OllieBray.com

1:1 Learning: Myth 4 – 1:1 is the best ratio for learning [only some of the time!]

This is part of a series of posts that document some of my personal thoughts on some of the myths surrounding 1:1 learning (one device per learner) and 1:1 deployments in schools and school systems.

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Myth 4 – 1:1 is the best ratio for learning

I can’t disagree that 1:1 isn’t a good ratio BUT sometimes other ratios are a lot more appropriate. Just because you have the capacity for 1:1 in your school doesn’t mean that it is the best ratio to use all of the time.

Indeed, when we look at learning from 3 years to 18 years a significant amount of thought needs to go into when you would like to achieve 1:1 (if you do at all). This is particularly the case when you don’t work within a 3 – 18 school. I know of a number of examples where 1:1 has been integrated successfully and purposefully in the upper primary (elementary) school yet when the children move to secondary (high) school this provision has not been continued and as a result has a regressive impact on learning.

So, what are the optimum ratios? In short, there is no easy answer to this. It really depends on what it is you are trying to achieve. But it is important to remember that sometimes 1:many (one device for many learners) is fine and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a lecture style presentation.

Of course the advantage of learners having their own device in this type of environment means that they can provide feedback and ask questions during the presentation (sometime referred to back channeling). Devices can also be used to follow up links that the presenter has mentioned – these can be bookmarked for exploration at a later date or quickly shared with others across social networking spaces. One important consideration during this type of environment is that this type of interaction, although powerful, does not come naturally to young people – it is a skill that is required to be taught and practiced if it is going to have any real impact.

As well as 1:many, there are also lots of examples when 1:3/4/5 (one device for three, four or five learners) might be appropriate. These are all good ratios to support collaborative learning and group work. Tablet technology can have a real advantage here.

There is something about children working around a tablet device that seems to make it more collaborative – could it be that in physical collaborative learning scenarios the screen can actually act as a barrier to learning. Despite their cost the role of the Interactive Table should also not be underestimated in developing collaboration and problem solving skills.

Research from my genius of a friend Professor Sugata Mitra (University of Newcastle) and others has also proved time-and-time again that 1:2 (one device for two learners) is also another great ratio for learning (particularly for younger children). It’s small enough to allow opportunities for children to get time on the computer without arguing who should be in the driving seat BUT it also allows dialogue and conversation between children as they work to solve real world problems and consolidate their learning tasks.

Of course the nice thing about having 1:1 (one device for each learner) is that all of the above can be achieved but children can also work with their own device where appropriate. 

Photo: Fearghal Kelly

Now, in my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes that is often made in 1:1 deployments is that people aim for a 1:1 ratio and provide teacher professional development for learning and teaching at this ratio.

Of course (particularly for older children – but increasing younger ones as well) the real ratio that we should be aiming for is at least 2:1 (two devices for each learner). I see this more and more in the forward thinking progressive schools and systems that I have the pleasure to work in from time-to-time.

In this scenario, learners are supported by a main device (it could be a desktop, laptop, netbook, hybrid or tablet) and their handheld (normally their phone).

Many of the people reading this article will probably already work this way. For example, I’m writing this blog post on my Laptop (my choice is to use a keyboard for extended writing) but I’ve got an eye on twitter on my iPad that is next to me and 5 minutes ago I replied to a text message on my mobile phone.

Another recent example is from when I checked into a hotel for a conference in Stockholm last week.

The wifi voucher that I was given by the hotel receptionist allowed me to connect 5 personal devices to the hotel network.

Now, I only had 3 with me (laptop, tablet & phone) but that is not the point – the point is in the business word and increasingly in the education world we are required to be connected by a variety of devices most of the time, in order to do the tasks we are set (and set ourselves) to the maximum efficiency.

 

As you start to develop 1:1 learning scenarios in your school / system don’t forget to develop other scenarios in parallel that involve other ratios and other types of technology integration. 

 

1:1 Learning: Myth Two – ‘Children aren’t used to 1:1’ [this is just an excuse]

 

This is part of a series of posts that document some of my personal thoughts on some of the myths surrounding 1:1 learning (one device per learner) and 1:1 deployments in schools and school systems.

