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Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning (4 of 5) – Choosing and using tablets

Tim Scratcherd (the School House Partnership) and I were recently asked to write a report for the Oxford Education School Improvement Series on the use of Tablets and Apps. The purpose of this report is to provide practical support and guidance for school leadership teams who are considering the purchase of tablet devices. The report is aimed at school leaders and teacher in England but the ideas within the report are transferable to other parts of the world.

With permission from Oxford I’ll be duplicating some of the report on olliebray.com over the next week. You can download the full report or order a paper copy over at the new Oxford School Improvement Tablet and App Help Centre.

 

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Part Four - Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning – Choosing and using tablets 

Tablet technology moves very rapidly. Before considering the current range of devices available, you will need some general principles for choosing and using tablets. Moving to the use of tablets is a development that requires the same sort of thinking as any other development. So, a consideration of what you want to achieve, where you are now, what it will cost, and how you will know it has worked, within some sort of shared and agreed development plan, is a good idea. For tablets, you will need to consider all the following questions.

 

What will be the focus of use?

There are two main areas to think about here: whether the tablets are to be tools for teacher use, to help them improve teaching or make management and administration processes more effective, or whether they are for use by pupils, to improve learning processes. In practice it is possible to do both, but for effective planning it is essential to separate these out, because they have different implementation requirements. For example, if you were only to use a set of tablets for teachers to move to a paperless environment, you would be less concerned about the quality of your Internet access.

 

What sort of learning are we looking for?

The case studies show that, while there are significant benefits in developing teacher use, the real impact comes from a well-implemented approach to pupil use. Therefore, for pupil use, what sort of learning gains are we looking for? Exciting learning, described earlier, is exactly the sort of learning which is possible with tablets. At the same time, there are other ways to achieve learning gains. Do you want learning to take place, where it was not happening before, or

not happening very much? Do you want to engage parents through increasing learning at home and outside formal settings? Or do you want to change the nature of some or all of the learning? This is where Exciting Learning comes in.

What sort of development would we like? Is it top-down, or bottom-up?

There are many instances of schools buying a small number of devices, not just tablets ‘to find out what they can do’, with the implication that if it looks as though they might be useful, more will be bought. This is, of course, an example of bottom-up, or piloting. An example of a top-down development might be the decision to do without an ICT suite and replace with tablets. Bottom- up approaches have the advantage that they are less costly. Top-down approaches have the advantage of immediacy and equality. In both cases, we need to learn from other schools’ experiences, and after reading the case studies, this is the fastest way to find out what they can do. Experience shows that, once a development has started, a mixture of both top-down and bottom-up approaches start to surface. The beauty of tablets is that there is a very wide range of uses which deliver different types of benefit.

 

Are we clear about the costs versus the benefits of tablets?

At the same time, there needs to be a consistent way of judging benefit. A good method is simply to ask, ‘How much more learning do we get? Is the learning better?’ The commonest reasons for the adoption of top-down approaches to tablets are that they improve motivation, and they increase parental engagement. In both of these, the underlying reason is more and better learning. More learning can be achieved in very simple ways. For example, the fact that tablets start up immediately removes delays from the learning process, and thus progress in lessons is improved at once. After the learning gains have been chosen it is time to ask, is the learning worth the cost? For a rapidly growing number of schools, the answer is a resounding yes.

What is the impact on infrastructure?

Some things are essential for effective use of tablets. The first is high quality broadband, with a robust high quality wireless infrastructure, which all tablets can access seamlessly from anywhere learning takes place. Specialist advice is recommended to review current provision. It is also very important to consider display options for tablet devices. They can be made to connect up to existing projectors, but often it is advantageous to consider display specific to the device, such as Apple TV. This has the benefit of being a local wireless connection for any Apple type device in the classroom. Intel’s classmate PC offers a similar projection solution through its pre-installed software. Thereafter, there are three main areas which require ongoing management.

The first is the installation and use of apps. Here, management issues are the same as for all software. All apps need educational licences. It is important to check the cost of installing an app on many devices. Schools will also want to control the number and types of app available on tablets.

The second is e-safety. The filtering of websites is an issue schools already need to consider, but which also impacts specifically upon tablets in a variety of ways. For example, tablets synchronise with other devices, meaning that all information including any pupil information can be copied onto devices not under the school’s control. It is essential that schools have an up-to-date e-safety policy (see tomorrows post!).

