What Did They Tweet? | Teacher Reboot Camp
Interesting selection of stuff discovered thru Twitter, eg video games link. It includes one of my posts too, but that's not the reason I'm posting this!
The Daily Telegraph today reports on the fact that a forthcoming GCSE examination (for the benefit of non-Brits, the GCSE, or General Certificate of Secondary Education, is taken at 16) includes questions on text messaging. The paper writes:
"In a move described by education campaigners as the "ultimate in dumbing down", pupils will be asked to write an essay on the etiquette and grammar of texting."
I've learnt that you can never take anything the media says about education at face value, so I decided to look up the new qualification for myself. I have to say that, before I did so, my reaction to the news was, well, reactionary. It seemed pretty pointless, at the very least.
Having thought it about it some more, and looked at the new qualification, I have come to the conclusion that the AQA GCSE English Language GCSE (Spoken Language) looks like a fairly interesting qualification.
The section on text messaging is brief, and is under the heading 'multi-modal talk'. The 'blurb' reads:
"This topic deals with new technologies that alter the demarcation between traditional areas of spoken and written language – MSN, text speak, etc. It opens up the ambiguity of imprecise language and, what seems like limited subject material, can actually prove a fertile ground for further analysis."
I think that sounds like a fine set of aims. We live in a modern world; who writes letters any more? Actually probably everyone at some point, especially when applying for jobs. Do young people know that text-talk is not always appropriate? Anything that can help them understand such niceties is to be welcomed.
Shifting gears slightly, there are also positive things to be said for being able to communicate an idea in 140 characters or fewer. Being able to do so is quite an art. In fact, I would suggest that one really good form of assessment (in any subject) would be to ask students to summarise the main points of the lesson in the equivalent of a single tweet.
Brevity often leads to creativity. See, for example, these examples of award-winning fiction in 140 characters. Have a look, too, at this competition for start-up stories in 140 characters. True, it's sponsored by the National Venture Capital Association, so it's not altogether a disinterested party, but it's an interesting idea. If I were an employer, I would specify that job applicants send me their CV (resumé) accompanied by a letter of application comprising no more than 140 characters; it would certainly cut down on the reading, if nothing else.
Going back to the qualification, there is always a danger of taking something out of context. I had a look at the draft assessment paper they've knocked up, and it's not bad. For example, one of the things which caught my eye was this exercise:
"The web host of a creative writing web site approaches you to submit some writing for it. This month’s theme is “Work”. You have complete freedom in your choice of form, but are asked not to make what you submit longer than 1000 words. In this case, ‘work’ could refer to paid employment, work experience, training for work or voluntary work. Write your piece for the web site."
Writing for the web is, in many respects, different from writing for print, especially as far as story titles are concerned. Given that many job entrants will need to write for online consumption, it would be a good idea to address it in an English qualification.
I'm not an English specialist, and I'm not a marketer for the AQA, but this qualification seems to me to be definitely worth further investigation.
I may have more to say on such matters after I've attended the 140 Characters Conference in London tomorrow (17 November 2009).
I wonder what 'visionary' came up with the concept of the paperless office? This is an idea that could have been born only in the days before personal computer technology was ubiquitous, at a time when it was peripheral to our everyday lives.
Paperless office?Quite apart from our natural tendency to prefer something tangible to something which, in a physical sense, seems not to exist at all, we are just not designed to do lots of reading on a screen. Eye strain and other computer-related ailments are all too easily acquired when people try to achieve what is, when all said and done, impossible.
Reading on a screen is a different experience to reading on paper. That's why several studies have shown that people skim text on screens more than they do text in print,and why a whole industry has grown up advising people how to write specifically for the web. (A good summary may be found here: http://www.paperhat.net/articles/how_do_people_read_on_screen/.) It will be interesting to see whether the same reading limitations will hold true, in the long run, for ebook readers, even the ones whose screens purport to emulate paper.
Yet every so often I visit a school which prides itself on having a virtually paperless environment. I find that hard to believe, but more importantly, as it's such a difficult goal to attain, why not be pragmatic and adopt the green lobby's mantra of 'reduce, re-use, recycle' as their motto?
Here in the Freedman household we strive to abide by these principles. We reduce our use of paper by only printing out stuff when it's absolutely necessary, and then using both sides of the paper when we do.
We re-use the paper by using the blank side, when there is one, for things like shopping lists and telephone messages. We have attempted to re-use paper by putting it back in the printer's paper tray.
The trouble with this though is that at least fifty percent of the time it screws the paper up, which results not only in wasted time but in even more paper being used. But worse still is the embarrassment of turning up at a meeting with a sensible breakdown of costs on one side of a sheet of paper, and some political blogger's rant on the other. It hasn't actually happened to me yet, but give it time.
More often than not, I forget or don't realise that there is used paper in the printer. I set it to print a 30 page report while I go off and pummell a cat (everybody needs a hobby), only to return to a completely useless stack of paper, and the need to use even more.
We're especially good at the recycling bit. We shred a lot of our paper in order to safeguard ourselves against identity theft. The shreddings find their way either into the cats' litter tray, or to our compost heap. The rest goes into a recycling box which is collected once a week.
Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and one must always be alert to the possibility of unintended consequences. Like the time I set out recycling sacks in the computer suites in order to encourage the pupils to put discarded print-outs in them rather than the waste paper baskets. The volume of printing increased dramatically overnight, which I could only summise was due to the fact that the pupils thought it no longer mattered since they would recycle unwanted results. I was right: as soon as I removed the bags, from the pupils' sight at least, printing returned to its normal level.