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Myth Two – ‘Children aren’t used to 1:1’ 

This is an excuse that is sometimes given to delay / prevent technology deployments in schools. The truth is that most young people already live in a 1:1 environment as they are constantly connected via their mobile / cell phones or other Internet enabled devices.

Research published in the Ofcom report ‘Children and parents: media use and attitudes report 2012’ illustrates this well.

Here is what it says about children and smartphones:

Children’s access to the internet is not restricted to PCs or laptops. Those aged 12-15 are more likely than last year to go online using their mobile phones and are more likely to say that this is the device they would miss the most.

Since 2011, there has been a 50% rise in 12-15 year olds owning smartphone devices. Almost two thirds (62%) of this age group now has one – up from 41% the previous year. This is significantly higher than the UK average for adults of 45%.

Mobile phones are more important to this age group than any other device, even TV. Two fifths (39%) of 12-15 year olds now say they would miss their mobile phone more than any other device, up from just over a quarter (28%) in 2011. Only one in five (20%) said that they would miss TV the most.

Around one in seven (14%) of all children aged 5-15 now use a tablet device at home, a threefold increase since 2011 (5%). Children aged 12-15 are most likely to use a tablet, with 17% saying they do, up from 6% in 2011. 

 

However, just because young people are used to 1:1 environments doesn’t mean that they are used to them in schools. It also doesn’t mean that school staff are comfortable teaching when young people have ubiquitous access to the Internet.

Indeed, I would also argue that young people are not great at learning on-line in a structured and formal way and we have a lot of work to do in schools to prepare young people for this type of learning.

It is also interesting to note that organizations like the Open University (who specialize in distance learning) only use on-line as part of their overall model. Experience has shown that on-line alone does not have a great success rate – the key to success is ‘blended’ learning where on-line is supported by good community management, peer support and local tutorials.

Before schools go down the route of 1:1 access it is important that they ask themselves what the potetial impact on teaching and learning might be.

 

Free Technologies for Learning CPD in Aberdeen on the 26th March

Aberdeen Cityl are running a FREE Saturday CPD Event for educators on the 26^th March. I’m involved in the initial opening of the conference and then a session on Internet Safety and Responsible Use. There is also a great set of workshops for people to attend.

The event is being held at the AECC (Aberdeen) between 10am – 2pm. If you’re an teacher in Aberdeen you can book online:  http://tinyurl.com/glow-cpd-opps

Anyone else should contact “ CPD [at] aberdeencity.gov.uk “

Further information about the Conference Here.

The events workshops include:

1. Creativity and Games Design: Inspiring Learners to Create their own Content - Charlie Love, Development Officer, LTS Consolarium

2. GLOW – New Resources and Services - Ross Watson, Glow Development Officer, LTS

3. SCRAN – Learning Images for Schools - Andrew James Education Officer (SCRAN)

4. GLOW - Projects in Aberdeen Secondary Schools–eportfolios/blogs and Virtual Campus - Ian Hoffman, Glow National Team (RM)

5. Blogging in the Primary School - Shirley Campbell-Morgan, Class Teacher, Loirston Primary School

6. GBL and Games Design: A Literary Perspective - Brian Clark, Development Officer, LTS Consolarium

7. Games-based Learning using PS3 and Nintendo Wii - Dawn Reid, DHT and Elaine Paige, Class Teacher, Woodside Primary School

8. Using SCRATCH as a P7 – S1 Transition Project - Shona Milne, DHT, Kirkhill Primary School

Hope to see some people there.

Reflections from the 2010 #EducationShow (1 of 10) – Google Earth and Google Maps in the Classroom

This is the first in a series of ten posts about my recent visit to the 2010 Education Show in Birmingham. Most of the posts are very short and will talk about some of the products and ideas that I saw that could have real potential in the classroom. However, my reason for visiting the Education Show was to give a presentation on Google Earth and Google Maps in the Classroom.

There was standing room only in the Secondary Lecture Theatre during my presentation and it seemed to be well received. I've shared all of these ideas on the site before and the session was basically a re-run of my Teachmeet North East London Mininote from last April.

I've listed the ideas with links below. But you might also want to watch the video from Teachmeet NE London that was produced by Leon Cych (Learn4Life) and funded by Futurelab as part of the Teachmeet Talk series.