Thirdly, there is the storage of pupil work. Tablets are designed as devices for individuals, whereas the work pupils produce needs to be shared for a whole range of purposes; particularly for assessment including marking and other feedback, and celebration through publishing. Typically this has been done on PC based local area networks by having shared local folders where all work is stored. There can be shared folders for tablets but these are not local and carry with them security and copyright issues. Current solutions are essentially work rounds involving pupils emailing work as attachments to teachers or the use of a cloud based storage system such as Google Drive or Microsoft Skydrive.

 

Have we considered the total cost of ownership of tablets?

Schools are very familiar with the ideas of capital (start-up) and revenue (running) costs, and these are easily identifiable from the above. Don’t forget to include energy costs in calculations, particularly if you plan to deploy a lot more devices in schools. One cost which can be often neglected is the cost of professional development.

In summary, there are three forms of cost; purchase, maintenance, and the time spent to use tablets correctly.

 

How are we going to procure?

There will be a need not just to procure the devices, but also a review of infrastructure in general, and possibly wireless connectivity upgrades and a management service or tool for control over apps. This depends upon the nature of the project and the availability of funding. It is tempting, when running a pilot with a small number of devices simply to buy the devices. This leaves the school open to all sorts of risk. Another option is for pupils to bring their own devices (BYOD) which carries equal risk and also brings into question an entitlement to learning for all. In the following case studies the devices start off as being owned by the school, but pass into the property of the parents after an agreed length of time. The two commonest routes taken by schools are outright purchase, and leasing arrangements, whereby the devices remain the property of the school, but parents pay a monthly sum until purchase after a period of time for a nominal amount.

What device are we going to procure?

There is a large range of devices to choose from, but there are only a small number of operating systems used. These are Android, iOS and Windows. The iOS operating system is used on Apple devices. A wide range of manufacturers use the Android operating system to produce tablets of all sizes and functionality. The vast majority of primary schools working with tablets are using the iOS devices, and there are very good reasons for this: the huge and growing range of apps available, covering practically all the ways both pupils and teachers might wish to use the devices; the fact that the look and feel of the device is the same for all of them; their comparative robustness; the growing number of specialist support companies who understand the particular needs of schools; the national network of consultants (Apple Distinguished Educators) available to help with professional development; and the wealth of practical experience available from schools and others.

There are also reasons for choosing devices with other operating systems: Android devices tend to be cheaper, and Windows 8 offers the opportunity of better integration with any existing PC based infrastructure. There is a bewildering choice of Android based devices, and schools need to spend the time comparing features and cost.

 

More about cloud storage

There are many services offering to store files ‘in the cloud’, which use remote storage through the web. Some of them are generic and some are for specific files, such as photos. While there are many advantages to using these services, all of them have different arrangements regarding copyright and security, and many have other constraints, such as the age of those using them. School leaders intending to use one of these services are recommended to investigate thoroughly before committing pupil information and files to them.

 

Some key things to consider when choosing a tablet

Have a think about:

• Battery life
• Camera quality and direction
• Build quality
• Quality and range of apps
• Methods for saving pupil work

 

In my next post I’ll discuss Policy Considerations – you can download the full “Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning” report now for free over on the Oxford School Improvement Site.

Related articles

Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE) - Introduction

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

Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning - Introduction

Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning (1 of 5) - The Big Picture

1:1 Learning: Myth 5 – 1:1 is all about independent learning [nope, the impact on collaborative learning is far greater]

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 5 – 1:1 is all about independent learning

Obviously, if used in the right way, 1:1 (one device for each learner) does offer opportunities for independent learning. But the reality of it is the digital collaborative learning opportunities are far greater with 1:1 than without. It is also important to remember that ‘independent’ learning doesn’t necessarily mean ‘learning by yourself’.

I think there is a time and a place for children to learn independently but then I also feel that as human beings we achieve our greatest learning feats through collaboration and copying. Just think how you learnt to walk, talk and read. Isn’t it a shame that education is still one of the only aspects of society that still calls copying, ‘cheating’.

Even in large scale 1:1 deployments that don’t necessarily involve good connectivity, the right solution can still offer digital collaboration on a classroom / school level through a Local Area Network (LAN). Of course the real power of digital collaboration comes when you combine 1:1 with good connectivity and give learners the full power of the Internet.

For me the photo below sums it up:

 

Photo: Fearghal Kelly

You have a group of young people working on Chromebooks in Google Docs. If you look carefully you can see that there are a number of other learners in the document all collaborating at the same time. In this case all of the collaborators are all in the same room, but they could be anywhere in the world.

