31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader -- Day 12: Look At Some Work

A task a day for 31 daysAs well as talking to students and observing lessons, a good way of getting a feel for what educational technology standards are like — and therefore whether you need to do anything about them — is to look at students' work.  There's nothing to stop you talking to students about their work; indeed, that's what a good head of ICT would do. However, you can get through a lot more student work without having to talk about it. Therefore 'work scrutiny', as this is sometimes called, can be a useful supplement to the other things you're doing.

Without the student there to discuss it with you it can be hard to drwa and hard and fast conclusions. The way I think of work scrutiny is that it's a means of gaining enough of an overall impression to be able to ask some pertinent questions. The kind of things I would be thinking about as I looked through the work include:

• Are attainment levels appropriate?   
• Is the amount of work adequate?   
• Is there a good range of subject coverage?   
• Is there a range of contexts?
• Does the work show progress over the year?   
• Are literacy skills being developed?   
• Are numeracy skills being developed?   
• Are ICT skills being developed? Which ones?
• Are ICT skills being applied?   
• Is work marked regularly and is the marking diagnostic?   
• Is there evidence of extension work?   
• Are pupils’ special educational needs being addressed?
• Are there differences in the work according to gender or ethnicity?   
• Does the quality of the resources used enhance learning?      
• Is there evidence of homework?   

   
Many of these would be more appropriate if you have recently taken up the post of leader of the educational technology team, or if ICT is taught or used mainly across the curriculum. Otherwise one would assume that you already know the answers to questions like 'is there a range of contexts?'
Note that some of the questions are appropriate if you are trying to judge the standards attained by individual students. However, in the context of work scrutiny the main purpose is to look at the big picture.

I think this sort of exercise can work quite well if entered into in the same spirit as the lesson observations discussed on Day 11. The purpose is not to catch people out, but to see what things are like. In my opinion, it's a good idea to discuss as a team what sort of things to look for, and then for the whole team to look at the same samples of work.

The exercise can be quite revealing. Let's take that contexts question again. On scrutinising the work it may become clear that the range of contexts is very narrow, which means that you and your colleagues can start to address that right away. Similarly with marking: if most of it is of the 'tick, good' variety then there probably needs to be some discussion of assessment for learning approaches to marking. Often it is only when you step back and look at the thing as a whole that you can start to see such issues.

Ideally, take samples of work from a wide range of students. Also, bear in mind that you need to look at a substantial range of work from each student. If you don't, it's impossible to even begin to answer questions like 'Does the work show progress over the year?' or 'Is the amount of work adequate?'

Also, it's worth bearing in mind that context is important. Take the question 'Is there evidence of homework?' When I was last Head of ICT, my scheme of work involved mainly extended project work, and so the homework each week was 'Do whatever you need to do in order to be able to get on with your project work in the next lesson.' I regarded that as perfectly adequate, because it was entirely appropriate. But there was no hard evidence in students' portfolios of homework having been done: you'd have to infer it.

You also need to know about context from the point of view of knowing what the student was required to do and how much help they had, when trying to infer their level of understanding.

Together with talking to students, looking at the data, observing lessons, and having an external person's opinion (covered on Day 13), work scrutiny can give you a real insight into the state of educational technology in your school. That knowledge can help you concentrate resources of people, time and money most effectively.

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader -- Day 11: Observe Some Lessons

A task a day for 31 daysLooking at data is all very well but doesn't tell the whole story. In my opinion you also need to see what goes on in a lesson.

The observer and the observed

This is potentially a sensitive subject: nobody likes to feel they're being monitored. I think it is therefore quite important that everyone in your team, including yourself, has at least one lesson observed. If possible, arrange it internally, that is to say, have members of your team observing each other rather than bring in an outside colleague, unless that is unavoidable.

Recording the lesson on video can be useful -- although a pocket camcorder will do!If possible, have the lesson recorded on video. That can obviate the need for any elaborate cover arrangements and has the added advantage that the observer and the observed can look at the lesson together. This is quite useful because, done properly, it leads to a good discussion that can benefit both parties. Indeed, if people are brave enough, and trust each other enough, all such videos can be discussed by everyone in the team on a training day, or as part of a special team meeting (other ideas for team meetings will be covered on another Day).

What to look for

This has to be a matter of mutual agreement to some extent. For example, the person being observed might ask the observer to pay special attention to the way they use the whiteboard. The greater part of the observation has to be on whether or not the students are learning, or learning quickly enough. That means that it's fine, in my book, for the observer to ask students questions in order to ascertain their understanding, as long as, obviously, that they don't disrupt the lesson by doing so.

If you're going to assign a grading system to different aspects of the lesson, you will need to ensure that everyone in the team understands and uses the same system in the same way as each other.

The sort of things you might wish to focus on include the following, which I have placed in alphabetical order:

• Ability of students to use manual or on-screen Help
• Addressing of equality and diversity in planning
• Attendance of learners
• Attitudes, values, personal qualities
• Care, guidance and support
• Course suitability
• Health & Safety awareness
• How well does teaching match individual students’ needs?
• Learners’ understanding of purpose of session
• Learning outcomes
• Pace and challenge of session
• Partnership
• Punctuality of learners
• Quality of accommodation
• Quality of activities set
• Quality of answers given by students
• Quality of help and guidance given
• Quality of marking/feedback
• Quality of planning and preparation
• Quality of Resources
• Quality of students’ presentation
• Quality of teaching & learning
• Relating of work to previous sessions
• Software skills
• Standards of work seen in session
• Students’ achievement in session
• Students’ motivation & involvement in session
• Students’ self-esteem
• Students’ understanding of own progress and how to improve
• Teacher’s knowledge
• Teacher’s control of session (not just behaviour, but pace, change in activities, use of plenaries and so on)
• Teacher’s evaluation and review of the teaching and learning in session
• Teacher’s time management
• Use of resources

This is not a definitive list, of course. Obviously, I should not advise trying to observe all of these in a single lesson!

What can you learn from this?

As team leader, you are concerned with the quality of the educational technology as a whole, and lesson observations across the board can be really helpful in this regard. You may, for example, pick up on the fact that colleagues don't use the interactive whiteboard much. Is that because they have not received adequate training?

Or perhaps the pace tends to be too fast, leaving some students behind. Is that because they're concerned about covering the whole scheme of work in time? If so, does that suggest that the scheme of work is too crowded, or that more teaching time is needed?

Perhaps now that you come to look at it, the quality of your accommodation isn't wonderful. Is it possible to make a case for some refurbishment in the next financial year?