So the ideas covered were:

Idea 1 - Use the Google Maps mash-up Smoke Signal Generator (http://www.mapmsg.com/send/smokesignal) as a different way to set learning objectives, homework tasks or to re-cap a lesson.

You can use the mash-up in exactly the same way as you normally use Google Maps to find places by typing in the location. You can zoom in and zoom out in exactly the same way and switch between map, hybrid and satellite view. The mash-up however allows you to generate smoke signals from any location within Google Maps. Great for linking place to learning objectives.

 Idea 2 - Use geo-greetings to explore the world

You can use geo-greatings in lots of different ways but as well as being a fun way to send messages to the class. You can also do other activities like, get children to spell out their names and then work out which country their buildings are in (good for teaching atlas skills), they can also measure the distances between their buildings, reserch the buildings, try and find other letter shaped building.... the list goes on and on...

Idea 3 - Turn on the Grid Lines and spin the globe

This is a very simple, yet powerful and magical idea. I believe that children find maps, globes and places fascinating. A great lesson starter is just to have Google Earth Spinning as your class comes into the room (they will instantly start to comment and try to work out where places are). You can also very easily turn on the Grid Latitude and Longitude lines to allow you to quickly add an extra dimension to this starter activity. 

Idea 4 - Teaching about place and location

At the front of your classroom have a bucket of European or world city names (would also work with countries, mountain ranges, rivers etc…). You can get lists from websites like www.citymayors.com.

Students pick a city name from ‘the hat’ and type the location into Google Earth – class watch as they fly from their school to the city location. Once in the city Student gets one or two minutes to explore in front of the rest of the class. As long as you have websites like Panoramio enabled within Google Earth there will be no shortage of things to look at and you will quickly get a real feel for what an area is like. I think it is very important to always flay to your location from your school, this adds to the experience of distance, place and space. 

I've repeated this activity with loads of things such as cities, buildings, mountains, landmarks, rivers etc...

Idea 5 – Teaching Distance

The Google Earth Ruler is really simple to use and allows you to quickly change between units (cm, m. km, ft. yards etc…) There is a  lot of scope here about to talk about measurement and also ratios if you start to swap the units around. You can also use the ruler to perform interesting tasks. For example you can calculate how far the ingredient of a pizza have travelled before it gets to the UK. 

 Idea 6 – Sea Level Rise Mash Up

http://flood.firetree.net/ is a favourite Google Maps Mashup of mine. It allows you to change the sea level height to see areas of land that would be flooded due to sea level change. Its simple but really effective, interestingly it wouldn’t take much for the Glasgow Science Centre to be underwater.

Idea 7 – Look at what other people have already created

At http://www.gearthhacks.com you can download klm files (Google Earth Files) about Current Events, Previous Events, Sightseeing, Sports, Historical Places, Transport, Natural Formations and a whole heap of other stuff. The Current event files are excellent. The screencast below shows how quickly it is to download a Google Earth file on recent Greece Fires.

Idea 8 – Flickr and Twitter Vision

Flickr vision is a another great lesson starter activity or way to promote class discussion. The site basically shows the geographical location of real time photos being up-loaded to Flickr. It gives a real feel for what’s going on in the world and sense of place. It can also be used to promote interesting discussions. For example, you have to wait a long to see a photograph being up-loaded from Africa, Antarctica or South America? 

Twitter vision gives another interesting perspective. It basically shows text messages of people thoughts from around the world.

 Idea 9 – Turn Layers On and Off

Sometimes things get really crowded and sometimes you want more detail. You can turn layers on and off using the layers tabs. Fly to New York to see the 3D Buildings in action. If you are struggling with Bandwidth Issues at school you can save on bandwidth by turning the layers off.

Idea 10 - Explore the Historic Imagery layer

The Google Earth Historic imagery layer allows you to compare up-to-date satalite imagery with older satellite imagery. In the video I look at the construction of the Birdsnest Stadium in China from 2002 to 2008. Its very impressive stuff!

Idea 11 –Google Earth in the web browser

Download the Google Earth API to get Google Earth working right in your web browser.

 Idea 12 - Monster Milk Truck

Monster Milk Truck allows you to drive a virtual milk cart around the globe to explore things. 

Idea 13- First Person Camera

In a lot of ways this is similar to Monster Milk Truck. The First Person Camera API allows you to wander around the world (Google Earth) on foot.

