OllieBray.com

Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum–Brazil 2009 (2of10): Event Opening and Keynote

The Microsoft Innovative Education Forum officially opened on Tuesday 3rd November and delegates were treated to some live Brazilain Music and dancing. I was particularly impressed with the Capoeira Dancers that seemed to combine marshal arts with acrobatics.

The following morning we all collected headset and assembled in the main conference room to listen to the event opening keynote presentations. The first presentation was from Michel Levy, President, Microsoft Brazil who welcomed delegates, and officially opened the Forum.

The second keynote was from Hon. Jacques Wagner, Governor of Bahia State, Brazil. I found Wagners keynote really interesting partly because it was being translated into my ear live and the voice changed from a male to a female halfway through. But mainly, because it reinforced to me that every country in the world that I know of at the moment is going through education reform. And in the process of this reform every country in the world is experiencing similar problems. The Governor seemed incredibly proud of his state and this came across in his presentation.

The final keynote was given my Michael Golden the Corporate Vice President of the Education Product Group, Microsoft UK who was amply assisted by Microsoft’s Scott Burmester. It was a good presentation and set the tone for the conference.

Michael gave an overview of his perspective of global education and gave a really clear message, ‘It all starts with one’. He suggested that if we were really going to have impact and change the world than we need to start tackling global education issues one child at a time and one school at a time. I couldn’t agree more and that is just one reason why I agree with a fully inclusive education system.

As you would expect as part of the presentation both Scott and Michal also demonstrated some Microsoft Products. The product demonstrations included:

Microsoft Worldwide Telescope – fantastic for learning about the stars and galaxies. Scott demonstrated how you could find out facts and figures of different stars and planets. I couldn’t help thinking it would be a really great resource as a stimulus for creative writing as well. Imagine getting children to write their own space tour or using some of the bright and vibrant colors of some of the intergalactic constellation of far off lands.

Windows 7 – The touch screen capacity of Windows 7 was demonstrated (I’m not quite sure how Scott managed to demo everything upside down but he did!). I think that that this has good potential in education and without a doubt multi-touch is a growing interface and will certainly find a niche in early years education very quickly. What I want to know is who has got Windows 7 working with full multi touch capacity on an interactive whiteboard? The split screen function of Windows 7 was also demonstrated.

Bing Maps – Again Bing Maps are often over looked resource by schools. As regular readers of this site will realize I love Google Maps as well. But in some cases Bing maps actually provide more detailed and up-to-date satellite imagery. Ts always worth comparing both if you are exploring place with a class. Its also always worth downloading the Bing Maps 3D plugin on the standard build of your school computers.

Partners in Learning Network – the new partners in learning network was launched at the event. Its got a number of advantages most notably you can now search across countries to make connections and you can use your Windows Live Login to access the network. It’s another good example of how Microsoft are working hard to join up services (xBox Live, Windows Live, SkyDrive etc…).

Microsoft Semblio -  Lots of potential here. More about this next week.

Multipoint – a really cool way to allow many users to controls lots of different mice on the same screen. Great for collaborative working and even better if eventually your Windows enabled mobile phone becomes the mouse. Lets hope they have already through of that?

Live @edu – Free education services available for schools. Email, messenger, student sky drive etc…

Math’s add in for word and the math’s worksheet generator – I’m not as keen on the math’s worksheet generator. I struggle with the concept of creating lots of different versions of the same problem. But I do like the technology behind what they have created here and I think the maths add in for word would be great for teaching Math’s and Physics. Alessio Bernardelli has made a nice little InnoVID on the Maths Add in for word.

Overall a great start to the conference.

Photo credits: Franz and Valter Pontes at COPERPHOTO

New Tools for Teachers: Barnet, London

Yesterday I had a flying visit to the Borough of Barnet in London. The Borough of Barnet have been great friends to Learning and Teaching Scotland during the last two handheld learning festivals in London and as a result I agreed to go and speak at their annual ICT Leader Conference.

The other reason I agreed to go was because Professor Tanya Byron was the speaker before me at the conference. I have heard Tanya speak on-line a number of times but I had never seen here live and I was very keen to meet her in person. More on her presentation in a later post.

Anyway, I promised I would post the links from yesterdays talk. I’m not going to re-post the exact slides but you can find a very similar presentation and on-line hand out here.

