OllieBray.com

A Day Made of Glass... [Video]

I quite liked this - worth 5 mins of your time if your into future gazing and how technology may impact homes / business in the future...

Exploring People and the Past (Level 4) - Now Available

If you have ever been involved in writing books you will know that it is always nice to get your hands on the final product.

There was a definite history theme in the air yesterday as not only did we announce Scotland participation in the Big History Project but I also got my hands on the new Hodder Gibson Exploring People and the Past CfE Level 4 Social Subjects Textbook  written by Ed Offer.

I had the job of writing the thematic chapter at the end of the book and editing the series. The People and Place textbook was published earlier in the year and the People and Society textbook will be available soon.

Big History comes to Scotland - great CPD opportunity for Scottish teachers

 

Ian Stuart (@islayian) and I first met David Christian at the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Education Forum in Washington DC in November 2011. David was talking about Big History and we were instantly impressed with the quality of David’s presentation, his passion for education and how the concept of Big History fitted with the principles of CfE. You can see my short write up of his talk here.

Since Washington Ian has remained in contact with David and facilitated a conversation between him and Joe Wilson, Head of New Ventures at the SQA. Ian and Joe were keen to explore how we might get Scottish Schools involved in the piolet programme for 2012/2013 before the large scale worldwide rollout in 2013/2014.

 

The rest as they say is history and we are excited to announce that…

 

Winging its way out to Directors of Education and Headteachers today was a superb opportunity for three Scottish Schools and their science & social subjects departments. 

We have been invited as a Nation to participate in the pilot roll out of the Big History Project. Funded by Bill Gates directly through Bill Gates Catlyst Three. This is a superb opportunity for Scottish Schools to be part of a cutting edge,  project based learning,  global project - that fits very well with a Curriculum for Excellence


The SQA and The Big History Project  invite applications to be part of The Big History Project and join pilot schools in Australia and USA.

In particular:

• We are looking for three secondary schools in close proximity to each other - this is stipulation from the Big History Project.

• Funding is available for two teachers from each school to attend the programme induction in Seatlle, USA between 22-25th March 2012

• These teachers will be a Science Teacher and a Social Subjects Teacher (the curriculum leaders).

• Participating schools need to deliver the Big History programme as a pilot from September 2012 to a 2nd or 3rd Year cohort  and provide feedback where appropriate.  

• Participating schools will also be expected to carry out a curriculum mapping exercise for the Big History Project materials to the experiences and outcomes of CfE.

• Pilot schools will gain experience of working with global partners on a new and innovative multidisciplinary curriculum.

You can find out more about the Big History Project here www.bighistoryproject.com but this short video sums it up nicely!

You can hear a message from David Christian (Founder of the Big History Project) that we recorded when he was in Glasgow a couple of weeks ago to Scottish Schools here http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/video/b/video_tcm4687443.asp

What do you need to do?

To apply for this opportunity - we need  an Education Authority’s nomination of three suitable schools.

The project will meet the travel and subsistence costs associated with the programme but will not provide cover costs for the  induction programme.

Applications will be screened by panel drawn from SQA, Education Scotland and The Big History Project.

 

Application Process

Applications should consist of one side A4 with  a simple statement  from each of three nominated schools on Why the Big History project appeals to them.  

Attached to the application we need a name and short resume of the Science and Social Science Teacher nominated to take part in induction programme from each of the three schools. Given the tight timescale on this nominees need to hold a full British Passport.

Applications close on Monday 5th of March - successful applicants will be contacted to make travel arrangements on 7th of March .

Applications should be emailed to Liam.Priest@sqa.org.uk

 

Exciting stuff!

CEOP - Parents' and Carers' Guide to the Internet [Safer Internet Day 2012]

Today (7th February 2012) is Safer Internet Day  and CEOP has launched 'The Parents' and Carers' Guide to the Internet', a light hearted and realistic look at what it takes to be a better online parent. The show covers topics such as, talking to your child about the technologies they use and the things they might see, such as pornography.

Hosted by my good pal Jonathan Baggaley and with interviews from leading experts such as, Professor Tanya Byron, Dr Linda Papadopoulos and Reg Bailey, as well as key industry players from Facebook, Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters , the online guide aims to equip parents and carers with the tools to have those tricky conversations with their children to help keep their family safe online.

