What are your kids learning while you're not looking?

This was the title of a seminar which Miles Berry and I presented at the 2009 BETT show. The more I think about it, the more important it seems to me that teachers know about what their students can do.

Soon after the BETT show I had occasion to give a presentation in Rotterdam, on the subject of the potential of ICT in education. Again, I did some research and discovered, perhaps not surprisingly, that what young people do and can do in terms of technology is pretty much the same in The Netherlands as it is in the UK as it is in Europe as a whole as it is in the USA.

What do young people do online at home?

This is very much a broad-brush picture, but from the research and reading we have done, it would be true to say the following.

• It may be politically incorrect to say so, but boys and girls tend to conform to gender stereotypes online as well as offline. For example, boys prefer playing games to writing blogs.
  
  
• Youngsters really do multitask, because the percentage of their time spent on various activities adds up to a lot more than 100%.
  
  
• Despite the emphasis on creativity at the moment, youngsters aren't really all that creative, in the sense of creating stuff, compared to other things they do online.
  
  

Summary from http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sip/docs/eurobarometer/qualitative_study_2007/summary_report_en.pdf

I find it interesting that youngsters are still mainly consumers of content than creators of content. Mind you, it depends on who you ask, of course. In Larry Rosen's Me, MySpace and I, nearly everyone surveyed spent a lot of time tweaking their web page. How surprising is that?

• From their responses, it would seem that young people use the web mainly for "sensible" things, like communicating with friends and doing homework.

• 
  Well the chatting to friends I can believe, but homework? I am not completely convinced by that, and I think what we may have here is evidence of some sort of experimenter effect. I wonder if the results would be different were the same surveys to be conducted by young people?
  
  If it is  true, I personally think that's something to be concerned about rather than something to celebrate. Kids should be enjoying themselves, not using every spare moment to better their grades.
  
  
• The overall impression one gains from all the research is that technology is indeed very much a part of young people's lives. They spend an inordinate amount of time using it, and have a facility for grasping how to use it, at least in a superficial or immediate sort of way.
  
  Whether they are able to easily delve deeper into an application or device, or use it in ways for which perhaps it may not have been intended, is an interesting question. 

Like I said, a very broad picture. If you'd like more detail, take a look at the slides from our presentation at Miles' blog. We hope to have the audio accompaniment soon.

Why is this important?

I think we would all agree that it's good practice to base our teaching on what our students already know, understand and can do. If you don't, you run the risk of alienating through boredom and lack of challenge, or through setting work which they find impossible. (These were two of the ten causes of ICT lessons being boring that I identified in my seminal work, Go On, Bore 'Em: How to make ICT lessons excruciatingly dull.)

What this research shows, I think, is that you cannot simply go by what you know they can do from what they have done in school. You also need to find out what they do when they are not in school.

What can you do about it?

The obvious answer is: find out what they can do! You could set up a survey using Google Docs (Go to New-->Form). The results end up in a spreadsheet, making analysis relatively straightforward.

If you include questions like what primary school they went to, if you're in a secondary, that in itself may yield some interesting results. You will need to include age and gender, of course.

If you decide to ask students to give their names, you will need to respect their privacy and not pass that information on. That would be my position, anyway, but you may be in a different situation. In my opinion, it's probably a lot easier to either say that names are optional or simply not to include a field for it. Much more pertinent would be information like the class or registration or option group the students are in.

Feel free to "steal" the questionnaires used by Miles and myself: you'll find the links here.

None of this is intended to be a piece of academic research; rather, it is intended to give you a good basis for deciding on what to teach and where to pitch it.

At least one person left our seminar with the intention of running his own survey within his school, and both Miles and I have said we would be interested in the results of his findings.  We'd be interested in yours too, if you decide to do something like this.

One last word, about presenting the results. Miles used Wordle to generate word clouds from the answers to some of the questions. The results, which are very interesting, are here.

What makes a good teacher as far as technology is concerned?

I'm interested in exploring this question,  which I have phrased very carefully. I think whether you're a teacher of information and communications technology, or someone who teaches with educational technology, there are some common denominators of what makes the teaching good. These are all my ideas and conjectures; I have stated them as though they are facts purely in order to avoid clumsy circumlocutions.

The first requirement is a willingness to experiment and take chances. You never really know whether something is going to work until you try it. A piece of software may be great when used by an individual, but not scale up very well when used with a class.

For example, I came across a program a few years ago which made commenting on a student's work very easy: it was possible to give comprehensive feedback in only 5 minutes by clicking various buttons. But that would mean 150 minutes for a class of 30 students, and a day's work for four or five classes.

Clearly, it was the sort of 'solution' you may wish to use with one or two special case students, but not with whole classes. But you wouldn't know that until you had sat down with the software and spent time using it and thinking about it.

Not everything is within the individual teacher's control. I am thinking in particular of my next requirement: the opportunity to experiment. Too many schools, in England and Wales at any rate, are so frightened of being named and shamed for not having achieved the requisite number of A*-C passes at GCSE that it takes a very brave, stupid or fortunate teacher to feel that they have the time and the support to be able to try things out, especially given the amount of stuff that has to be covered in the curriculum. I admire all those who do, and the colleagues who enable them to do so.

A third requirement is for intellectual honesty. I think one of the most difficult things to do is to admit to oneself, let alone one's colleagues, that as far as achieving X is concerned, the last 3 weeks have been less successful than one would have liked. But there are a few counters to this way of looking at things:

Firstly, adopt the scientific view: an experiment is only a failure if it yields no results at all, ie you find out nothing from it. If you get negative results, you've learnt something which will be useful to both yourself and your colleagues.