When you get into some of the cities with 3D buildings, it kind of reminds me of some of the early versions of Doom. Which is interesting as one of the ideas that I have been talking about recently is could Google Earth become in itself a rich gaming environment?

Idea 14 - Driving Simulator

The plug in driving simulator is fantastic particularly for cities that have 3D Buildings in them.

Basically, you type in where you want to start and where you want to go to. Google Map directions appear on the left hand side of the screen and calculates your route. A Google Map shows your intended route on the right hand side of the screen and in the middle Google Earth flies you though what your route will look like in 3D.

Idea 15 - Create Powerful Google Earth Posters

Full write up on this activity here.

Idea 16 - Have a look at these other great resources

Try and follow these websites for some up-to-date Google Earth information and ideas on how it can be used in Teaching and Learning.

• Google Lat Long Blog
• Google Earth Users Guide Project
• Juicy Geography Google Earth Guide
• Google Earth Blog
• Ogle Earth Blog
• Google Earth Developers Blog

Please get in touch if you have any questions about the session.

#BETT2010 - Naace: ICT CPD 4 Free

 

I got along to the launch of ICT CPD 4 Free on the Naace stand on the Thursday of BETT. ICT CPD 4 free is a new web site, sponsored by TDA, offering ICT teachers FREE on-line continuing professional development opportunities.

Naace is the professional association for those concerned with advancing education through the appropriate use of information and communications technology (ICT). Naace was established in 1984 and has become the key membership organization for those working in ICT in education.

What are the courses available on ICT CPD 4 Free?

The training modules, written by experts in their field, cover topics that have been identified by teachers as areas where additional training opportunities might be useful.

They are available on Moodle and currently include the following titles:

• Assessment of ICT in Primary Phase

• Assessment of ICT in Secondary Phase

• ICT knowledge within the QCA Primary Framework

• Embedding e-safety in the Curriculum – Short Course

• Embedding e-safety in the Curriculum – Long Course

• Exploring Digital media

• Introduction to finding Digital Resources

• Developing higher-order thinking skills utilizing ICT mind mapping and concept mapping interfaces

• High Interaction, Reflection and Peer Assessment through Educational Online Forums.

What are the advantages of this type of CPD? - (according to Naace)

• Study in your own time, at your leisure, without pressure and without charge.

• Use courses designed by teachers and practitioners that follow a familiar format and have many practical applications in the classroom.

• Receive recognition with a personalised certificate for every course completed and aggregate these awards over time to gain the Naace Online ICT Diploma.

• Whilst doing so become part of an online community that grows and grows and supports its members. 

I am particularly interested in the embedding e-safety in the curriculum course and will be doing a short review of this over the coming weeks.

 

Vital CPD from the Open University – I’m first in the hot seat…

 

Vital is a new approach to CPD from the Open University and the UK e-skills foundation

It describes itself as a,

“innovative professional development programme which aims to support schools in England to make the most of ICT in their teaching”.

Although the focus is on England much of the content available within vital will also be highly appropriate for the Scottish Curriculum.

Vital CPD is an interesting idea it links a combination of free CPD, with OU course, with courses from other providers. The backbone to the whole system is a moodle on-line community.

I really like the idea of ‘15 minute’ which is the term used by vital to refer to any planned CPD activity other than courses. 

The intention of ‘15 minute’ is to create structured CPD opportunities which can be engaged with in a series of small pockets of time, each ranging from a couple of minutes to a maximum of about an hour. Its very similar to the CPD Scotland CPD Shorts.

I been asked to contribute to the ’15 minute’ programme and as a result from tomorrow morning I will find myself in the very first Vital Hot Seat.