Excavation an giant Ant Hill with 10 tonnes of concrete [Video]

I'm not sure that the ants would be particularly happy about this research project but the final result is really quite amazing.

Basically, researchers pump concrete into a giant ant hill. It takes a little bit longer than they expect (3 days to be precise) and they get through 10 tonnes of concrete.

Then they leave the concrete to set and three weeks later start excavating the site to revile what the inside of the colony looks like. The result is an intricate structure, equivalent in labour to humans building the Great Wall of China.

Worth a watch and a great resource to support the teaching of science. 

Via: Boing Boing

 

Anthony Salcito's Daily EDventures [featured teacher] #PilGF

I’ve been enjoying Anthony Salcito’s (Vice President of Microsoft Worldwide Education) new daily edventures blog. The idea is to post a profile every day of an educator / thought leader that Anthony meets during his 2012 travels to schools and education systems around the world.

Respected friends and colleagues Garth Ritter (Wales), Jacques Denies (Belgium), Tessa van Zadelhoff (Netherlands) and Dr Maria Langworthy (USA) have already appeared in the series which is proving to be an informative window on worldwide education practice and innovation.

Anthony was over in the UK last week speaking at the Learning Without Frontiers Conference in London (Great job Graham and the team BTW!). During his visit he also made a trip north to Scotland to visit Scottish Government, Education Scotland and the SQA. I bumped into Anthony at the Education Scotland offices n Glasgow and we managed to have a great off-the-cuff chat about education networks, gaming in education and playful learning. I think that Microsoft are likely to have big plans for this space and the Kinect SDK for Windows and their new Kinect Playful Learning titles are just one part of this.

Anyway, today I’m the latest person to feature on Anthony’s daily edventures blog - so a huge thank you for your kind words and encouragement. You can read the full piece here.

I agree with you Anthony… there has never been a more exciting time for education and the opportunities to innovate are greater than ever before.

 

 

2012 Scottish Education Awards

The Scottish Education Awards celebrate the hard work and success which takes place in Scottish education. They recognise the achievements of people who dedicate their lives to children and young people and showcase the valuable work and innovation in Scottish classrooms. Nominations close on Friday 2 March 2012.

Visit the Scottish Education Awards website for more information.

Reflections from Microsoft Pil Global Forum 5 of 5 - Building Networks [#pilgf #msftpil]

This is the last of my reflections on the recent Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum in Washington DC. I want to talk networks, because for me this is what Partners in Learning is and always has been about - it also might explain how I ended up being a judge at this years worldwide event. The post has actually turned out to be a bit of a trip down memory lane… 

I am proud to say that I must be one of the longest active members of the Partners in Learning Community - this is one of the main reason I am so passionate about supporting it. In fact I am so sad that I can actually remember roughly when I signed up back in December 2005 and a screenshot from the orginal community confirms this (gosh, I looked young then!).

 

At the time I had just come across the proposals for the School of the Future in Philadelphia - this led me to the original Innovative Teachers Network where I signed up for a regular eNewsletter. I even managed to find the first ever one of these that I recived in an old on-line in-box from early 2006.

Anyway it was either the Inoovative Teachers eNewsletter or the SQA monthly digest that led me to find out about a partnership between Microsoft and the SQA where they were giving out technology grants for teachers. I applied and received an award that used early tablet technology and other technologies to produce revision Podcasts for Geography (we called them GEOCASTS). I painfully drew many of the diagrams (badly) myself in an early version of PowerPoint and Paint.

above: another young version of me (Photo by: Caroline Roberson)

GEOCASTS were some of the first revision material for students on the web (and probably some of the first regular education podcasts) - available in .mp3 and .mv4 formats - it is funny to think that this type of approach for learning and revision is still only really just taking off in 2011 (think Kahn Academy!).

I’ve embedded a sample below (for 2005/2006 they were actually pretty good):

The GEOCAST project  did rather well as a concept and the atmosphere and oceanography materials were very popular in the USA. So popular, that I had to up my hosting arrangement with my Internet Service Provider and eventually when they became even more popular I gave them away to Do-Be ICT Training in Fife, Scotland to ship with their mp4 players and as a free download from their website.