Secondly, take a cost-benefit approach. Basically, even if the experiment looks like having been a waste of time, if the benefits outweigh the costs, than it hasn't been. This is all a bit subjective, of course, but let's consider an example. Suppose the use of a website or application has added nothing to the knowledge of 29 of the students in your class, meaning that you wasted a few hours preparing the lessons based on it, and those 29 pupils have wasted the one or two lessons they spent on it. But at the same time, one student, who was thinking of quitting the course, and who has already mentally opted out, is suddenly fired up by the experience and really starts to 'get it'. It's arguable that the net gain has outweighed the net cost.

Thirdly -- and this leads on nicely from the point just made -- it may be that your success criteria need to be changed. In the example of 29 students gaining nothing in terms of learning anything new, if I was the teacher I would ask them to analyse why they gained nothing, and how the resource (or my use and teaching of it) could have been improved.

Also, academic achievement has to be balanced by other kinds of development. If the website or program added nothing to their knowledge or technical skill set, but facilitated critical thinking or collaborative working -- even though they may not have been the intended outcomes -- then I would suggest the whole thing has been very worthwhile.

A fourth requirement for good teaching is a love of the technology. That does not necessarily mean being a geek, but having a love of what the technology can enable you to do. For example, I love my digital camera. It's not good enough for professional photography, but it's good enough for me. I can slip it in my pocket or briefcase, and I use it to take shots which are either interesting in themselves, and which I could therefore use as stimulus material, or to illustrate articles.

Also, call me 'sad' and perhaps needing to get out more, but unlike a lot of people I do not find spreadsheets boring. On the contrary, I think a well-constructed spreadsheet is a thing of beauty, to be marvelled at! (I'm being serious: when I have more time I will explain myself in this regard!)

A fifth requirement is a willingness to not know everything. I think that when it comes to technology, there is every chance that at least one student, and probably all of them, will know more about at least one aspect of it than you do. That's why I have no hesitation in asking teenagers I know how you do certain things in Facebook or Blog TV. They know things I don't. I also know things they don't. What's so threatening about exchanging knowledge and ideas as equals?

Does this mean that I go along with the old chestnut about teachers being a 'guide on the side' rather than a 'sage on the stage'? No, because I think that is a false analogy or an abrogation of responsibility. I see no point in spending an inordinate amount of time encouraging kids to discover something that you could have told them in 5 seconds, so the guide on the side thing is not appropriate in all circumstances anyway.

I don't have a catchy phrase to express this idea, but the way I see it, the class is like a group of walkers going on a guided ramble. You have the leader, who knows the terrain and knows what to look out for and to point out. But at the same time each person on the walk is making sense of it all in their own individual way, and discovering other delights that the leader has not pointed out. That sounds to me more like the guide at the front than the guide on the side. I told you it wasn't very catchy.

There are other factors which make for good teaching. My fifth one is the opportunity to have excellent professional development. Note that I use the word 'development', not training. I am not sure how, in most cases, spending a day being bombarded by bullet points, which they then give you in a pack anyway, can be as useful as having an opportunity to explore and discuss ideas of your own choosing in depth. In fact, as far as feedback is concerned, the most successful training I ever provided consisted of doing absolutely nothing except provide a room, some software, and myself and a technician, to enable a group of teachers to develop their area of the school's website.

My final factor is an amalgam of what good teaching is all about anyway: a love of one's subject, a love of exploring new avenues with other people, a love of being with young people and helping them along the path, a fanatical insistence that each person achieves their own personal best, and a willingness and ability to employ a whole range of techniques, such as questioning, facilitating group work and giving meaningful and useful feedback.

I'd be interested to hear your views about what makes a good technology teacher.

There are other articles related to this theme in which you may be interested:
Oh, Sir, You are too kind
Training your co-workers in the use of new technology by Lisa Parisi
Jane Bozarth's article, New Skills for Learning Professionals
The Learning Circuit's Big Question, New Skills for Learning Professionals
Be sure to look in the comments on that site for other blog posts on this theme.

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• Social Media Give Educators Options (usnews.com)
   
• The Widget Effect: Teacher Interchangeability In Our Schools (takepart.com)
   
• The tyranny of relevance (terry-freedman.org.uk)
 

10 things to do when someone follows you in Twitter

If someone follows you in Twitter, the polite thing to do is reciprocate, right? Well, maybe so, but I think it needs a little more thought than that. Here is a list of the steps I take when someone follows me.

Incidentally, the same techniques, with a bit of adjustment, work for any social network situation where people can become your "friend".

#1: What's in it for you?

As a general rule, I think about what I hope to gain from the relationship. Relationship? Yes: as soon as you follow someone, or they follow you, you have a relationship of sorts, whenever you want it or not and regardless of whether you pay it any attention. The only way to avoid it whilst remaining within your Twitter network is by blocking that person.

Now, my primary reason for wanting to link with anyone online is my interest in educational ICT. I have a secondary interest, that of business, because I run my own business. I am also interested in writing and journalism. And that is pretty much it. Unless you have the most amazing powers of persuasion, chances are that I won't be your friend or follower unless you come into one of those categories. Yes, there are the odd exceptions, such as connecting with someone who likes the same sort of music as I do, but even there it is almost certainly the case that I already "know" or know of the person through one of the other spheres I have just mentioned.

This is very much linked to my main website, of course. The focus of that is ICT in education. There may be a great, newsworthy article just begging to be written -- but if it's not to do with ICT in education it probably won't be me writing it, and if I do, it won't be on that website.