Here is the full list of CPD opportunities with '15 minute' between now and the summer:

• January18-29, Hotseat - The changing learning landscape: Teaching and learning with emerging web technologies with Ollie Bray

• February 4, Keynote - ICT Visioning - The Strategy with Stephen Heppell

• February 8-23, Hotseat - e-Safety with Childnet with Ellen Ferguson

• March 1-12, Hotseat - Using ICT to individualise learning for students with learning difficulties with Karen Kelly

• March 15 4pm, Keynote - Online Peer Assessment - Students as Facilitators with Andy Runciman

• April 19-30, Hotseat - What do the national bodies do for us?  with representatives from  Becta - GTCE - TDA - QCDA  

• May 5 2pm, Keynote - Leading and Managing ICT in schools with Terry Freedman

• May 10-22, Hotseat - A Whole School Learning Platform - Shirelands Collegiate Academy with Sir Mark Grundy

• w/b June 7, Keynote - ICT trends impacting education - what's coming our way? With Derek Wenmoth

• June 14-26, Hotseat - Can Learners be Researchers and Creators? With Ben Williamson/ Sarah Payton (Futurelab)

You can find out more about these opportunities and join the discussion over on the vital site. I will definitely be signing up to a few of the discussions. 

I’m going to be really interested to see how this goes.

Twit to woo: how to harness social media (TES article - January 2010)

The TES ICT Guide was published this week and I've got a piece included on social media in schools. It’s already got some positive feedback that I am really pleased about. I’ve copied the article below into this post or you can read it over on the TES web pages – as always any feedback is very welcome.

BETT 2010 - Twit to woo: how to harness social media

News | Published in The TES on 8 January, 2010

There's no time to waste in bringing the social media revolution into the classroom, argues Ollie Bray, a deputy headteacher and national adviser for emerging technologies at Learning and Teaching Scotland

Stephen Fry recently used Twitter to spark a backlash against Jan Moir's Daily Mail article on Stephen Gately's death. He has also used it to announce the demise of his TV programme Kingdom and reveal that he was stuck in a lift.

Barack Obama became the first US president to run a campaign with an integrated web and social-media element.

Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media are shaping the daily news agenda for newspapers and news websites.

But can social media have a place in the classroom? You bet.

So what is it? Social media includes online tools such as blogs, podcasts, wikis, YouTube, Bebo and Facebook.

There are literally hundreds of social-media tools available on the web, and many of these are already being used by students at home to network, collaborate and learn. By their very nature, these resources are highly engaging for children and if used appropriately present powerful opportunities for teachers.

Why use social media in the classroom?

There are lots of ways that schools can use social media to enhance learning but perhaps the most obvious is how they can be used to share pupils' work.

All teachers know the impact of a good classroom display, yet how many people have a detailed look at children's work on the walls of a classroom or corridor? The people who really want to look at displays are those personally connected to the children - parents, family and family friends. Yet how often do we let these people into our schools? The web allows us to create a worldwide wall display to exhibit and showcase work to a huge audience.

Blog to provide audiences for students' work

East Lothian Council in Scotland was one of the first UK councils to install a WordPress multi-user blogging platform, making it available for all its 46 schools.

Blogs provide a very quick way to publish content to the web and are very easy to use. If you can send an email and add an attachment, you'll be happy writing a blog.

At Law Primary School, staff wanted to be more innovative in their use of ICT. They created a blog to provide information on school life and to encourage a regular dialogue between families, pupils and teachers. Pupils in the upper primary exhibit work and give an account of their achievements in activities in which they have participated.

The blog also helps parents keep in contact with children who take part in the P7 residential trip and let them know about their daily activities.

When the school was recently inspected, the report said:

"The development and use of the blog has helped to promote pupils' language, ICT and independent learning skills. It has also proved to be a highly effective way of highlighting and celebrating pupils' achievements."

Law also has a blog for its student council (edubuzz.org/blogs/lawschoolcouncil) and pupils upload a weekly audio file giving an update on school life. Such files can include podcasts.

Wiki for cross-curricular collaboration

Wikis are web pages that can be easily edited, the most famous of which is Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia.

When Tom Rae took over as the head of Tynecastle High School in Edinburgh, he noticed the school's Wikipedia entry was outdated and short on hard facts. As he was not sure how to update it, he set his senior students the task of doing it. In just under a week, a group of more than 10 students had researched and rewritten it. They became the first Tynecastle students to be published in Wikipedia. How empowering is that?

YouTube and live video streaming

Saltash.net Community School in Cornwall has really embraced the idea of social media and online audiences. As well as having their own YouTube channel, which features lesson resources, videos and extracurricular material, they regularly use Twitcam (an online tool that lets you turn your Twitter account into a video stream) to broadcast in real time from the school's livestock enclosure.