I'd be interested in hearing your views on all this. Do you strive towards being completely paperless, for instance? What do you do?
Anti-Bullying Week: 16-20 November - Next Generation Learning
Includes briefing pack on cyberbullying that contains, amongst other things, hguidance for parents.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Here is a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Chris Leach is doing with Web 2.0. It is taken from the forthcoming second edition of the free Web 2.0 projects Book which was published last year -- over 11,000 copies downloaded! The book itself will contain even more information, so look out for that early in 2010!
First name: Chris
Surname: Leach
Title of Project: Gunpowder Plot
Application Type: Social networking
Age range: 9-11 years
Brief description of Project
Creating a twitter account for Robert catesby, leader of the Gunpowder Plot. Children researched the events after Fawkes's capture and then scheduled tweets using Hootsuite. He gained over 60 followers.
URL of project: http://www.twitter.com/LCS_RCatesby
Are you doing interesting work with Web 2.0 applications in your school or college? If so, why not contribute to a new ebook containing ideas that other teachers can pick up and use? Further information is right here:
http://www.ictineducation.org/home-page/2009/10/14/web-20-projects-book-deadline-extended.html
Chris Leach has informed me that the project has received feedback. This in itself is worth looking at, not least ebcause it demonstrates a great use of WallWisher, a sort of online post-it note application.
See for yourself: http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/rcatesby
One of the hazards of teaching youngsters about educational technology -- well, any subject I suppose -- is that it's all too easy to become predictable.
What's a database for? Storing data. Yawn. What's a spreadsheet for? Modelling. Snooze. Yes, I know that we have to address such things -- indeed, would be failing in our obligations if we didn't -- but sometimes it does a lot of good to be a little 'left field' about it all, where possible.
Here are some ideas.
One of the best I've ever seen was a production of Julius Caesar. There were many fine moments in it, but the two which really stood out for me were the following:
In Act 1 Scene 2, Cassius says to Casca,
"Will you sup with me tonight, Casca?",
to which Casca replies,
"No, I am promised forth."
I the production I referred to, Casca didn't answer straight away. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a PDA, flipped it open, checked it for a few seconds, closed it, and put it away, and then said,
"No."
"I am promised forth."
Marvellous! Needless to say, the audience laughed its collective head off.
Later in the play, the action takes place in Mark Antony's camp. In this production, as the curtains draw apart we saw someone putting sheets of paper through a shredding machine. From an Eng Lit point of view this is wonderful, because it sows a few seeds of doubt in the audience's mind: what's being shredded, and why? Is Mark Anthony as squeaky clean as we were perhaps led to believe?
A very good film is Ian McKellan's Richard The Third, in which the first scene opens with a tickertape being transmitted. There's a discussion about technology in itself. If you teach modern history and you want to convey what Hitler's Germany was like, or a Citizenship teacher wanting to discuss ethics and loyalty, you could do a lot worse than show this film.
Similar to the first idea, this is all about getting the class to think about how modern technology would have been used by historical figures.
A good one I tried once was about Jesus. Instead of preaching the Sermon on the Mount, perhaps he'd have used YouTube. What difficulties might he have faced (a) getting his message across to as many people as possible, and (b) being believed?
Once you start to look at these things in a modern setting, the ideas, and even the language, seem less remote. In this way, focusing on modern technology can help to make subjects like history and Religious Education more comprehendible.
For example, I love this spreadsheet poem.
It's another way of getting the pupils to think about mathematical relationships. You could ask them to work out the relationships for themselves, before showing them the poem. You could devise a much simpler one, and then ask them to do the same.
I witnessed a very effective art lesson (for teachers) once, in which the tutor gave out digital cameras and instructed the teachers to go out and take pictures of textures. "Get right up close and personal", he told them. And they did: close-ups of brickwork and carpet tiles, to mention just two, were enough to stimulate discussion about texture, pattern, colours and shadows.
Or rather, get the students to use theirs. How could a writer make use of a handheld camcorder, for example? Or, turning this idea on its head, what yet-to-be-invented gadget would be a real boon to an author?
You don't have to know the answers to such questions, because the important thing is the discussion and presentation which ensue.
In the current issue of The Author, the Society of Author's magazine, there is an article about the use of historical fiction in the teaching of history:
"Rebecca Sullivan, CEO of the Historical Association, a charity that exists to promote and support the study and teaching of history at all levels, [said] 'Fiction can engage pupils and open them to more thought and study. Teachers use historical fiction because it improves historical understanding in pupils.'"
How much use of fiction do teachers of ICT use? There are some rich pickings, such as:
The dialogue between the astronaut and Hal, the all-powerful computer, in 2001: A Space Odyssey
The marvellous piece from Asimov, The Machine That Won the War
The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin
Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys,
And last but not least, the brilliant news flash, 'Time travel is possible'
These stories can be great starting points for discussion, not only in the educational technology classroom, but for other subjects too.
Finally, a nice activity is a project in which pupils, working in groups, have to analyse the classroom and come up with ways in which it could be enhanced with technology. Part of that will have to include any refurbishments which may be necessary to accommodate the changes (such as a storage facility for a class set of mp3 recorders).
Needless to say, groups should present their findings and ideas to the rest of the class and even, if there's a particularly mouth-watering idea, to the Principal.
The thing that all of these ideas have in common is that they stray from the 'norm', and that gives them a bit of a punch.