What it comes down to is this: I don't want to populate my Twitter network with people who have little or nothing to do with my main interests, because that will only make it more likely that I will miss something important from the people who do. That's why I don't agree with the people who advocate following as many people as possible: I think one needs to be more discriminating than that.

In summary: decide in advance what sort of people you're happy to follow, ie the ones from whom you're likely to benefit from following.

That's the backdrop against which I take all of the steps that follow.

#2: Check the tweets

When I receive an email to say that someone is following me, I click on the link to their Twitter page. I then check look to see what they've been tweeting about. If it's mainly technology or education-related, that's a good start.

If it's about what they had for breakfast over the last week and a half, that's a real turn-off but not a "deal-breaker".

If their tweets are all along the lines of "Great investment opportunity: make $5,000 a week for 5 minutes' work", I will block them straight away.

If they haven't tweeted yet, go straight to #5.

#3: Check the numbers

The next thing I do is check how many people they follow, and who follow them. If they have 3 followers and are following 5,000 people, I probably won't follow them. I would just assume that they're a sort of Twitter groupie and are following everyone in sight. I like to think that they want to follow me because they like what I write about, not to boost their numbers. But I won't dismiss them just yet -- you can't say I'm not fair!

If they have 5,000 followers and follow nobody, that seems on the face of it a bit egotistical and a bit pointless. But I still won't dismiss them just yet!

If they follow 5,000 people and have 5,000 followers, they're probably some sort of spammer. I almost certainly won't follow them. In fact, I may even block them, because this sort of thing usually goes hand-in-hand with the third type of tweet mentioned in #2.

#4: Who's who?

I like to check who the followers are, and who the followees (is there such a word?) are. If I recognise some names I respect, I'm usually happy to set aside my doubts for a while.

#5: Check their profile

If it is blank, or says that they're a professional goof-offer, or that they manage a real estate company and enjoy engineering in their spare time, I won't follow them. I have nothing against real estate workers or engineers, but I don't see what any of that has to do with me. See #1.

#6: Check if they have a website

If they don't, I almost certainly won't follow them unless I'm reasonably satisfied according to points 2, 3, 4 and 5. The existence of a website tells me they're (probably) serious. It also gives me a chance to find out more about them.

#7: Look at their website URL

If they have a website, but it's URL is www.goofingoff.com, I won't follow them. If it's some generic website that I can't check, like www.blogger.com, I won't follow them.

#8: Check their website

If we've made it this far, I'll check their website. In other words, unless I have been totally put off according to some of the earlier criteria, and if they do have a genuine-sounding website, I will look at it. If it's interesting then I will probably bookmark it or subscribe to its RSS feed even if I don't wish to follow them in Twitter (just yet).

#9: Check their profile or About page

If they have a website, I'll try and find out a little more about them there as well. Bottom line: are they who they purport to be, or some sort of scam artist or pornbroker (no, that wasn't a spelling error)?

#10: Home at last!

If all the previous nine hoops have been jumped through satisfactorily, I click on "Follow"!

Conclusion

I suppose all of that makes me sound like some sort of prima donna or intellectual snob, or as if I'm paranoid. I'm not, though I suppose you'll have to take my word for it. But if you think about it, these 10 steps are not a bad blueprint for how students should evaluate requests for online friendship. And although it all seems like a long and drawn out process, the whole thing from start to finish takes me 5 minutes at the outside. The reason I often keep people waiting for a response when they follow me is not that the process takes a long time, but because I usually end up trying to process lots of "follows" in one go, a couple of months after receiving the notification. (But I'm trying to improve in that department!)

I'd be interested to hear what you think of these steps, and how you respond when people follow you in Twitter or other social networks.

Web 2.0 Project: Kim Munoz's work

Here’s a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Kim Munoz 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: Kim Munoz

Application type: Live Blogging, Blog,Social networking

Age range: 11-14 years

Description of project

During Pres. Obama's speech to students, I took the opportunity to use Cover It Live. A live blogging app that allows you to embed the shared blogging space into a webpage. This allowed the students to interact during the speech and reflect on the speech

Benefits of using Web 2.0

Motivation,Participation,Variety of means of expression,Anywhere,Multi-tasking

URL: http://techmunoz.edublogs.org/2009/09/07/obamas-speech/ 

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

 

Meeting in real life

I love the web and all that, but there's nothing like meeting up in the physical world. Derek Wenmoth and Ali Hughes of Core-Ed are here in the UK, and last night they, Richard Millwood (of Core-Ed UK), Elaine and I went out for a meal.

Good food, fine conversation, plus catching up -- all good stuff. As, indeed, was being able to actually sit down and have a proper conversation -- the last time Richard and I met was back in January when we bumped into each other in Piccaddilly Circus!

It was good to meet Derek and Ali too, and like Derek I'm looking forward to meeting up again.
The picture shows, from left to right, Elaine, Richard, Ali, me and Derek. 

Meeting in Essex, UK

Do-it-yourself technical support

Only last night I was waxing lyrical to Derek Wenmoth about the joys of being self-employed. I forgot to mention one of the downsides, though: having to do your own technical support.

For some reason, a few days ago Outlook started goiung wrong. Actually, it didn't so much start going wrong, as start to not start! And this is a known problem! How do I know it's a known problem? Because there is actually tons of stuff on the internet about it.

Well, I tried everything I came across, except looking to see if there is an upgrade. I managed to gain access for long enough to set it to 'Offline', so that it wouldn't try receiving emails, and to get my email settings. After much fiddling, I am now set up with Windows Mail which also has a bit of flakiness when it comes to creating signatures, but the important thing is that (touch wood), I now have a functioning email program.

