OllieBray.com

Personal and Professional Review for 2009

It’s the time of year when I look back over my learning log to see what I’ve achieved during the last 12 months. As with most years I’ve probably achieved a bit more than most people, but a bit less than I should have. Overall though, despite a few ups downs down I think it’s been a pretty good year, not quite a vintage but a pretty good year all the same!

Here are a few aspects from the last year that really stuck out:

Work

I continued to work as Depute Head Teacher at Musselbugh Grammar School until 1st April 2009. Since then I’ve been seconded to Learning and Teaching Scotland as National Advisor for Emerging Technologies for Learning.  I started this role as part of the Glow Team but have since been transferred to the Consolarium project whilst maintaining a cross-organization portfolio for social media and advice on new technologies for teaching and learning.

I miss the buzz of the grammar school in particular working with the young people and the staff. I also miss being more distant from the East Lothian learning community. I don’t miss the Thursday morning senior leadership team meetings.

I am really enjoying my current remit in particular working with such a talented bunch of people. We work hard, spend a lot of time away from home, travel miles but have great fun. I am also enjoying being given the opportunity to contribute to policy advice and being consulted on a number of aspects of the Scottish Curriculum reform.

I’ve cut back on a lot of the external work over 2009 to concentrate on my new day job. But I did managed to deliver a couple of consultancy projects near the beginning of the year which have included:

• BBC New Lives New landscapes – was really pleased how these TV programmes turned out. I was the principal consultant and I think we managed to finally make ‘Industry Interesting’ again! I was particularly pleased with the Dundee programme that looks at the computer games industry.

• DoBe Teach IT – I was the main author on this resource contributing to the Google Earth, Best of the Web and Images section of the pack. I heard its now in over 500 schools across the UK which is something to be proud of.

• Microsoft InnoVids – After the Microsoft Summer School. I produced a few videos looking at the creative use of Microsoft Office in the classroom. A full range of the videos will be available at BETT 2010.

• CfE Social Subjects Textbooks – When I have had the chance I’ve been writing and editing resources for Hoddar Gibson (more on this in the new year) - the deadline is the 5th January!

Academic

I finished my Scottish Qualification for Headship in June and continue to do bits of work for the University of Edinburgh on the PGDE Geography Course including student observations.

It’s also been great to also be able to contribute to the BEd Primary Programme at Edinburgh University and work with PGDE Secondary Students at the University of Strathclyde.

Education Innovation

I’ve established some good relations with Microsoft over 2009 in particular the Innovative Teachers Network. I’ve visited Reading, Vienna and Brazil promoting the value of games based learning and other new technology in schools.

Since starting my secondment I have had an opportunity to engage with hundreds of teachers from around the UK and further afield. Specific highlights include:

• Computer Games in Schools: NAACE Strategic Conference.

• Personal Learning Networks: at the Scottish International Summer School on School Leadership.

• Accelerated Leadership - How do we develop motivated school leaders?: at the Scottish Learning Festival.

• Social Media in Schools: at the Handheld Learning Festival, London.

• Geography: Past, Present and Future Keynote Presentation: at the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers Annual Conference.

• Literacy, ICT and CfE: at Drummond Community High School.

• The use of Mobile Devices on Expeditions: at the Royal Geographical Society London.

• Curriculum for Excellence, Science, Change and New Technologies: at SSERC Conference.

• Using computer games as a context for learning and social interaction: at the K-12 Online Conference.

Professional Development

My main professional development comes from my personal learning network in particular twitter and my RSS Reader.

I have also been lucky enough to attend a number of conferences and Teachmeet events including Teachmeet BETT 2009, Teachmeet NE London and the Islay 2020 unconference in June.

I headed up the organization and chaired Teachmeet at the Scottish Learning Festival and I think that everybody that attended will agree that it was a lovely evening. I even achieved an ambition to my name on a BrainPop letter! which the BrainPop team later included as one of the highlights of their year.

 

Outdoor Education

Much of the first half of the year was spent trying (unsuccessfully) to get fit for my summer adventure to cycle the Great Divide from Banff, Canada to the Mexico Border. In the end I gave up training (it was taking far to long) and just flew out to Canada to start the ride.

After two weeks with Marco and Simon followed by posting most of my equipment back to the UK, deleting songs from my iPod and two further weeks riding alone I found myself (nearly 3000 miles from the start) at the Mexico border. I was looking a shadow of my former self, with no feeling in my right hand, slight concussion and huge smile on my face.

Cycling the Great Divide was without a doubt one of the hardest things I have physically ever done and a real highlight of the year.

Home

I continue to live in East Lothian and work across Scotland. Most weeks you can find me in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee on at least on day of the week. Work also increasingly takes me to London and other location all over the UK. I still enjoy regular trips to Weymouth and miss my friends and family back at home (even Yazz and Bertie).

