OllieBray.com

Literacy, CfE and ICT

Edinburgh City had their in-service day on Monday 26th October. All Scottish Schools have been given an extra in-service day to help them plan for the roll out of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) from August 2010.

I was asked by Drumond Community High School to go along and deliver a session on Literacy, CfE and ICT. I confess to not being a literacy or even CfE expert but I do like a challenge so I accepted the request. I was very grateful for the on-line resources provided by Bill Boyd (the Literacy Advisor) who really helped spark my thinking and the structure of this particular presentation.

Also, sorry I am so late posting the on-line handout and resources – but I’ve been a bit busy! Anyway…

Below are the main sides that I used during today's talk:

Literacy, CfE and ICT

View more presentations from Ollie Bray.

Notes from the presentation and key points

It is important to remember that literacy (along with numeracy, health and wellbeing) are the responsibility for all within A Curriculum for Excellence. Further clarification and a definition is given in the Literacy and English Principles and Practice Cover Paper (2009).

"All practitioners in each sector, in each department and in all settings have a responsibility to develop, reinforce and extend the skills which are set out in the literacy experiences and outcomes.

Literacy is the set of skills which allows an individual to engage fully in society and in learning, through the different forms of language which society values and finds useful"

(Literacy and English Principles and Practice 2009)

In order to allow these things to happen literacy has had to be re-defined for the 21st Century. The forms of language which society has valued and finds useful has changed through time.

Reflective and difficult questions for practitioners:

• Do 13 year old girls find Shakespeare useful?
• Do 11 year old boys find the works of Robert Burns useful?
• Do we value the work of Shakespeare and Robert Burns in our schools? – of course we do they are part of our heritage.
• Is sending a text message useful?
• Do we value the ability to send a text message?
• What makes a good text message?
• How do you pronounce a text message?
• Are comic useful?
• Should we value the use of comics in class?
• Are comics valuable for the Scottish economy?
• Is a comic without the words still literacy?

Definition of text:

"A text is the medium through which ideas, experiences, opinions and information can be communicated".

    (Literacy and English Principles and Practice 2009)

The definition of text refers to a wide variety of media that we use to communicate – it does not just mean books. Importantly listening and talking are included as forms of essential literacy.

Examples of text include:

• novels, short stories, plays, poems
• reference texts
• the spoken word
• charts, maps, graphs and timetables
• advertisements and promotional leaflets
• comics, newspapers and magazines
• CVs, letters and emails
• films, games and TV programmes
• labels, signs and posters
• recipes, manuals and instructions
• reports and reviews
• text messages, blogs and social networking sites
• web pages, catalogues and directories

When considering the above texts it may be useful to consider the distribution of skills that are required to survive in a 21st Century world. Which of the above example of text should all children come into contact with? Are any of the examples more important than others? How does financial and consumer literacy relate to the above list?


Understanding our students

As well as understanding what we mean by literacy it is also important to understand how young people and children have may be changing.

Recent research information commissioned by Channel 4 indicates that many young people today are very much digital. You can find out more information about this report here.

For schools I think that we need to ask ourselves three important questions:

• Do we know what skills the children in our care have?
• Do we know what access our students have to technology at home?
• Can we use a combination of the above to stretch, push and engage young people?

Without the above information how can we ever set appropriate and challenging assessment and home learning activities?


Engaging our students

I believe that in order for learning to take place we need to have good pedagogy and also interest or engagement from our students. I think that there is a difference between interest and engagement.

A teacher who is teaching a child who has a natural interest in a subject or who see’s the point of it (eg: it will help them get a job) is likely to find it easier to help that child learn compared to student who has no interest or does not see the point.

Unfortunately not all topics are interesting and not all children see the point of all talks. That’s where tasks need to be engaging in order to create powerful learning environments.

Most children find technology engaging and that is one of the reasons it is so valuable in the classroom.

All registered Scottish teachers should be able to use technology in innovative ways

‘Registered teachers skillfully adopt and deploy a wide variety of innovative resources, including ICT and, where appropriate, the outdoor environment’

(GTCS Standard for Full Registration)

Possible ways to use technology to engage our students

• Use their tools (eg: social networking spaces)

• Offer choice of output (written, typed, poster, presentation, video, podcast etc…) the input (planning, drafting, re-drafting, collaboration etc…) remains the same and the most important bit.

• Provide real audience for students work (Wikipedia, blogs with comments, school radio podcast etc…)

• Be creative with on-line technology tools eg: Comic Brush, Pixton, Go Animate (This recent list of other free tools for teachers might be useful)

Digital Literacy

All teachers now have a responsibility for digital literacy. Most importantly:

‘To help me develop an informed view, I am exploring the techniques used to influence my opinion. I can recognise persuasion and assess the reliability of information and credibility and value of my resources.’

            (Literacy Level 3)

Golden rules for digital literacy:

1. Intenet Safety and Responsible Use – more information here

2. Don’t ban Wikipedia – teach them to use it - more inforamtion here

3. The Internet is only any good if you can find what your looking for, think about:

• Google Advanced Search
• Quintura Visual Search
• Google News Search

Final thoughts

Books are not going away. They are a form of text but the nature of text is changing (see above).

We need new models of CPD to engage with a Curriculum for Excellence. If your interested in this have a look at my Drip Feed Vs Sheep Dip CPD post here.

The future of professional development is on-line, have a look at:

• CPD Find
• Curriculum for Excellence
• Consolarium: Games Based and Innovation in Education
• LTScotland on iTunesU (the ‘U’ is for University)
• Bill Boyd: the literacy advisor

Feedback

I would welcome any feedback or comments on the above. Please feel free to get in touch (details top right) or leave a comment below.

Tim Rylands – HHL09 and African Safari

(photo: James Clay)

I’ve heard lots about Tim Rylands and have followed his blog for a long time. Tim is the king of education web links, a clearly a talented teacher, fantastic presenter, PowerPoint Jedi and knowledgeable education consultant. I was lucky enough to meet Tim at Handheld Learning 2009 – I just wish we had more time to chat?

Unfortunately I missed his presentation but I did get a chance to watch the re-run on the Handheld Learning Blip TV channel. The main focus of Tim’s presentation was on the work that he has been doing with the Wii game Wild Earth: African Safari. If you have not played African Safari then it is defiantly worth a look as the education potential of such a resource is outstanding.

Brian McLaren who works as one of our development officers at the Consolarium in Scotland is doing some work with this title at the moment and with time we will get this written up over on the Learning and Teaching Scotland Games Based Learning website.

African Safari is a unique simulation for the Wii based on the PC game from Super X Studios. It is your task to take award-winning pictures of exotic animals in their natural habitats without disturbing them. This includes running with herds of zebra to following hunting lions and scavenging vultures.

The main features of the game include:

• 11 picture-taking missions with both primary and secondary objectives. Inclusding, nvestigating the hyena during a midday thunderstorm, observing giraffes in a hidden valley from a helicopter and meeting a family of elephants as they take care of their young.

• The Wii lets you use the Wii Remote to play from the animal’s perspective in the different games.

• You can come across more than 30 African animals including: cheetah, crocodile, crowned crane, elephant, flamingo, frog, bat, gazelle, giraffe, hippo, hyrax, leopard, lion, ostrich, oxpecker, pangolin, rhinoceros, meerkat, tortoise, trout, vulture, warthog, wildebeest and zebra.

• Multiplayer mode gives players the choice to drive the vehicle or snap photos while playing with anywhere from 1 to 3 friends.

• Photos collected are placed into an animated slide show presentation of informative articles. Players can select their own favorite photos to keep in their portfolio.

• An Impact Meter tracks how much of a disturbance you are to the natural habitat. If you disturb too many animals or get to close to them, your Wii Remote will rumble at varying degrees, making it harder to take a steady picture. If the Impact Meter becomes completely depleted, you fail the mission.

• There are terrific photo opportunities due to the accurately presented flora and terrain from the Serengeti National Park in Africa. This includes shrubs, flowers, kopjes (rocky outcroppings), streams and lakes. The weather also changes through the day

You can view a trailer for the game below (You Tube):

During his presentation Tim games lots of ideas about how he has used African Safari with classes all over the UK. I have embedded the video of Tim speaking at HHL below:

During his talk he mentions the following links, software and web based tools:

• African Safari – for the Nintento Wii (more details here)

• PowerPoint – In particular Tim mentioned how you can write in PowerPoint slides in the 2007 edition, which is useful for note taking within presenations.

• Quotepad - A great tool to take / aggregate  notes from the web or your computer (from anywhere!).

• Vocab Grabber - A great visual thesaurus to get children to experiment with worlds and to improve their language

• Ether Pad - Online collaborative documents – not normally blocked by school firewalls.

• Switheroozoo - A great little website for learning about animals and even creating some of your own – what do you think of my ElicheetaZeb?

• Fighting Maleria - A good website for learning about Malaria and a good example of how very serious citizenship issues can be talked through the medium of computer games.

• Wordle - An old classic but Tim uses it in an interesting way to analyze note taking – watch the video to see how.

The video is well worth 30mins of your time.

Ubiquitous Mobile Computing at the Abilene University

I went to an interesting  talk on Thursday afternoon at the Department of Informatics and the University of Edinburgh. The talk was on the introduction of the iPhone / iPod Touch at the Abilene Christian University in Texas, USA.

Every student that goes in to the University gets given either an iPhone or an iPod Touch. This is bought for them from the University. The difference is that if you opt for an iPhone the individual student has to enter into an 18 month contract with the mobile phone operator (in the US this is AT&T). There have been nearly 2000 devices distributed to students of which 68% are iPhone and 32% are iPod Touches.

The university then provides resources for its students via  an interactive website that it optimized for the iPhone /iPod Touch. Lecturers and university professors also suggest and develop Apps that the students might want to download to help them with their learning. The results were quite staggering in terms of how much the students believed that the devices improved their learning and gave them confidence in class.


One of the big questions from the audience was on cost and how ever did the Abilene University afford such an initiative. It seems that the university made three very clever but significant cost savings in order to fund the initiative.

1. Cut back on open access computer suites

One of the things that the University did was cut back on the open access computer facilities that were available to students. Particularly the facilities that were available in dorm rooms (halls of residence).

After research they found that these facilities were not being used as much as they were in the past because 98% of students going to the university brought with them their own laptop. They also found that the biggest usage of the open access areas in the student accommodation was between 11pm – 3am when students were playing first person shooter games with each other!

By cutting back on and not refreshing these underused facilities they saved thousands.

2. Cut back on traditional telephone

Another significant saving was with telephone bills. As most university professors and a large proportion of students were now using the iPhone and as calls from one iPhone to another (in the States anyway) are free they effectively created a free telephone service across the campus. They also saved by not refreshing the telephone infrastructure within the University. Why would they bother – everyone has a mobile and there is a Skype App.

3. Photocopying

If everything available electronically as pdfs or as podcasts, savings on photocopying were significant.

iPhone Vs iPod Touch

One really interesting part of the study was how it seemed that the iPhone was the more successful device with the students.

This was possibility down to a number of reasons:

• Anytime, any place connectivity (and learning)

• Students felt more ownership over their phones (even though they were given them, they were still paying for them on the contract)

• Phones were nearly always brought to class and charged up where as the iPod touch was left at home more or not brought fully charged (students seemed to embrace the social connectivity of the phones more – eg: they needed their phones to stay connected to each other)

• Although it wasn’t mentioned I’m guessing that the phone also has a camera which can be used as powerful tool for learning.

Is the project iPhone / iPod Specific?

One other question from the audience was about platform and if the project completely relied on the iPhone / iPod touch. Although there were a number of university lectures (and students) who were developing Apps specifically for the Apple platform. The main resources produced by the university were all web based but optimized for the iPhone. This meant regardless of the device students could access the material in different ways.

It also means that if a more appropriate device comes along the University can easily migrate their content.

Overall a very interesting study that I would like to replicate in a school. You can find out more about what the university have done over on their website.

Meeting Greg Whitby

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

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


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

A bit more background on Greg:

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

 

So what was Greg’s message?

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

I took a number of things from his presentation including:

• Lots of young people are disengaged from their learning

• To overcome disengagement we need to search for relevance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Students learning is what makes the biggest difference

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

• Good leadership involves the making or courageous decisions

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

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

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

• Our leaders have to be leaders in pedagogy

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

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

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

The reasons for this include:

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

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

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

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

The Technological revolution: what does this mean for schools?

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

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

These are:

1. The 3 screens

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think?

Apple Distinguished Educator Conference on TwazzUp

 
Unfortunately, I couldn’t make the Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) Conference in Liverpool this weekend.

But, I was able to follow what was going on using Twitter. The hash tag for the conference was #ADEcon09 and by putting this into a website called TwazzUp you can get a real feel for what was being discussed, the richness of conversation, photographs and links mentioned.

TwazzUp (even though I hate the name) is currently my Twitter hash tag conference aggregator of choice.

I think it turns all the 'tweets' into a really good on-line handout.

Which free on-line service do you use to aggregate your tweets?

The Changing Learning Landscape

Last week I was involved with a forward thinking professional development event with all the headteachers in East Ayrshire (primary and secondary). The event was based on the ‘Building Windmills Model’ that was developed by Con Morris from the National CPD Team.

The title of the event gets its name from the old Chineas proberb:

‘When the winds of change come, some build walls, others build windmills”

As well as facilitating, I was asked to deliver a couple of sessions on new technology and education. One of the sessions was titled ‘the changing learning landscape’ where I tried to get the audience to think a little differently about new technology, education and schooling.

My message was basically in three parts:

1. How technology and youth culture is changing (linked to recent research)
2. Examples of effective learning due to sound pedagogy and student engagement (linked to the LTScotland Consolarium Project)
3. The notion of digital entitlement and other critical questions for school leaders

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

The Changing Learning Landscape: Building Windmills Ayrshire 2009

View more presentations from Learning and Teaching Scotland.

I also delivered a session on Personal Learning Networks. This was basically a re-run of my workshop at the Scottish International Summer School on School Leadership. You can access resources about personal learning networks for school leaders here.

Andrew Brown was also presenting at the conference and you can find copies of his slides and observations from day one over on his personal website.

Also, if you were one of the headteachers present at the workshop remember you can continue with the discussion via the South Ayrshire Building Windmills GLOW Group – or just send me an email.

Teachmeet SLF09: Scottish Learning Festival 2009 – Up-Date

The Scottish Learning Festival is fast approaching and with it comes Teachmeet SLF09. As with all Teachmeet events this is an event organized by teachers for teachers.

This year the event will take place at the BBC Scotland Building just over the road from the SECC. I met with @clara_mac yesterdsay morning to sort out some of the final arrangements for accommodation, break out space and wifi.

If you have not been to a teachmeet before, anyone is welcome (but you do have to sign up). We ask for people to put their names forward to give a 7 or 2 minute presentation on something that they have done in their school or classroom. Speakers are picked at random using a giant fruit machine and there is absolutely no guarantee at all that you will get to speak.

Emphasis is on openness, professional dialogue, swapping ideas and sharing good practice. Importantly,  Teachmeets are about learning in a fun way and supporting your professional learning network. Everyone who attends is expected to contribute something - even if it is sharing your favorite website with the person sat next to you.

You can find out more about Teachmeet past and future events over on the Teachmeet Community Wiki.

A successful Teachmeet relies on volunteers to help organize the event and also on sponsors for the venue, AV equipment and refreshments.

So far the BBC has sponsored the venue, the AV equipment and the WiFi (Thank you BBC!), Do-Be Ltd have offered some money towards the wine and BrainPOP UK have had Tim and Moby working on something special for months.

BUT, we still need more sponsorship to cover the cost of the rest of the refreshments and also to help contribute to the TeachEat after the event.

If you are commercial company (or just feeling generous!) and you would like to sponsor Teachmeet please get in touch with me or leave a note about your donation over on the wiki.

Understanding the New Learning Landscape - Scottish Learning Festival 2009 Spotlight Presentation

The Scottish Learning Festival is fast approaching and if you have not booked your place to the fantastic free conference you need to book quickly as some seminars are already fully booked.

I’m presenting a couple of seminars on the Wednesday one is on Computer Games Based L earning in Secondary Schools and the other is one on Developing Motivated and Creative Leaders using a cluster approach.

NEW SPOTLIGHT PRESENTATION – JUST ADDED

Derek Robertson and I will also now be presenting a Spotlight Session on The New Learning Landscape.

A description of this session is here:

Technology has changed our lives from the way we communicate to the way we shop. The pace of change is growing increasing fast and some educators struggle to keep up with this rapidly evolving learning landscape. In comparison, our children have grown up in a world of rich multi-media and seem able to adapt quickly to changes in technology.

This seminar will look at the effect digital media has had on the children within our care. It will examine how increased exposure to modern technology has impacted on how young people communicate, behave and learn. 

In order to engage these 21 century young people schools must be prepared to evolve with the learner and not remain stuck in the past. Changes in technology and society must be seen as opportunities rather than barriers by schools if they are going to be successful in implementing a Curriculum for Excellence. The presentation will outline strategies for making the most of these opportunities in order to engage young people.

Finally, this spotlight will look at some of the emerging technologies that are starting to make there way into schools. It will touch on the latest developments and research into the use of the internet, computer games, virtual worlds, mobile technology and augmented reality.

You can book these and over 150 other seminars on the Scottish Learning Festival website.