New Tools for Teachers - University of Strathclyde PGDE Secondary Students (January 2010)

Ronnie Rankin (National Glow Team) and I were out speaking to the PGDE secondary students at the University of Strathclyde today in Glasgow. Ronnie was talking about Glow and showed some good examples of how it is being used in classrooms across Scotland and I was asked to talk about ICT tools for teachers.

David Muir has already done a nice little write up on the presentations.

 I promised I would post the notes and slides from the talk here. But as they are very similar to a number of other talks that I have recently given.

Just have a look at these posts instead as they deal with all of the points that I mentioned today:

• New Tools for Teachers - BEd Students (Edinburgh University)

• Literacy, ICT and A Curriculum for Excellence

• Curriculum for Excellence, Science, Change and New Technologies

• Internet Safety and Responsible Use

• Free web tools for teachers

If you were at the talk I would welcome any feedback either by email (my contact details are top right) or please just leave a comment below. As I said today, feel free to challenge anything that I said.

Comments

[Anon]

What the picture doesn't show you is the remarkable low turnout for this lecture. Not a reflection on Strathclyde students but the general poor quality of the ICT lectures as a whole. We've had three now and the numbers have steadily declined with each one.

Three speakers, three laptops. If ICT is genuinely supposed to make things collaborative, can you explain why we had to wait while we changed from PC, to Mac, to whatever? Perhaps these would come in useful? http://www.mymemory.co.uk/USB-Flash-Drives

Glow looks like a genuine waste of time, bloated. The unanswered threads posted by teachers and students, visible in the lecture, told its own story. Not used. Also misinformation, Fife and Glasgow haven't taken it up, only trialling it. Yet "the last LAs have come online".

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/glowscotland/localauthorities/fife/index.asp

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/glowscotland/localauthorities/glasgow/index.asp

Then we get to Mr Bray. I'm surprised they managed to fit his heid in the Coats hall. What an exercise in self promotion that was. Website check, Twitter check. Nothing but a fancy power point presentation recycled to death. Apparently you can find stuff with google. Good to know. And with links to stuff you found (presumably with google) on the internet.

So I visit the heids website. Nice. Lot of effort, good topical URL. All in all a nice CV.

Lets finish with a quote from the man himself "As with most years I’ve probably achieved a bit more than most people" http://olliebray.typepad.com/olliebraycom/olliebray/

We're gonna need a bigger heid.

[Ollie Bray]

Dear Anon,

Great comment, and I look forward to replying to it in more detail. Probably by the weekend before I get round to it. Some of your URL’s are wrong BTW.

OB

[Ollie Bray]

Dear Anon,

First of all sorry its taken so long for me to respond – I have been working away from home this week and wifi access has been a little bit hit and miss. Secondly, can I apologize that you don’t feel comfortable being able to use your name on your comment.

Lets first of all take the subject of poor ICT lectures at the university – it would be useful if you could expand on this to help me understand the current provision within ITE. You have made comments on our input but what made the other lectures so bad. What is it the lectures are missing and how can they be improved.

Why did we change the computers over. A very good question. I was basically because we had both prepared our presentations on different laptops. Ronnie was using his Mac and keynote and I was using my PC and technical beta of Office 10. This isn’t meant to be an excuse by the way (although I am sure that you will think it is?). We actually just didn’t have time to put both presentations on one machine as we are not allowed to connect our laptops to connect to the university network we had to use the lecture theater PC to demo Glow. All things considered I didn’t think that the change over’s (while maybe wasting 2 or 3 minutes) went relatively smoothly?

Thanks for pointing out USB flash drives – I’ve actually got one

Now to Glow – I’m interested to know why you think trying to connect every teacher in Scotland via a national intranet is a ‘genuine waste of time’. Don’t get me wrong there are aspects of Glow that we would all like to see improved but the philosophy is a very good one. Some of the tools like Glow Meet have been used extensively by many Scottish schools. Many teachers have also used the intranet to access quality CPD.