Musselburgh Grammar School in Scotland has used twitcam  to broadcast a show to classrooms, associated primaries and parents at home. Taking part in activities such as these are important in their own right and simultaneously instil a sense of confidence and responsibility in children. Also, because the pupils know the footage is going to be displayed online or broadcast live, they seem to take more pride in their work.

Gather live data with Twitter

Social-media tools such as Twitter also allow teachers to gather "real data" quickly and efficiently. Last February, I was asked to cover a Year 1 class. It was snowing and there were lots of questions about it. One pupil wanted to know why it was snowing and where else it was snowing in the world. I sent a message out via Twitter asking my personal learning network whether it was snowing in their country. Within 10 minutes, we had more than 20 replies from Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland and the US.

Armed with my iPhone, I asked one of the children to plot the responses on a Google Map. We then imported this into Google Earth and overlaid the cloud-cover layer. A great discussion ensued about clouds and weather fronts. What made the lesson special was its social nature - the children were amazed by the number of people willing to share information from around the globe.

Be social

Some school leaders remain wary of using these and other powerful social media tools in the classroom. But as long as they are used appropriately, wikis, blogs, Twitter and the like present no significant risk.

Indeed, many would argue that schools should be making more use of these resources, not only because of their powerful learning applications but also so the school can teach children how to use them in safe and responsible ways.

The latter is hard to do with school firewalls. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Agency's Think U Know (thinkyouknow.co.uk) website provides advice on using social-networking sites responsibly. Applications such as www.securus-software.com are also available.

THE SOCIAL-MEDIA TOOLBOX

• WordPress - an open-source blogging platform (www.wordpress.org)

• Wikispaces - create, edit and collaborate on your own wiki documents (www.wikispaces.com)

• Flickr - a photo-sharing website (www.flickr.com)

• YouTube - upload and share videos online (www.youtube.com)

• SlideShare - view, upload and share presentations and documents (www.slideshare.net)

• Twitter - a micro-blogging platform for swapping experiences and ideas (www.twitter.com)

TRY IT YOURSELF!

Blogs

Does your school or class have a regularly updated website? If not, why not set one up for the whole school or a year group or class? It's easy to do, using blogging tools such as WordPress, Blogger or TypePad.

You could start by creating a blog for a school trip, so parents can keep in touch and leave comments while you're away.

Wikis

Does your school have a Wikipedia entry? Is it a real reflection of your school? Could it be improved?

Anyone can edit Wikipedia. You could use it as a powerful learning opportunity and get your school published in the largest encyclopedia in the world.

Social-media savvy schools and councils:

• East Lothian Council (edubuzz.org)

• Law Primary School (edubuzz.org/blogs/law)

• Musselburgh Grammar School (www.mgsonline.org.uk)

• Saltash.net Community School (www.saltash.net)

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

• Wikipedia social media article (http://bit.ly/16SPG)

• Social media in plain English video (http://bit.ly/QliUq)

• Social media revolution video (http://bit.ly/qCmT8)

Literacy, ICT and a Curriculum for Excellence

My first school engagement event of 2010 was back in Edinburgh City where I was asked to speak to the staff at Portobello High School about ICT, CfE and Literacy. I’ve always had strong links with Portobello as it was the school that I did my very first teaching placement when I was training to be a teacher.

The presentation was based on the one that I did at Drumond Community High School back in October.

I updated the talk to included a few extra slide and points that I thought I was important. These points included references to the eduTalk365 project (drip feed CPD at its best), the value of using real-time data to engage students (including @ukwarcabinet and Classpress.net) the importance of useing modern reserch techniques (eg: Google Alerts) to help children find information that has not yet been published.

The slides that I used from the presentation are embedded below:

Literacy, ICT and the Curriculum for Excellence - January 2010 (updated)

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 and computer games in the classroom)

• Offer choice of output (written, typed, poster, presentation, video, podcast etc…) the input (thiking, planning, note-taking, 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, school TV station on YouTube etc…)

• Real-time news, events and global happenings are empowering for students (look at @ukwarcabinet and Classpress.net as example sof this)

• 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 information 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

4. Make sure that students have up-to-date reserch skills and understand things like Google Alerts.

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. A great example of Drip Feed CPD is the EduTalk365 Project - 5 minutes of quality input a day, every day for a year.