You can find my pre-booked 2010 event list here – with lots of other events and conferences in the pipeline. Please get in touch if you want to meet up.


Volunteering

I continue as the chair of Volunteer Development East Lothian and we recently moved our offices out in Haddington to new premises in Musselburgh. I’ve been on sabbatical from the role for the last few months but I will be re-engaging with the organization from the new year (tomorrow actually!).

We have some exciting community and social enterprise projects up our sleeves for 2010 and I’m looking forward to being able to tell you more about them (particularly if you like cycling).

This was also my first year as a member of the SCSSA Advisory Group on School Leadership and member of the Media Literacy Scotland National Steering Group.

Looking forward

I already know that 2010 is going to be a very interesting and possibly a difficult year for me and is likely to involve change on a number of levels. Here are some of the things I am looking forward to:

• Re-engaging with the Volunteer Centre and taking on some new projects and initiatives.

• My new texbook will be published in June 2010. I’ll probably also start work on the CfE Level 4 edition - although I have another idea for a different side project that might end up occupying this time.

• I’m going to cycle between Lands End to John o' Groats. Not for charity – but in the words of late George Mallory, ‘because its there’.

• In June 2010 I will announce the team and dates for a return trip to Denali’s West Buttress that will depart in 2011 or 2012 depending on National Park permits and a few other details.

• In July I’m leading a group of young explorers to the Alaska Wilderness where we will trek and canoe the Noatak River from its Headwaters to the Bearing Sea.

• I’m going to start to make preparations for the end of my secondment from Learning and Teaching Scotland and for my return to school. I aim to apply for my first (well second actually...) headship during 2010.

• I’ve felt really fired up since the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Event in Brazil and as a result I’m going to work harder than ever before. 2010 will be the year I up my game and really fight for what I believe in to make sure that any children in my care get a modern education and not a re-invented one from the past 200 years.

• I’m going to attempt to find that work-life balance (OK you right… that’s not going to happen!)

•  I’m going to continue to expand my whiskey collection and share it with friends at regular intervals (yes, even Alan Parkinson).

• I’ll continue my quest for the perfect cup of coffee and hope to finally get round to helping my pal Michael roast some real beans early in the new year.

• Despite times of massive local, national and global change, I’ll remain optimistic about the future.

Anyway, if you’re a regular visitor to my little part of the Internet - Happy New Year and huge thank you to everyone how has helped, supported, worked and laughed with me through a good 2009.

Happy New Year

OB

My Nominations for the Edublog Awards 2009

 
The Edublog Awards 2009 are now open for nomination.

The Edublog Awards (now in their 5th year) are a chance to nominate and celebrate the achievements of edubloggers, twitterers, podcasters, video makers, online communities, wiki hosts and other web based users of educational technology.

Just like last year you have to nominate on an open blog post

Here are the individuals and their categories that I would like to nominate for:

• Best individual blog – John Connell (www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog) for saying it exactly how it is! A content source of inspiration with the strong message of, ‘we just need to get on with it!’.

• Best individual tweeter – Russel Tarr (http://twitter.com/RusselTarr). Russel is the king of links and an important part of my professional learning network.

• Best new blog – Trails Optional by Jen Deyenberg (http://trailsoptional.wordpress.com) Jen is championing ICT in education in Alberta, Canada. Her work with GPS and geocahingwith her students is particularly impressive. She has been blogging since May 2009.

• Best class blog – Law Primary School East Lothian Primary 6 Blog (http://edubuzz.org/blogs/lawprimaryp6) A well written blog by the children and by their teachers about life the universe and learning…. A great model for other school blogs that really open a window on learning to the children's parents and community.

• Best resource sharing blog – Tim Rylands (www.timrylands.com/blog). Tim blogs inspired resources for classroom use and good suggestions on how to use them practically every day (and sometimes more than once a day!)

• Most influential blog post – The VLE is Dead by James Clay (http://elearningstuff.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/the-vle-is-dead-the-movie/). Downloaded and viewed by hundreds of people all over the world. A great debate.

• Most influential tweet – Andrew Brown (http://twitter.com/whereisab/status/5944228767) Maybe not a big thing globally. But huge for Scottish Education and teachers in Scotland passionate about using ICT.

• Best teacher blog – Tom Barrett (www.edte.ch). Tom continues to inspire me and even bought me a pint the last time we met.

• Best elearning / corporate education blog – Stuart Ball and Kristen Wetherby from the Microsoft UK Innovative Teachers Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/teachers). Stuart and Kristen have mastered the art of writing a corporate blog without a corporate feel. Lots of practical advice and support for teachers around the world and the first Microsoft Innovative Teachers Blog globally (for which they deserve more credit).

• Best educational use of audio – SLF Talk – Really innovative use of audio at the Scottish Learning Festival mstrminded by John Johnson and David Noble to share the conference with the rest of the world (http://slftalk.posterous.com). A great model that could be copied for other events.