Of course, the bottom line is that as team leader you need to know what's going on in actual lessons. You can't rely on reports or statistical data. You have to actually see it for yourself. That doesn't have to be done in a draconian way. It doesn't even have to be done too often, especially if you have cultivated an ethos of nobody minding other people wandering into their lessons unannounced. But it does need to be done as it is a good means of finding out useful information and gaining an overview of learning and teaching in your area of the curriculum.

Practicalities

If you recall, each Day in the series is intended to include an activity that takes no more than 15 minutes. Clearly, you can't observe everyone's lessons in 15 minutes -- although you may wish to suggest that nobody's lesson is observed for more than 15 or 20 minutes, which makes the process more manageable. You may even wish to focus on the start or end of each lesson rather than all of it.

So I suggest that you spend your 15 minutes today reflecting on what's been written here, and perhas drawing up a rudimentary timetable of which lessons could be observed when -- starting with your own.

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader -- Day 10: Know the Data

A task a day for 31 daysOne of the things you absolutely must be able to do as an educational technology leader is know and understand what is actually going on in your domain. You need to know the facts, or at least be able to put the facts up on a computer screen straight away. Sometimes I've gone into schools and asked the Head of ICT, "Why are the boys here doing better than the girls in ICT, and what are you doing about it?", to which they have replied, "Are they?"

That is not the correct answer.

I don't want to get tied down to one particular country's rubric here, so what I'm going to do is suggest some generic questions you should be asking. You will want to add a few of your own that are pertinent to your own school or country.

Understand the data, and no cheating

First, though, a word about the data. I don't think you need to be a statistical genius to be able to see what's going on at a glance, as it were. For example, if 70% of the boys attained Level 5 last year, and only 40% of the girls, that would seem to suggest that the boys are doing better than the girls.
However, perhaps the girls are making faster progress over time than the boys. If the gender balance isn't split more or less 50-50 that could be skewing the figures. I think it's worth enlisting the help of someone who does understand this sort of thing — perhaps a mathematics teacher or the person responsible for data returns in the school.

But if you do know how to delve into the data, no cheating by using an obscure type of calculation to make the results favourable. I recall an inspection I was on in which the Headteacher sought to prove there was nothing amiss in the school because the examination results of the six students (out of around 300) who were taking a course in Advanced Physics had improved by half a percentage point over last year, using the chi-squared distribution technique.

No, I don't think so.

You may be tempted to adopt the blues singer Bessie Smith's attitude:

If you don't like my potatoes, why did you dig so deep?

(although I'm not convinced she was referring to exam results), but in the long run you're more likely to do best by your students by facing the facts rather than trying to avoid them.

OK, with no more ado, let's consider the sort of questions you ought to be able to answer. Bear in mind that members of your team need to know this too, or know about it and where to find it. You will need to involve them in the data-gathering process so that they don't feel 'done to', and you will need to share the results with them. Also, you will have to go through the process every year: it's not a one-off exercise.

Questions

Questions, questionsWhat ICT is being taught, and where?      For example, do they teach control technology in the Design and Technology department (if you're in a secondary school)? Are they using electronic keyboards and a composition program in music lessons? Where do the students get opportunities to use educational technology, and apply their knowledge of ICT, in their daily school lives?

Is ICT taught to all students in every Year or Grade? Are they getting their statutory entitlement (in countries where there is one)? How is it organised? For example, a two hour lesson every two weeks is not usually as effective as a one hour lesson each week, even though the total amount of time comes out the same.

What was the percentage of students who attained each Level at the end of the last school year? How do these results compare with the previous year? Was there a difference between boys and girls, or different ethnic groups? If so, what are you doing about it?

What do you do for youngsters with special educational needs? How do you stretch the high fliers? How do you cater for students who are unable to get into school, or who have just returned after being absent?

Do you have attainment targets in place for next year, eg "At least 50% of our students will achieve Level 4"? How are the targets being set, eg is it based on discussion with colleagues, handed down from 'on high' or did you roll some dice?    

How is students' knowledge and understanding of educational technology assessed? Do they know what Level they're on, and how to get to the next one up? Do you and your team know about, and make effective use of, assessment for learning techniques?   

What are the accommodation and resources like? For example, how many computer labs are there? How many class sets of laptops are available on loan? Is there an interactive whiteboard in each classroom? What is the student:computer ratio?Can the students bring their own devices in? Do you have a scheme to tackle the 'digital divide'?

How much use is made of the facilities?, For example, how often are the computer labs used? How often are the banks of laptops borrowed?

Are students taught how to keep themselves safe online? Not only from sexual predators, but from financial scams, misleading information, or from potentially damaging their own future prospects?   

Staffing: are the members of your team well-qualified? Not necessarily academically, but in the sense of being knowledgeable enough to teach the subject. If not, shouldn't you be sending them on courses? What about your colleagues: are you providing professional development opportunities for them too? Have there been any issues of staffing which have had an impact on students' attainment in the subject, such as high staff turnover?

What strategic planning takes place, in terms of both targets (see above) and budget, taking into account the total costs of ownership? How are the interests of educational technology represented in the senior leadership team?

Is technical support adequate?

How far is technology used, both by you and your team and the school in general, for administration and management?

And your homework is...

As you can see, these questions are not trivial, and you do need to be able to answer them. But the good news is that you don't have to answer them all today, and you don't have to find out all the answers yourself. (For example, if proper records have been kept, a lot of the hard data like examination results and number of laptops should already be available, but not necessarily all in one place.)

Knowing the answers to questions like these gives you an excellent basis for planning, and for being able to talk knowledgeably with others about the educational technology in your school.

Leading and Managing ICT Keynote

At 2pm British Summer Time (the word 'summer' being used somewhat loosely, given the deluge we had today and yesterday) on 5th May 2010 I'm giving a keynote talk on leading and managing ICT in schools, in the OU Vital Community. OU Vital is a recently-established online professional development community for ICT educators. Run as a collaboration between the Open University and e-Skills, it is providing a range of free professional development opportunities, both offline and online. Several people whose websites I enjoy reading have run, or are about to run, sessions, including Doug Woods and Andy Hutt, to name but two. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you don't live in the UK.

I'm not getting paid to plug it, by the way. It's a genuinely exciting initiative and a vibrant-looking community. The nice thing is the absence of rivalry. For example, Peter Twining, the head honcho, kindly offered to have The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book converted into HTML format free of charge -- the only 'price' being that I let Vital host it within their own site as well as on my own. Must have taken me all of three nanoseconds to think about that.

Anyway, back to the present. I was approached by Malcolm Moss, of Core-Ed, to present a session on ICT leadership. (See this articleto get details about OU Vital and how Core-Ed fits in). The terms 'present' and 'keynote' are strange ones to use in this context, because there is as yet no audio or video facility, unless one creates it and links to it. Instead, what I've done is to write a short stimulus article suggesting five broad strategies for leading and managing ICT in a school.

If you log in and go to that session, you can read the article and also take part in a live discussion via a chat room. That should be fun, and will hopefully lead to some good ideas being exchanged. I've made a short audio (less than three minutes long) to give it a bit more of a context, and you can listen to that by clicking on the play button below. The session lasts for an hour. Hope to 'see' you there.

Leading ICT Keynote Preview

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader-- Day 9: Ask the Pupils

A task a day for 31 daysWhen all is said and done, the whole point of being in school is to provide a good education for young people, so we need to ask them whether we're doing a reasonable job. However, exactly how you ask them will depend on their age, and also what you wish to find out.

What should you ask?

The kind of questions I  ask when visiting a secondary (high) school are as follows:

• What you think is the school’s vision for ICT, ie why is it providing lots of kit etc?
• Are students asked to contribute to the school's vision and ideas?
• Are there lots of (high-quality) opportunities to use ICT?
• Do you find the things you're asked to do with educational technology challenging? 
• Are you making progress?
• What opportunities are there for students to contribute to the school’s use and choice of ICT?
• What is the value of learning about and using ICT, especially as many people consider young people to be experts anyway?
• What Level are you at in ICT, how do you know, and what do you have to do to get up to the next Level?
• Anything you’d like to add?

Ask the right questionsThese are not all the questions I like to ask, and I ask slightly different ones, in a very different way, when visiting primary (elementary) schools, but hopefully this selection will give you an idea of what works. Breaking these down what they seek to find out from the students is:

• What do you think the school is trying to do?
• Are you 'done to', or are you consulted, as far as ICT is concerned?
• Do youb get to do hard things with the technology, as opposed to stuff you could do anyway?
• How are you doing in ICT, and how do you know?

There are other ways of finding out useful information from a student's perspective, as you'll see on Days 10, 11 and 12. However, asking them directly is a useful — actually, essential — part of the process.

How to do it

I should recommend taking a random-ish group of youngsters from different age groups, eg 2 from each Year or Grade, and of both genders. Ideally, limit the size of the group to no more than six, and do it with two groups if necessary. Obviously, try to draw everyone into the discussion. The whole thing need take no longer than 15 or 20 minutes — half an hour at the outside.

You can either conduct the session in a lunch period, say, or during lessons whilst project work is going on, or online. If you do it online, I think it's important to ensure that students cannot make anonymous contributions. The reason is that there is always a danger that some students will use the exercise as a means of moaning about their teachers. If they wish to make such complaints, they or their parents should do so in a proper manner, not hijack your survey.

On the other hand, most students, most of the time, are eager to please, and therefore can be tempted to say things that they think you'd like to hear, or which won't get anyone into trouble. For that reason I do think that the best person to ask these questions is someone who is, and can be seen to be, independent. On Day 13 we'll look at the idea of inviting a teacher from another school to visit; the visitor would be an ideal person to conduct the interviews. Alternatively, a member of the Governing Body or a parent might be approached. A teaching assistant is also a possibility, as indeed is a colleague from another curriculum area altogether.

Then what?

The information you glean from asking the students directly about their educational technology experience in the school can prove very useful to you in planning. If, for example, the school has invested lots of money in state-of-the-art equipment, but the students aren't using it, is that because teachers don't have the knowledge or confidence to make it available? Perhaps you should put on some staff training sessions in those areas?

Or suppose the students are using the technology a lot, and are really enjoying it, but don't know how they're doing or how to improve (an answer such as "I must work harder" is not specific enough). In that case, perhaps you need to make sure that people have a good idea of how to assess students' ICT capability and, crucially, how to convey useful information about it to their students.

So how would all this knowledge help you to become a better ed tech leader? The youngsters are your final customer, if you wish to think of it in commercial terms. It's not necessarily the case that the customer is always right, of course. But by making sure you know how things are from their perspective you can adjust what you're doing, repriotising if necessary, in order to bring about an improvement in the educational technology 'service' being offered.


31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader -- Day 8: Set Up a Committee

A task a day for 31 daysThey say that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. There's a certain amount of truth in the message being conveyed: committees often start by arguing, and end up compromising. The result is something that nobody in the room had in mind at the outset.

And, let's face it, committees may add another level of bureaucracy to an already bureaucracy-burdened profession. So why am I suggesting that organising one could help you become a better ed tech leader?

A committee can actually be a good thing — if the reason for its establishment is clearly to further the use of technology in the school, and the people invited to sit on it do not regard it as a forum for arguing in favour of having more funding lavished on their own curriculum area. Organised and managed properly, an ICT committee can be beneficial in a number of ways.

The benefits of an ICT committee

The members of the committee can be your eyes and ears around the school. We've already seen how walking around the school can be quite useful, but you can't necessarily do that every day, or even every week. You certainly can't be in other teachers' lessons all the time. A committee can provide useful information about how the technology is being used — or not being used — in different areas of the school. And, crucially, why or why not.

A committee can provide a watching brief on developments in technology. I'm mindful of the comments Doug Woods made about my suggestion of delegating a unit of work, to the effect that alleviating some of your own workload is not a good reason for it as other people are busy too, and I agree. But if people are on the committee they can be asked to keep an eye on things in an area they're passionate about, which they probably will do anyway. If they also happen to be non-specialist geeks, so much the better.

In any case, if you're in a secondary school they will be specialists in their own curriculum area. I think it's quite reasonable to expect them to provide feedback on the way technology is being used there, and new software applications. If nothing else, it should help to avoid duplication. For example, in one school I worked in, three subject departments had each bought exactly the same software — before I arrived on the scene, I hasten to add: one of the first things I did was to co-ordinate all software purchasing in order to both avoid that situation and to be in a position to enjoy price discounts.

Notwithstanding the camel comment at the start, colleagues on the committee are likely to come up with ideas you wouldn't have thought of. They have friends in other schools, for example, and belong to subject associations and read different magazines to the ones you do. They have different experiences from you. They're different people, for heaven's sake! They're bound to come up with different ideas.

Who should be on the committee?

In a secondary school, it makes sense to have a representative from each subject specialism. It's interesting to see who is chosen by the team leader. It's often the youngest teacher in the department, but is that because they're brimming with ideas and understand technology, or is it because they're the most junior members of the department and being on the ICT committee is seen as trivial but necessary? It shouldn't make you treat the teacher concerned any differently one way or the other, but this kind of knowledge can give you an insight into how important the use of technology is seen by their subject leader.

An alternative approach, if your school is organised like this, is to invite people from each faculty or learning area. That has the distinct advantage of keeping the numbers down, which makes the committee easier to manage. On the other hand, there are a fewer people to contribute to the work of the committee.

Primary schools are structured differently, of course, but you may still want to invite people based on their specialisms, eg literacy, special educational needs and so on. But the big problem is that, in the UK at any rate, primary schools are often so small that the same person is literacy co-ordinator and special educational needs co-ordinator, with several other roles thrown in for good measure.

So you have to be sensible and judge your particular situation on its merits. Should the committee comprise colleagues who have volunteered? Do you even need a committee at all? Perhaps it would be best simply to ask colleagues' opinions about things from time to time, or set up a means whereby it's easy for them to make suggestions and voice their opinions whenever they like.

Maybe the ICT committee should be an ad hoc one, ie set up for one particular purpose, with the intention of disbanding it once it has done its job. A good example would be where the school is thinking about implementing a new VLE, or a new set of portable computers.

Practical matters

Some thought needs to be given at the outset about when the committee will meet. In England, for example, there is a work time directive in place that teachers should work 1265 hours a year. This comprises both teaching time and 'directed time', and is often regarded as an upper limit (see this example, which I don't think is atypical). In such circumstances, if you're going to set up a committee, try to ensure that its meetings are counted as 'directed time'.

Even if you don't have to worry about the 1265 hours or similar, I think it's good practice to recognise that sitting on a committee like this takes up time which could have been spent on lesson preparation or with one's family. It shouldn't be taken for granted.

Also, it should go without saying that the meetings should be conducted in a businesslike way, ie with an agenda, and with notes of the meetings afterwards. People shouldn't be expected to have their time wasted whilst you consult the back of an envelope or, worst still, ask if anyone in the room has anything to discuss.

And a nice selection of cakes and some fresh coffee wouldn't go amiss either.

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader: Consolidation Day 1

A task a day for 31 daysThere is always a danger with any series like this that, with a new task or challenge being presented each day, it can all become somewhat relentless. For that reason I decided at the outset that I would insert some 'consolidation days'.I suppose technically that's cheating a bit, because it will make the series longer than 31 days — but I never said anything about the days being consecutive!

Reflection is a good thing, so let's cogitate on what's been achieved over the first seven days.

In fact, reflection is a good word to use in this context, because what this week has been mainly about is metaphorically sitting back and watching and listening. The exception was Day 2, of course, which was designed to both satisfy leaders' innate predilection to actually do something, and to set events in motion that would have long-term benefits without being too disruptive in the short-term. As I've suggested before,one of the worst things you can do, if you're new to the job, is to go around changing everything before you really know what's what. You want to make your mark as a new leader, but hopefully you'd prefer to be known for being incisive and doing what's needed, than for being impetuous and self-obsessed (which in my opinion is a characteristic of people who act without doing some fact-finding first).

If you've been rising to the challenge every day, what you should have by now is a kind of shopping list of issues to address, and some ways to address them. You will have found out what, in your opinion, needs looking at through the exercises on Day 1 (SWOT analysis), Day 4 (getting out and about) and Day 7 (wall displays). You will also have started to think about ways of dealing with these issues, whether in the short term (Day 6, quick wins) or the longer-term (Day 3, find a non-specialist geek, and Day 5, draw up a wish list). Remember, the whole focus of this series is to stimulate some thinking, not necessarily to solve all the problems straight away.

If you haven't had time to look at one or two of these tasks, well, today's a good day for catching up!

The next seven days will involve further looking, but at a deeper level, and will also involve other people.

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader -- Day 7: Wall Displays

A task a day for 31 daysTake a look around you. I don't mean around the school, as suggested on Day 4, but around you. What are the walls of your classroom like? If your school has computer labs, what's on the walls? How about the walls in the general area itself, outside the rooms?

Walls are not there simply to separate rooms or hold the roof up. Well, they are, but you can use them for so much more. And if you're not allowed to put anything on the walls then investigate the possibility of having digital displays, in the form of mobile 'walls', plasma screens or, if it comes down to it, a computer station or two at the back of the room running an automated PowerPoint show. I'm not saying that's ideal, and I recognise there may be practical drawbacks, but I am just trying to convey the idea that there is no need to, and nothing to be gained by, taking a defeatist attitude in that kind of situation.

What's it all for?

Before we go any further we need to stand back and ask the big question “why?”. To put it another way: what is going to be the impact on teaching and, especially, learning, of your classroom display? If the answer is “not much”, then there’s little point in bothering.

That may seem a little uncompromising, but schools are about learning. Anything which does not contribute to that goal, whether directly or, perhaps by creating a safe, stimulating and pleasant environment, indirectly, is simply a waste of time and energy.

The same goes for notices in a computer lab. All too often they are full of what you must not do. After three minutes you start to feel as though you've entered a prison. What's on the walls should enhance your desire to learn and do stuff, not make you wish the end of the lesson had arrived.

How effective is the display in your classroom? Try this as an experiment to find out how much notice your class takes of the wall displays. Ask them to tell you, without turning round to look, what country is shown on the map at the back of the classroom. The best situation in which to do this is one in which there is no map, nor ever has been, in the back of the classroom. The pupils will almost certainly come up with all sorts of answers except the correct one.

If that happens then you will know that your display has been less than successful!

Types of display

Nothing, nada, zilch

The most basic type of display is no display at all. In other words, there are just plain walls and doors. You may think it is frivolous to count this as a display at all, but bear in mind that the environment the pupils have to work in conveys a message to them. In this case, the silent message could be that they are not important enough to worry about. Even if this is stretching the significance of the so-called ‘hidden curriculum’ a little too far, it has to be admitted that the complete absence of anything at all on the walls cannot exactly produce a stimulating learning environment.

It may be, of course, that the school has been built, and is being maintained, through a private finance initiative (PFI) or similar arrangement, and that one of the conditions of use is that nothing is put on the walls, or other restrictions. That is something that should have been spotted, and negotiated out of the contract altogether, at the planning stage, so it is too late to do anything about it immediately - although it may be possible to find ways to work around it, as suggested earlier.

Posters

Another type of display is created by putting posters on the walls. These can be obtained from companies, in which case they contain advertising, or educational periodicals. The main function these serve in practice appears to be to brighten up the room. In some cases they serve a second function as well: that of covering up unsightly marks or cracks. Ideally, they should help to provide information or points for discussion that can be brought into lessons.

Showcase

A third type of display is intended to showcase children’s work. The walls are festooned with print-outs - sometimes annotated in colourful felt tip - and extracts from pupils’ folders. If you have someone on your team who is great at putting things on walls in a way that makes people burst with pride at seeing their work on them, ask them if they'd be kind enough to be in charge of all that sort of thing.

Perhaps in return you could negotiate some sort of quid pro quo with the powers-that-be, something useful like having one or two guaranteed free periods a week in which to manage it. If that's not an option or not applicable, then take away some aspect of administration, or even try to obtain a small salary increase for them, although that is both unlikely to happen and is not without its difficulties if it does happen. If the person is a teaching or classroom assistant, then build in display duties as part of their timetable if you can.

The point is simply that although many staff in school do extra things and go above and beyond the call of duty, that's no reason to expect it and take it for granted.

Guides…

Another type of display consists of sets of instructions. Information on the walls tells users how to achieve something, like printing to the colour printer.

… and Guidance

A related type of display is sets of rules, intended as guidance on how to behave near the computers or how to make sure the equipment stays working. I have always applied Freedman's 5 Minute Rule: Someone should be able to come into my computer suite, log on, do some work, print it out and save it and log off, all in the space of 5 minutes even if they had never set foot in the school before. See 7 Rules For Teachers and ICT Co-ordinators for more on this plus six other great rules.

Terminology

Finally, the display may consist of sets of technical terms, or key words, which the pupils are expected to learn. These can and ought to change to some extent to reflect the topics currently being considered.

Issues

There are a number of important issues to bear in mind:

• All of these types of display may be important, but possibly not equally important.
• The different types of display are not mutually exclusive.
• You, the teacher, don’t have to actually do the work for the display necessarily - but you do have to manage it.

Action

So, how might you improve your immediate learning environment by addressing the wall displays? Could this be another 'quick win', as discussed on Day 6?

I am currently in the process of updating and expanding my book about the importance of display. Look out for announcements about that.

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader -- Day 6: Find Quick Wins

A task a day for 31 daysIf you have been reading and carrying out, or at least thinking about, the tasks so far, you're now in a position to think about quick wins.

I said on Day 1 that the last thing you want to do is go in changing everything before you've had a chance to see what's going on. In fact, I read some advice for new Heads of Department to the effect that you should make no suggestions in senior management meetings until you've been in post for at least half a term. That may not be entirely feasible, but there's a grain of common sense there, and the same applies here. A major change, like getting rid of the computer labs altogether, may fly in the face of everything the school holds dear and has been working towards for years, in which case you'd have a hard time even getting the idea off the ground. Big changes need time and ground work.

But quick wins, as the term suggests, are different. They are small changes which you can bring about immediately, or almost immediately, but which have a profound effect. The key thing is that they are often incredibly simple. Here are some examples from my own experience:

Putting a printer in each computer lab

In the school I joined as Head of ICT, there were two and a half computer labs (one was really a Business Studies room), but only one really expensive printer, which was locked away in the server room. Indeed, it was so expensive that when it went wrong the call-out charge for a service engineer cost £60 (approximately $90) — and that was before they even did anything. And hardly anyone used it anyway, because it was locked away.

At that time, new inkjet printers cost around £70, so it made perfect economic sense to buy three of them and install one in each room. Suddenly, printing out your work was easy and natural instead of the dreadful hassle it had been. Bringing about this change took just a week, from placing the order to having the new printers up and running on the school network.

Changing the room-booking procedure

Another small change, which was big really, was changing the way the computer labs could be booked by non-ICT classes. It took me about an hour to change the procedure such that it would now take someone two or three minutes to book a room instead of an hour or more. I'll be saying more about what I did on another Day.

If you've just joined the school, or if you followed Doug Woods' advice, namely:

Try looking around your school as if you were a visitor and see what perception it gives.

you're in a great position to look at the situation with fresh eyes — a situation which most people have become so used to that they never question it.

Making small changes can have a big effect on what you might call 'the user experience'. The benefit usually far outweighs the effort involved. So now that you've carried out a SWOT analysis (Day 1), walked around the school (Day 4) and thought about what you'd do if you had bucketfuls of cash (Day 5), have a think about what you could change or put into place today or tomorrow that would make a huge difference to the way your colleagues, and the students, perceive and use educational technology in the school.

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader -- Day 5: Draw Up a Wish List

A task a day for 31 daysLet's take a break from looking around — a break, mind you: we haven't finished yet — and do a spot of introspection and daydreaming. I've always thought it a good idea to draw up a wish list of stuff you'd like to see in the school as far as educational technology hardware and software is concerned.

I think this is an important thing to do for two reasons. One is that I think every good leader has dreams. Maybe your particular vision seems impossible right now, but it's important to dream about it nonetheless. Thinking of what could be has, I think, a subtle aspirational effect, and that rubs off onto others. Another is quite simply that if you suddenly find yourself with a windfall to spend on educational technology, or are asked to bid for some funding with very short notice, it's as well to have a sort of shopping list up your sleeve.

And I should say here that, whilst I like to think of myself as both a practical and pragmatic person, there is absolutely nothing wrong with daydreaming. Indeed, I think it is necessary. Where it all goes wrong is where someone has a dream, and does nothing whatsoever to bring it to reality. Dreaming is necessary, as I said; it is not sufficient.

Without a vision, how could you even start to draw up a wish list? A wish list should not be a ragbag of random items thrown together, but should reflect what you'd like learning and teaching with technology in your school to look like. That's the starting point: not "How many pocket camcorders would I like?", but "How can we help youngsters express themselves without having to speak it or write it?".

I suggest the following 'rules' for drawing up a wish list:

• Base it on a vision for learning and teaching, as already mentioned.
• Discuss it with colleagues and students. Perhaps your wish list could start as the 'seed funding' for an ideas bank. Why not set up a wiki for this?
• Organise it into price bands. The reason for this is that I think it's good to have an instant answer to each of these questions, and all the ones in between: "How would you spend £100 if I gave it you now?"; "How would you spend £5m if I gave it to you now?" Sometimes you may find yourself in a situation in which you have to come up with an answer very quickly (in one case for me it was instantly) in order to acquire the money. Therefore it's a good idea to adopt the Boy Scouts' motto, Be Prepared.
• Keep reading magazines, educational news, and blogs. You need to keep abreast of what's 'out there' in order to be able to include it in a wish list. I'll cover this in more detail at a later date. But it's another reason to make sure others may contribute to your wish list, since they may know things that you don't.

Above all, keep your wish list up-to-date. Is a new dot matrix printer really the pinacle of your aspirations?

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader -- Day 4: Get Out and About

A task a day for 31 daysA really useful thing to do is to get out of your own learning area and walk around the school. It's hard to find the time to do, because you're either teaching a full timetable or you need to use your non-teaching periods for lesson preparation and marking and so on. But if you can arrange it you will almost certainly find it quite enlightening.

The point of the exercise is to quickly get an idea of how embedded is the use of educational technology in the curriculum. Checklists and surveys often tell you what people would like to see happening, but not necessarily what IS happening. Walking around the school can give you a rough and ready idea. It's not scientific, but it may help you to pinpoint areas to focus on — either because they seem especially strong, or particularly weak.

Things to look out for include:

• What is the signage like on the display boards in the different parts of the school?
• Are there photos up of kids using technology?
• How many lessons are actually using technology, or at least include some children using it, as you walk around?

One thing you need to try and avoid is walking around the school at the same time every week, because it stands to reason that you're likely to keep seeing, or not seeing, the same thing. So a variation of this is to ask members of your team to do this as well. If they don't have time, then keeping their eyes open on the way to and from the staffroom and when they're walking around the school anyway can be very useful.

And as you walk around, think to yourself: does this feel like a school which has technology at its heart? Remember: it's the general impression, not the nitty-gritty detail, that you're supposed to be aware of.

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader -- Day 3: Find a Non-Specialist Geek

A task a day for 31 daysEconomists have a concept called 'Comparative Advantage', which runs like this. Suppose I'm really good at painting, but lousy at plastering, and you're a wizard at plastering but don't know one end of a paintbrush from the other. It doesn't take too much mental effort to work out that you and I should come to an arrangement: I'll do your painting if you do my plastering.

So far, so obvious. But here's the surprise: it turns out that even if I'm better than you at both painting and plastering it could still be worthwhile us coming to exactly the same sort of arrangement. It all depends on one thing: are you relatively, ie comparatively, better at one of the skills than I am, and vice-versa? If so, it makes sense for each of us to focus on our strengths.

So what does all this have to do with being an ed tech leader? Quite simply that even if you're the acknowledged ICT expert in the school, there may still be colleagues who could teach some aspects of ICT much better than you can for the same amount of effort.

For example, I know a Teaching Assistant who is an artist and poet, and a visual thinker. The consequence of this is that he will often think about using animation, video, or photo story-telling techniques to get the point across. If I worked in the same school as him, it would make perfect sense to try and arrange for him to work in the ed tech lessons teaching the kids all about using those approaches. Even if that were not feasible, at the very least I would try and cajole him into running a training session for staff, or even only my team, so that we could start using those techniques effectively too. I could do all this myself, but even if I know more about all this than he does (which I'm sure is not the case anyway), in the time it takes me to prepare one animation lesson and all the resources I need, I could have prepared two or three lessons centred on spreadsheets. Using this fellow would be a much better use of resources.

When I was Head of ICT, there was a science teacher in the school who knew a database I'd just purchased inside out. I knew it well too, but I asked her if she'd be good enough to run a training session for my team and me. It seemed to me that, having used it for longer than I had, and having used it with students in the classroom, she'd be much better than me at pointing out pitfalls, workarounds, extra resources and so on. I was right.

So this is what I mean by 'non-specialist geek': someone who isn't a specialist in educational technology as such, but has an in-depth knowledge of one particular field that has a place in the ICT curriculum.

There are lots of examples once you start looking and listening. They may even be in your own team. Perhaps one of them has been delving into their family history, which makes them a geek of sorts on research and databases. Maybe one of them works as a DJ at weekends, in which case they know about compiling playlists and mixing sounds.

Who do you know in your team, or in the school as a whole, who has expertise in one particular niche of educational technology? Who has such a passion for it that they can make it come alive in a way that you cannot?

Once you've identified such people, it probably won't take too much effort persuading them to talk about something they're passionate about, but you have to think of practical issues, like:

• Are they able to help out in your lessons, ie does the timetable permit it?
• If they do help out, can you negotiate a quid pro quo with whoever arranges cover for absent staff, eg that they're not called on to cover for those lessons?
• If they give up an hour after school to run some training for your team, what can you offer in return? Training their team in some other aspect of educational technology perhaps?

Whatever arrangement you come to, even if they don't actually want anything in return, I think it's important to send an email to their own team leader saying what a great help they've been, and thanking him or her for allowing it to go ahead. Thanking someone is both good manners and costless, and by doing it in writing you ensure that the fact that they helped out isn't lost in the fullness of time.

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader -- Day 2: Delegate a Unit of Work

A task a day for 31 daysDesigning units of work is quite a labour-intensive task. Even if you’re using a set of ready-made units, you will probably still want to customise them  for your school or class. One way of reducing the burden on yourself, and at the same time injecting fresh ideas into your lessons, is to ask others to take responsibility for one or more units.

This is much easier to do, of course, if you lead a team of people than if you’re co-ordinating the efforts of people who are not answerable to you. Even there, however, you can often find a colleague who is mad keen on one particular aspect of educational technology, and who would not require too much persuasion to take on such a task.

For example, is there a teacher who enjoys making videos? Is there one who enjoys geocaching? Does another colleague love graphic design?

It’s crucial to delegate the responsibility, not merely the task. Nobody would thank you for being asked to be a glorified work experience assistant! It entails setting the main objectives, to ensure that overall the curriculum or scheme of work is being fully covered, and then leaving everything to them. And I mean everything:

• The lessons
• The lesson materials
• Preparing resources on the school’s VLE
• Booking computer equipment as required
• Organising permission slips if a school visit will be involved
• Running training sessions with the rest of the team.

You may find, as I did when I tried this out, that some colleagues are a little under-confident. In that case, by all means provide them with the lifeline of being able to have meetings with you to discuss their ideas and any practical matters arising.

The result, as I can testify, is a set of teaching units which contain ideas you’d never have thought of, devised by colleagues who feel a great deal of ownership of, and pride in, the scheme of work. Crucially, engaged and enthusiastic teachers generate engagement and enthusiasm in their students, making it more likely that they will make progress.

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader -- Day 1: Carry Out a SWOT Analysis

A task a day for 31 daysWelcome to the 31 Days series. The aim of it is to provide challenges to help you become an even better educational technology leader than you already are. If you have only just found about the series, I suggest you read this article first.

In case you have already read this article through the preview sent to Computers in Classrooms subscribers, I've added more at the end.

Businesses do this all the time. The acronym ‘SWOT’ stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, and carrying out this kind of analysis is a good way to start looking at your circumstances in an honest and holistic way.

You can carry it out in a back-of-an-envelope kind of way, on your own, or use it in a team meeting. The advantage of the former is that you can very quickly generate ideas about what needs to be done, or at least what needs to be discussed.

In the illustration below, for example, you could take all of these points and turn them into an agenda of issues to discuss with your team.
Example of a SWOT analysis
The advantage of the latter approach as a starting point is that you get everyone else’s ideas too. If you’ve just joined the school as the ICT leader, the last thing you want to do really is go in like a bull in a china shop changing everything based on what could turn out to be mistaken assumptions.

This exercise is a good way of getting the lowdown on the situation, or at least your colleagues’ opinion of what the situation is, before devising a plan of action.

Variations on the theme

The whole point of carrying out a SWOT analysis is to get the big picture of the ICT provision in your school very quickly. Checklists have their place, because they help to ensure that you cover everything, but this kind of broad brush approach can lead to people identifying issues that they would probably never think of even putting on the checklist in the first place.

But you don't have to use the standard SWOT table as exemplified above. You could, for example, take the approach used to do assessment in many primary schools: three stars and a wish. So, you ask each of your colleagues to come up with three things they think are really good about the ICT in your school, and one thing they wish was in place.

An alternative is to ask them to suggest three things that are really good, two things which could be improved and one thing they'd really like to have.

Yet another variation, if you don't have a team as such or are feeling fairly brave, is to set up a survey for staff at the school (pupils too if you like, but I'll be dealing with them separately in this series). There are two problems with asking staff for their opinion:

The first is that it can become a bit depressing if people start throwing all their ICT-related problems at you in one fell swoop! However, this is an excellent exercise to carry out if you have only been at the school five minutes, because nobody could reasonably blame you for all that's perceived as being wrong.

Secondly, you would need to handle your request very carefully, not just because everyone is busy, but because it's easy to raise false expectations. Some things simply cannot be changed overnight, but not everyone understands that.

Of course, if few people are using technology in their lessons, or do so only sporadically, you will need to ask your colleagues for their opinions in order to find out why.

Getting back to the SWOT analysis carried out only within your team, there are variations in the way you go about it. For example, you might ask each person to carry out a back of the envelope exercise before coming to the next team meeting, so that you can all compare notes in the meeting itself. This saves time in the meeting, but does require you to ask busy colleagues to do yet one more thing.

Once at the meeting you could organise a 'snowball' activity, whereby colleagues go off in pairs and agree the list of strengths etc. Then the pairs get together and agree the list as a foursome. This approach is an effective way of getting to the key issues if you lead a fairly large team (four or more), or if you were doing it as a whole staff exercise.

An alternative approach is to ask one member of the team to come up with a list of three or four strengths, another to focus on the weaknesses, and so on.

Next steps

Once the issues have been teased out through the SWOT analysis, priorities for action will need to be established, followed by courses of action to be carried out by each person, and by when. In other words, the SWOT analysis helps to guide the team's future activity. The nice thing about working that out in this sort of way is that each member of the team will have had a say in the matter.

If you have any views about this idea, or can suggest a different way of obtaining a similar result, please leave a comment.

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader: Information

A task a day for 31 daysThe first part of this series will be published at 8am this morning. The whole point of it is to suggest ideas, so have a notepad and pen ready (remember those?) and a mug of tea or coffee.

The things I'll be suggesting have worked, they're not just theories I came up with whilst lying in the bath. However, they may not all work for you in your particular circumstances. So be creative! Use the ideas as a starting point for your own thinking. I promise I won't be checking up on you!

I'd be interested to learn how you find the series, and how you've adapted some of the ideas.

31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader

How do you get to be a better educational technology leader in a school? Lots of reading, obviously. Plenty of networking, both online and offline. Getting to conferences, again both online and offline. But where do you go for a more structured approach, that you can do in your own time and at your own pace?

A task a day for 31 daysI don’t know the answer to that question, so I thought I’d start my own ‘course’ – actually just a series of blog posts for the next 31 days. Inspired by such luminaries as Darren Rowse, Steve Dembo and Shelly Terrell, the 31 Days series sets a new task every day. Taken as a whole, these challenges should help you do an even better job than you’re doing already. So it should prove useful even for old hands, as well as folk who have just taken on a new job as ICT or Technology leader or co-ordinator.

What was that about a daily task? Don’t worry: I know everyone is busy. Therefore, the task I’ve set for each day shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to consider and start the initial steps. I’m not suggesting that each task will only take 15 minutes in total; rather, I am asking you to set aside 15 minutes a day to look at the tasks, maybe jot down some notes about it, perhaps talk to colleagues about it. In other words, each task is a sort of jump-starter to get some different ideas flowing.

The new series will start on Friday, but you can read the first two instalments later today if you’re a subscriber to Computers in Classrooms, the free newsletter.  You can sign up using the form on the newsletter page.

Update on 2010-04-24 12:08 by Terry Freedman, Educational ICT Consultant

The series has now started! Woo hoo! Go here for the first instalment.

Volcanic Ash Surprises

I find two aspects of the current situation surprising. (In case you're reading this in 10 years' time or something, the 'situation' is that a volcanic eruption in Iceland has thrown a huge cloud of ash and smoke over half of the western hemisphere, resulting in a flying ban over Western Europe.) This has resulted in thousands of teachers being stranded abroad, leaving schools in the position of probably having to close unless they can get enough cover teachers in.

The first surprise is that nobody in the media has, as far as I know, accused teachers, headteachers and the entire educational establishment of gross irresponsibility. Last year, when some schools had to close because of the weather conditions, the papers were full of rubbish about how schools had wimped out. The facts that (a) the Met Office had issued severe weather warnings and told people not to make journeys unless they were absolutely necessary, and (b) that the transport system itself had all but collapsed in some areas (I was due to give a talk in Nottingham and couldn't even get to the station!) completely escaped them.

So here we have this volcanic ash cloud, which you can see in this video:

OK, so teachers can't fly back to Britain and their schools. Couldn't they hire a boat? Or knock up a raft? Or swim? It's only a matter of time before some in-depth report proves that all of these options were possible.

More seriously, here's a question, and this indicates the second thing that surprised me in a way. Given the investment in ICT over the last couple of decades, and the ubiquity of devices like web cams, and wireless broadband, why should schools and teaching and learning be disrupted, as opposed to inconvenienced?

To put it another way, what has not been done to make continuing schooling possible, even in the event of this kind of situation? I'm not saying this as a way of knocking schools, or to be provocative: it's a genuine question. If we can figure out why we can't almost carry on as normal in this sort of extreme situation, it ought to be possible to work out what is needed to ensure that the use of technology is truly embedded in educational practice in more normal circumstances.

Managing Change: The Importance of Planning

If you're going to bring about real change in an organisation you have to have a plan. You need a vision, of course, and you have to engage people and get them excited about the vision. But if you don't have a plan then nothing much will come of it. As the old saying goes, failure to plan is planning to fail.

I feel embarrassed writing that: it ought to be a no-brainer. Yet I can't count the number of times I've sat in meetings and heard the team leader say, "OK, so by next month X will have happened. What's the next item on the agenda?", to which I've piped up: "Er, exactly how is it going to happen?".