Why not use 'the cloud' you say? No thanks. Having heard about thousands of emails being trashed, and not quite trusting free services to always be there, I much prefer having an installed program, with the emails stored locally. Silly, I know, but then losing a ton of emails would be even sillier. I think I'll stick with an old-fashioned solution for now.

But back to the tech support part. I think this week I have wasted around 6 hours or more trying to get this all sorted out.It means that the work I'd planned on doing today will have to be over the weekend. I like time-shifting, but not when it's forced on me in this way: I had other plans for the weekend.
So, much as it's customary to moan about technical support, at least when I was employed I could request that someone fix a problem while I visited a school or something. I can do a lot of this kind of stuff, but it's not a great use of my time when I have other (work) commitments.

Never mind: things could always be much worse. I mean, I could have ended up with no email access at all.

Hmm. Having looked at my burgeoning in-box, I'm not so sure that's an entirely terrible idea….

7 Reasons to have an educational technology library

This article has been replaced by Update of 7 reasons to have an educational technology library.

In my many visits to schools I have rarely seen a book library which has been built up and maintained by the teachers responsible for ICT, or educational technology as it is known in the USA.

There are several compelling reasons for starting such an enterprise. Indeed, not to do so is to implicitly agree with the utilitarian view of ICT being nothing more than a set of skills. Whenever you read an educationalist 's blog or a committee report espousing the view that ICT should be taught across the curriculum and has no place in the school timetable in its own right, you are ingesting the views of people who have little or no concept of the intellectual underpinnings of the subject, or of the importance of theories of learning in relation to it.

Having a library dedicated to ICT, even if only in the corner of a classroom orcomputer room to begin with, is a way of starting to address these and other concerns.

A library is?

But first, what exactly do I mean by 'library' in this context? Perhaps perversely, I do not necessarily advocate maintaining a library comprising multimedia resources -- at least, not to begin with. Whatever we may wish to beieve, books still carry an air of authority often eluded bhy other media. Besides, it's actually much easier to pick up a book and point something out than trying to locate the relevant section in a podcast, say. So, I am firmly in favour of a library comprising mainly, or even solely, printed material.

What should the library contain?

There are several types of printed material, and I would suggest building up a stock of the following:

• books;
• magazines;
• leaflets;
• advertisements;
• newspaper clippings;
• official publications such as curriculum guidance, exam specifications, and government policies;
• posters.

Reasons to have a library

Here are seven suggestions of how to make your library an integral part of the work you, your colleagues and, of course, your pupils or students do. In other words, these are the reasons to have a library.

• To inform other teachers. There are lots of books around which detail the educational benefits of using technology, and which delve into what young people do with technology. There are also books which may not be about technology per se, but which discuss the ways in which learning takes place. It's often useful to be able to lend others a book to help them understand the subject, and your approach to teaching it, a little better.
• To impress others. This may seem rather facile, but I don't think it is. If you want others to understand that ICT has intellectual value, you must have a visible indication of that fact. In short, a library tells or reminds everyone that there is more to ICT than being able to knock up a database or carry out a search on the internet.
• For reference, for you and your staff. It's almost impossible to keep up with all the policies and other documentation that comes out these days, and even harder to remember what each one stipulates. Although all of it is available electronically, I think it's easier to go straight to the relevant document on a bookshelf and find the bit you need than trying to remember where you stored it or bookmarked it.
• For reference, for everyone. I doubt that anyone has memorised every Excel formula or OpenOffice shortcut. Having a few books that go into such matters can be a godsend, espeically if they go into more depth than the on-screen or online help.
• For research. One of our wider goals should be to encourage (traditional) reading, and one way of doing so is to set work that requires book and newspaper research. Having a collection of newspaper clipping smay seem rather quaint, but I often find that unless you bookmark a newspaper story straight away it is virtually impossible to find it later. That is assuming, of course, that it was even published onine on the first place. That is not always the case, especially if the newspaper covers only a relatively small geographical area.
• For technical research. This is where having one or two computer magazines comes in handy. If you set a piece of work which entails 'speccing out' a computer system for someone, being able to pore over a comparative review article in a magazine can be a great help.
• Finally, for pleasure. What can be more enjoyable than sitting down for coffee or lunch with an interesting book? Yes, yes, I know you don't have the time. I never had the time either, when I was a teacher or, indeed, in any of my other jobs, including my current one. But it's important to make the time, even if it's only 10 minutes. Time to think, and time to relax, is never wasted.

So, before throwing out that computer magazine when you've read it, bring it into school. Encourage your students and colleagues to do the same. Use some of your allowance to buy a book or two, or recommend that such purchases be made.

It won't take long to build up a small library. Then your main challenge will be getting people to use it.

Take a look: 11/05/2009 (p.m.)

• June 2009

  The latest edition of IFIP, the ICT newsletter based in India, includes a range of interesting-looking articles, including social entrepreneurship and ICT in Nigeria. Also, the work Miles Berry and I did to find out how youngsters use technology when not at school. Available free of charge.

  tags: IFIP, ICT, International perspectives on ICT

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Web 2.0 Project: Dorothy Burt's Work

Here’s a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Dorothy Burt 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: Dorothy Burt

Application type: Korero Pt England - KPE, Podcast

Age range: 9-11 years

Description of project

Students from Pt England School in Auckland, New Zealand podcast short reviews of New Zealand children's books. They aim to let their global audience know a little about life in NZ. KPE is available on iTunes and on their blog, http://kpetv.blogspot.com

Benefits of using Web 2.0

Motivation,Participation,Variety of means of expression,Any time,Anywhere,Forms of literacy,Creativity

URL: http://www.ptengland.school.nz/index.php?family=1,871,11746 

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

 

Take a look: 11/05/2009 (a.m.)