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 if you have any questions (details top right) or leave a comment below.

UK Microsoft Innovative Teachers Forum and Conference 2009

Yesterday along with Con Morris (National CPD Team) and Joe Wilson  (SQA) I traveled down to Birmingham for the Microsoft UK Innovative Teachers Forum and Conference.

This is the first time that Partners in Learning have run a conference like this as part of the UK forum and it was a really good event. It was also free for anyone to attend and a great day of quality professional development with a bunch of very enthusiastic teachers.

The event was opened by Steve Bewsick, Microsoft UK. I met Steve last year in Reading and it was nice to meet him again and listen to him open the conference.

The morning keynote was given by John Davitt who did a really great job of getting the day off to a positive start. I’ve seen John present before and really enjoy his style and humor. Amongst other things he demonstrated the Learning Score and of course his Learning Event Generator (LEG) and the iPhone version the Random Activity Generator (RAG).

If you have not seen or heard of the LEG or the RAG before have a read of this post from Stuart Ball and if you want to find out more about John here is a really nice article about some of his work that was published recently over on Merlin John’s site as part of the Innovators series.

After the keynote I had a chance to look around some of the Innovative Teacher projects that were on display. All of the work was very impressive and it was nice to chat to such dedicated and enthusiastic teachers who were all very obviously passionate about learning.

I had a second dose of John Davitt for my morning workshop where we were challenged to complete one of the random activities generated from the LEG. My group had to produce ‘knitting as a role play’.  We had great fun collaborating, gathering props, filming our role play and of course learning how to knit (thank goodness for YouTube!)

After lunch I went to a workshop that was run by Shirelands Learning. Shirelands are doing some interesting work with their first year curriculum (it is now completely thematic). They have also invested heavily in technology. Some of the students from Shirelands showed us some of the work that they have been doing using Microsoft Surface and also Little Big Planet for the PS3.

I particularly liked one of the ideas for Little Big Planet – where Shirlands have re-created their school in Little Big Planet. First year students play to the game to get to know their new school and to learning about their new surroundings. We have a number of Little Big Planet projects starting from the Consolarium in the new year and this might be one of the ideas that we follow up on.

The final part of the day was the UK Innovative Teacher Awards. All of the projects were great but the four projects that will be representing the UK in Berlin will be:

• Dave Rogers (Priory School Specialist Sports College) Pirates and social networking
• Simon Horleston (Howe Dell Primary School) EcoVids    
• Amy Lewis (saltash.net community school) Heroes    
• Jan Webb (Weston Village Primary School) A classroom without walls    

I was particularly delighted to see my good friend David Rogers pick up an award – which was very well deserved. I was also really pleased to see Dave Garland from Saltash.net get a special achievement award for all of the hard work that he has done to promote ICT in Schools.

So, overall a great event and one that I hope to have an opportunity to attend in the future…

Wikipedia, schools and the BBC - a response to tonight’s BBC Scotland Radio Broadcast

My thoughts on Wikipedia and its use in schools has been getting some in interesting press just recently. My original thoughts were posted here after the Handheld Learning Conference in London.
This article together with my presentation at the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers Annual Conference in October resulted in a nice piece in the Times Educational Supplement Scotland. I made some comments about the TESS piece just so I could clarify a couple of points. Overall I was very happy with it and I did say the things that were highlighted.

The TESS article was then used by Cara Sulieman to write a piece for Deadline Scotland. Unfortunately, I felt this piece missed the point. I’ve contacted Deadline and explained to them that I would be willing to do an extended interview – but they haven’t got back to me yet!

Anyway, I had just got back home tonight when I picked up a ‘tweet’ that said they were talking about me on BBC Radio Scotland. I tuned in but missed all but the last minute or so. I’ve now had a chance to re-listen to the piece on iPlayer.

The BBC didn’t mention me by name – but I’m well known enough for people to join up the dots. I think it’s a real shame and unprofesional of the BBC that they didn’t contact me for my opinion because actually they have completely missed the point in what I consider to be a poor piece of journalism. You can listen to it here and tell me what you think

I have written a rough transcript from the programme below. It may be slightly inaccurate as I just typed it as I was listening. I have also then inserted my own comments.

Anyway, it went something like this:


BBC: "Depute Head teacher from Musselburgh says that pupils should be encouraged to use the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia despite its inaccuracies".