There was no misinformation in the presentation ‘the last LEAs have come online’ that’s how they are able to trial Glow. Both Glasgow and Fife have Glow roll out plans. Training for Fife’s Glow mentors took place last week.

Now lets get to me – I do hope you will help me tease this out.

First of all why did you think the presentation was full of self promotion – yes, I did mention my twitter account. I do in all presentations as I like people to ask question via twitter. Sometimes this works well and sometimes it doesn’t – I also like to promote the idea that its OK to use mobile phones to gather feedback. Yes I did mention my blog because that’s where I post the slides and the links that I mention. I think paper handouts are a waste of time. But also I use my blog to share what I find and what I think could be useful for teachers – I think it is very important that we all share more. In fact, I think it’s the biggest efficiency saving we could make in education. How much have you shared? How do you share it? Or why don’ you share things? I am genuinely interested.

Also happy for you to give me some feedback on my presentation style. Did I come across as arrogant or speak to fast or too confident? You say I have a ‘big heid’ lets talk it over or debate it professionally – what is it you mean exactly? How do I make ‘me heid’ smaller. You can rip me to shreds Anon – I won’t get offended I am just keen to improve.

I don’t think it was a fancy PowerPoint – it was really only images, screen shots and a couple of words here and there. It’s interesting that you don’t think I should recycle previous material? Why is this? Why is it necessary to re-create everything from scratch when your brief for audience engagement from one institution to the next is exactly the same? Did you feel cheated?

Now on to the quality of the material. I take it from your comment that you learnt nothing useful from the presentation. That is a shame, but also fine – it’s difficult to deliver a lecture on ICT in Education and for everyone to learn something.

You obviously thought it was pointless mentioning the Google advanced search and the way to select specific file types. Or using the advance image search to only get big images back for presentation – to help save teachers time. In your opinion (be honest now) do you think everyone thought that these tips was a waste of time?

Is there anything you think I should keep in the presentation or do you think I should start from the beginning again? What is it you wanted to hear? What would have been useful to you?

I love that you finish up your comment with a personal dig from my yearly reflections. I also find it interesting that you have obviously taken time to read some of my other posts.

I look forward to future debates Anon! I try to be as transparent as possible – but you are more than welcome to contact me by email if you don’t want to respond here. I normally block anonymous comments by the way but this is far to interesting.

I know I have asked you a lot of questions but I am already looking forward to your response.

Ollie

[annie]

Anon, I can’t comment on what happened at this particular lecture however I would say that whatever your opinion of Ollie may be you can’t argue that he didn’t get to the position he has in his career if he didn’t know what he was talking about. As someone new to the profession I’m surprised that you would be so blatant as to criticise someone with far more experience than yourself in the manner that you have. There are ways and means of giving positive criticism/feedback – I’m sure you’re familiar with ‘two stars and a wish’; this might be something you want to try in future.
Also I suggest having a chat with the course co-ordinator or whoever organised the lecture to convey your disappointment this would ensure that future lectures are more useful.

I wish you every luck in successfully completing your PGDE.

[Ollie Bray]

Thanks for your support and kind words Annie. OB

[DavidDMuir]

Hello Ollie

I share your disappointment that the person leaving the comment did not identify him/herself and would echo annie's encouragement for them to speak to me about their concerns. As the person who co-ordinates the ICT input to the course, I am disappointed by the low attendance and would love to know why the students stay away. I don't believe it's because they know it all already. I am genuinely keen to know what the students didn't like about the lectures they attended and why they felt they didn't need to attend them all

Some of this student's criticism may be valid but some is daft - rude even. To give a link to a source of memory sticks is a best cheeky and at worst arrogant and nasty. I thought the change over went very smoothly with the minimum of fuss - perhaps taking slightly longer than closing down one presentation and launching another on the same machine but not by much. In my opinion, the advantages of having two speakers sharing their expertise far outweighs any minor problems caused by swapping laptops half way through.