• BBC NEWS | Education | Danish pupils use web in exams

  A lot of good stuff comes out of Denmark as far as education is concerned, and I think this raises the stakes a bit. In a nutshell, this exam allows students to use the internet to help them answer the questions. The questions are not about finding facts, but validation of search engine results and such like. As Stephen Heppell says, students use computers in their education, and then as soon as they walk through the examination room door they have to leave all that behind and write their answers. I'd go further: research has shown that setting tests which involve a different mode of answering from the mode of learning leads to poorer performance. In other words, if students have covered a course mainly through using technology, they should be required to use the technology for the examination. Similarly with paper-based learning.

  tags: Denmark, web in exams, Danish pupils use web in exams

• Social Isolation and New Technology | Pew Internet & American Life Project

  I wonder if (a) this is also true of the UK and (b) if so, what would Baroness Greenfield make of it? The summary suggests that the increase in the use of the internet and mobile phones does NOT lead to social isolation, but instead: "is associated with larger and more diverse discussion networks. And, when we examine people’s full personal network – their strong and weak ties – internet use in general and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular are associated with more diverse social networks."

  tags: Pew, Social isolation and new technology

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

12 ways of Making an event successful

Parents' evenings, ICT open days, local conferences, "away days". As a leader of educational ICT you are bound to have to organise such an event at some stage in your career. What can you do in order to ensure that it is successful? Here are 12 top tips.

1: Know what "successful" means

At the risk of stating the obvious, every event should have at least one objective. Friendly get-togethers that are amiable but also aimless simply waste people's time. But even if they are not a waste of time, they may look as if they will be, and that will deter people from attending.

2. Limit the number of objectives

In my experience the most successful events have a limited number of objectives, no more than four or half-a-dozen. Having a relatively small number of aims means that the event is kept focused.

3. Choose the right time of year

OK, there never is a right time, because there is always something going on. So perhaps this should have been expressed as "choose the least bad time of year"! try to avoid obviously difficult times such as the very beginning of term, or examination time. But equally, the slack times, such as in the last week of term, can also be difficult. Often, teachers are too tired by then to want to attend something where they need to be creative, or they are involved in activities such as museum visits.

4. Have a variety of activities

See 21 Ideas for an ICT or Technology Co-ordinators' Day for some ideas that you can adapt for different types of event.

5. Plan ahead

People tend to be very busy these days, and so their diaries get full. If you are planning to bring in an external speaker, this is especially relevant. So book the event as far ahead as possible.

6. Tell people about the event

I can never understand it when I receive invitations for conferences with a week's notice. Since the event had obviously been planned some time ago, why didn't the organisers tell me about it ages ago? How can you maximise the likelihood of someone attending if you don't tell them about it until the last minute?

7. Keep reminding people about it

I do not mean send them spam. Sending them a reminder a week or two before the conference is fine -- it's when it's the first notification that I think it's unreasonable.

8. Give them reasons to attend

Not your reasons, but theirs: what will they get out of it, and why is that better than what they'd have gained by not attending the event? For example, how will attending help them address the new curriculum, a particular course, Every Child Matters or No Child Left Behind? If it's an event aimed at parents, how will attending benefit them and their child?

9. Bribe them!

If you can get funding, perhaps you could send each attendee away with a freebie of some kind, something useful to them -- such as a CD full of resources.

10. Feed them

People often judge the success of an event by the quality of the food they are given. Pay attention to this.

11. Park them

The other thing that people judge by is how easy it is to get to, and the parking. If possible, it's a good idea to arrange for some parking spaces or parking permits to be available, if this is a relevant consideration.

12. Create a community

This won't be appropriate or easy for all types of event, but sometimes creating a website or blog can generate and maintain interest. Before the event, it can help to generate ideas and anticipation, whilst after the event it can help to keep the discussions going, and keep the event itself alive in people's minds.

Over to you

Can you think of anything else that can help to make an event successful? If so, do tell -- make a comment in the area below.


 

Web 2.0 Project: Nancy Raff's work

Here’s a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Nancy Raff 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: Nancy Raff

Application type: Planetfesto, Photography,Social bookmarking,Social networking,writing

Age range: 7-18+

Description of project

We're creating a virtual ribbon of 6 pieces with a photo showing why a student loves the earth and a statement of why they love it and what they will do to protect it. Many schools have joined this project and people from 59 countries. Spans all grades.

Benefits of using Web 2.0

Motivation,Participation,Variety of means of expression,Any time,Anywhere,Ownership,Forms of literacy,Collaboration,Creativity

URL: http://www.planetfesto.org 

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

 

A Minute for Maddie

Image via Wikipedia

Remember Maddie McCann? The police in the UK are appealing to anyone who knows what may have happened to her to get in touch, and are asking bloggers and others to spread the word. Here is the video, and a link to the website. Please consider posting this information on your own blog.

Link: Police website for Maddie

Plea to spread Madeleine message (news.bbc.co.uk)

Blogging Honesty

The Federal Trade Commission Ruling

According to an article I read recently (http://daneblogger.com/bloggers-disclose-reviews/), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has revised its guidelines, and has determined that bloggers who review products, receive payment for it, and then fail to make a disclosure about it, face a fine of up to $11,000.