• Best educational use of a wiki - Teachmeet Wiki (http://teachmeet.pbworks.com) used by hundreds of educators from around the world to plan and organize free professional development for teacher by teachers.

• Best educational use of a social networking service - #movemeon (http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23movemeon) An inspired idea from Doug Belshaw Further details here.

• Best educational use of a virtual world – CANVAS (Children’s Art in the Virtual Arena of Scotland). A ground breaking project from Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Consolarium using Open Sim. Details here.

• Lifetime achievement – Stephen Downes (www.downes.ca). Stephens work needs no introduction.

More details about the awards and how to nominate over on the edublog awards site.

Using Mobile Technology on Fieldwork and Expeditions: RGS-Explore09

On Saturday I was invited along to speak at Explore 2009 at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London. When I lived on the South of England I used to hang out in the RGS a lot. I’ve spent hours going through old expedition reports and looking through their map room. However, since moving to Scotland its not been as accessible to me and its been a few years since I was there in a geographical / expedition capacity.

The Explore Conference is an expedition & fieldwork planning weekend. I went to my first one (or an earlier version of it) over ten years ago and it was a real privilege to be asked to contribute to the expedition strand by Shane Winser and Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop. Escape from the City has already written a good overview of the conference.

My input to the main conference was on ‘Using Mobile Technology on Fieldwork and Expeditions’. In particular though I was asked to steer away from the use of satellite phones as that was being covered in a separate presentation by Simon Thompson.

I had lots of good feedback from the talk and the slides that I used are embedded below (although they have lost some formatting in the transfer to slideshare):

Using mobile technology for fieldwork and expeditions

View more presentations from Ollie Bray.

The main points I covered were:  

• Sometimes it may be appropriate not to have a satalite phone – It depends on your expedition location.

• Communication back from the field to up-date a blog, record audio, up-load photos etc can be done through a smartphone (such as an iPhone). Advantages of this type of technology is that it is light and easily chargeable with a solar charger.

• Like any mobile service from overseas smartphones can be expensive, particularly for data.  It’s worth checking coverage beforehand, looking at international calling cards or taking out a seperate data plan for when you are away.

• In 2004 we used a normal Nokia mobile phone to send SMS messages back from Denali which were then typed up in the UK and up-loaded to our expedition blog. It was cheap, but it worked until we ran out of battery power! (solar panels were not that great in those days!).

• This summer during the Great Divide Expedition I managed to use WiFi hot spots to up-date my Twitter status and keep people informed of my progress. Agin you can search for these in advance online.

• The added value of a smartphone (such as an iPhone) are the Apps. They can add value to your expedition communication strategy and well a providing an electronic field notebook.

Specifically I mentioned the following Apps that I think can add value:

• iPhone notebook (built in)
• Google Maps and Satellite View (built in)
• Ordnance Survey Maps (I use OSBrowserR2)
• Built in GPS for Google Earth Exports (I use GPS recorder)
• Evernote – The ultimate electronic fieldwork notebook!

Demo of evernote below:

Other Apps I mentioned:

• Mobile blogging Apps – Including Typepad, Blogger and Wordpress
• Other fieldwork apps that night be appropriate for children (clinometer, compass etc…)
• AudioBoo – Great because people can subscribe to your Boos through iTunes

Finally:

• How to take an iPhone screen shot (instructions here)

• The importance of linking social spaces to improve audience and publicize your venture. For example you can use a smartphone to up-date your expedition blog, which will automatically send out an up-date on Twitter which will automatically up-date you expedition facebook page.

• The trick is putting your content where people are – rather than relying on people coming to you.

• Mark Beaumont (Currently on a BBC supported expedition to Cycle the Americas has made excellent use of Social Media on his trip)

• You can also use aggregation sites such as ‘twazzup’ to bring together expedition ‘hash tags’ from different team members to make a real-time expedition handout.

If you were at the presenation – I would be more than happy to answer any questions and as always welcome your feedback. There was a lt to cover in a very short space of time.

"Why it’s all Ollie Bray’s fault..."

I laughed when I read Dave Rogers recent post in my RSS Feed Reader. It was a real delight to read a lighthearted blog post called 'why it's all Ollie Bray's fault' from someone I have so much time and respect for.

Dave was writing about the first time that we met at the Scottish Assosiation of Geography Teachers Conference (SAGT) in 2006. I over ambitiously presented  a talk titled ’50 ideas in 50 minutes’ – at the time (despite over running!) it seem to be quite well received by the assembled audience of close to 200 geography teachers.

I made a screen cast of the talk and posted it to Google Video – it surprises me that it still continues to get hits and views most days. Much of the content is now quite historic and some of the tools that I mention don’t even exist anymore! I’ve also changed my mind about lots of things – but otherwise if you have not seen it, it might be worth a watch?