OB Comment: That is actually not quite what I said. You can read the extended piece here.

The BBC Introduce Oliver Kamm (Times columnist) who recently defined Wikipedia as 'vain, glorious amateurism'. They ask him what he thinks is wrong with Wikipedia.

NOTE: for the record - I enjoy Oliver Kamm's articles on the Times on-line (although he would probably argue that the on-line version is not as good as the printed version :-)) . But I think he was misinformed and badly briefed by the BBC.

Carrying on:

Kamm: "What’s so wrong with it is not so much the balance between accurate articles and articles that are self- promoting rubbish. Wikipedia makes no distinction between someone who has knowledge and are competent to comment or if you are just someone off the street".

OB Comment: This gets us back to age old debate of knowledge, what is knowledge and who has the expertise to write articles? The person ‘off the street’ might actually write a really good Wikipedia article – particularly if it was about their street. You see Wikipedia caters for niche markets as well as the big issues and articles. That is one of the reasons why it is so big.

Kamm: "The problem is that knowledge is democratic in the sense that no one has the last word. But its not democratic in the sense that anyone can join in".

OB Comment: Depends of your definition of knowledge. Why can’t anyone join in? The more people that join in, the larger the debate we have and the more conversation we share with each other, the more we contribute to the growth and understanding of knowledge.

Kamm: "Wikipedia doesn’t encourage people with real competence to express their expertise".

OB Comment: Yes it does Wikipedia encourages anyone to comment – even people with errrmmm….’knowledge?’

Kamm: "It’s [Wikipedia] certainly fresh in the sense that it doesn’t distinguish between total rubbish and genuine expertise. But that doesn’t contribute to the sum of knowledge".

OB Comment: Do the disclaimers that are littered all over Wikipedia not contribute to this?

Surely it flags up when something might be ‘rubbish’ with text boxes saying things like "The factual accuracy is disputed' - 'This article contradicts another article' - 'This article contradicts itself' - 'This article reads like an advertisement' -'This article needs additional citation for verification"

Anyway, if you find something that is not actuate in your opinion, why don’t you have a look at the discussion tab, collaborate with the on-line community and then edit the article?

Kamm: "If the teacher, the Deputy Head Master (that’s me by the way!) who is encouraging his pupils to look at Wikipedia is unconcerned about that distinction then I’m slightly worried about it".

OB Comment: Really sorry you were poorly briefed by the BBC about my original article. My point is that because children use Wikipedia and because we can’t make it go away, WE SHOULD be teaching them to use it responsibly, rather than giving no guidance at all on its use. If we give no guidance at all they are likely to believe anything that they read. I actually think we probably agree on this point?

Kamm: "There is no equivalent on-line resource to my knowledge that is as reliable as your standard printed encyclopedia. There used to be a great printed encyclopedia by Columbia. Proper scholarly works written for a non specialist audience such as school pupils are the right way to imbibe and encourage knowledge".

OB Comment: Yes there is? If you really want  ‘scholarly works’ what about an on-line version of a traditional encyclopedia? For example Britannica on-line? Surely on-line is better than printed because it is kept more current and up to date?

Kamm: "What I would like educators to do is to encourage school pupils and students at university to approach critically the resources that they use and to be aware that only things that can be properly checked and researched are reliable knowledge. Wikipedia doesn’t discriminate between different types of user and that’s what worries me".

OB Comments: I completely disagree. Wikipedia can be properly checked and researched but it doesn’t mean that it is reliable, refuting the point about reliability being guaranteed through the checking of sources.  I do of course agree  that we need to teach school children to critically approach sources – that’s why I wrote the article on Wikipedia in the first place. We need to teach learners to use Wikipedia properly and to do their best to verify all the sources that they use.

I actually like the fact that anyone can edit Wikipedia and I’ve already acknowledged that this brings associated difficulties. I like the fact that knowledge doesn’t have to be elitist.

The interview went on a bit longer. But I think I’ll leave it at that.

I wonder if the BBC will get in touch now and ask me for my opinion? They presented a rather one-sided, biased argument that if it was a Wikipedia article would be unlikely to come up to standard and would be flagged as a concern…

By the way Oliver and I have already made our peace over on his blog.