When you observe learning like this it really starts to make you think more about ratios and what it is we are actually trying to achieve in education. Google Docs can achieve a ratio of 50:1 (fifty learners all contributing to one document in real-time). What’s more because Google Docs is a browser-based application you can easily edit documents on any Internet enabled device (although it is optimized for Android and Chrome)

The real-time collaboration features of Google Docs really does make it a killer application for education. I just wish more people would consider using it to support learning and formative assessment. Microsoft’s Office 2013 supports similar features, so perhaps we might see more of an uptake then?

Google Docs is obviously not the only suite of collaboration tools now available to learners. Other collaboration tools include blogs, wikis, web-based conferencing, voice threads, glogs and loads of other stuff.

 

There really is an amazing suite of opportunities available for educators to help support learning theses days. Combined with good learning and teaching 1:1 technology integration in our schools can only enhance these opportunities.

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.

 

1:1 Learning: Myth One – ‘1:1 is new’ [is it really?]

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 One - ‘1:1 is new’

No its not! We have had 1:1 computing in schools for many years. Now it might have not been ubiquitous across the school but that is not really the point. 1:1 has been around for a long time - its just been confined to the domain of the computer lab or business education suite.

Unfortunately, during my work as Scotland’s National Adviser for Emerging Technologies I observed some of the worst pedagogy in schools in computer labs (don't forget its not just computing teachers who use labs). It great to see movements like Computing at School (CAS) challenge this and new pedagogy was one of their focuses at their recent conference in Edinburgh. 

Photo credit: Doug Belshaw (cc)

I think that one of the reasons that pedagogy is not always as good as it should be in computer labs is actually down to how labs are often designed.

Just think about standard computer lab design for a minute. Often the desks are around the sides of the room (to make it easier to get power and Ethernet connections to machines) which means that children spend most of their time with their back to each other and their teacher.

Modern and better thought out furniture is starting to change this and we can be a lot more creative with power and connectivity in new school build projects. But this means we need to build schools in different ways.

Photo: St Monica's Primary School,  NSW, Australia

We can even make some quick changes to ‘old style’ labs but putting a few mirrors behind the computer screens so that a teacher can still make eye contact with his students or by introducing ‘muster points’ in the classroom where students can meet away from the screen to discuss their learning with peers or with a teacher.

 Photo Credit: Stephen Heppell

Laptop and wireless technology is also having in impact on school design – although it is important to remember that wireless is still a challenge in many schools due to bandwidth issues.

However, even with the best furniture, agile spaces and high tech hardware learning is not always great in ICT suites.

One alarming trend that I have seen in recent years is that some teachers now constantly give children free time at the end of the lesson (or even during the lesson) to use the computers in anyway that they like.

Now I don’t have a problem with ‘free time’ or ‘golden time’ or any other classroom based reward system as long as it is well thought out. But I worry that with some teachers it has become an expectation of their classes and the reason why learners ask for this free time is because they a board and not stimulated with what they are being asked to do. My preference has always been to set ‘learning challenges’ when there are free gaps of time to fill, or to ensure that learners always know where they are going with their learning - both of these strategies remove the need for a random ‘free-for-all’.

As a teacher my best lessons are / were the ones when the class are still captivated with their learning when the bell goes because we have lost track of time. I’m never worried in these situations that we don’t have time to recap the lesson objectives as the students rush to get tidied up and get away to their next class. If the learning before the bell has been deep and purposeful then that is the most important thing to me.

Another criticism I sometimes have of 1:1 projects is that the rollout is often left to a computing or ICT teacher. Although there is nothing wrong with this we need to make sure that the right person in a school takes some responsibility and accountability for rollout.

One of the reasons that a computing or ICT teacher may not be the best person is because out of any teacher in their school a 1:1 project should benefit the computing teacher the the least. Why? because they already work in that environment and are unlikely to give up the powerful computers in their lab (why would you?) for less powerful handheld devices. In situations where school use their computing staff to roll out 1:1 deployments you are in danger of creating a very overpaid ICT technician and reinforcing an unnecessary stereotype of what a computing teacher actually does.

In my experience a matrix management approach to 1:1 rollout combined with good project management, involvement from school senior managers and senior students always has the most success (and ultimately impact).

In any 1:1 rollout it is important to make sure that computing and ICT teachers are part of the pedegogical solution as well as the technical solution. 

1:1 Learning – Exploring some myths [Introduction]

1:1 means one computer for each learner within a classroom or school.

The device is normally (but not always) Internet enabled and could be a desktop, laptop, netbook, hybrid, tablet, eReader, smartphone or handheld.

I’m doing loads of work at the moment around 1:1 and devices in schools at a system, state and school level. Interestingly in many of the places where I have been working these large scale 1:1 technology initiative are not driven by Ministries of Education but instead Ministries of ICT or Ministries of Technology.

As a result, the focus of such projects tends to be heavily on the device and units and not always on the pedagogical approach of how such initiatives could transform learning.

I often start any conversations with people about 1:1 by exploring some of its great myths.

I’ll be picking up on five of these over the next week…

Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE) - 6 of 6: Social media policy and the challenges of social media adoption in schools?

Sponsored by Facebook I did some work recently for the EUN where we looked at the role of Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE). One of the outputs of my contribution to the project was a professional development eLearning course for European Teachers and Head Teachers on the use of Social Media in Schools.

As this part of the course has now finished (and we have gone into the community development phase) I am re-posting a version of the materials here so others can benefit from them.

This is part 6 of 6 - Social media policy and the challenges of social media adoption in schools?

 

Social media policy and the challenges of social media adoption in schools?: The Video

Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE) - Video 6 of 6: Challenges of Social Media Adoption in Schools from Ollie Bray on Vimeo.

 

Internet Safety and Responsible Use Social media policy and the challenges of social media adoption in schools? The Course Notes and Links

 

1. Creating a Social Media Policy

The important thing to remember about social media policies is that there is absolutely no right or wrong way to write one. Your social media policy needs to reflect your organisation, who you wish to communicate with and what you feel comfortable doing.

You should also consider if you actually need a social media policy in the first place. Rather than a separate policy that silos social media as an ‘add on’ strategy it might be better just to include social media in some of your other school / institution policies and procedures. For example, social media and social networking should be mentioned and included in your school ICT Policy, your school Learning & Teaching Policy and your school ICT Policy.

If you do decide to create your own stand alone policy then the following list of things / rules to include will help you make a good start.

1. Introduce the purpose of social media

2. Be responsible for what you write

3. Be authentic

4. Consider your audience

5. Exercise good judgment

6. Understand the concept of community

7. Respect copyrights and fair use

8. Remember to protect confidential

9. Bring value

10. Productivity matters

The above list was first published on the Mashable Website and is designed for enterprise. But we can apply much of what is in the list to education.

Mashable.com is also a great website to subscribe to in your RSS Reader because its news items will keep you up-to-date with the latest social media tools and trends.

One country that is very progressive in the development of Social Media Policies is Australia, in particular Victoria. They have provided some good social media guidance on their website but have also produced a nice little YouTube Clip on Social Media Policy that gives examples of what is and isn’t acceptable.

 

 

2. Challenging Opinion

One challenge that you will come up against what trying to adopt social media in your school or institution will be opinion. It seems that everyone has an opinion when it comes to social media and some of these opinions are more positive than others.

The key here is good communication. It doesn’t really matter how you communicate with stakeholders (letter, email, Facebook) but you need to make sure that everyone in your learning community knows that you are going to be trying something new. People are often anxious about change and this includes changing of practice due to technology adoption.

Where possible capitalise on good news stories about the positive use of social media in school and education and piggyback off the back of these stories to explain why social media adoption is the right thing to do for your institution.

Information evenings for parents on new practice, curriculum change and Internet Safety & Responsible Use can also be helpful to keep parents up-to-date and informed.

 

3. Technical Challenge

Social Media adoption is also likely to present a number of technical challenges. A good relationship between school management, teachers and corporate ICT Departments is really important here.

The key message is that ‘locking and blocking’ does not solve the problem of irresponsible Social Media use. It just hides the problem where the consequences are potentially a lot worse.

There are ways that educators can get around some of the technical challenges of social media being blocked in schools to demonstrate responsible behaviour and appropriate privacy settings. These ways include the use of a mobile phone to create a wifi hot spot that is not affected by filtering or the use of screen capture software (such as Jing) to record social media use outside of the school.

The Cloud Learn Research Report from Heppell.net and the Nominet Trust provides a good insight to how schools can work with corporate ICT departments to deliver the best possible outcomes for learners.

 

4. Cultural Challenges

The biggest challenge that you will have when it comes to Social Media Adoption in Schools will be cultural challenges. Changing the culture of any organisation is hard and schools and other education institutions are no exception to this.

When trying to introduce change into any organisation you need to make sure that you take people (employees) with you.

If you are serious about introducing Social Media into your school you need to win the hearts and minds of school staff. The only way that you will do this is if you can demonstrate impact and give clear and concise reasons about why you are keen to adopt social media. The reasons for Social Media adoption are to improve school communication with stakeholders, to enhance learning in teaching that leads to improved motivation and increased attainment and to develop virtual CPD opportunities.

One staged model to help with social media adoption in you school or other education institute might be:

i) Agree a shared vision and purpose of why you want to adopt social media in your school. Make sure that everyone is speaking the same language and you have a localised definition of what your school thinks social media is and the benefits it can bring. Some of these ideas were covered in the SMILE Blog Post (unit) #1.

ii) Start with the use of social media at whole school level. This includes your school website and other things that we discussed during SMILE Blog Post (unit) #2. This will get your school recognised as being forward thinking but also send clear messages to staff that the use of social media is acceptable.

iii) Once staff have started to accept social media, focus on how social media can be used to enhance learning and teaching. We covered some of these ideas in SMILE Blog Post (unit) #3. Remember do not focus on the tool but what the tool can do if it is used in the right way to improve the classroom experience.

iv) When Social Media is being more widely used to enhance learning and teaching encourage staff to consider using social media tools for professional development. Using social media in this way can help link staff by professional interest. SMILE Blog Post (unit) #4.

v) Throughout the process emphasis to all members of the school community that Internet Safety and Responsible Use and providing advice on the safe use of social media must be the responsibility of all staff. We covered a number of strategies for this during SMILE Blog Post (unit) #5.

 

The above stepped model is useful as it takes staff on a journey of engagement from information sharing to empowering. It also means that you can introduce different aspects of social media adoption as people become comfortable with the tools and the terminology rather than providing all the information and resources at once.

 

Links for you to explore and reflect on: 

Tools

• Jing - http://www.techsmith.com/jing

 

Articles

• Mashable: Social Media News - http://mashable.com

• Ten Must Haves for your Social Media Policy - http://goo.gl/u9iY

• Department of Justice, Victoria, Australia: Social Media Policy for Employees - http://goo.gl/fQCV4

• Social Media Policy Video (YouTube) - http://goo.gl/f51g2

• School Social Media Policies - http://goo.gl/3PDWe

 

Research

• Cloud Learn: the end of locking and blocking - http://goo.gl/GKHy4

 

 

Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE) - 4 of 6: Using social media for professional development (CPD)

 

Sponsored by Facebook I did some work recently for the EUN where we looked at the role of Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE). One of the outputs of my contribution to the project was a professional development eLearning course for European Teachers and Head Teachers on the use of Social Media in Schools.

As this part of the course has now finished (and we have gone into the community development phase) I am re-posting a version of the materials here so others can benefit from them.

This is part 4 of 6 - Using social media for professional development (CPD) 

Using social media for professional development (CPD): The Video

Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE) - Video 4 of 6: Using social media for professional development from Ollie Bray on Vimeo.

 

Using social media for professional development (CPD): The Course Notes and Links 

 

1. Personal Learning Networks

Much like the term ‘Social Media’ there has been a lot written about the definition of ‘Personal Learning Networks’ over the years. Some of the pioneering research in this field has been completed by Dr Alec Couros, University of Regina, Canada.

Dr Couros argues that most typical teacher networks are one way and that teachers are delivered information on professional development and professional learning. He also talks about the rise of the ‘networked teacher’ where due to the increase in social media tools available for teachers professional learning and professional learning becomes two-way, driven by dialogue and as a result more open and reflective.

The key thing to remember about any Personal Learning Network is that they are, by definition, personal and depend on the interests and willingness of the individual to engage. When considering the use of social media to develop Personal Learning networks it may be useful to break them down into three component parts.

The first of these is face-to-face, even in the Internet age and with the rise of social media you can’t actually beat sitting down and talking to someone. Trusted professional feedback is also often born as a result of trusted relationships between colleagues.

The second component is one of closed digital communities. These are digital closed communities of practice where people may not know each other but they are connected through interest (examples might include TES Forums, Microsoft Partners in Learning Network and the discussion forums for the SMILE eLearning Lab).