Sticking points

There are a few sticking points here, specifically:
1. How will they enforce it on overseas bloggers?
2. What's the position of someone who reviews products on their blog, on behalf of a magazine or website? Every time I've reviewed a product for a magazine or website, I've been allowed to keep it, except for hardware. That hasn't influenced my review, and it's just normal for that to happen anyway. Do they count such software and books as 'gifts'?
3. As above, but when it's on your own behalf. Whenever I review software, or a website that is subscription-based and fee-paying, I usually insist on having access to the real thing. I cannot in all honesty review the free, trial version, and then on that basis recommend the paid-for version. For all I know, once the 30 day free trial period is over, everything goes haywire. By the same token, it would be unfair on the company for me to dissuade readers from buying it on the basis of my experience with a trial version.
If you don't think this is the right way of looking at it, and that trial versions are OK to review, consider this: would you think it acceptable for me to recommend, or not recommend, a book on the basis of having read a few pages on Amazon by clicking the 'look inside the book' link?
4. Do the same rules apply to journalists?
5. If you write a blog about films or theatre, are you supposed to declare that you were given a press pass to see the production? It should be obvious to anyone with common sense that that is probably what you've done, especially if you write several reviews a week.

Is the FTC ruling a good thing?

Notwithstanding those questions, I think it's a good thing for the FTC to insist on bloggers (and other writers) being  'clean' in this respect because I for one am pretty sick and tired of constantly having to declare that I am not on someone's payroll. It's very tedious, when writing a positive review of a product, to have to say, "By the way, I'm not being paid to say this."
I have to say, on the whole I try to resist the temptation to write something like that because I know I'm honest and have integrity, and if someone else doubts it, I think that's their problem. (I'd be interested to hear what you think of that way of looking at things.)
I think there is actually nothing wrong in paid to write a review, as long as it is agreed that the fact of payment, and the content of the review, have no relation with each other. As that is impossible to prove, I think it better to avoid that situation altogether, unless there is a disconnect between you and the article under review. For example, if a magazine, or a website specialising in product reviews, pays you to write reviews regardless of what the product is, or what you say about it, that's fine. At least, that seems fine to me. It's probably not fine from the FTC's point of view.

Recommendations

If you're a blogger, how can you act in a way that is not only above board, but seen to be so? I would recommend the following:
If you are asked to publicise an event in return for a free ticket to attend, that places you in a very difficult position, potentially. Try saying this:
Send me the details of your conference. If it is (a) about the subject I write about and (b) looks like it will be of interest to, and benefit, my readers, I will probably give it a plug on my blog. If you then choose to send me a free ticket, that's up to you, but I will plug it, or not, regardless of your intentions in that regard.
The important point here, in fact, is that it's the 'seller' who creates the potential problem, albeit inadvertently.
How should you respond if you receive emails from companies or their PR agents asking you to publish details of their latest offering? They may even offer to write an article for you, including case studies.
I suggest the following. Firstly, check whether their product or service is something you would actually wish to publicise. Use this rubric, or something like it:
1. Is it to do with, or involve, the subject I write about?
2. If 'yes', is it likely to be of interest to my readers and RSS or newsletter subscribers?
3. If 'yes', is it OK, ie above board, and useful (ie not a solution seeking a problem)?
Assuming those criteria are met successfully, why not tell the company that it has three options:
1. They can send you the product for you to review. The review may be good or bad, as your obligation, in my opinion, is to your readers, not to the company. It's a risk they take.
2. If they don't like the sound of that, inform them that they can place an advertisement. Tell them that it will be clearly signposted as an ad, and that they have to agree that their ad will meet the Advertising Standards Code in the country in which the blog is published (disclaimer: everything in this article, including this, is my understanding of the situation, but I'm not a lawyer so don't take my word for it!).
3. Alternatively, suggest that they write an article or case study, which will be clearly labelled as a sponsored article (ie advertorial), and for which they will pay you.
In the case of book reviews, if you know the author, declare that to be the case, especially if you end up recommending the book. In the UK, the ICT (educational technology) scene is tight-knit enough for it to be reasonably likely that you will know, or at least have had dealings with, an author of, or contributor to, a book. I think it's sensible to make that clear if it happens to be the case. (See, for example, my review of Information & Communication Technology: Inside the Black Box http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/article_1292.php.)
I don't know about the legal aspects of these suggestions, but they just seem to me to be eminently sensible. I think it's a great shame that, by implication of the FTC's ruling, some bloggers have been ill-advised enough to receive payment to write positive things about a product without declaring their (conflict of) interest.
What do you think of such matters?

Related articles by Zemanta

• FTC to bloggers: Fess up or pay up (news.cnet.com)
• Dear government: Stop trying to have it both ways on bloggers (dailyfinance.com)

Web 2.0 Project: Nicole Luongo's work

Here’s a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Nicole Luongo 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: Nicole Luongo

Application type: Podcasting in the Elementary Reading Classroom, Podcast,Blog

Age range: 5-7 years

Description of project

Pre-service students at St. Peter's College in Jersey City, NJ learn how to use podcasting in their future K-5 classrooms. They will use Podomatic to read stories, which will be shared with parents and other students via a blog on Blogger.

Benefits of using Web 2.0

Motivation,Participation,Variety of means of expression,Any time,Anywhere,Ownership,Forms of literacy,Collaboration,Creativity

URL: http://professorluongo.blogspot.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

21 ideas for an ICT or Technology Co-ordinators’ Day

Does part of your job involve planning and running professional development days for the ICT Co-ordinators (known as Technology Co-ordinators in some parts of the world) in your area? If so, you may find these twenty activity suggestions useful.

The activities are not mutually exclusive. The idea of this list is to use a pick-‘n’-mix approach to selecting a few activities that you could run in a single day.