Oh yes…. At one stage they were the 34^th most popular education download on iTunes (this was worldwide - there weren’t regional accounts in those days!). The project gave me the first of many opportunities to speak at the Scottish Learning Festival in 2006.

So why is this important - well this was the start of building my education network (remember, this was a long time before Twitter and Facebook) and Partners in Learning is at least partly really responsible for this.

Here is an abbreviated version of what happened next…

As part of my Original 2005/2006 Partners in Learning Project I met three people who continue to influence my practice (they also all came to watch my talk at the SLF06).

• Tom Jackson (Partners in Learning Manager for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland);
• Walter Paterson (Former HMIe and now Independent Consultant - but my mentor on my original project); and
• David Noble (now Chartered Teacher (amongst other things) at Hillside School)

David Noble and I were into early social networking for teaching and supportive of each other’s practice. David started a regular Podcast and I had started a blog (funny to think it has been going in various forms since 2005). He was amongst the first of my audience and encouraged me to keep writing it. We continue to collaborate on-line and have worked together on a variety of projects over the years.

That evening of the SLF 2006 David and I want to the first Teachmeet (there had been a ScotEduBlogs meet up before this) that has been organised by Ewan Macintosh. This is where I met I number of other people who became a key part of my personal learning network. See if you can spot them in the photograph below but they include John Connell, Andrew Brown, John Johnston, Bob Hill and Neil Winton.

Photo: Ewan Macintosh

Earlier in the day Tom Jackson had given me his business card and I emailed him a few years later to tell him about a project I had been doing with Xboxes in the classroom. He introduced me to Stuart Ball and Stuart and I met at BETT 2009 - I agreed to submit a Virtual Classroom Tour about the project and went on to present the work in Reading, Vienna and Brazil throughout the year. Merlin John has got a good write up on my work here.

At the 2009 UK Event I met Mandeep Atwal (who now works for Taking IT Global).  I met Dan Roberts in Vienna and since then we have become great friends and I have had an oppertunity to visit Dan at Saltash.net. At the Brazil Event I met Mark Sparvell (who now works for Principles Australia). Mandeep and Mark went on to win first place in their respective categories at the Brazil event. I also met Tony McDaid Head Teacher from Calderglen High School at the Brazil Event as they had just become an Microsoft Innovative School. 

In 2006 I left the geography classroom for senior management - but I kept blogging and Walter and David (and lots of others continued to stick with me on my virtual journey). I gave a talk to the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers in 2006 where I mentioned Blogging and Geocasts and as result a ‘young bright eyed and bushy tailed’ David Rogers (now head of geography and multi-award winning teacher) started a blog - apparently that is why it is ‘all my fault!’

I introduced David to the Innovative Teachers Network via my own blog after the Brazil Worldwide Event. David then entered the 2010 competition with his VCT on social networking and pirates and made it to Berlin for the European final.

At some point a joined Twitter (actually it was June 2007) and twitter has done a great job of linking and aggregating all of the various education networks together. Which is why when I was asked to judge at the Worldwide Event in Washington this year I was delighted to meet both Lee Kolbert (@TeachaKidd) and Angela Maiers (@angelamaiers) both of who I had been following on Twitter for some time.

Of course the wordwide event was also great for meeting other inspirational teachers. Including the UKs very own Gareth Ritter (@ritzertech) but also teachers from other parts of the world such as Johnny Kissko (@johnnyeducation) and Chris Clay from Botany Downs Secondary College in New Zealand).

Gareth’s project is worth a look at if you have not seen it already:

Mark, Mandeep and Tony (remember then from above) were also at the Worldwide Event. Mark was judging and Mandeep presenting on Taking IT Global. Tony has taken his school from strength to strength and has become a mentor school within the Innovative School Programme (teamed up with Dan Roberts and Saltash.net). Hopefully you are now starting to see how everything is so joined up...

To carry on with this connectedness Walter Patterson (my original Partners in Learning mentor from 2005) and I found ourselves judging the UK Partners in Learning Awards at the end of November!