You have dealt appropriately with this student's factual inaccuracies about Glow so I will move onto her/his final point. At the risk of further increasing the size of your "heid", the feedback I have had on your input has been universally positive. You have been praised for: your down to earth approach; for facing up to problems and difficulties caused by technology honestly; for giving many useful, practical and simple ideas that can be easily incorporated into lessons; and for being interesting and relevant. I was even grabbed in the coffee queue by a student who wanted to tell me how much she'd enjoyed your input - something that has never happened before.

In conclusion, if the student who left the comment genuinely learned nothing from the lecture, they were either not paying attention or are exceptionally gifted. I suspect the former but acknowledge that we are failing as a course if we are not providing useful input for the later.

[Sarah Williamson]

I would like to add to the comments above if I may. I was present at the lecture in question and I'm not sure where 'anon' was but it doesn't sound like he or she was in the same room as me!
I would consider myself to be fairly savvy in the ways of ICT and the internet - I'm a blogger, an avid Twitter user (some might say a bit too avid!) and have a fair bit of experience in using a variety of software packages. I would go so far as to say that my previous knowledge and experience was certainly more than the average student on this PGDE course...however, I have attended all the ICT Lectures and have come away from each one with more ideas, resources and information than I had before, and more importantly more than I could have ever found on my own!

I believe that Ollie (and Ronnie)gave a lot of invaluable information and I for one would like to thank them both for giving up their time to do so. Having had a quick browse through this site there is a whole world of info, links and resources...and yes as 'anon' so kindly pointed out, it's all out there on the internet and I could probably find some of it myself using Google - but thanks to Ollie I don't have to, he's already done the hard work for me!!

To mention Glow - yes I agree it does look a bit bloated and I think it's maybe trying to be too much to too many people...but it's what we've got so you might as well find out about it, make it work for you and only by everyone doing this will improvements be made.

Just a general point in terms of the attendance at the ICT lectures - I think that students not attending fall into perhaps three categories - those who don't attend but will watch the lecture videostream later (a very handy feature provided by Strathclyde Uni, but not one that encourages physical attendance at lectures unfortunately), those who think they already know everything there is to know so there's no point, and those who think that ICT just isn't important (and unfortunately those people are the ones who would probably benefit most).

I hope this has been useful in some way and I'll certainly be keeping an eye on the website in the future.

[Elaine Murphy]

Too many words!!! Just wanted to say that I was at your ICT lecture and got a lot out of it. Tips, short-cuts and links to useful resources are very welcome to me. I find your blogs etc.. very informative as you can keep us updated on recent developments in ICT in education, and by travelling around the country you must be gauging opinions and have a good idea what is working and what is not. I think that the difficulty with the ICT lectures is that they are lectures! More hands-on activities would be best, backed-up by some exposition..get us active!!

Interested in the Follow the Flame link on Winter Olympics..we saw it being exchanged three times when we were visiting family near Toronto over Christmas.

[Ollie Bray]

@Sarah - thanks very much for your feedback. Really glad you managed to take something from the talk and also pleased that you find this site useful. I tray to post up as much as I can – I’m in a privileged position at the moment where I get to see a lot of good practice and I think it is only fair that I share the ides that I see.

I know what you mean about Glow – I hope (as soon as you get your log in?) you will join the discussion about the future of Glow. We need this to come from the Scottish teaching community and not from politicians and policy makers. There are always people willing to listen and I encourage you to always contribute to the conversation.

@Elaine – thank you for you feedback as well Elaine. It is really difficult to know how to pitch these lectures. Particularly when you guys are expected to sit there for an hour and a half! I agree with you about more active learning activities – I’ll try to think about how to incorporate more of these into whole course presentations.

Glad you like the Winter Olympics Posts – real potential for classroom use there and isn’t Canada a fantastic place!

[MrStrathmore]

I made it to the first three ICT lectures and got plenty out of them. The one on the advanced tools in google showed me lots of things I did not know.

I have entered the world of twitter and delicious and have gleaned an [b]enormous[/b] amount of information and excellent resources. I used one of them in my Task B submission.