A separate article to be published on Thursday morning will look in more detail at making the day a success, but for now there is one important thing to bear in mind: vary the nature of the activities in terms of what attendees will be doing. I have attended conferences where the only “activity” consisted of listening to a presenter, with the occasional 5 minute break for a table discussion. That sort of menu is ultimately not very useful for people, as they struggle to maintain their concentration after several hours of doing very little. Make your conference different.

The activities

Book an expert speaker

ie someone who is an expert in a particular area, such as assessing students’ attainment in ICT, or government requirements.

It’s a bonus if the speaker is prepared to run a break-out session or workshop to follow on from their main talk.

Book an inspirational speaker

It can be very useful to get someone in who can get people fired up. However, a lot of one-day conference organisers make the mistake of getting in two such speakers. That is too much: people like to be inspired, but then they also want to know how to translate their new-found enthusiasm in their lesson tomorrow morning.

Book a product demonstration

Schools may be thinking about buying a particular product, or a particular type of product. Getting in someone to give a demonstration, especially if it would be difficult for a school to evaluate it on its own (such as a VLE) can be quite useful.

However, if the aim of the exercise is to decide as a whole group which product to buy for all schools, you will probably need to go through a more formal process in which would-be suppliers are invited to demonstrate their wares.

Book a product training session

If schools have recently been given or have recently purchased a particular product, a training session may be quite useful. You may wish to organise a couple of parallel sessions, so that people can choose whether to go to the basic or the advanced “course”.

If there are quite a few attendees, some of whom may not need any training session, give a couple of further choices for them.

Write your ICT Strategy

Nobody in school has enough time to do things like write their ICT Strategy. You could provide them with an opportunity to do so, in a situation in which they will have access to your and their colleagues’ expertise and experience, and access to all the official documentation they need.

Write your e-Safety Strategy

As above, but for an e-Safety Strategy.

Observe a lesson, via video

Watch a video, and then discuss with others what were the good points and what the not-so-good points about the lesson (or extract from the lesson). You may want the group to focus on a particular aspect of the lesson. In fact, you might ask different groups to look at different aspects.

Obviously, you should get the video clips from a source that is in the public domain, or make sure you have the teachers’ permission to use it.

Observe a scenario, using actors

There are actors’ companies who visit schools and other organisations for educational purposes. If there are particular issues that need to be addressed, especially where relationships and choices are concerned, they will work with you to devise a semi-improvised scenario that brings out the points you want to address.

Be an inspector

Disseminate the relevant inspection framework, and a case study (anonymised or made up) and invite participants to “inspect” the school or department. What lessons can they learn to apply to their own situation?

Be an evaluator

As for an inspector, but perhaps a lighter touch, less formal or focusing on specific aspects of a school’s ICT provision.

Be a moderator

Disseminate examples of students’ work (anonymised), along with Level descriptions of the set of standards you go by, and ask participants to assess the students’ attainment, and come to an agreement with each other about it.

Be a data analyst

Disseminate some statistics pertaining to ICT attainment for one or two anonymised schools. Which students have shown the greatest attainment and improvement? Which are the areas that need to be addressed?

Be a trouble-shooter

Disseminate a case study of a situation in which several things are going wrong, and invite participants to identify the issues and suggest solutions. I used this approach to address problems being experienced in several of the schools represented at the event, and the outcome was very useful to all concerned.

Create a resource in a day

As already stated, people lack time in school. If you have 20 participants, and they get into pairs and create 10 resources by the end of the day (or the morning), everyone will have an extra ten resources they can use straight away, or which they can customise.

Share good practice, unconference style

Invite participants to take turns sharing good ideas with each other, or resources they’ve discovered, or things they have tried out in their own classroom.

Have a mini-exhibition

Bring in vendors to display their wares around the room or hall. Invite participants to provide examples of work they’ve been doing. Then allow time in the day for people to wander around looking talking.

Have a primary-secondary (elementary-high) school get-together

These two phases of education often do not know what the other one does. Getting them in the same room to discuss what they’ve been up to can be quite revelatory.

Collaborate with a partner school

If some schools are in partnership with a neighbouring school, or for a particular project, make time available in which they can have a meeting to progress some issues.

Collaborate with cluster schools

As above, but involving schools in a cluster, which may be geographically-based or based on a different criterion, such as participation in a government-funded project.

Plan your district’s policy

An ICT Co-ordinators’ Day is a good opportunity to thrash out issues such as the local area’s internet safety policy, or other issues of general local interest.

Have an away-day

This works best with a relatively small number of people, but can be very useful. For example, I once arranged a visit to a major software and hardware supplier. They gave us a tour, showed us products in development, a training session on an existing product and a nice lunch!

Conclusion

One day conferences do not need to be boring, or follow the same old tired format of a couple of keynote presenters and a workshop. Be imaginative!

If you have any other suggestions, please let us know in the comments section below.

 

Coming soon on this website

I've got a ton of great new content coming up on this website over the next week. Each morning there is a checklist sort of article planned, and every afternoon there is a focus on a Web 2.0 project submitted for inclusion in the second edition of the Web 2.0 projects book I'm compiling. (Incidentally, please see this article for an important update about that.)

I have also been working on the next issue of Computers in Classrooms. This will feature a report on the recent Handheld Learning Conference, a guest article by Neil Howie on Adobe's Creative Suite 4, an article about why you need an elevator speech, and several reviews, including the following books:

• The making of a digital world
• The Well-Fed Writer
• Totally Wired
• Wikified Schools

What I also intend doing is putting up a page on this website where people can buy the books I review, from Amazon. (Please bear in mind that by purchasing a book in this manner, you will be helping to keep a whole family out of the debtors' prison. Mind you, I have not exactly given a resounding recommendation to one of the books listed above, so perhaps I should defer my desert island retirement plans for now.)