It’s nice to think that I might have influenced Dave’s practice in some way. But I’m sure if I had not introduced him to blogging then he would have found his own way. Never the less reading his post made me feel quite proud. It’s great to be able to work with teachers, introduce them to new ideas and share resources. It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.

I also read this article on PopTalk (the BrainPop UK Blog) titled 'Save the planet with a little help from Tim and Moby'. It was a post about Annette Lafrate a newly Qualified Teacher at Knightswood Secondary, Glasgow she had been using Tim and Moby to teach her class about environmental issues. The children had produced BrainPop posters as part of their assessment for the unit of work. Again Annette had discovered BrainPop through this site.

It is stories like this that remind me why I continue to blog, share and collaborate with the wider education community. I still believe sharing is the biggest efficiency saving we could make in education.

How many people have you shared your thoughts lesson plans or ideas with this week? Also if you have used a link or idea from this site - I always love to hear from you!

Photo: geoblogs

Climate Change Resources for Schools - Blog Action Day 2009

 
Today is Blog Action Day.

Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance.

First and last, the purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. Bloggers are asked to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue. By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the Web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue. Out of this discussion naturally flow ideas, advice, plans, and action.

More information about Blog Action Day in this YouTube Video below:

As this years themes is climate change and to show my support I thought I would post five of my favorite climate change resources that should be being used in schools.

1. Google Climate Change Resources

Google has produced a great set of on-line resources in the build up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit. This includes a series of YouTube videos and Google earth files.

Have look at this youtube video below to find out more:

This is Google maps mash up for sea level change is also a good old favorite of mine!

2. ZeroFootprint - Kids calculator

A great carbon footprint calculator aimed at children - thanks to Mr Evans for showing me this on his excellent blog.

3. The Climate Mystery

The climate mystery from Microsoft and the Discovery Channel is a great resource and set of mini games. But I can’t quite believe how few schools are using it in the build up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

More information here (you tube video):

Also see my previous blog post for links to resources.

4. LogiCity

LogiCity is a game produced by Logicom and The National Energy Foundation. The game set in a 3D virtual city where players are set the task of reducing the carbon footprint of an average resident. As players work their way through the game they will pick up information about Climate Change, and some of the main ways in which everyone is currently contributing to the emissions of the main greenhouse gas (CO2) that causes Climate Change.

It places students in a virtual environment and lets them experiment and experience the potential effect that individual actions can have on the planet before it's too late. Users can travel to the future to see the direct results of their actions in real time by quickly fast forwarding to the year 2066.

Thanks to the serious games blog for the heads up and original post on this.

5. Learning and Teaching Scotland Climate Change Website

There are some great resources on the LTS Climate Change website that are specifically aimed at Scottish Schools.

Finally, don't forget my melting men idea and what is your favorite resource to teach about climate change in schools?

Meeting Greg Whitby

After work today I got to spend a few hours with Greg Whitby I was really impressed with Greg’s style, philosophy and passion for education. I left the session feeling very inspired (and that’s not a word I use very often).

Like many others I first came across Greg in this short YouTube video – if you have not seen it is well worth a look:


Since then I have followed his blog and more recently followed Greg on Twitter.

A bit more background on Greg:

Greg Whitby is the pioneering Executive Director of Schools in the Diocese of Parrammatta, in Western Sydney, and leads a system of approximately 80 Catholic schools. He has 30 years combined experience in K-12 schooling and senior system leadership.
 
In recognising the critical link between good teaching practice and student learning outcomes, Greg is working to build the capacity of school leaders and teachers through a whole-of-system approach to professional learning.
 
 As a regular speaker at national and international conferences, Greg talks about the key areas underpinning a new model of schooling for today’s world:  de-privatising teacher practice, personalising student learning and ICTs as enablers to facilitate deep learning.   
 
In 2007, he was named the most innovative educator in Australia by the Bulletin Magazine in its annual SMART 100 awards.  Greg has also been awarded an ACEL Presidential Citation for his contribution to Australian education.   

 

So what was Greg’s message?

Greg spent two hours with a group of us at the LTS offices in Glasgow and we were joined by other practitioners from all over Scotland in a flashmeeting.

I took a number of things from his presentation including:

• Lots of young people are disengaged from their learning

• To overcome disengagement we need to search for relevance

• We have spent the last 20th Century perfecting 19th centaury learning (quoted Stephen Heppell here)

• We need to start asking big questions about learning and the structure of learning. For example why do all children start school at the same age? Does the class you end up in dictate where you end up? How much do school timetables kill creativity?

• The whole next version of the web will be a mash up

• We have good schools but we are victims of the past when it comes to school improvement.

• What’s the point of a classroom of the future or  school of the future? We want a classroom of today!

• If you want success you have to un-lock the timetable.

• I [Greg] expect all of my schools to be extremely diverse.

• We need to develop systems that allow us to take action as things happen.