As for attendance... I am sure if you took a measure of people who didn't go to the other lectures, but then turned up at the tutorials, you would find a slight discrepancy in the numbers. The sign-in is a wonderful motivator. (This actually really annoys me as I just love trying to discuss the tasks with people who have made no attempt to read or understand what the topic was)

Personally, I took the decision to miss the lecture so that I could meet with another student to prepare work for our C&P. I knew the lecture would be videoed and I can always contact the presenters by the wonder of email and the internet. Isn't it a great idea to connect people in this way? We should try to do this for every teacher in Scotland. That would be a great idea... Oh wait, we already have....

[Leanne Burgess]

I just wanted to say that I found the lecture very helpful. I thought Ronnie did a great job explaining Glow and its features which beforehand I had no idea about. You provided loads of new ideas and plenty of links - I know many of us in Science are now addicted to putting every document we have into Wordle!

As for lecture attendance in general, I think part of the problem is also that half the year finish at 12pm therefore having to wait about for 2 hours. Also it would be good to have a computer infront of me during the lecture but I know that's not very practical.

Each ICT lecture (if a bit long)has been filled with little nuggets which I hope to utilise in future placements and probation.

Thanks Ollie for the valuable info that not everyone finds obvious!

[ScottMc]

Just wanted to say I also enjoyed the lecture so much I have taken the time to make my first post to a blog!!

[Karen]

I really enjoyed all four ICT lectures.

In ICT 4, which I watched online, it was great to learn more about GLOW. I'm looking forward to having my password. The wordle generators are really exciting. Thank you to David and the guest speakers.

It would be great to be able to do more active ICT things - try them out on willing Jordanhill guinea pigs rather than pupils first! Maybe a mini-APD or a link with C&P?

On a practical note, it would have been good to include the date of the lecture in the Term 2 booklets - I used these as reference so missed the lecture.

The lectures have been full of ideas which are accessible and creative and not about using gimmicks.

[Greer Ogston]

Hi,
Personally my friends and I left the lecture raving about it. Ollie's charisma and undisputable wealth of knowledge made me sit up and listen and I found many of the resources incredibly useful such as the fabulous Wordle and the advanced Google search. There is a difference between arrogance and having confidence and pride in your numerous achievements.

There seems to be a 'we know it all' attitude among some students when it comes to ICT, I definitely do not. However, I like to think I am now more ICT literate. In my opinion the lectures delivered by David Muir are engaging and enjoyable. It feels more like a two way dialogue (and he gave out chocolate!)

I was very surprised by the petty, immature comments about the lecture. I actually find it very distasteful that anon went out of his/her way to whine about a visiting lecturer. By all means give constructive criticism but to launch a personal attack seems unnecessary and is not indicative of the general student body. Surely if there's a genuine problem this could be addressed through the appropriate channels such as tutors or student reps rather than launching a personal attack and hiding behind anonymity!

[Ollie Bray]

@Mr Strathmore @Leanne @ScottMc @Karen and @Greer - Just a quick note to say thank you very much for leaving your comments here. I'm glad you managed to take some thing from the presenation and I know david will act on any comments you have made to improve the ICT input into your course.

I think you get a good deal compared to other ITE's. Edinburgh PGDE (for example) gets one hour (and thats me as well!)

Please get in touch if I can be of any further help or advice.

Good luck with placement two!

OB

[Iain]

I had to make my excuses for ICT 4 as I was absent the entire day for personal reasons. I'm actually just online at my folks and was digging through FirtstClass for the link to watch it!

Commenting on the first three lectures, I've really enjoyed them. OK, the 2nd and 3rd. I wasn't enrolled on the course when David did the first one!

I am a geek. David will back me up on this. I'm on Twitter, facebook, ex-Blogger and now onto WordPress (self-hosted, three blogs). I've had the same email address for over 10 years and coded my first web page in Notepad.

But I don't know everything.

I go to the ICT lectures because I know David, or whoever is taking them, will always throw something new in that will pique my interest. The fact that I'm a Computing teacher-to-be does, I confess, bias me slightly in favour of using the stuff but I can genuinely see the value of the ICT lectures.