Planning is essentialMuch as I'm slightly suspicious of targets and deadlines and milestones, the inevitable paraphernalia of rigorous planning, there is no doubt that they are necessary. (The reason I'm 'suspicious', by the way, is that it is all too easy for the targets to become ends in themselves, divorced from the context in which they were conceived, and therefore unrelated to the actual point of it all. A good example of this is how some police forces in Britain instruct their officers to return to the police station an hour before the end of their shift in order to complete a report about how much time they've spent, and who they've met, in the community.)

Good planning consists of the following elements:

• Having SMART targets in place, ie targets that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-related.
• Having deadlines in place for their achievement.
• Where necessary, having 'milestones' in place, ie key events, with dates, by when things should be achieved in order to keep on track.
• Knowing who is going to be responsible for what.
• Having a mechanism whereby progress can easily be recorded and viewed. I think for a lot of purposes you don't need dedicated project-management software for this: a spreadsheet will do the job if used properly.
• Above all, having regular and frequent review meetings to see if the work is still on course to be completed by the agreed dates, and if not, the reasons for that, and what might be done about rectifying the situation.

These are not the only considerations. In order for the plan to be effective, team members must have a large say in its construction. I hate using buzz words like 'ownership', but in this case it really is appropriate: if people feel they're just being 'done to' then it may be hard for them to feel fully committed.

There should also be a no-blame culture. If people feel they're going to have strips torn off them if they admit to not having achieved something, or if there's a shoot-the-messenger culture, most people will simply take the easy way out and say nothing. That merely stores up problems for the future.

Finally, I think that as far as any planning involving technology is concerned, the flexibility to change or reinterpret goals is vital. When I worked in a Local Authority, each team had a one year plan which was derived from a  three-year educational plan which was derived from a ten year community plan. Given that ten weeks is a long time in educational technology, feeling restricted by plans laid down ten years ago is madness. You may not be able to change the goal itself, but you may be able to change how its interpreted. For example, a goal like 'get parents more involved in their child's education by attending parents' evenings' might be interpreted in terms of checking their child's progress online and taking part in web-based discussions with their child's form tutor.

Certainly, spending plans should be revisited frequently. For example, a three year plan to equip every classroom with an interactive whiteboard may need to revised in the light of the entry of 3D projectors into the market.

The key thing in all of this is discussion, discussion, discussion. It may seem to slow the whole process down, but I think if you're hoping to achieve non-superficial changes that last, there really is no alternative.

Making a Good Impression: Efficient Writing

These days, doing a good job as an ICT or Technology Co- ordinator/Subject Leader is not enough. In order to get on in your career, you have to be seen to be doing a good job. In this series, Alison Skymes looks at ways of making a good impression.Today: learning how to write efficiently.

Alison SkymesAnyone can write, right? Um, think again! A lot of people equate "long" and "unfamiliar" with authority. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Writing should be plain, simple, and well-structured, and fit for purpose. Simple really!

There is nothing rocket science-ish about this. The main question you have to ask yourself is: do you want people to actually read what you've written. If the answer is "no", and you intend your long-winded prose to "bury bad news", I'm afraid I can't help you.

So, assuming that your motives are honest, here are 7 useful tips.

1. Avoid jargon. Jargon is any specialist term that non-specialists are unlikely to have heard of, or may they have heard of it but without really knowing or understanding what it means.

2. Avoid adverbs. Most of the time you can take out words like "really" or "very" -- what, for example, is the difference between "useful" and "very useful"? Either it's useful or it ain't. The only time  a relativistic approach makes any sense is when you compare two or more things. Thus, if product X is useful, and product Y is even more useful, that's fine.

3. Avoid speech mannerisms like "In fact". If it isn't a fact, why bother to say it?

4. Summarise, summarise, summarise. Why should any concept or proposal take more than half a dozen bullet points, or maybe a side of Letter or A4, to explain? In fact (oops, sorry!), why not send it as a single text message?

5. Structure the document (1). For example, have a summary at the beginning. That way, your audience can read that and then skip the rest until they have more time. Or they may even decide they don't need to read the whole thing at all.

6. Structure the document (2). For example, insert a table of contents. Even if the document is only 10 pages, or even 5 pages, long.

7. Structure the document (3). The first paragraph of the document, or of each section, should set the scene and tell the reader all they need to know.

If you wanna stay on the right side of your boss, don't try to be clever: the simpler you make things, the more intelligent and indispensable you will appear.

Tomorrow: How to read efficiently.

Making a Good Impression: Get To The Point!

These days, doing a good job as an ICT or Technology Co- ordinator/Subject Leader is not enough. In order to get on in your career, you have to be seen to be doing a good job.

In this new series, Alison Skymes looks at ways of making a good impression. Today: knowing when to be brief.

Alison Skymes

Many people make a big mistake when talking to their boss: they give what teens refer to as (albeit in a different, and usually seedier, context) TMI: Too Much Information. Unless your supervisor is a nit-picking, ultra hands-on, overbearing fool who is obsessed with operational rather than strategic matters, she just doesn't need to know it all, and what's even more important, she doesn't want to.

Sounds counter-intuitive, right? Well, put yourself in her shoes. She gets up at 5 am and does a pile of reading over breakfast. Arriving at work at 7am, she is confronted by the caretaker having a moan about someone flooding the boys' toilets -- again. 8.30 am comes and Mrs Grimes has phoned in sick, and her class is supposed be on a museum trip today. Then the bell has hardly stopped ringing when -- but you've got the picture by now, yeah? Do you really, honestly, hand-on-heart believe that she is gonna be interested in your 80 zigameg broadband connection?

Tell you what the boss will be interested in though:

Anything which gets the school a good press.

Anything that makes it more appealing to parents.

Anything that is likely to raise grades.

Anything, in short, that is going to make your boss look good.

So, you need to bear two things in mind before you go talking to your boss or write a report:

Fact: she is busy. Really busy.

Fact: she has taken the "what's in it for me? attitude to the next level.

Knowing these facts makes writing a progress report a cinch:

1. Never write more than a side of A4 or Letter-size paper -- and no cheating by using a size 5 font with no margins.

2. If you can, try and restrict yourself to half-a-dozen bullet points. Heck: go the whole hog and reduce it to a single tweet.

3. Lose the technicalities. Instead of writing, "We now have an 80 zigameg broadband connection", say "Teachers and students will now be able to access high quality resources from the internet -- all at the same time and in less time than it takes to blink."

But -- and this is of major importance -- always have the full story available at the click of the mouse just in case your boss wants more detail.

Tomorrow: Write right.