There may be more (hopefully, will be more), but I'd rather under-promise and over-deliver than the converse of that!

I am pleased that there has been quite a lot of interest in this new website, and as you may have noticed I am working like crazy to get new content up here. In fact, at the moment I am posting at the rate of at least two articles a day. I'm always interested in hearing from potential contributors to the newsletter and website, and guest-bloggers and reciprocating that on other people's blogs. If that is of interest to you, then please get in touch, using one of the myriad options on the Contact Us page.

Enough of this persiflage! There's another (hopefully useful) article coming in around 6.5 hours' time, containing a whole load of ideas for an ICT Co-ordinators' (sometimes known as Technology Co-ordinators) day. Yes, it's true: they do not have to consist of a load of boring people reading out their PowerPoint slides!

Do subscribe to the RSS feed if you don't want to miss it! In fact, why not subscribe even if you do want to miss it? After all, you don't have to read it, and there'll be another one at 16:30 anyway, and you won't want to miss that!

Web 2.0 Project: Jennifer Wagner's work

Here’s a thumbnail sketch of some interesting work that Jennifer Wagner 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: Jennifer Wagner

Application type: Jenuinetech.com, Wiki,Presentation

Age range: PreK - 6th

Description of project

Jenuinetech.com hosts a variety of projects throughout the year.  Most projects provide creative ways of teaching math, language, history, art, and science in your classroom.  Projects usually run between 2 and 4 weeks.

Benefits of using Web 2.0

Motivation,Participation,Any time,Anywhere,Forms of literacy,Collaboration,Creativity

URL: http://www.jenuinetech.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

 

10 Reasons to use Diigo

Diigo is a social bookmark service. A social bookmark service is like the Favorites in Internet Explorer, or Bookmarks in other web browsers, like Firefox. However, instead of saving a URL to your computer, you save it on the internet.

This has a number of advantages:

Firstly, you're less likely to lose all your bookmarks in the event of a hard drive meltdown: you just move on to a different computer.

Secondly, you don't have the hassle of trying to remember which URLs you saved on which computer.

Thirdly, a corollary to the above is that you don't have the annoying situation of finding yourself at work wishing you could remember the URL you saved on your home computer, or vice versa.

Fourthly, and this is where the 'social' comes in, by saving your bookmarks on the web, suitably tagged, other people will be able to see your bookmarks on a particular topic, and you will be able to see theirs. This makes for a very rich experience, and helps you to expand your horizons. It's basically a very practical demonstration of the old adage: Many hands make light work.

Think of how you might use that with your colleagues, or with your students.

Diigo is one of several social bookmarking applications that are available, and I like it for the following reasons.

• It's very intuitive to use. In this sense, it's not that different from the others available.
• It's also free. Ditto.
• You can publish a bookmark straight to your blog. This is a very nice feature. It means that you can, in effect, use the Diigo description text box as a surrogate blogging platform: very handy if you're out and about, and you come across a website you'd like to draw others' attention to, but don't have the time to write a blog about it, or to repeat what you have already said in the Diigo text box.
• If you prefer, you could send the link to Twitter instead.
• You can also organise your bookmarks into lists. I have to say that I have not yet tried this myself, but it seems like the kind of feature you'd find useful.
• For the time being at least, I've decided to make use of the Groups feature. You can join (or apply to join) groups within your area of interest. Doing so will mean that you can be notified of any new bookmarks that other people in your niche have made. It's like doing research, or having continuing professional development, without actually doing much apart from checking your email now and again.
• You can also create your own groups. I've created a group called Education Technology - ICT in Education. From a sharing point of view, it doesn't really cover anything more than several other ICT-related groups already do. But I created it as a way of easily storing bookmarks I have referenced, or may wish to reference, in my own articles.
• Remember my point about being able to publish a bookmark to a blog? Well, the feature that makes Diigo stand out for me is the facility of being able to set up an autoblog post. What that means is that I can set it up to post my bookmarks at particular times and intervals. You can set conditions too. Thus I have set it up to automatically publish, twice a day (although I may change this to once a day or even once a week), any bookmarks in the group I have created. So, if I bookmark something now, it will miraculously appear on my blog at 9 pm today. If I discover and bookmark stuff after that, it will automatically publish it tomorrow morning at 9 am.
• Think of how you could use this in school. For example, you could require your students to join a particular group and bookmark useful sites there, and have that published once a week, say. So their weekly homework would be to check the blog every week to see what's new, and to explore the freshly-bookmarked sites.
• As with other social bookmarking sites, you don't have to share all of your URLs with the world: you can mark them as private if you prefer.

But as I think you'll agree, the educational possibilities of using the various (non-private) facilities of Diigo are vast.

Update on 2009-11-03 00:30 by Terry Freedman, Educational ICT Consultant

Thanks to Peggy George of Classroom 2.0 Live for drawing my attention to their latest show, on the subject of the new features in Diigo.

You may also be interested in the fact that Karl Fisch is conducting a survey on how people are using Diigo in education. Why not contribute, and look out for Karl's report on it (by subscribing to his blog's RSS feed).

Life without the internet?

I just happened to come across this video, which I think is wonderful. I remember life before the internet, and I am not sure how I got anything done! (Mind you, I also don't know how I get anything done now, because of the distractions of the internet!)

I think this would be a great video to use as a starter for discussion on the importance of internet, and encourage students to respond with a video or podcast or even (shudder) an essay!

Would love to hear what you think of it.