• Students learning is what makes the biggest difference

• The focus of technology should be on teachers learning as well as students learning

• Good leadership involves the making or courageous decisions

• Use the wisdom of the crowds (teachers, parents and most importantly students) to drive forward school improvement

• All of our children and staff are allowed to use facebook, youtube, my space etc… But it is important to have robust network security and tracking.

• Teachers feel under valued because they are always being told how to improve.

• Our leaders have to be leaders in pedagogy

If you are interested in what Greg had to say – why don’t you listen to his presentation on the flashmeet re-play.

National Intranet, National Virtual World and Now National Blogs and Wiki’s

Recent comments from colleagues who live and work elsewhere in the UK at the Handheld Learning Festival 2009 reminded me that I am very lucky to work within the education ICT sector in Scotland. Yes, there are always things that can be improved but I actually think we are pretty lucky.

The reasons for this include:

Glow - we have a national intranet. All local education authorities in Scotland are now signed up to this service and roll out is well underway. As well as providing a set of tools that can be used by Scotlands learners including messaging, discussion boards and video conferencing Glow also allows us to authenticate other approved services via shibboleth.

CANVAS – Children’s Art in the Virtual Areana of Scotland is Scotland’s first virtual world. Accessed via Glow it provides all Scotland’s learners with access to a seafe and secure multi user 3D virtual universe for learning. You can find out more information about CANVAS here. Personally, this is something I have been waiting for!

Blog and Wiki’s – Announced yesterday by Learning and Teaching Scotland are plans to enrich the user experience and functionality of Glow by adding national blogs and wikis that will allow students to create on-line diaries, showcase their work and collaborate with other children all over Scotland.

You can read further details of the Glow enhancement over on the Glow blog.

Should schools use Wikipedia?

At the recent Handheld Learning Festival 2009 I was talking about the use of Social Media in Schools. The session seemed to go well and generally has been quite well received.

One of the points from my presentation was that I felt that schools should have their own Wikipedia article about their school and the wider school community.

My argument for this was not only in itself does this present an opportunity for a fantastic cross-curricular project but it also can contribute to the positive ethos of a school. Many schools already have Wikipedia articles written about them and some of them present a negative picture of the learning community.

During my presentation this message was tweeted out by a few people in the audience and then in turn re-tweeted.

Bart Van B (A geography teacher from Belgium and @geobart on Twitter) took a bit of an exception to what I was suggesting and an interesting three way conversation occurred between Alan Parkinson, Bart  and myself.

I’ve documented the conversation to provide a bit of background by combining the tweets below:

Ollie: All schools should be written up on Wikipedia

Bart: I totally disagree on that matter. Wikipedia should only be used as a starting point, not as an actual reference.

Alan: Presumably Ollie Bray means that the students write the entry?

Bart: That's even worse (shivering at the mere thought of it). I think we should train examining and experimenting skills far more often than other children and even adults will copy and paste those mediocre entries in their presentation without questioning validity. We no longer allow students to use Wikipedia as a source at our geography department. Sorry, but 'wiki' and 'web 2.0' have become new hypes and there are apparently loads of lemmings on the premises following blindly.

Ollie: Yes, I was suggesting that schools should write there own Wikipedia entries...

Bart: I'm having serious questions about that. Maybe they should properly learn how to write. And will they just copy the entries from another source? And how will they be ever mature enough to discern true or valuable from rubbish? I'm so very scared this will be the ultimate rectification of the copy-and-paste mentality. I think writing an entry in a Wiki may be a form of presenting experiment results and conclusions though, but writing (filling up a wiki as a goal on itself is as useful/useless as making e.g. a powerpoint and sharing it.

Ollie: You have completely missed the point? I'll post a reply on my blog ASAP and I look forward to the debate from there...

Bart: Ok, I am very interested

So this is my reply - its a bit long but I hope that some readers will find it useful

First of all for the reasons that I’ve mentioned above I’m sticking to my point about schools having their own Wikipedia articles. The task presents a great opportunity for teachers to actually work with children to produce a good, well researched, appropriately referenced and collaborative article. By doing this we will avoid the creation of a ‘mediocre’ entry as Bart suggests and also teach children more about how Wikipedia works.

I also don’t think that wiki’s and web 2.0 are hypes. I think they are powerful tools for learning and part of an increasing teaching paradigm. I want to emphasis the word ‘tool’ here. A wiki in itself does not create good learning. But, if used appropriately and combined by sound pedagogy from the classroom teacher the results of using such resources can be outstanding. You only have to look as far as some of the great Wiki work going on at Perth Academy, Scotland led Neil Winton and his team to get a good understanding of the power of these tools.

A difficulty that we have is training teachers in this new technology and the pedagogy that is associated with it. This is where appropriate professional development within schools is needed. The East Lothian Teachmeet Roadshows are and excellent and sustainable example of this.

I’m a bit concerned that Bart seems to think that I’m suggesting that young people shouldn’t be taught to read and write? I’m not – but I am suggesting that Wiki’s and other engaging technology can be used to improve literacy and numeracy skills in young people. Again I’ll sight Neil Winton and his department as an example here.

I partly agree with Bart about his point about children presenting work in PowerPoint. But again this actually depends on the task. I don’t think there is anything wrong with getting young people to submit work as a handwritten piece, word processed, as a web page, as a video, as a podcast, as poster or as a newspaper report. The reason for this is that all we are talking about here is presentation. In teaching we do often give some credit for presentation eg: how neat your handwriting is, if you have used a good page layout, if your video is well edited etc… But we actually normally give more marks / credit for research, planning and content of the piece of work. We also should give marks / credit for referencing.

Bart seems to be worried about a ‘cut and paste’ culture but banning wikis won’t stop this. Only by good teaching combined with instilling the idea of intellectual property and copyright in young people will we be able to reverse this shift in culture.

To be honest I don’t think there is any point in banning Wikipedia in schools. Students will continue to access it when they go home or on their mobile phones and therefore still use it to gain knowledge (no matter how accurate this knowledge is). If we ban Wikipedia in schools how can we ever teach young people to use this resource in a safe and responsible way? Its the same argument for most social networking sites.

What we should be doing is teaching students how to use Wikipedia properly – because it’s not going away.

It annoys me when people simply dismiss Wikipedia as a source because they feel it is not actuate. In my experience these are people who don’t really understand how it works and teachers need to understand how Wikipedia works so they can pass on this knowledge to their students.

The first thing that teachers need to understand about Wikipedia is that it openly acknowledges that it might not be accurate. You don’t have to look very far through it pages to see disclaimers 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'

The interesting thing about these and the many other disclaimers that appear over Wikipedia is that by acknowledging that it could be wrong it is actually adding credibility to its articles.

I can’t remember ever seeing a disclaimers like these in a more traditional encyclopedia (eg: Britannica) or a Sunday newspaper. But these sources can also be wrong and the errors are often just corrected in a re-print of the encyclopedia or as an apology by the newspaper months or years later.

Young people should be being taught to question everything that they read on-line and in print. The Wikipedia disclaimers help remind us of this and should be being used by teachers as a teaching and learning point. Fundamentally, we should be getting children to use a bit of common sense to decide for themselves if something is true or not.

I think teachers can get students to use wikipedia in a more responsible way by:

1. Using the disclaimers as a starting point to help think about an article in a more critical way.

2. Challenging students to check to see how many times an article on Wikipedia has been edited. As a general rule I would say that if something has been edited a lot, it’s more likely to be accurate than if it’s just been put on-line and never edited. I still come across people who don't realize you can edit wikipedia.

3. Encouraging Wikipedia users to look at the discussion forums that accompany each article to see if we agree or disagree with the justification for the sources.

4. Looking carfully at the original reference of articles (normally to other on-line sources). We should be teaching young people to follow the chain of references backwards to assess the credibility and validity of the original source.

5. Getting our students to understand exactly how a good wikipedia article is produced.

I think good wikipedia article is produced by groups of people collaborating. The authors reach a compromise by allowing everyone who wants to put their own point of view across. A so-called expert with a strong opinion about exactly what should be said who keeps reverting an article back to only what they think will be locked out of Wikipedia. 

Conclusion

Finally, a question I often get asked is ‘Is Wikipedia actuate?’. Some researchers at the University of Colorado would argue that some articles are more actuate than similar articles in Britannica. Wikipedia is also more up to date in terms of real time events – for example when Pluto was declassified as a planet in 2005 Wikipedia was up-dated almost straight away. Other more traditional encyclopedias had to wait for a re-print. There is of course difference between up to date and accuracy.

However, the simple truth and answer to the accuracy question is that, like books, WIkipedia is full of mistakes! But this is why we need to need to teach young people how to use it as a resource properly. It’s not going away and we certainly shouldn’t ban it from schools.

Social Media in Schools: Handheld Learning Conference 2009

On the Tuesday afternoon of the Handheld Learning 2009 Conference I had an opportunity to present on Social Media in School. This was part of the social media break out strand of the conference.

Below are the main slides that I used in my presentation below:

Social Media in Schools

View more documents from Ollie Bray.

The main points from my presentation were as follows:
 
What is Social Media?

There are lots of definitions of Social Media and lists of social media tools all over the Internet. Some diagrams and descriptions are more useful than others in trying to define what social media is and how we can used in education. I came across the diagram on the right (there are various versions of it) which I thought was useful in trying to define the role of individual social media tools (you can click on the image for a bigger version of it).

As I explain during my conference session I don’t pretend to be an expert in this topic. But I have had some success in using ICT and social media tools in an education context. For me there is no single definition that can encapsulate what we mean by social media but I think it has most of the following characteristics.