I’m sure there are lots of other people that I have met along the way as a result of Partners in Learning. Including Stuart Ball, Kristen Weatherby, Dave Garland and Alessio Bernardelli.

I’m also sure I have got a lot more people to meet! Hopefully the new Partners in Learning Network (which allows multi-sign on via a number of IDs) will  help facilitate this.

If you are not a member of the Microsoft Partners in Learning Community already, why don’t you sign up to the new 'beta' community, it’s free and didn’t do me any harm!

 

 

 

Reflections from Microsoft Pil Global Forum 4 of 5 - ITL Research [#pilgf #msftpil]

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Download the Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research Report with White Paper from Michael Fullan here.

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With the other judges at the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum in Washington DC we were given an special briefing from Dr Maria Langworthy on the latest developments of the Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research. I’ve been following the developments in this area with great interest since the Education World Leaders Forum in London at the start of the 2011. 

Any action researcher or school leader should consider signing up to the ITL newsletter to keep up-to-date with developments in this area. Schools should also consider using the free Partners in Learning Research Tool to help you kick-start your discussions about teaching and learning within your school. Let me emphasize that you don’t have to agree with the research, the research methodology or the terminology that is used in ITL but there is nothing wrong with using as many sources as possible to challenge your thinking.

Maria’s first slide certainly made me think…

 “In a new world of work unemployment is high, yet skilled and talented people are in short supply”. - The Economist (September 2011).

 

For me this comes back to the point that I made on Monday related to Anthony Salcito’s keynote presentation. As well as creating jobs and employment opportunities within the UK we also need to make sure that young people are leaving school able to go out and find (and do) the jobs that exist globally. In many cases this doesn’t mean that they have to leave the UK - or even their local community. In a recent radio interview in Australia (which is worth 20 mins of your time) Professor Stephen Heppell illustrates this point by explaining that in the UK 7 million people currently work abroad… but they live in the UK on a full time basis. We need to make sure that young people have the digital skills, agility and resilience to work in a variety of 21^st century work scenarios.

The Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research Project is a large scale and very expensive piece of research. Seven countries are part of the initial research (England, Mexico, Senegal, Australia, Russia, Finland and Indonesia). The research partners for England is The Schools Network (formally the SSTA).

As you might expect one of the findings of the ITL research is that if students are given an opportunity to learning 21^st Century Skills then they can. There is also a direct correlation between innovative teaching practice and the development of 21^st century skills. However, what is very interesting from the research is that really good examples of this seem to be quite rare.

The data is even more interesting when you consider that many of the Microsoft Innovative Schools participated in this research. This means that even our most innovative schools don't seem to be demonstating innovative practice. So the question is why is this the case? 

Again this is partly covered in the research paper and the findings included: 

• Innovative teaching happens more in environments where teachers collaborate.

• Collaboration relies on a supportive culture, alignment of incentives, and times built into teachers’ schedules during which collaboration can take place.

• Innovative teaching happens more in environments where teachers have access to strong programs of professional development

• Innovative teaching that leverages ICT happens more where students have access in their classrooms.

• Where access was lacking, this issue served as a strong deterrent to ICT integration into teaching and learning. 

• Innovative teaching happens more in schools with a school-wide culture that supports innovation.

• Reports from all countries recognize school leadership as a key factor for implementing school-level innovation.

• Opt-in models—the ability for teachers to choose to begin to explore innovative practices when they are ready—were common among schools with supportive cultures.

 

The findings on barriers to ICT integration are also interesting and I would be quite keen to see a more detailed break down of country-by-country results in this area.

The main barriers are shown in the graphic below:

As you might expect access to devices is one of the key barriers to technology integration. With lack of preparation time and lack of professional development being the other significant barriers.

Although I don’t disagree, I am sceptical of the access to devices result.

For me it is often about ‘attitudes’ rather than ‘access’. Far to often in my experience teachers use ‘equipment’ as an excuse for not changing their practice and then when the equipment arrives (normally at great expense) the results are not transformational. At the same time I walk though schools in Scotland most weeks and look into computer labs where young people are sat in the middle of the room (no-where near computers) writing or taking notes from the board. In the UK we need to challenge how we distribute our school resources more to make sure that we get good value for money.