Also, if you were at the talk – thank you for your positive feedback on the evaluation forms. Please feel free to leave further feedback or comment below.

Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum–Brazil 2009 (1of1): The Journey to Brazil

This is the first of ten posts about my recent experience at the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum in Brazil.

I’ve been involved with the Microsoft Innovative Teachers network for years. I first joined in 2005 as part of a joint Scottish Qualification Authority / Microsoft Initiative where I was able to apply for a classroom grant. I was successful in this application and produced some of the first video revision podcasts (geocasts) on the web. I have now pasted the ownership and maintenance of these resources over to do-be ltd (a Scottish based company in Fyfe). At one time however we reached the 16 most popular education iTunes podcast in the world – not bad for something I produced on tablet PC from my living room!

Since my original Geocasts project – I have always tried to stay up-to-date with the Innovative Teachers programme. And as many regular readers of this blog will realize, I am a big fan of personal learning networks.

So, this years journey to Brazil started in December 2008. We had just collected the evaluation evidence of our successful Guitar Hero Transition project and I decided to share the project with Tom Jackson (The Microsoft Academic Programme Manager for Northern Ireland). I had met Tom back in 2005 as part of my original Geocast project.

Tom liked the sound of my project and suggested that I get in touch with Stuart Ball. I did this and Stuart in turn suggested that I enter the project as a UK Virtual Classroom Tour as part of the UK Microsoft Innovative Teacher Programme. I met briefly with Stuart at BETT 2009 also listened to a talk from Dan Roberts who was telling his own innovative teacher story.

As a result I submitted my VCT and was one of ten projects to go to Microsoft HQ in Reading. I blogged about the experience here . For me there were two highlights of my first trip to Reading. The first was meeting and listening to Guy Shearer who I now correspond with regularly and the second was being given the opportunity to present my project at the European Innovative Teaching Awards in Vienna.

The European Innovative Teaching Awards was a fantastic experience and again I blogged about it in detail here. I think it’s important that teachers share experience of this type of event as it add value and extends our communities of practice. There were two highlights for me of the Vienna event the first was listening to Franz Kuehmayer and again Franz and I have remained in contact since the event and the second was winning 1st prize in the Innovation in the Community Category. This meant I gained an opportunity to present my project in Brazil.

As you can see it was a long journey to Brazil. But it was also a really exiting one. There has not been a single moment in the last eight months that I have not looked forward too - it really has been agreat journey! and I hope that many Scottish and UK educators will follow?

I’ll write more about Brazil in the future posts of this series but in the meantime. If you like the sound of going to South Africa – why don’t you submit a VCT for this years Microsoft UK Innovative Teachers Awards. You are exactly in same place as I was 12 months ago – apart from I’ve currently got a tan from Brazil!

Good luck and please contact me if you need any advice, help or support. It really is exciting times...

Literacy, CfE and ICT

Edinburgh City had their in-service day on Monday 26th October. All Scottish Schools have been given an extra in-service day to help them plan for the roll out of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) from August 2010.

I was asked by Drumond Community High School to go along and deliver a session on Literacy, CfE and ICT. I confess to not being a literacy or even CfE expert but I do like a challenge so I accepted the request. I was very grateful for the on-line resources provided by Bill Boyd (the Literacy Advisor) who really helped spark my thinking and the structure of this particular presentation.

Also, sorry I am so late posting the on-line handout and resources – but I’ve been a bit busy! Anyway…

Below are the main sides that I used during today's talk:

Literacy, CfE and ICT

View more presentations from Ollie Bray.

Notes from the presentation and key points

It is important to remember that literacy (along with numeracy, health and wellbeing) are the responsibility for all within A Curriculum for Excellence. Further clarification and a definition is given in the Literacy and English Principles and Practice Cover Paper (2009).

"All practitioners in each sector, in each department and in all settings have a responsibility to develop, reinforce and extend the skills which are set out in the literacy experiences and outcomes.

Literacy is the set of skills which allows an individual to engage fully in society and in learning, through the different forms of language which society values and finds useful"

(Literacy and English Principles and Practice 2009)

In order to allow these things to happen literacy has had to be re-defined for the 21st Century. The forms of language which society has valued and finds useful has changed through time.

Reflective and difficult questions for practitioners:

• Do 13 year old girls find Shakespeare useful?
• Do 11 year old boys find the works of Robert Burns useful?
• Do we value the work of Shakespeare and Robert Burns in our schools? – of course we do they are part of our heritage.
• Is sending a text message useful?
• Do we value the ability to send a text message?
• What makes a good text message?
• How do you pronounce a text message?
• Are comic useful?
• Should we value the use of comics in class?
• Are comics valuable for the Scottish economy?
• Is a comic without the words still literacy?

Definition of text:

"A text is the medium through which ideas, experiences, opinions and information can be communicated".

    (Literacy and English Principles and Practice 2009)

The definition of text refers to a wide variety of media that we use to communicate – it does not just mean books. Importantly listening and talking are included as forms of essential literacy.

Examples of text include:

• novels, short stories, plays, poems
• reference texts
• the spoken word
• charts, maps, graphs and timetables
• advertisements and promotional leaflets
• comics, newspapers and magazines
• CVs, letters and emails
• films, games and TV programmes
• labels, signs and posters
• recipes, manuals and instructions
• reports and reviews
• text messages, blogs and social networking sites
• web pages, catalogues and directories

When considering the above texts it may be useful to consider the distribution of skills that are required to survive in a 21st Century world. Which of the above example of text should all children come into contact with? Are any of the examples more important than others? How does financial and consumer literacy relate to the above list?


Understanding our students

As well as understanding what we mean by literacy it is also important to understand how young people and children have may be changing.

Recent research information commissioned by Channel 4 indicates that many young people today are very much digital. You can find out more information about this report here.

For schools I think that we need to ask ourselves three important questions:

• Do we know what skills the children in our care have?
• Do we know what access our students have to technology at home?
• Can we use a combination of the above to stretch, push and engage young people?

Without the above information how can we ever set appropriate and challenging assessment and home learning activities?


Engaging our students

I believe that in order for learning to take place we need to have good pedagogy and also interest or engagement from our students. I think that there is a difference between interest and engagement.

A teacher who is teaching a child who has a natural interest in a subject or who see’s the point of it (eg: it will help them get a job) is likely to find it easier to help that child learn compared to student who has no interest or does not see the point.

Unfortunately not all topics are interesting and not all children see the point of all talks. That’s where tasks need to be engaging in order to create powerful learning environments.

Most children find technology engaging and that is one of the reasons it is so valuable in the classroom.

All registered Scottish teachers should be able to use technology in innovative ways

‘Registered teachers skillfully adopt and deploy a wide variety of innovative resources, including ICT and, where appropriate, the outdoor environment’

(GTCS Standard for Full Registration)

Possible ways to use technology to engage our students

• Use their tools (eg: social networking spaces)

• Offer choice of output (written, typed, poster, presentation, video, podcast etc…) the input (planning, drafting, re-drafting, collaboration etc…) remains the same and the most important bit.

• Provide real audience for students work (Wikipedia, blogs with comments, school radio podcast etc…)

• Be creative with on-line technology tools eg: Comic Brush, Pixton, Go Animate (This recent list of other free tools for teachers might be useful)

Digital Literacy

All teachers now have a responsibility for digital literacy. Most importantly:

‘To help me develop an informed view, I am exploring the techniques used to influence my opinion. I can recognise persuasion and assess the reliability of information and credibility and value of my resources.’

            (Literacy Level 3)

Golden rules for digital literacy:

1. Intenet Safety and Responsible Use – more information here

2. Don’t ban Wikipedia – teach them to use it - more inforamtion here

3. The Internet is only any good if you can find what your looking for, think about:

• Google Advanced Search
• Quintura Visual Search
• Google News Search

Final thoughts

Books are not going away. They are a form of text but the nature of text is changing (see above).

We need new models of CPD to engage with a Curriculum for Excellence. If your interested in this have a look at my Drip Feed Vs Sheep Dip CPD post here.

The future of professional development is on-line, have a look at:

• CPD Find
• Curriculum for Excellence
• Consolarium: Games Based and Innovation in Education
• LTScotland on iTunesU (the ‘U’ is for University)
• Bill Boyd: the literacy advisor

Feedback

I would welcome any feedback or comments on the above. Please feel free to get in touch (details top right) or leave a comment below.

The Future of Work

Thanks to Alan Parkinson for pointing out this great PowerPoint presentation on Slideshare to me. It’s along the same sort of lines at ‘did you know?’ and ‘thirst’ – some really interesting facts and figures and would be a useful resource for schools.

The Future Of Work

View more documents from Jeff Brenman.

East Lothian Success at Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Education Forum – Brazil 2009

I’ve been back from Brazil now for about 24 hours –I have to admit trying to think at work today was a little bit taxing at times. I will be posting my observations and thoughts on the conference over the next week or two as well as trying to up-date a back log of promised blog posts.

But in the meantime I was delighted that East Lothian (particularly Musselburgh Grammar) was recognized during the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teaching Awards ceremony and that we were able to pick up second place in the Innovation for Building Community Category.

We were 1st in this same category in the European Awards earlier this year. The project is about using computer games to help children learn and to also provide a context for social interaction as children move between primary to secondary school.

I had a great time in Brazil and met loads of interesting, inspiring and motivated teachers from all around the world.

Merlin John has written about the UK success here.

Catch up and quick up-date...

 
The last seven days has been a bit crazy. I’ve been all over Scotland speaking to teachers and school leaders. Events in the last seven days have included:

• Literacy, ICT and CfE at Drummond Community High School Edinburgh

• Games Based Learning to Support Literacy Workshops at the Dingwall Academy as part of the Highland Learning Festival

• A breakfast keynote for leadership teams and QIO’s from the Central Scotland Headteacher Partnershi pat Stirling Management Centre

• A Keynote at The Scottish Association of Geography Teachers Annual Conference on Geography: past, present and future in Edinburgh last Saturday

• A Google Earth Worksop at the same conference.

Now I know that I’ve promised to post slides, links and notes from the about talks and I will. But I am currently in Brazil at the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum (more on this later). I’ll get notes from the above session up as soon as I have a chance – but it’s likely to be next week!

More soon...

Ollie

Microsoft Peer Coaching

Last week I took part in the Microsoft UK Peer Coaching course led by Stuart Ball and Walter Patterson.

It was good to take part in some CPD over a couple of days and have the opportunity to meet some more enthusiastic teachers from around the UK. I was also good to see that Microsoft UK have named a meeting room after me in building 2! (this is a joke by the way!).

I’m not new to coaching and have been coached myself during my initial few months at Musselburgh Grammar School and I also took part in the East Lothian Internal Coaching progrmme a few years ago. I think it remains a powerful form of professional development.

The Microsoft Peer coaching resource materials are free on the Innovative Teachers Network. Although they are slightly written in US English (eg: using the word ‘instruction’ rather than ‘teaching’) I feel the resources are very good. Particularly considering they are aimed at and have been translated for an international audience.

The resources are free for anyone who is a member of the Innovative Teachers Network (ITN). I am mentioning this because the ITN is free to join and it would save any local education authority from re-creating their own programme. Many of the resources are written in Microsoft Office, which means I'm sure they could be adapted for local need.

The other thing that I found particularly appealing about the MS peer coaching programme is that participants on the pogramme can gain masters level accreditation at the University of Warwick. Again this is one thing that local versions of coaching scheme lack and would provide an extra insentive for those wishing to partisipate.

I’m just wondering now if it would be possible to build an internal peer coaching network – using the MS (or other peer coaching resources) within Glow?

Would this be a form of accredited CPD that Scottish teachers would find useful?

Direct link to the peer coaching resources here (registation required).

Digital Games in Schools: a handbook for teachers

European Schoolnet has recently undertaking a major study sponsored by the Interactive Software Federation of Europe on the use of games in schools in Europe. The study included the use of computer games and any online games that run on consoles, computers, handhelds or mobile phones.

As part of the project a book by Dr Patrick Felicia, a researcher at the Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland has also been bublished.

You can find out more about the book here and also download a copy as a .pdf.

Its full of lots of pictures from Scottish Schools using computer games in the classroom.

Sand drawing used to give WWII History Lesson

Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who just won Ukraine's version of "Britain's Got Talent" in August 2009.

She uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and "sand painting" skills to interpret Germany's invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII. Apparently Kseniya started drawing with sand after her business collapsed because of the credit crunch and she had been drawing for less than a year when she entered Ukraine's Got Talent in August.

The video is very impressive and strangely hypnotizing.

As well as it being inspirational to watch it would also make an interesting lesson starter.

(You Tube video below)