What 'outside the box' ideas have you used to teach technology, or with technology?
If you enjoyed reading this article, you will probably find this one useful too:
Yesterday I attended a Westminster Forum event on testing and assessment. It was an excellent event, not least because something I have been saying for years was validated.
It has always been my contention that if you love your subject and teach it well, your students should do well in the final exam. Yesterday, a member of the audience (whose name I unfortunately failed to catch) stated that it has been found that the students of teachers who teach in an inspirational way achieve better results than students of those who teach to the test. This chimed with Bruce Dickson's observation, based on 50 years in education, that inspirational teaching turns pupils on.
I agree. So what can we do about it? It's generally held to be true that inspirational teachers are born, not made. I am not altogether convinced by that: I think it's possible for most teachers to be inspirational. Here are some reflections on these matters.
Some of my best lessons were the ones I 'planned' driving into work or on my way to a lesson. A few days ago, for example, there was an article in the news about the English government deciding to pass a law making it compulsory for the police to retain the DNA samples of innocent people for six years. That's too rich a story to be shelved until I'm covering databases, in six weeks' time or whenever.
That's right. Why not start each lesson going through the news, or picking up on one or two stories that have an educational technology aspect to them?
If all that sounds like too much extra work, allocate the work to pupils, age permitting. Assign the task of gathering news items to three pupils per lesson. Their homework will be to spend a bit of time together deciding on the best two or three items. Assuming you have a class of 30, by the end of term all of them would have done this.
Think of the skills they will be learning and honing in the process: news spotting, collaboration with each other, discussion with each other as they each argue the case for ‘their’ item to be included, and presentation skills.
They will also, of course, be demonstrating their understanding of ICT itself. Otherwise, how could they select an item for discussion at all?
Try taking a photograph (or finding one on Flickr), and then asking your pupils to identify what educational technology they can see, or which is implied.
Where's the ICT?
Image by Terry Freedman via Flickr
Ask your pupils to take photos and then explain where the educational technology is, or why they think the photo is relevant to the subject.
You could do this every couple of weeks. Alternatively, ask each student to take and print off a photo, and put them all on the noticeboard. Where there is a spare five minutes at the end of a lesson, select a pupil at random and ask them to explain their photo. Or somebody else's.
One of the things which I took away from yesterday's conference was the following, from Professor Mary James, of the University of Cambridge:
"Teachers who 'get' Assessment for Learning,
are themselves reflective learners;
collaborate with colleagues;
go to see good practice in other schools."
So how about getting together with your English colleagues and set up an extended writing exercise involving educational technology - as the subject matter, not just the means of producing it? For instance, how about a short story or a haiku on the theme of identity theft, virtual friendship or technology going wrong?
There are lots of interesting blogs to read. Just set up a Google alert for 'ICT in Education' or 'educational technology' and you'll find them. A few I really enjoy reading are Paul Blogush's blog, Shelly Terrell's blog and Di Brooks' blog. I like them for different reasons. Try them out for yourself.
I have already made the case for maintaining a (small) educational technology library at school. There are some really interesting books around, not all of which are to do with educational technology as such. For example, I am currently enjoying Howard Gardner's Five Minds For The Future (listed on http://www.ictineducation.org/books-from-amazon/).
When I was inspecting schools' ICT provision I had to say to the ICT leader, on more than one occasion, "You need to get out more." Even the best provision can often benefit from the injection of fresh ideas and perspectives.
You may pick up new ideas, and get to make new connections with like-minded others. There are at least three interesting conferences coming up in the near future:
Transforming Learning Through Creativity and ICT, Liverpool 27 November 2009. Features Keynotes by Sir Ken Robinson, Tanya Byron, John Davitt and Ben Johnson. Phone (+44)151 233 3901 to book a place.)
Or there's the 140 Character Conference in London on November 14th: check http://london.140conf.com/for details.
School won't let you out? Then how about the K12 Online Conference, which starts on November 30th. See http://k12onlineconference.org/ for details.
And don't forget Mirandamod for some serious seminar-style discussions via FlashMeeting (and in person, if you can get there). See http://www.mirandanet.ac.uk/mirandamods/for topics and dates.
Also, Classroom 2.0 takes place on the internet every Saturday at http://live.classroom20.com/(I shall be talking myself -- hopefully not to myself! -- on November 21st.
Finally, you ought to try to get to a Westminster Forum conference now and then. As well as featuring speakers who are experts in their field, they last only for a morning or an afternoon.
I think it's important to get involved, or at least belong to, offline communities too. That's why I'm a member of Naace, the British Computer Society and the Royal Society of Arts. Attending events is another way of meeting new people and being exposed to fresh ideas.
Once someone starts to feel inspired, they're more likely to inspire others. By adopting these sorts of strategies, and encouraging (and allowing) your colleagues to do the same, you're helping to create the conditions in which inspirational teaching can flourish.
I doubt that I have covered the whole range of ideas here! I'd be interested to hear your ideas for encouraging inspirational teaching.
Here is a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Silvia Tolisano is doing with Web 2.0. It is taken from the forthcoming second edition of the free Web 2.0 projects Book which was published last year -- over 11,000 copies downloaded! The book itself will contain even more information, so look out for that early in 2010!