Many schools in the UK are also flooded with devices - its just that children are not allowed to get them out of their pockets or they are not allowed to join them to school wireless networks. We are working to challenge this in Scotland as part of our emerging work around our Emerging National ICT Strategy. 

The data collected on what makes effective CPD is also interesting and backs up everything that Con Morris and the rest of our National CPD Team have been saying for a long time now. That the most effective form of CPD is watching or working with another teacher (this can obviously be digital or face-to-face) and the least effective form of CPD is listening to a lecture (a traditional didactic conference).

There were two other clear themes emerging from the research for me. The first is what we expect young people to do with ICT. Globally many ICT activities in schools seem to be around low order skills rather than high order skills.

My own work on using digital technology to improve higher order skills demonstrates that this doesn’t need to be the case but we do need to do things differently.

The second thing that really stood out for me from the research is that in the same way that in Scotland the difference between ‘classroom’ to ‘classroom’ is far greater than the overall difference between ‘school’ to ‘school’. The ITL research shows us that globally we seem to have a lot of Innovative teachers but very few innovative schools. However to drive system wide change we need innovation to occur on a school wide level.

In summary - the ITL 2011 Research Report with accompanying White paper from Michael Fullan is worth a read. But the really exciting part of the research is what will come next as the next phase to examine from a strong research base how can school systems raise the achievement bar and narrow the attainment gap by making significant improvements to learning and teaching. This phase of the project will be called LEAP21 and start in early 2012 - I would love to be part of the leadership development part of this BTW!

Images: ITL Research 

Reflections from Microsoft Pil Global Forum 3 of 5 - Big Ideas for Education [#pilgf #msftpil]

On the final day of the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum in Washington the keynote was done as a panel session. There was an opportunity to hear from Kapil Wadhera, General Manager, Education Market Platforms Group at Intel and also six educators who shared some of the work they have been doing.

I wasn’t expecting to hear anything new from Kapil Wadhera as I have been doing some work with Intel recently around their Intel Teach Program, including attending an Intel Teach Course in Poland during the summer holidays. However I liked how Wadhera used Intel’s five part Education Transformation Model of Policy, Research & Evaluation, ICT, CPD and Curriculum & Assessment and linked this to contextual examples.

For example, Wadhera’s argued that in Portugal since the introduction of the National 1:1 programme for primary age children, combined with national leadership, teacher CPD and changes to curriculum & assessment that there had been an increase of 20 points on PISA scores since 2006 in reading, maths and science.

He also linked this to economic growth. Again the Portuguese model is clever as the Intel Classmate PC's were manufactured in country. This led to 350 direct new jobs, 1500 secondary new jobs, over 2B Euro in increased economic activity.

I’m not going to talk about all six of the educators who got up and talked about the work they have been doing - all of the projects were impressive in their own way but some not replicable within a UK / Scottish Context.

I do however want to mention Diana Laufenberg’s (@dlaufenberg) presentation on ‘Experiencing and communicating the power of democracy in action’ because this is such a simple but powerful idea that could be replicated in most parts of the world.

Basically in Diana’s school district at election time they shut the school and turn it into a polling booth. For most students this means ‘a day off’ for Diana’s students this means ‘opportunity’!

The whole day become a live assignment where the young people go out into the community and live report the election day. They interview voters, interview poll workers, find out what its like to stand in the queue waiting to vote, find out what types of people vote and when.

They live tweet, record video, produce audioboos, make podcasts and discuss their findings face-to-face and over SMS. Most importantly it exposes young people to the voting process, helps them understand it and gets them excited about democracy so that when they are old enough to vote… they will!

I was in complete agreement with Diana when she talks about why the project worked so well. Basically it has all the components of good learning and teaching. It allows the student voice to co-construct learning activities by taking part in authentic experiences and sharing their stories with real audience.

The idea has been so successful that Diana has set up a website to help people who might want to replicate the project and to also share their own voter stories at http://votervoice.wordpress.com/.

If your inteested in some of Diana Laufenberg’s other work you might also like her TEDx Talk: