OllieBray.com

Scotland’s Technology for Learning: A Tipping Point

Although many people won’t realise it today is a critical day for Scottish Education. It’s a time when more than ever before we need to be brave, really brave. 

I believe the education community, its teachers, its Local Authority employees and most importantly the children that they support are relying on our Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Michael Russell, MSP (@feorlean), to make the right decision. A decision based on advice from people who really understand the scale of the problem, people who understand the needs of the user and people who have the skills and expertise to deliver real and tangible results.

Today the Cabinet Secretary for Education will meet with the ICT Excellence Group to discuss the recommendations from their recently published report and presumably use these discussions to inform his decisions on the future of Glow.

For those of you not in the know, Glow is Scotland’s Schools National Intranet – a brilliant project that has unfortunately failed to deliver. Now, before I get a barrage of abuse from ‘Glow-Fans’, please remember that I am a Glow-Fan, and that there are lots of parts of Glow that have worked really well. But, Glow has not transformed our education culture or the learning and teaching of our children as it had the potential to do.

Also, before all the ‘Anti-Glow’ people chip in… Glow’s failure is not really a result of legacy software, clunkiness, the ‘walled garden’ or the inflexibility of the managed service that it was required to operate within. Indeed, quite the opposite – the failure of Glow (in my opinion) has been down to poor leadership (at Scottish Government level), poor decision-making, blocking at a project management and board level, risk aversion, and ultimately the greed of a handful of people - who, quite frankly should be ashamed of themselves and their hobby which seems to have become the burning of taxpayers’ money.

I think we also need to reflect on the profession at the time and its readiness and ability to accommodate the change in methodology that the use of Glow’s learning tools offered. Were we ready for them? were we really ready to change our practice? Also, could it be argued that a culture of dependency on the need to be ‘trained’ inadvertently became the norm with ICT initiatives with the result being that the relevance, purpose and opportunities to enhance learning with Glow were lost even as the Glow mentors left their training sessions? Make no mistake, there was some really effective practice with Glow beginning to emerge but as it did it found itself struggling to be heard against the growing criticism of the ‘clunky’ interface and the experience of those using tools that were newer and ‘easier to use’.

I think (and this is again all personal opinion and not that of my employer!) that out of just about anyone in Scottish Education I am one of the most qualified to say the above. After all, I worked on the latter stages of the original Glow project as part of the Glow Team and as part of the small team which was responsible for putting together a proposal for the Next Generation of Glow, after Glow Futures was quite rightly scrapped by the Education Minister in 2012.

I was part of the team who shaped the Scottish ICT in Education Objectives, contributed to speeches and blog posts at the highest level, evangelised about Glow internationally and throughout Scotland and also made recommendations to the Scottish Government and Education Scotland on what the next generation of Glow should be. Let me be clear, I believe in ICT in Education and I believe in Glow, I also have every faith in Scotland's young people, after all, they are a remarkable bunch as their input at the ICT Summit in October 2011 illustrates.

The ICT Excellence Group was formed by the Cabinet Secretary after a series of events led to Google pulling out of bidding for the Next Generation of Glow and RM’s contract being extended. I was in hospital at the time for some serious surgery on my shoulder ( information that was kept well out of the public domain). When I returned to work the small team that I had been working in had been disbanded – which to be honest fitted in well with the end of my secondment to Education Scotland.

In what seemed to me to be a very short space of time some people had made (in my opinion) some awful decisions and then the rumours started flying. Which of course played directly into the hands of the 'Anti-Glow mob' and exposed further incompetency of those who now seemed to be in charge of the project and thus reinforcing that they really didn’t seem to understand what the whole thing was actually about and how important it was for our economic future. There was also a rumor at the time (around July 2012) that I had been sent back to school – but this was complete nonsense as well!

My only gripe with Education Scotland is that after nearly four years working for them I left without a ‘thank you’ and no one even thought to ask me what I had been working on, or if there was any information I needed to pass over. It is no secret that I have always thought that the knowledge management within our education agency was shocking and I guess my transition back to Local Authority provided further evidence for this. I’ve contacted Education Scotland on at least five occasions since the end of my secondment offering to help if I can (particularly around Glow issues); sometimes I get a polite reply – but no one is yet to take me up on my offer. Which is why I feel even more frustrated that from a distance they seem to be making a number of predictable and avoidable mistakes (eg: not utilising past expertise, poor communication strategy, under resourced team, lack of proper testing and poor roll out model etc...).

Anyway, why am I talking about this now? Well, I mention it (and I have a lot more to say) because I feel that the Minister for Education needs the support of the education community and to be really brave with his future decision-making. Otherwise we are again going to fail to learn from our past experience. The Digital Scotland 2020: Achieving World-Class digital infrastructure report released on the 26th February talks about ‘leveraging digital solutions in education’. The right decision now about the future of Glow could indeed be part of the digital solution that we need and the wrong decision is unlikely to help us move forward at all. As the report states,

‘The world of education in 2020 will inherently be 'on-line-centric' engaging with those in education will be relatively easy but for those of school age the biggest challenge will be engaging with parents or carers. We must  ensure that those in education have access to the technology to engage in education beyond the walls and time boundary of the school day; and that those who care for and support them have at least the basic skills to follow what their children are doing’

The Past: A Potted History…

Let me give you a (very abbreviated) potted history…

• On 15th October 2010 a group of people were invited to talk about ICT in Education at the International Futures Forum. These discussions helped inform the initial stages of Scotland’s Technologies for Learning Strategy and this post from Feargal Kelly is a good summary of the day as it links to all the other posts that were written. Many people left the event feeling very enthused and positive about the future. The Scottish Government’s Technologies for Learning Strategy Project went on until July 2011 when it was merged with the Next Generation Glow Project. A lot of recommendations were made as part of the Technologies for Learning Strategy Report which to my knowledge have never seen the light of day.

• Then Next Generation Glow came along and Mr Russell made all the right noises in his speeches and blog posts about the future. We had an ICT Summit on 17th October 2011 organised by the Scottish Government where recommendations were made and everyone (apart from the people who were at the event almost exactly a year before!) left the day feeling enthusiastic and positive about the future. Lots of recommendations and ideas were collected from the event which went on to inform the ICT in Education Project Team, led by the Scottish Government. One of the projects within this workstream was to develop and make recommendations on the Next Generation of Glow.

• This was scrapped in May / June 2012. The RM contract was extended; Google said they weren’t bidding and lots of people (and people, and people) chipped in with their take on events.

• The solution to what quickly became unessessy widespread panic was the formation of the ICT Excellence Group. Their job, amongst other things was to advise on the future direction of Glow. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed not to be asked to join this group not because I see myself as being an expert, but because I have so much locked up in my head and background information from the years before June 2012 that I think I could have saved the group a lot of time and money. But, maybe the purpose of the group was to reinvent the wheel.

The ICT Excellence Report

Now let me get onto the ICT Excellence Report Itself…

In a nutshell, it is awful and embarrassing. Don’t misread me here much of the content is good, actually it is very good, in fact it is not a million miles away from where the team I was working within got to over a year ago (back to that in a minute...).

So what is bad about it? Well, the formatting, the spelling, the grammar (I know I can talk!), the presentation, its inconsistency, the lack of authorship, the accessibility, how it was distributed to key stakeholders and the lack of formal consultation following its publication. All of these little things make a mockery of potentially a pretty good piece of work from Professor Calder and her team. A piece of work that has already been discredited by many in the IT profession (both corporate and education users).

Now let me be clear about this again - the content of the ICT Excellence Report is good (there are obviously some bits I don’t agree with but most parts are good and very worthwhile). BUT the poor presentation is an embarrassment and whoever within the Scottish Government let such an important report like this be published in the way that it has been should be very embarrassed and offer an apology to the education community. This might sound a little bit petty but it makes the Education Minister look bad as once again, it seems to me, he has been let down not by the people (the experts) whom he entrusted to the job but by the civil servants who had a duty to support them. This has been an annoying recurrence throughout the Glow saga.


The Report’s Contents

Again, let me emphasise that the findings and recommendations of the ICT Excellence Report are really not very different to the findings and recommendations of the team I was working in over a year ago.

We even code named our project Glow Plus! I suspect that most of the ICT Excellence Group didn’t know this and that it would have caused a great deal of amusement to the people who did! (And there were definitely a few!).

Take this diagram of the structure of Glow Plus from the report as an example...



...how different is that from the diagram that has been previously shown to ADES ICT Advisory Board, the people who attended the Google Apps / Office 365 User Testing (in November 2011) and Local Authority Key Contacts, Directors of Education (or their representatives) and Local Authority Corporate IT personnel in (in February 2012).



Then there is the recommendation on the training model…



… and how different is that exactly to the model I described at the Next Generation Glow Local Authority Meeting in March 2012?



At the same meeting Stuart Campbell (now the Acting Head of Glow) and part of the Next Generation Glow Team talked about the need for National Filtering....



...the ICT Excellence Report recommends the same thing…



I could go on and on, and please don’t get me wrong, all of these things are hard to do. But my point is many of the things have been recommended before and what we need now is action.

If I was the Cabinet Secretary for Education (and I’m not) I would accept all the recommendations in the ICT Excellence Report (apart from one – and I’ll come to that in a minute). But I would particularly endorse the recommendation to form a small agile team to develop the next generation of Glow and this team has to have credibility.

This team needs to obviously operate inside the laws of procurement where appropriate, but without the bureaucracy of the civil service and Education Scotland (at least until it is built and implemented). To be honest much of the vision for the future of Glow has already been encapsulated in Charlie Love’s Glew Project. What I think is great about this project is that Charlie openly says – ‘it’s not perfect’ and ‘there is a lot of work to do’ but what he does beautifully is show what is possible. Never before has there been a time in Scottish Education when we’ve so needed to show teachers and learners what is possible – they deserve the very best and no less.


Setting The Record Straight…

A few other things before I start on a much needed cup of coffee…

• This isn’t about Google Apps or Office 365 (and it never has been). Glew can work with both (Apps and 365) indeed a future user or LA could have both (I know this because I was there when the technical diagrams were drawn over a year ago).

• This isn’t about .gsx. You could easily have .gsx as part of the Next Generation of Glow or as part of Glew. We just have to host that part in a Scottish or UK Secure Data Centre. It is really not that expensive or, to be honest that complicated. Again, preliminary technical scoping of this was done well over a year ago – which is why it was embarrassing for Education Scotland to say they didn’t realise .gsx was a problem at the last Glow Key Contacts Meeting (February 2013).

• Ignore the user scenarios/stories in the ICT Excellence Report – they don’t capture what is possible and most importantly don’t capture the international research of what is already happening with some of our global competitors. In my opinion both Ewan McIntosh and Professor Stephen Heppell (both members of the Excellence Group) could have been more influential here? I just hope they were widely consulted? For example, South Korea, Lithuania and Sweden provide examples of success by embedding digital access in education: South Korea provided free PCs to low income students with good grades; Sweden set targets for digital literacy; and Lithuania provides access to school diaries and reports online supporting students and encouraging parents to engage.

• I don't believe the rumours about ADES and RM and I have every faith in ADES making the right decisions around Glow.

• This aside, I think there is also a lot of truth in what Jaye Richards Hill has researched and written over the last five years (and not just about Glow). She has always been a ‘critical friend and informal adviser’ to the Glow project right from the early days and I hope that she will continue to be in the future along with the other ‘teacher' members of the ICT Excellence Group such as Ian Stuart, Neil Winton, Charlie Love, Fraser Speirs and Hamish Budge.

Don’t Change The Name

Now I said there was one recommendation within the ICT Excellence Report that I didn’t agree with. I think the Scottish Government should keep the brand. There is nothing wrong with Glow.

Lots of people will disagree with me here. But to be frank, scrapping the brand is too easy an objective to achieve. My challenge to the ICT Excellence Implementation Group is to achieve all the other recommendations and then you won’t have to change the brand. Believe it or not – the brand is not that bad and has international credibility. It just needs to reinvent itself – if Skoda can do it, Glow can do it!


What Happens Next?

Mr Russell, it is time to form the agile group to start moving things forward. The technologists within Scottish Education are some of the most passionate practitioners you will ever meet with international reputations and growing global experience. We will continue to support and advise when we are asked – but you need to ask and we will always be honest.

Unfortunately it is our honesty that scares some of the bureaucrats who work within our system,

These are exciting times for Scottish Education and Technology for Learning, but I hope we can now start to move forward together and not in isolated silos of innovation.  

Finally, Mr Russell, if you need any more reassurance - listen to your own words... they united a profession, and can do again...

 

Ollie Bray
27th February 2013

[Please note the comments are closed on this post]

Related articles

#EduPIc11 - An Open Discussion on the Future Scottish Education?

#EduPic11 - First Reflections and Key Messages

Can you help re-design the Glow National Site?

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.

--------------------------------------

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.

--------------------------------------

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.

-------------------------------------- 

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.

 --------------------------------------

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…

Technologies for Learning Strategy - Literature Reviews

Now the Scottish election is over its full steam ahead with the work on the Scottish Government Technologies for Learning Strategy. Along with Glow Futures and commitment to the Interconnect 2.0 the development and publication of the Technologies for Learning Stratgey is a commitment in the SNP manifesto.

As part of this work last week we published some of the literature reviews that were competed to inform the reserch phase of the strategy.

They are:

• Scottish Education Autorities ICT Policies - Roddy Stewart
• The Impact of Technology on Learning and Teaching - Bob Hill
• Technologies for Career Long CPD - David Noble

You can download and comment on all three documents over on the Strategy Project Blog.

Culture, Careers, Credibility and CfE: Why Internet Safety and Responsible Use is Everyone’s Responsibility (#ISRU11)

 
All of the keynote presentations from last weeks LTS / Scottish Government Internet Safety and Responsible Use Conference are now up on-line over on the conference website.

These presentations include:

• Adam Ingram, MSP (Minister for Children and Families) - Ministerial Address

• Helen King (Head of Education at CEOP) - Protecting young people on-line

• Josie Fraser (Leicester City Council) - Digital Identity and Young People (this is a must watch presentation)

My own presentation was titled Culture, Careers, Credibility and CfE: Why Internet Safety and Responsible Use is Everyone’s Responsibility. I've embedded it below for interest and as always would welcome any feedback.

Ollie Bray Keynote from ISRU Conference2 on Vimeo.

Further workshop presentations and other links will be added to the conference website over the next week.

 

Magical Schools – Monkseaton High School, North Tyneside

Last week I had the privilege of visiting Monkseaton High School in North Tyneside. I had wanted to visit the school for a while as I had heard so much about it, in particular its use of technology. I had also met the Assistant Head Teacher Simon Thompson a number of times before and completed a Microsoft peer-coaching course with one of the schools ICT teachers George Purdey.

If you have not seen pictures of Monkseaton before then the best way to describe it is that it looks like a spaceship – it really is an amazing building. It was actually one of the only BSF Concept design schools to ever leave the plan and it was surprising cheap to build (cheaper than most traditional secondary schools of a similar specification).

One of the highlights of the day was meeting Dr Paul Kelly, the schools headteacher. I used to think that I had a lot of ideas and was into linking networks of people until I met Paul – but after 30 minutes my brain was starting to hurt with all of the content and concepts that he was throwing at me. He kindly gave me a copy of his book  'Making Minds' to take away and read and I look forward to reading this and exploring the range of links and videos about the school available online.

 

Key school design components

• The design of the school is a terrific blend of open plan, open access computing and classrooms (some general purpose and some specialized).
• The sound absorbing of the school is really good. I could comfortably listen to an English lesson in an open access area where a maths lesson was going on the other side of me. A basketball game was taking place in the school gym below me. Sound just didn’t carry.
• The temperature of the schools stay constant at around 18.5⁰c – Paul explained to me that research shows that this is the temperature that teenagers learn best.
• The school is filled with a huge amount of Interactive light.
• All toilets are individual cubicles that are built into the wall and off main corridors – they are modeled on airplane toilets.
• There are no interactive whiteboards but each room has a large LCD screen.

As well as the impressive design the school is doing a lot of other interesting things as well. May of these things are linked to the latest research in learning neuroscience.

Start of the school day

The school day at Monkseaton starts at 10am and this is based on the work of the Oxford Professor of Nuroscience Russell Foster who has found that from the age of 10 years old our internal body clocks shift meaning that a too early start can have an impact on teenagers learning.

Spaced Learning

The school has also piloted what they call ‘spaced learning’ which is based on the theory of how the brain actually creates a memory researched by Douglas Fields of the National Institute for Child Health and Development in the US. The school has taken this theory to create a learning methodology where the children have the key concept / facts explained to them (creating pathway stimulation), then they have a break from the input, then they have the concept / facts explained again (but this time is a different way), then they have a break from the input and finally the concept / facts are explained for a third time (again in a different way). The break from the input is normally in the form of physical activity.

The results are really interesting. In controlled trials, Monkseaton have shown that it is possible to teach concepts normally covered over several hours or weeks in approximately 30 minutes of actual teaching time.  The school has also used spaced learning as a revision technique instead of ‘normal’ revision tasks and has seen improved exam results. 2008 report from the BBC here (pre new school build).

Lots more information is available about Monkseaton High School on their website and I’ve embedded a short YouTube clip that was made by Microsoft and the DfE on how Monkseaton partners with parents.

Magical Schools – Saltash.net Community School

 

There is something about Saltash.net community school that is really special. From the moment you walk in you know that it is a special place – it’s funny how schools just sometimes ‘feel’ like that isn’t it?

I’ve known some of the teachers and saltash.net school leadership team for a while now most notably Dan Roberts (Assistant Headteacher) and Dave Garland (Depute Head). I was delighted to finally get an opportunity to visit them at the school and ask them and some of their students questions about the school.

As Dave told me three things that Saltash has always done is take risks, try new things and do things on the cheap! He gave the example of Skype in the classroom. Saltash have been using Skype for years, they use it well and therefore have never bothered investing in expensive video conferencing technology. Skype works and it works well.

The school is a strong believer in the use of free web tools and open source solutions. There Moodle Learning Environment is well developed and well used by students and staff.

Saltash has also invested heavily in its network they have wireless throughout the school (and they have for a while) and students are allowed (in fact encouraged) to connect their own devices to the school network. The school manage all of this themselves.

As well as technology Saltash is probably as famous for its school farm. The farm is in the middle of the school and contains a pig and a load of rescued battery hens (that still produce the school eggs!). You can check up on the Saltash livestock area at just about any time as it has web camera access available 24/7 – check out the cameras here. Livestock are not the only types of animal that you see around the school – they also have a school dog!

One of the other things about the school that I found interesting was how the  school use students to support and up-skill staff. Called the ‘a-team’ this small group of year 8 students have been equipped with a net book from the school and have their own emergency email address. If you’re a member of staff who is having problems with their PowerPoint transitions, editing a video or cropping an image then you can email the ‘a-team’ and they will come and give you a hand.

I saw lots of other things during my visit to Saltash including teachers experimenting with 3D to teach shape, Microsoft Multi Mouse and some pretty impressive photoshop skills in a media class. I also had an opertunity to hear about some of their staff ICT conferences where past speakers have included John Davitt, Russell Prue, Stuart Ball and Prof. Sugata Mitra.

More information about Saltash.net over on their website and also in this Microsoft Peer Coaching video below:

A huge thank you to the staff and students at Saltash.net for supporting my visit.