Name: Silvia Tolisano
Application type: Around The World with 80 Schools, Video Conferencing
Age range: All age groups
Description of project
Schools connect with other schools around the world through a short 5 minute video conference call.Students introduce themselves, share something special about their location or culture and ask a data collecting question.Over 200 schools are participating
Benefits of using Web 2.0
Motivation,Participation,Collaboration,Global Connections & Collaboration
URL: http://aroundtheworldwith80schools.wikispaces.com/
Are you doing interesting work with Web 2.0 applications in your school or college? If so, why not contribute to a new ebook containing ideas that other teachers can pick up and use? Further information is right here:
http://www.ictineducation.org/home-page/2009/10/14/web-20-projects-book-deadline-extended.html
This is article 3 of a series of 3.
Frederick Herzberg was a psychologist in the USA who
developed the hygiene theory of people's
productivity at work. What is the theory, and how
can it help the ICT (educational technology) leader?
Herzberg can be placed in the Abraham
Maslow school of thought, in that he believed that
people's motivation could be explained in "human" terms
rather than "scientific" ones. He distinguished between two
kinds of factors: hygienic and motivational.
The hygienic ones are those which help to prevent job
dissatisfaction, but do not in themselves promote job
satisfaction. In other words, they are like good hygiene: it
does not in itself create good health, but its absence can
lead to ill-health.
Examples of such factors include, working conditions,
salary and working relationships.
Motivational factors are those which positively promote
job satisfaction, and include achievement, recognition and
responsibility.
So how can you, the ICT manager, make use of these insights?
Hygiene factors
As far as the hygiene factors are concerned, you consider
the following:
Working conditions
Staff should have access to the best equipment, not the
worst. In other words, if you find yourself being offered a
sum of money to spend on educational technology, ask
yourself how it might be used to make teachers' lives
easier.
Make sure that the environment is kept pleasant -- and
hygienic. For example, if you have a technical support team
ask them to implement a schedule of keyboard cleaning.
Working relationships
There is not much you can do if two people dislike each
other, but that is not the point. As a manager you need to
be seen to be above their differences, and to be completely
impartial. That means, for example, being prepared to give
everyone a chance to give their opinion in team meetings.
It also means not going out for dinner or other kinds of
socialising with just one or two people. Team means are
fine -- a good idea, in fact -- but anything else could be
seen as favouritism or at least a lack of impartiality.
What about motivational factors?
Clearly, you will probably not have the power to promote
people to a higher position -- but you can make sure that
members of your team are given opportunities to take
responsibilities that may help them gain promotion in the
future.
Also, giving them some degree of control and flexibility
over what they do is a very good way to motivate people,
and to harness their natural desire to do the best they
can. You may think that in these highly prescriptive times,
that kind of delegation is impossible. not so.
One of the things I used to do, for example, was to ask each team
member to take responsibility for a particular unit in the
scheme of work. That meant devising the lesson plans and
the resources for the rest of us to use, and making sure
that we had received training so that we knew what we doing
and how to do it. The only non-negotiable element in all
this was the set of objectives that had to be achieved. The
result was not only a well-motivated team, but also a much
richer set of lesson plans than I could have devised on my
own, or which could be found in a book.
Job enrichment
This article would not be complete without considering job
enrichment, which is an extension of Herzberg's hygiene-
motivation theory. It includes factors such as giving team
members more control, and using more of their abilities --
and extending the ones they have through training.
You will immediately recognise that the example I gave a
moment ago of team members taking responsibility for a
unity of work can be seen as an example of job enrichment.
But we can also learn something else from Herzberg's job
enrichment theory, although you probably know it already,
and that is the importance of professional development.
It is probably also crucial to extend what team members do
to areas that are slightly beyond their comfort zone:
everyone needs a challenge, if only to prevent boredom in
the long term. But this option can be fraught with
difficulties, and so will be covered in a separate article.
As you can see, it is possible to take the theories and
findings of a clinical psychologist and apply them to the
leadership and management of ICT.
Let's face it: most school websites are pretty boring. True, some have improved a lot in the last few years, but they're mainly the exception that proves the rule.
Looking at most school websites is like taking a trip back in time. No interactivity, no sense of community, no updates for weeks, if not months.
In short, no life.
There are ways in which you can ensure that your school's website is not only vibrant, but stays that way.
This may seem a bit of a no-brainer, but in too many schools the 'powers-that-be' delegate the task of website maintenance to the Head of ICT. That's like delegating the job of producing the school prospectus to the Head of English, on the grounds that it uses words.
Why should only one person be responsible for generating the content, keeping it updated and publishing it? If several people were involved, and if all staff were expected to contribute to the site in some way on a regular basis (once every half-term, say), the website would almost look after itself.
The 'school' includes pupils, parents, support staff and even the local community, as well as teachers and the Principal. It includes more than the curriculum and sports activities. See the next point too.
School websites often talk about what a great job the school does, usually through a combination of lists of examination results and photos of people on a sports field or at a computer. Yawn. Why not have pupil bloggers on the website, discussing what they do and why, and what they like and don't like?
With that in mind, consider having a school blog rather than a website, or have a website which incorporates a blog.
A blog can be updated quickly and easily, and lends itself to participation by allowing comments to be made on the articles posted.
How about a school Ning in which parents can get into blogging and discussions? Obviously, it would have to be moderated, but think of the dividends in terms of goodwill and excitement.
It doesn't even have to be about the school itself. A question like "What do you think of the new Vetting and Barring Scheme? would generate some interest, and may even provide some good ideas for the school. It should certainly give the school management a good idea of where parents stand on the issues involved.
The main aim of most school websites is to attract new pupils. They have a corporate kind of aim, but not a corporate kind of approach. Most commercial websites give stuff away. It doesn't cost them much, but gives people the impression they are not just after your money.
How come I have never seen a school website that gives stuff away? For example, how about a downloadable sheet about keeping your child safe online? How about one explaining what the National Curriculum levels mean?
... Unless you really are pretty sure that you can keep it going. There is little worse than seeing that the 'latest news' is three months out of date -- which it may be, given end of term exams followed by a long summer break.
It makes life a lot easier if you have a good idea of what you're going to write about and when. There are key times of the year, of course: reminders of holiday dates, and parents' evenings, for example. There are also key times of the week, such as setting the tone on a Monday morning.
One of the features of a blog I now regard as a must-have is the ability to write a post and have it appear at some time in the future. It means that you can bash out a few articles all in one go when you have the time and energy, and set them to publish at the rate of one a day automatically.
Another handy feature, if you can get it, is one which 'unpublishes' articles.
A blog post is referred to as a 'draft' if it has not been published yet. It's incredibly useful to be able to have articles written and ready to go live, but not necessarily automatically. Why? See the following point.
Taking the above three features together, it is possible to write an article called, say, 'Big basketball match tomorrow: don't forget!', have it appear the day before the match, and then disappear on the day of the match.
As well as keeping the articles timely, and therefore relevant, it also paves the way for putting up two further articles: 'Basketball match: the big day arrives!', and 'Basketball match results'. This is where the draft articles come in. True, you can't write much detail about something that hasn't happened yet, unless your name happens to be Nostradamus, but you can write something which is almost certain to be true, such as:
'The basketball team looked resplendent in their kit as they marched out onto the pitch. Nerves? Maybe, but only their coach would know, and he wasn't telling!'
All you have to do on the day is take a quick snapshot, upload it along with a caption and a bit of text about the weather or something somebody said, and hit the Publish button.
That means, giving whoever is responsible for putting it together and maintaining it or co-ordinating everyone involved some proper time to do it in. Or exemption from doing (some) cover/substitution.
Or even a bit of extra salary perhaps?
If you found this article useful, you may also like 14 MORE ways to make your school website better.
This is article 2 of a series of 3.
In this series I am exploring what the educational ICT leader can learn from business leaders and thinkers when it comes to performing the educational technology leader's role.
So what can we learn from Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of General Electric? Although schools and GE are very different types of institution, you may be surprised to discover that school leaders could benefit from adopting some of Welch's strategies.
There are a some basic principles that characterise Welch's approach and philosophy:
He was not prepared to suffer mediocrity. IF GE was not number one or number two in a particular field, he would close and sometimes sell off that section.
He adopted a similar attitude to his staff. He reduced the number of employees at GE by nearly 120,000 in the course of 5 years, because he preferred to have a lean, efficient operation to a bloated, inefficient one.
Still on the subject of staff, he divided them into the top 10%, a middle 70% and the lowest performing 20%. His aim was to develop the top 10%, help the 70% achieve what they wanted to, and minimise the time, energy and resources spent on the bottom 20%. In fact, if an employee didn't shape up, he got rid of them.
Having said that, he did not punish failure. If someone made a mistake, he thought it was important to help them regain their self-esteem. He was, you might say, big on motivation.
He was highly competitive on his company's behalf, and communicated his vision to his team. This manifested itself not only in a desire to be number one or number two in each field in which GE operated, but also in terms of a reputation for quality. Unlike many educational so-called visionaries, Welch had his feet firmly on the ground, so his vision could actually be put into practice.
So how might we translate all this into the context of a school? Clearly, the subject leader for educational ICT does not have the same powers of hire and fire, nor does she have the same ambitions in terms of profits and sales. Or at least, not expressed in those terms. Let's go through the above points.
There is a tendency and certainly a great deal of pressure for schools to adopt new courses and qualifications, or new approaches, before they have the resources in place to make a success of them.
Taking the example of a secondary school in England, are you able to deliver excellent results at Key Stage 3, GCSE, 14-19, and, in the longer term,the ICT Diploma, and possibly A Levels? You need to identify what you are good at delivering, and why, and what you cannot deliver well, and why not.
It may not be feasible for you to pull out of the "market" -- but then again, it might be. For example, is there a possibility of developing links with a neighbouring school or college, in order to each specialise in a particular are? Or perhaps once you have identified where your weaknesses lie, you could share resources.
Sometimes, it is possible to drop courses. In one of my jobs, I decided to discontinue a low-level course in graphics that was, actually, delivering good results. Why? Because I thought the course was so simple that (a) it didn't stretch the students in any sense; and (b), because of (a), I didn't think the qualification was worth the paper it was printed on. I dropped it in favour of a much more challenging course, which proved only slightly harder to achieve the same degree of success in, because students rose to the challenge.
Interestingly, this had a knock-on effect on some of the other issues listed above.
Firstly, the ICT department started to gain a reputation for quality, as it started to attract the hardest working students rather than the idle ones. That, in turn, led to better results which led to more "top" students choosing it in their options. In fact, in the course of two years, ICT went from being a "sink" subject to one for which their was more demand than places.
Secondly, it started to attract ICT experts to teach it. Whereas previously anybody could have taught the graphics course, the new course needed a subject expert. In fact, I managed to persuade the headteacher that the subject, and therefore the students, would be much better served by a tight team of 4 or 5 teachers, all experts in their fields, than double that number who knew just enough to get by -- and, being committed to teaching just one or two hours a week, had no obvious incentive to spend much time developing their knowledge and understanding.