Social media:

• is primarily about communication in particular the conversation
• challenges traditional models of communication
• tends to be open allowing an access to a wide audience
• is normally built from the bottom up

Five reasons why schools should be interested in social media:

1. The power to engage

Social media such as blogs, wiki’s and podcats can give students a sense of audience.

Like all social media tools in school it is important to start somewhere. I suggested that a good place for schools to start might be writing a Wikipedia article about your school or at the very least having a look to see if your school has a Wikipedia article written about it. The truth is that many schools do have their own Wikipedia articles and that many of them are quite negative and not truly reprehensive of the school community.

Writing or re-writing an artical about your school can not only create an accurately researched cross curricular project but at the same time it is likely to improve the image / marketing of your school (Wikipedia is very popular in Google). It is also hugely empowering for students. How often do they normally get to publish to the largest encyclopedia in the world?

Some education authorities such as East Lothian in Scotland have really embraced some types of social media in particular blogging. Edubuzz (managed by David Gilmour) is a Wordpress Multi User blogging platform that is available for all learners within East Lothian. One of the reasons it is unique is because it is not hosted on the councils servers and therefore completely independent to the councils corporate IT department.

The East Lothian EduBuzz project has been and continues to be a massive success.  Most school websites in East Lothian are now edubuzz blogs which means they are quick and easy to up-date by teachers and pupils. The director of education has a blog which shows that he is fully supportive of the initiative and schools such as Preston Lodge have over 1500 subscribers to their blog by email – creating an effective, easy to publish digital news letter. Law Primary Schools blog and how it uses ICT was sited as an example of good practice in a recent HMIe report – this has given other schools confidence to develop a similar model.

 
Social media tools can also be used to encourage collaboration. Again East Lothian are one of the only education authorities that I know of in the UK that have adopted Google Apps for Education across the whole of the authority for students. Not only does this provide them with a great email solution and massive free data storage solution for pupils but it also allows students and teacher to utilize Google Docs in their learning and teaching.

In my experience well managed collaboration on work normally results in an improved output and increased student pride. It is also a vital skill for enterprise education.

2. Real data in real time

Social Media can also be used to source real data in real time. During this part of the talk I described two examples of this that I’ve used in schools.

i) Google Alerts to celebrate pupil achievement

Google Alerts is a way of telling Google a key word of phrase and then if that word of phrase is published on the Internet and picked up by the GoogleBot then you get sent an email linking to the article where it has been published. I sometime describe this as ‘searching the future internet’.

My suggestions is that all schools should have Google Alerts for their schools. Why? Well it can be used as an early warning system if someone writes about or mentions your school online. Importantly, it’s also a really good way to track student achievements. Many children take part in activities outside of the school and some of them are really impressive. They are often written about in the media and normally the child’s schools is mentioned. As most papers are digitized Google Alerts gives you an opportunity to be told about this as soon as it is published and this is often before you have a chance to read the local paper.

I also believe that the use of Google Alerts is a vital study skills that we should be teaching young people in order to collect their own research. I’m sure higher education researchers use alerts a lot.

 ii) Twitter to gather weather data

My Twitter snow lesson is quite well documented but the key points of the lesson were:

• My twitter network was asked where they lived and if it was snowing
• We plotted all the tweets on a Google Map
• We exported the data into Google Earth and overlaid the real-time satellite imagery
• We discussed every part of this process and the results

The children were captivated by this particular task because it involved collecting real data and communicating with real people. In essence the lesson was ‘live’ and this provided a powerful context for learning.

3. Social media is not going away

Schools need to realize that social media, new technologies and the Internet are not going away. In fact they are only going to become more prominent in 21 century youth culture and society. Schools need to start asking themselves questions about why devices such as mobile phones are banned within their education institutes? Are phones really phones any more? Or just powerful mini computers that happen to make phone calls?

Some schools have been very progressive in social media adoption and I think one of the UK leaders in this field is Saltash.net Community College in Cornwall.

You only have to look at the Saltash.net home page to see they are forward thinking. This is a school where parents and the wider school community can get up-dates on school news via the Saltash.net twitter account. Pupils and staff up-load work, assignments and achievements to the schools YouTube channel (effectively creating a school television station). The school has an animal enclosure and you can visit the pigs and chickens 24/7 via the school webcams. If your lucky enough you can also attend one of the schools live broadcasts via twitcam (an on-line video streaming service). Finally, if you like what your reading here you can even contribute to the school project via paypal! Most importantly anything that the school does with regard to social media is based on well grounded classroom pedagogy to support learning and student achievement.

Other schools are also making use of live video streaming services suck as Qik. Musselburgh Grammar School has broadcast a live music event from the schools drama studio to other classroom in the school. As the event was not open to the wider community parents and friends of the pupils involved could also join the broadcast on-line.


4. Professional development

Social media can help education professionals and school leaders move towards a more ‘drip feed’ approach to CPD. I like attending conferences for the conversation but in recent years I have learnt a lot more from my immediate personal learning network than I have from listening to conference presenters within the traditional ‘sheep dip’ model.