Give me an hour or so to get the streaming working (I even booted into Windows so I could watch it - feel honoured, as my Eeebuntu install is probably sulking) and I'll see if I can find an open source program that can calculate your heid volume from the video...

[Ollie Bray]

LOL - look forward to hearing the calculation Iain! - take care and sorry about your Windows experience! OB :-)

[Jen]

I enjoyed the lecture and found it really useful. I think the use of ICT is very important for us teachers as it can really improve the quality of our lessons. I have really enjoyed getting tips (as I have to say ICT is not my strong point) and feel I have come away with a lot from the lectures.

[Ollie Bray]

@Jen - thanks for your comment Jen. If you try some of the tools that I showed your during the talk you will quickly find out that lots of them are pretty easy to use and with a bit of confidence you will be an ICT wizard! Keep in touch. OB

[Nicola]

I'm sure that the point had been made by now that the comments of Anon are not at all representative of everyone who has attended the ICT lectures or watched them online.

Anon mentioned Ollie's "fancy PowerPoint". I thought that it was one of the best presentations that we have seen so far on the course since so often slides are just lots of text which you never quite manage to read, never mind understand, before the presented moves on to the next one. Ollie's were carefully thought out to help understanding of what he was saying without just saying in it a more formal way.

I found the information about Google advanced search really useful too. Of course I already knew that "you can find stuff with Google" but I think the vast majority of us only learned how to use Google through trial and error, and only really use the main simple search function. I knew that the advanced search existed, but had never really used it. Apart from the time this is sure to save me in the future, I think the infomation given was fascinating for its own sake since search engines have become a big part of how we use the internet but hardly anyone takes the time to learn how to use them in the most effective way, and even fewer people understand how they work.

We in English are also now addicted to Wordle!

[James Alastair kendall]

I was at Ollie's lecture and found it stimulating and even inspirational. I picked up plenty of good ideas which I will certainly be incorporating in my future lessons. I have an MSc in Information Management and have spent the best part of 20 years working in the agricultural commodities trading sector which is very ICT intensive. Yet I have found all the ICT lectures useful and some of the ways ICT can be incorporated into lessons would not have occured to me without attending these lectures. Wordle is brilliant and delicious is a hugely useful search engine. Our kids are a hell of a lot more street wise and ICT savvy than some of us and we need to find innovative ways to engage with them.

I thought Ollie's lecture ranks as one of the more stimulating of the year.

[James Alastair kendall]

I thought I would add a further comment to my previous post. People who do not have the balls to append their name to a comment should really keep their thoughts to themselves. The lack of courage is a pitiful thing to behold.

[Anna]

I just thought I'd leave a quick wee note to say how disgusted I am at the comments left by 'anon'. How rude!

Ollie, please be reassured that this is not the opinions of all the PGDE students. I for one attended this lecture and found it extremely interesting. It was enjoyable to recieve a lecture from such an enthusiastic and informative individual. How's your big heid now? lol

I have attended all ICT lectures and have come away with numerous ideas to try out in my classes. There is no point in ignoring technology, at the least us teachers need to keep up-to-date. Pupils simply lose respect for those teachers that can't even swtich on the projector or always get feedback on their mics. It's a cruel world out there.

One thing I have noticed is that the primary school I visited seemed to be more interactive with ICT, than the high school. This may be due to the fact primary teachers have one class, all day, all year and it maybe quicker and easier to introduce ICT into their lessons.

I for one am not techologically gifted and I am slowly but surely navigating my way through all the links and reading the blogs, twitters etc. All the time finding little snippets of useful infromation. It's never ending!

'Anon', of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, freedom of speech blah blah. However, to start slagging off a guest speakers' lecture is not particularly professional. A descrete email to David voicing your opinions would perhaps have be more appropriate (I assume you never did this considering David's comment).
In regards to your comment about GLOW 'looks like a waste of time'. So you have just looked at it? hmmmm. If this is a representation of your learning attitude and professionalism what a great role model you, anon, are going to be for pupils!.

p.s. sorry about the spelling in a bit of a rush. :-)