This all raises another issue: how do you measure success? There are the obvious measures, such as examination results, but I decided to judge myself and my team by a harder set of criteria: how many students opted to do the subject once they were no longer obliged to; and, even more difficult, how early in their school career did they make that choice? By adopting a systematic approach, I was able to start seeing students decide to opt for my subjects a full two years before they needed to.
Developing staff is all-important. What professional development does your team enjoy? What responsibilities have you delegated to them?
Vision is important, and here are three questions for you to consider:
Ultimately, although the energy industry and the education service are superficially very different, in terms of what motivates people to do well, and other forces which affect performance, they are not that different at all.
The next article in this series will be published at the same time tomorrow morning.
See also:
Business thought leaders and their relevance to educational technology leadership: Abraham Maslow
Here is a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Paula Naugle is doing with Web 2.0. It is taken from the forthcoming second edition of the free Web 2.0 projects Book which was published last year -- over 11,000 copies downloaded! The book itself will contain even more information, so look out for that early in 2010!
Name: Paula Naugle
Application type: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Skype Call, Skype call
Age range: 9-11 years
Description of project
My 4th graders in Louisiana and Jan Wells' 4th graders in Kansas read the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs together via a Skype video call. Both classes practiced their reading fluency and voice before performing for each others' class.
Benefits of using Web 2.0
Motivation,Participation,Variety of means of expression,Ownership,Attention to detail,Peer assessment,Forms of literacy,Collaboration
URL: http://pnaugle.blogspot.com/2009/09/cloudy-with.html
Are you doing interesting work with Web 2.0 applications in your school or college? If so, why not contribute to a new ebook containing ideas that other teachers can pick up and use? Further information is right here:
http://www.ictineducation.org/home-page/2009/10/14/web-20-projects-book-deadline-extended.html
All technology expands the space, contracts the time, and destroys the working group.
It works better if you plug it in. If it still doesn't work, switch it on.
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
Computing power increases as the square of the cost. If you want to do it twice as cheaply, you have to do it four times as fast.
To err is human but to really foul things up requires a computer.
There's always one more bug.
If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled, and no one dares to criticise it.
To estimate the time it takes to do a task: estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by two, and change the unit of measure to the next highest unit. Thus we allocate two days for a one-hour task.
The solution to a problem changes the problem.
Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which, by definition, are limited. Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.
These rules were coined by Thomas Gilb, a systems engineer.
ICT capability is inversely related to seniority within an organisation.
The length of time required for a task is inversely related to its simplicity.
The reliability of computer systems is inversely related to the urgency of the task.
When all else fails, read the instructions.
New systems generate new problems.
If you do not have anything to say, a word processor
will not say it ~ Peter Coffee
The solution to a problem changes the problem.
Don't buy a computer.
If you do buy a computer, don't turn it on.
Thanks to David Harley for providing me with these last two rules.
First published in InTegrate, March 1995.
You may also find 7 rules for ICT teachers, co-ordinators and leaders interesting.
Here is a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Damian Maher is doing with Web 2.0. It is taken from the forthcoming second edition of the free Web 2.0 projects Book which was published last year -- over 11,000 copies downloaded! The book itself will contain even more information, so look out for that early in 2010!
Name: Damian Maher
Application type: Using Google maps to support an excursion.
Age range: 9-11 years
Description of project
Using Google Maps, students are orientated to a place they are going to for an excursion, for example a river. Students are able to examine the types of uses for the river by following it along its length. Fits well with direction (mathematics)
Benefits of using Web 2.0
Anywhere
URL: http://maps.google.com/
Are you doing interesting work with Web 2.0 applications in your school or college? If so, why not contribute to a new ebook containing ideas that other teachers can pick up and use? Further information is right here:
http://www.ictineducation.org/home-page/2009/10/14/web-20-projects-book-deadline-extended.html
This is article 1 of a series of 3.
A short while ago I posted a message in Twitter to the effect that anyone who quotes a statistic like "The number of geniuses in China outnumbers the total population of our own country" does not understand the nature of genius. I believe that genius has much in common with creativity, about which the psychologist Abraham Maslow had particular views.
He also had views about human needs. In this series I should like to explore what the educational ICT leader can learn from Maslow and others when it comes to performing the educational technology leader's role, especially that of encouraging other teachers to incorporate the use of educational technology into their curricula.
What distinguishes you, me, and most of the people we know from someone like Shakespeare? In fact, writing is a good area to look at in this context, because lots of people love the idea of being a best-selling author -- yet the number of best-selling authors can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. How come?
Maslow drew a distinction between what he called primary creativity and secondary creativity. The former, which most of us enjoy, consists of having great ideas and moments of insight. But most people are lacking in secondary creativity which is the hard slog bit. That's the part where you try to hone the idea, and spend hours drafting a wonderful few pages -- only to discard them when you read them again the following morning.
Oscar Wilde was once asked to define a day's work. He replied:
"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."
Like most of Wilde's quotations, that seems like a throwaway comment at first glance, but has a much deeper aspect to it. What Wilde was describing, in effect, was Maslow's notion of secondary creativity as it manifested itself in practice in his own life.
Maslow stated that people's primary need was for the need for survival, followed by the need for safety and security. Other needs, in chronological order (ie each one can only be addressed once the preceding one has been met) are social needs, ie the need to be part of a group; ego needs, ie the need to be held in esteem by others and to have self-confidence; and the need for self-actualisation, ie the desire to express oneself fully.
