technology. It's only by scrutinising the various policies, strategies and initiatives that we can get behind the soundbite of the title to determine what it's really all about, and sometimes what we discover is actually good!

And if it does turn out to be an example of the petrification of the implied opposite, it is our responsibility to try to ensure that the initiative lives up to its promise, rather than down to our lowest expectations.

This article was first published on 31 October 2007.

The world according to Potter Part (1) Going Metric

There is an updated version of this article here: UPDATED! The World According To Stephen Potter

In this brief series I'd like to see how the writings of Stephen Potter might be applicable in the world of education -- and, in particular, educational technology -- today. Writing predominantly in the 1940s and 50s, Potter codified the art and science of "one-upmanship". In so doing, he not only inspired a generation of undergraduates to put his theories to the test and invent new "ploys" and "gambits", but inspired the making of a film ("School for Scoundrels") and, perhaps more importantly, was taken seriously enough for the term "one-upmanship" to be cited in academic books.

His books are concerned with the study of how to be "one up" on other people. Although they are written very much tongue-in-cheek, they are clearly based on real-life observation. I first came across them 40 years ago, and have read and re-read them over the years for their humour. However, I find myself more and more discovering that a number of aspects of modern life may be found in these books, despite the elapsing of half a century, a fact which I believe puts them on a par with other classics such as Parkinson's Law and The Peter Principle.

So, with no further ado, let's see what Potter has to offer the educational ICT (Information & Communications Technology) subject leader in a school, Local Authority or School District. For this to make as much sense as possible, imagine yourself to be of a certain mindset: that of regarding every waking moment as an opportunity to place yourself, or appear to be, in a superior position to those around you. It may all sound too far-fetched, but as you read on I think you will start to recognise people you know....

I have already written about this in the context of getting ICT embedded in a school. In today's article, I should like to explore the wonderful world of statistics.

I don't know if you have noticed, but every presentation by a Government spokesperson consists of at least 5 minutes (and often much more), of statistics. Whatever the topic under consideration, there is always a section that goes something like this:

"Since we were elected X years ago we have more than doubled the number of Y, and over the next 3 years we will increase this by a further Z percent".

We hear it all the time in presentations about educational ICT in the UK, but it appears in every other branch of public affairs too.

The thing about statistics, though, is that so much depends on context, even if the figures themselves are (a) accurate and (b) not subject to interpretation -- both of which assumptions are highly dubious for a start. For example, if an educational spokesperson were to announce that the Government will spend an extra £10m on in-service training for teachers over the next 3 years, that sounds impressive until you work out that, in the UK, that amounts to just over £22 per head, or around £7.50 (approximately 15 USD) per teacher per year. (See http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1765 for the statistics on which I have based this calculation.)

Now, there is nothing startling about this per se, but what is interesting is the fact that it is completely disarming unless you (a) happen to know the underlying stats and (b) can do lightning fast calculations. The point is, by the time you have even had a chance to think about it, the moment is gone, and the speaker is on to yet another "fact".

Interestingly enough, Stephen Potter recognised the power of this sort of approach. In "One-upmanship" there is a chapter called "Doctorship", in which Potter discusses the important topics of medical studentship, doctorship, patientship and healthmanship. (I will be examining Potter's use of terminology in a future article.) In a footnote he says:

"An effective statement in the right context can sometimes be: 'I have had 140 days' illness in my life.' Listeners are unable, without a lame pause for calculation, to know whether to commiserate or admire."

So how does this apply in the context of educational technology leadership? The answer is that in today's world, metrics are all-important. I personally believe that that is how it should be, but it's easy to be fooled by statistics which sound good but which, on closer examination turn out to be less than desirable or even meaningless.

For example, I have no idea why any teacher would want their students to receive thousands of comments about their work, because not only is that volume of comments unhelpful, it is completely unmanageable, as I have already said recently (see, for example, the October 2007 edition of Computers in Classrooms, which is available via a free subscription).

I also think most RSS feed readership statistics raise more questions than answers, and that (for my website at least) Technorati's statistics are fictional. More importantly, the metrics given out by companies need further scrutiny.

For example, a technical support company that claims that 99% of its call-outs are rated excellent inspires no confidence in me whatsoever. If the company has 10 employees, each doing one job per day, it means that over a two week period one of those jobs or days will not be rated excellent. That sounds quite a lot to me.

Similarly, a web hosting company that promises 99% "up time" may actually be promising that you may have to put up with the site being "down" for 15 minutes a week, assuming a 25 hour school week. Even if we leave school out of it, given the global nature of communications, I don't want my website to ever be down, not even for 5 minutes a week -- and even then, I want it to be planned for so that I can put a notice up and warn people. Yes, I know I am asking for the impossible, but my point is that statistics like "99% up-time" are meaningless unless we understand the context in which they are cited.

As an educational technology leader, you should at least know some important statistics. When evaluating the quality of a school's ICT provision (at the request of the Head of ICT or the Principal), I make a point of asking a number of questions which involve facts and figures and which the Head of ICT should either know or have immediate access to. It is astonishing how many don't. For example, do you know if there is a difference in attainment in ICT between girls and boys in your school? If so, is it significant? Do you know the cause? What are you doing about it?

As well as knowing some basic figures, you should also know what they mean. Statistics are often given a spurious veneer of credibility by the addition of a graph. I recall one teacher showing me "before" and "after" charts to illustrate how much his students had progressed over the last term.

"But what were the tests actually measuring?", I asked.

"I don't know", came the reply. "But the point is that whatever it is, it has gone up."

Getting back to Stephen Potter, he was making a wry observation about the cavalier use of statistics. Although he wrapped it up in a humorous, not to say unlikely, package, he was alerting us all to be on our guard.

This article was first published on 20 October 2007