However, in order for people to become used to using social media  for their professional development they may need to be nurtured as it presents a whole new way of working. My suggestion is to get teacher using some of the more easily accessible websites that have an obvious link to CPD for example slideshare and teachers TV. Try to get people to rate presentations and programmes and to leave feedback as this contributes to the social aspect and personal development of using such tools.


5. Businesses want to hire people who can use the Internet

Schools ICT should no longer be about how to create letters in word, underline text, making things bold or drawing a graph in excel. We have moved on and ICT tools have moved on. I’m not saying Microsoft Office isn’t important, because I think it is very important. But I also think the ICT curriculum needs to develop, move on and evolve in exactly the same way that ICT and the use of the social web has done within successful business.

Lets face it, organizations that continue to use traditional models based on an industrial hierarchy don’t seem to be doing that well in the new world markets. Banks are a good example of this. Companies such as Google on the other hand continue to thrive and expand in this rapidly change world. An enjoyable easy read on this subject is ‘What Would Google Do?’ by Jeff Jarvis.


Challenges

Schools and teachers wishing to use social media will continue to face challenges. The first challenge is around permission and strong school leadership. One of the reasons that there has become wide spread blogging and more open culture in East Lothian is that the Director of Education has fully supported the blogging initiative.

The second challenge is one of web filtering. There is no easy answer to this and the situation seems to be completely un-coordinated across the UK with massive regional and local variations.

I was in a primary school before the summer holidays where I observed three girls rehearsing a dance routine for their summer show from a laptop perched on chair in the corner of the room. YouTube was un-blocked in the school and the children’s access to YouTube was built up on a system of trust and respect between the students and the class teacher. There are other schools that I know of that block this service completely for both students and staff. I know which school I would rather work for and wish that schools would risk assess filtering (in a similar way to school trips) rather than blanket banning such potentially valuable education resources.

At what point will digital entitlement for students include access to content as well as access to devices?

School improvement

Finally it will be interesting to see how education institutes start to use social media to contribute to the schools continuous cycle of improvement. We have a lot to learn from enterprise here. Starbucks for example has a website called ‘My Starbucks Idea’ where customers can leave a comment suggesting ways that the coffee chain could improve its service. Some of the ideas it adopts – just think about how much money it is saving on research and development. Won’t it be great when schools become open enough to do this?

Athelstanford Primary School in East Lothian recently challenged parents at an assembly to post a comment on the schools wall wisher page explaining how they were going to become more environmentally friendly. A great example of how the whole school community can be involved in children’s learning.

Conclusion

As I said at the start of this long article on social media in schools I don’t pretend to be an expert on this subject and I know there are lots of other benefits and challenges in using this type of technology with young people. However, I remain committed to the fact that good teachers use good tools and I think some of the web based tools that I have mentioned above should be in every teachers toolbox.

What do you think? Please feel free to leave a comment if you were at the presentation at Handheld Learning 2009 I would love to know what you thought.

The Technological revolution: what does this mean for schools?

Following on from my post yesterday about changing youth culture. I thought I would also mention some of the other data that I referred to at the Building Windmills Conference about future technological changes and why we should be thinking about these changes in schools.

In its recent publication ‘Europe Logs On: European Internet Trends for Today and tomorrow’ Microsoft predicts five trends for the near future (2012).

These are:

1. The 3 screens

We will see a concerted shift to seamless PC, TV and mobile experiences.
 
2. The rise of connected entertainment

Seamless entertainment experiences will bridge the gap between online and offline. This will end the need to watch TV in real-time as we shift to seemless PC and TV experiences. Consumers will download movies and TV shows and only access ‘live’ TV for big news and sports events.
 
3. The whole web will become social
 
Social connectivity will become commercial and advertising will become increasingly personal.

4. The 3D Internet
 
The 3D internet will become a reality, with consumers able to virtually experience a holiday resort before they book, students will be able to attend virtual lecture and shoppers will be able to see how an armchair would look in their living room before they buy it.
 
5. The rise of smartphones
 
Smartphone's will stop being a category of their own and become a mainstream affordable choice. People will increasingly use mobiles as a natural first port of call for web browsing, social networking, photo sharing, music, videos and other dimensions of their digital lives.

Again I think that this data is interesting for education and I’m sure that some will argue that these changes are already here, but perhaps not yet widely adopted?

Assuming than that over the next five years this technology will become the normality should schools be asking the following questions?

1. What is your school dong to prepare for the next global advances in technology? Are you thinking ahead?
2. How can connected entertainment become connected education?
3. What systems have you got in place to teach young people responsible behavior within the emerging 3D Internet?
4. Will mobile phones continue to be banned in your school?
5. When does a mobile phone become a mini computer that you can make phone calls on?

What do you think?