Both of these sets of ideas have implications for the successful embedding of ICT in a school curriculum. For example:
Maslow was primarily concerned with deep issues like the human condition, but it is testimony to the greatness of his insights that his theories can be applied in many contexts, including that of the drive to embed the use of educational technology in schools.
Further information on Maslow may be found here: http://www.answers.com/topic/abraham-maslow.
The next article in this series will be published at the same time tomorrow morning.
Here is a set of rules that I hope you will find useful.
Information for tech users should be more useful than this!I think it's important to have rules for oneself, as well as one's classroom. The way I see it, as professionals, our time, and that of our colleagues, is far too precious to waste. We're made to feel guilty, or have somehow been conditioned to feel guilty, if we don't read every possibly useful report. Or every relevant newspaper article. Or if we don't get our lesson plans absolutely perfect -- and then rework them in the light of what happened when we used them.
Feel guilty no more. Here are some rules which I am gradually starting to live by myself.
If you can't tell from the heading what the chapter/article/blog/section is about, at least to start thinking about it, skip it. I was browsing in a bookshop a couple of years ago and was looking at a book about website usability. The author stated that if a heading or link was worded in such a way that the reader had to think about what it might mean, it was no good.
Great stuff. What a pity, then, that he didn't take his own advice. I found it very hard to tell what some of the sections might be about. I didn't buy the book.
In a well written piece you will be able to tell from the first paragraph whether you need to read the whole thing. Newspaper articles are a classic example of this technique. No time to read the paper? Then read all the first paragraphs. They contain the gist of the story while the rest of it, usually, is concerned with filling in the details.
Same with press releases. Same with Government reports -- although there the "first paragraph" might be an executive summary of a couple of pages. Same principle though.
The trouble with podcasts and video-casts is that it's not easy to skim through to see if it's worth listening to or watching all the way through. Now, iTunes lets you listen or watch for 90 seconds without your having to download it. That should be enough time for anyone to decide if it's worth bothering with the whole thing.
Astonishingly, some podcasters have completely failed to understand this. There was one I was interested in, and I tried previewing 3 different episodes. All of them spent at least the first minute and a half on completely irrelevant stuff. Apart from the intro, which took up at least half the time, there was stuff about his loft, his dog, and some other highly interesting (to him) topic. By the time he said, "OK, today we're going to...", the preview timed out. I'm too busy to have other people waste my time: I can do that myself, but far more productively thank you!
From what I have seen (and apparently this is a well-observed phenomenon), in any undertaking only about 1% of the people affected are active in any way. What that means is that, on average, if you work in a school which employs 100 teachers, only one of them is going to be moved by your efforts to introduce podcasting, video-blogging or whatever. With that in mind, concentrate your efforts on the people who are going to make a difference, and feel pretty good about yourself if two or three people come on board.
I invented this rule when I was a head of educational technology and educational technology Co-ordinator in a secondary (high) school. The way I saw it, 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. I set up systems to enable that to happen, and it was highly successful.
What a contrast to an occasion in my next job. I visited a school where I was, in fact, well known, and asked if I could use a computer for five minutes just to type up some notes. The conversation then went like this:
Ed Tech Co-ordinator: How long will you be here today?
Me: Erm, a couple of hours, probably, why?
ETC: OK, I'll set the password to time out at 2 pm, that should give you an extra 30 minutes or so.
Me: Right. What is it?
ETC: Your username will be mydogisacat, and your password will be t43egi98sp97
Me: I'll just write that down
ETC: No, we don't like people writing it down, it doesn't set a good example to the students.
Needless to say, by the time I got to the computer room, which had to be unlocked, I'd forgotten all this, and by that time the ETC was teaching. I had to find a teaching assistant to help me. All in all, it took me 40 minutes to get on to a computer to do 5 minutes work. Now, I understand about the need for security, but puh-leeeze! This is a school, not the Pentagon! It is perfectly possible to set up guest user accounts which give no access at all to students' areas.
Lesson preparation should never take longer than the lesson, or series of lessons, will be.
Lesson plans, reports, articles, chapters etc should only be revised once before submitting them. Any more than that and they lose their freshness. Basically, if you can't get it right second time, take the view that this will have to be good enough. Tough one that, if you're a perfectionist like me.
I hope you find these rules useful. If you prefer some more amusing ones, then look here.
A slightly different version of this article appeared on my Technology & Learning blog.
This was originally published as a news item in July 2006, but I think the principles still apply.
Well, the US House of Representatives has ratified the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), which was originally passed in May, and which bans access by minors to any website which involves creating a profile.
In other words, the Act is so broadly crafted as to, in effect, ban almost any useful website, blog, or collaborative learning and social web spaces from schools. So how's that as a way of dealing with online predator issues?
There's no point in rehearsing all the arguments here, but one thing I would say is that we in the UK need to watch developments closely. It has long been the case that what America does today, the UK does tomorrow. "Tomorrow" used to be around 20 years' time, but these days the time lag is much shorter. Moreover, it used to be the case that this process happened naturally. Unfortunately, the "special relationship" now seems to entail us constantly looking at what the Americans are doing in education in order to see if we could adopt it here.
I don't wish to come across as xenophobic against the USA -- I have friends, family and colleagues there, and I travel there at every available opportunity -- but I do think we need to be somewhat more discriminating than we sometimes are in adopting American ideas. I am concerned that some bright spark in the DfES, fresh out of university (Oxbridge, of course), with no clue as to how the real world works, will decide that banning everything that might attract perverts is a great idea.