The last components are digital open communities that are often un-moderated and are built around tools that have not been designed for education but have been adopted by educators. Examples of these tools include Blogs, Social Bookmarking and Open Content Repositories.

Some of these tools are services will now be discussed and exemplified below.

 

2. On-line Communities

On-line communities normally require registration and have been designed for a specific purpose to link people together via interest or for a specific project. The best on-line communities are ones that are allowed to grow organically over time because the users suggest new ideas or topics of discussion to keep the community vibrant and up-to-date.

Examples of on-line communities include:

• Microsoft Partners in Learning Network - a community for teachers and school leaders interested in using technology in education.

• Times Educational Supplement Subject Forums - a place where subject teachers discuss issues, up-load and share resources.

• Promethean Planet - a place to share and discuss Interactive Whiteboard Resources.

• EUN Community - a hub for European Union led projects as well as providing a facility for users to create their own communities of practice.

 

3. Using RSS

Reading about other peoples work and their reflections on classroom practice can be hugely valuable to your own professional development. Globally thousands of people are blogging about what is going on in their classrooms every day. The trick is trying to keep track of the blogs that interest you and to be automatically up-dated if someone posts something new or interesting.

Blogs produce an RSS feed (to find out what this is watch this CommonCraft video) but all you really need to know if that this means you can aggregate content from a variety of blogs into one place using an RSS Reader, such as Google Reader.

You will need a Google Account (which is free) to start using Google Reader. This CommonCraft video on Google Reader will tell you everything that you need to know about using this service. By using an RSS reader you can easily follow hundreds of blogs from educators around the world but only have to visit one website (your personal Google Reader page) to check for up-dates.

 

4. Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is when you save the URL of a website that you like to another website rather than to your favourites on your web browser.  One advantage is that you can see if anyone else who is using the service has also save the website that you have just saved. This is useful because users who have saved the same website as you will have often also save other websites that you will be interested in.

This makes Social Bookmarking another great way to collaborate with people globally, to swap ideas and useful websites that you have found to help aid school improvement.

This CommonCraft video will tell you everything that you need to know about Social Bookmarking using a service called Delicious (although it is worth noting that Delicious has changed since this video was made).

 

5. Searching the Future Web

Google Alerts are a way of telling Google a key word of phrase and then if that word of phrase is published on the Internet and is picked up by the GoogleBot you are sent an email link to where the article has been published. You can also create an RSS feed for alert terms (see RSS above). The use of Alerts is an important 3^rd Millennium research skill and are  already used widely in higher education.

As well as setting up alerts for professional interests eg: “formative assessment,” “outdoor learning,” and “international school links”. It is also useful for schools to have a Google Alert set up around their own school name.

Used in this way Alerts 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 wider student achievements. For example, many children take part in activities outside of the school and some of these activities are really impressive. These achievements are often written about in the local media and normally the child’s school is mentioned. As most papers are digitized, Google Alerts gives you an opportunity to receive this information as it is published. This is often before you have a chance to read a paper copy of the local news.

 

6. Micro Networks

Micro networks such as Twitter are a great way to receive short and concise advice, recommendations and resources from educators around the world. This article from Tony Parkin provides a good oversight of how you can find educators to follow on Twitter.

Hash (#) tags are also used within the Twitter community to bind conversation together. Most conferences now have a Twitter Tag and you can you services like Twazzup.com to search for a #tag and then aggregate all of the tweets and images shared on Twitter from the event. 

Other micro networks that are worth exploring for professional development purposes include Slideshare and SlideBoom. These are on-line communities where people share presentation slides and they are very popular with educators.

  

7. The Importance of Recommendation

As the above notes demonstrate there are an awful lot of professional development opportunities that are available on the web and many of these are linked to social media services.

However, just like any social service recommendations about a product are important. This is similar to recommending a product or a seller after you have bought somthing on Amazon - but within this context we are recommending professional development opportunities to others.

CPD Scotland is National Resource that has been developed by Education Scotland. One of its services is CPD Find, this is a national directory of paid for and free CPD opportunities. What is interesting about it is that it is not just a catalogue of courses because some of the courses have been endorsed by peers and you can see what other people think of the course content, delivery and value for money.

Including a system for open peer feedback and recommendations should be an important consideration for anyone who is interested in developing their own CPD portal. It also encourages teacher who attend the courses to become more reflective.

 

8. Research

Research into the use of social media for CPD is limited because the tools and service evolve so quickly. However, this report produced by The Pearson Centre for Policy and Learning and NoTosh Ltd in 2011 titled ‘Tweeting for Teachers,’ provides a number of useful case study examples of how social media can support teacher professional development.

 

Links for you to explore and reflect on:

On-line Communities:

• Microsoft Partners in Learning Network - www.pil-network.com

• Times Educational Supplement Subject Forums - www.tes.co.uk/forums

• Promethean Planet - http://community.prometheanplanet.com

• EUN Community - http://community.eun.org

 

Social Media Tools and Services:

• RSS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

• RSS in Plain English (CommonCraft) - http://goo.gl/v3IE

• Google Reader - www.reader.google.com

• Google Reader in Plain English (CommonCraft Video) - http://goo.gl/2Ia3

• Delicious - www.delicious.com

• Delicious in Plane English (CommonCraft Video) - http://goo.gl/IzBo5

• Google Alerts - www.google.com/alerts

• Twitter - www.twitter.com

• Twitter in Plain English (CommonCraft Video) - http://goo.gl/jD6i2

• Twitter Search in Plain English - http://goo.gl/MGQaK

• Twazzup - www.twazzup.com

• Slideshare - www.slideshare.com

• Slideboom - www.slideboom.com

• CPD Find - http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/cpdfind

  

Research and Articles:

• Who to follow on Twitter (Tony Parkin) - http://goo.gl/78mUs

• Tweeting for Teachers: how can social media support teacher professional development - http://goo.gl/Dxeis

 

Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE) - 3 of 6: Using social media for learning and teaching - pedagogical principles

Sponsored by Facebook I did some work recently for the EUN where we looked at the role of Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE). One of the outputs of my contribution to the project was a professional development eLearning course for European Teachers and Head Teachers on the use of Social Media in Schools.

As this part of the course has now finished (and we have gone into the community development phase) I am re-posting a version of the materials here so others can benefit from them.

This is part 3 of 6 - Using social media for learning and teaching - pedagogical principles

 

Using social media for learning and teaching - pedagogical principles: The Video

Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE) - Video 3 of 6 - Using social media for learning and teaching - pedagogical princ from Ollie Bray on Vimeo.

 

Using social media for learning and teaching - pedagogical principles: The Course Notes and Links

In unit one of the SMILE Course we discussed some common characteristics of social media. These characteristics included:

• Social Media challenges traditional models
• Social Media allows people to communicate
• Social Media allows people to collaborate
• Social Media gives people an audience
• Social Media services often remove hierarchy and are built from the bottom up
• Social Media is open and transparent

It is important to remember these characteristics, as they are also common characteristics associated with education reform.

Many countries globally are trying to create classrooms that challenge traditional models and reverse the hierarchy, allow young people to communicate and collaborate, that provide authentic audience for children’s work and exist within systems that are both open and transparent.

This means that by embracing the use of social media tools for learning and teaching we can start to build a culture that may help contribute to the reform of our school systems.

This post looks as some examples of how social media has been used successfully to enhance learning and teaching.

 

1. Cultural Relevance

Young people are engaged when they are learning about things or with things that they can relate too or that are relevant to them. Social media is highly cultural relevant at the moment for young people (from Facebook to the Xbox Live) and harnessing these tools for education can develop powerful contexts for learning.

Social media is also highly relevant across society in the UK in 2011 eight out of the ten most popular search terms were directly linked to a social website. Facebook was the most popular search term in the UK.

 

2. Real-time Data

As all experienced educators know one ingredient of a successful lesson is to try to use up-to-date, real and authentic data rather than contrived data that young people can not relate to. Twitter is a good social media service to help with this because you can ask your twitter followers to provide you with data that can then be used within the lesson.

One example of this is the Twitter snow lesson where a teachers twitter network was asked where they lived and if it was snowing. The tweets were plotted on to a Google Map and then the map imported into Google Earth where the real-time satellite imagery could be overlaid onto the map. The pattern that emerged provided an excellent context for discussing the weather, weather patters and weather systems.

Another example of how Twitter has been used in Maths can be found here (http://goo.gl/tAAWp).

As well as collecting data from twitter followers there are a number of twitter accounts that regularly provide information that can be used in classes. One example of this is the UK War Cabinet from the UK National Archives. By visiting or following this twitter account you can watch the events of WWII unfold 70 years to the day through the original Cabinet Papers. It is a good example of how comparative real-time data can also be engaging for children and young people. Another great live example is Titanic in Real Time which documenting the journey of the Titanic from its launch to fate exactly100 years to the day.