In fact, this head-burying approach could, if anything, lead to more and worse cases of online predation, if it leads schools into a false sense of security and makes them pay even less attention to these issues than they do now. Specifically, I am referring to the responsibility of children themselves, and parents. I am constantly amazed that, despite everything you hear, every so often another teenaged girl goes missing after meeting a man 3 times her age whom she met on the internet.
In the long term, the only real defence against online predation in my opinion is to make it compulsory for schools to address online safety issues in the following ways:
Actually, the same goes for teachers: if you're not a technology co-ordinator, that does not mean you are not responsible for observing what the students coin your class are up to.
(You would not believe the number of times I have to say to school administrators, "That is a child protection issue, not an educational technology issue.")
In fact, there is probably a case for arguing that, had the US House of Representatives had more confidence in schools' parents' and students' ability and willingness to address online safety issues in practical ways, perhaps they would not have felt the need to pass this legislation.
Further information.
On this subject, the Department for Education & Skills in England has just issued guidance about cyberbullying. You can find that here:
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/bullying/
It also includes a couple of videos. The "don't suffer in silence" video is quite powerful in its own way, but both it and the other one, which is basically a poem, needs to form part of a controlled discussion activity to be truly effective.
Recent research in the UK suggests that over 20% of children have experienced cyberbullying. Now, this is interesting:
"Phone calls, text messaging and emailing were the most common forms of cyber bullying both inside and outside of school, while chat-room bullying was the least common. The prevalence of cyber bullying was greater outside school than in school."
If that is also true in the USA, then DOPA is doubly dangerous because it will make people think these issues have been dealt with when they have been hardly touched. A bit like arresting the wrong person for a series of murders, leaving everyone in the area with a false sense of security because the actual murderer is still on the loose.
I haven't yet read the report in its entirety, but from what I've seen it is worth looking at and discussing with colleagues.
See here for the full report:
http://www.antibullyingalliance.org/documents/CyberbullyingreportFINAL230106_000.pdf
and here for the summary:
http://www.antibullyingalliance.org/documents/Cyberbriefing.pdf
DOPA
cyberbullying
Reading through people's blogs, especially those of educators, one thing that strikes me is what a nice bunch we are. Even David Warlick's rant is, essentially, nice. Jeff Utecht's recent blog about fear is, essentially, kind. Everything they say and everything others say about barriers to implementing the use of educational technology across the school is correct, but I also believe that part of the problem is our willingness to make allowances.
It is usually at this point that people who know me call me a grumpy old man, but in my mind I am an angry young man! Surely there are some things which we must regard as simply unacceptable? Period?
Here is a personal example of what I find unacceptable. One of my relatives asked me last Sunday if I could create a Word document for her so that she could type a list of dates. She has been teaching, I believe, for over 20 years, and is in a senior position in her school. Why has she been allowed to get away with such a basic lack of knowledge for so long?
In this particular instance it doesn't have any direct effect on the children she teaches, or the staff she manages. Or does it? I am a firm believer in what has been called the "hidden curriculum", in which what you teach and what the kids learn may be rather different. What are her children and staff learning from her behaviour? I would say the following:
1. Technology is relatively unimportant, otherwise she would have learnt how to use it to some extent (I even had to show her how to get from column one in the table to column two, and how to save her work).
2. That it's OK to let people know that your are technologically illiterate.
3. That, from the point of view of one's employer, it is OK to be technologically illiterate.
4. That if you appear helpless enough someone will help you.
I think that although that list is based on just one personal incident, we can extrapolate from it and reasonably conclude that it probably applies more generally. So here is my "wish" list for education, which I think we should adopt as a baseline set of standards.
Before I give my list, I should like to say this. The first step in establishing a standard is to state what that standard is, and/or what it is not. Just because you may not know how to go about achieving it is certainly no reason not to state it. For example, in my classes I always had expectations in terms of acceptable behaviour. It would sometimes take me three months to achieve them, desoite teaching them every single day, but that's besides the point.
Here is my list:
1. All educators must achieve a basic level of technological capability.
2. People who do not meet the criterion of #1 should be embarrassed, not proud, to say so in public.
3. We should finally drop the myth of digital natives and digital immigrants. As I said in my blog, in the context of issuing guidance to parents about e-safety:
"I'm sorry, but I don't go for all this digital natives and immigrants stuff when it comes to this: I don't know anything about the internal combustion engine, but I know it's pretty dangerous to wander about on the road, so I've learnt to handle myself safely when I need to get from one side of the road to the other."
The phrase may have been useful to start with, but it's been over-used for a long time now. In any case, after immigrants have been in a country for a while, they become natives. We've had personal computers for 30 years, and I was using computers in my teaching back in 1975. How long does it take for someone to wake up to the fact that technology is part of life, not an add-on?
4. Headteachers and Principals who have staff who are technologically-illiterate should be held to account.
5. School inspectors who are technologically illiterate should be encouraged to find alternative employment.
6. Schools, Universities and Teacher training courses who turn out students who are technologically illiterate should have their right to a licence and/or funding questioned.
7. We should stop being so nice. After all, we've got our qualifications and jobs, and we don't have the moral right to sit placidly on the sidelines whilst some educators are potentially jeopardising the chances of our youngsters.
New slogans for eLearning « Lasher on Learning
Excellent post which basically asks the question: is it wise to chuck out all the rules we know to be sensible when it comes to elearning and consultants?
(c) Terry Freedman All Rights Reserved