3. Collaboration

Social media tools can also be used to encourage collaboration. Google Apps for Education and Google Plus provide some great (and free) collaboration tools to assist with learning and teaching.

Google Docs (which is part of the Google Apps for Education suite) provide actual real-time collaboration for students and staff working on word-processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. You can have up to 50 people collaborating in real time within a document.

Well-managed collaboration on student projects normally results in an improved output and increased student pride. Meaningful collaboration is also a vital skill within enterprise education.

Google Plus can equip classrooms with a free ten-seat videoconference solution to allow face-to-face collaboration across geography, time zones and classrooms. Along with other services such as Skype in the Classroom social media video conferencing provide a great opportunity to beam in experts into your classroom.

4. Audience

Social media can also be used to provide authentic audience for children’s work. A good place to start might be the production of a Wikipedia Page for your school or an article for something in your local area.

Writing, re-writing or editing an article about your school in Wikipedia can easily be the output of a well researched cross-curricular project and at the same time it is likely to improve the image / marketing of your school (Wikipedia is very popular in Google rankings).

This type of task is also hugely empowering for students. How often do they normally get to publish to the largest encyclopaedia in the world?

Classroom blogs or blogs used as ePortfolio can also be used to generate audience for young peoples work. Leamore Primary School in Walsall, UK is a great example of this. Each class has their own class blog and each pupil has their own blog which is used as an ePortfolio of their best work and reflections on learning. The ePortfolio Blogs are password protected for safety reasons but parents have access to the password so they can see what their children have been learning about.

Another way to provide audience for students work is through sites like YouTube - effectively creating a school television station. A good example of this is the Drummond Community High School, Edinburgh, UK Animation Club.

 

5. Data Collection

Social media can also be used to collect information and date from students and other key stakeholders. Tools like Survey Monkey and Facebook Polls provide a great easy to use platform for this.

 

6. Research

Research into the use of social media in schools is difficult because things change so quickly before any meaningful longitudinal research can be done.

However, one piece of research from Professor Stephen Heppell (University of Bournemouth, UK) and Carole Chapman supported by the Nominet Trust and called Cloud Learn (www.cloudlearn.net) is worth investigating.

The Phase One Report that was published in January 2012 shares examples of how Social Media Tools such as Facebook, mobile phones, YouTube and Twitter are all being effectively used in schools.

 

Links for you to explore and reflect on -

 

Social media services that can be use for learning and teaching:

• Google Apps for Education - http://goo.gl/sSMNQ

• Google Docs - http://goo.gl/B1eIW

• Google Plus - http://www.google.com/+/learnmore

• Microsoft Office 365 for Education - http://goo.gl/AQmvf

• Skype in the Classroom - http://education.skype.com

• SurveyMonkey - http://www.surveymonkey.com

• Facebook Polls - www.facebook.com/OpinionPolls

 

Examples of interesting practice from schools:

• Twitter Weather Lesson - http://goo.gl/rwISq

• Twitter Maths Lesson - http://goo.gl/tAAWp

• Twitter UK War Cabinet Page - https://twitter.com/ukwarcabinet

• Twitter Titanic Page - https://twitter.com/titanicrealtime

• Leamore Primary School - http://leamoreblogs.net

• Dummond Community High School Animation Club - http://goo.gl/s5hKq

 

Research:

• Cloud Learn Research - www.cloudlearn.net

 

 

 

Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE) - Introduction

Sponsored by Facebook I did some work recently for the EUN where we looked at the role of Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE).

One of the outputs of my contribution to the project was a professional development eLearning course for European Teachers and Head Teachers on the use of Social Media in Schools.

As this part of the course has now finished (and we have gone into the community development phase) I am re-posting a version of the materials here so others can benefit from them. All of these materials are already in the public domain in other places and this is mainly an attempt to aggregate them together into an online handout.

I’ll be posting a video and video notes over the next six days.

These posts will also eventually form part of the Projects, Products and Articles Pages of the olliebray.com site re-fresh.

I will also be picking up on the theme of Social Media in Schools and School Leadership during my Keynote presentation on the 31st October in Edinburgh at the European School Heads Association biannual conference in Edinburgh. 

Further information:

• For more information about SMILE look here.
• For more information on the Facebook funding announcement look here. 
• For more information about the EUN look here.