OllieBray.com

UK Microsoft Innovative Teachers Forum and Conference 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Curriculum for Excellence, Science, Change and New Technologies (SSERC Conference 2009)

Yesterday I did the Keynote presentation at the Annual SSERC Conference and AGM.

With support from Learning and Teaching Scotland SSERC have done a good job of developing resources and a new interactive website to support the development of the emerging 3-18 Curriculum in Scotland for Science.

It was a real pleasure to be able to speak to the assembled audience. Although I have to admit as non-science specialist I was a little worried about how I might be recived. My brief was to talk about on-line tools and their role in science education.

If you were at the presentation I would welcome your feedback either by leaving a comment below or by sending me an email (contact details top right).

I promised that I would post the slides from the talk, so here they are:

Curriculum for Excellence, Science, Change and New Technologies (SSERC Conference 2009)

View more presentations from Ollie Bray.

Here are also my thoughts, notes and links that I referred to during my presentation:


1. Technology always wins

Everyone questions changes to technology adoption – but wide scale technology adoption nearly always wins. The question is more around the speed of adoption and how this relates to the speed of engagement with learners.

2. Its now easy to generate ‘rich’ content – but you need to think about using it in creative ways

It is now easier than ever for teachers to create on-line content that can be used as tools to enhance learning.

Wordle is an example of a generator that provides an interesting way for teachers to work with students to analyze and look at text. Sinclair Mackenzie who writes the excellent blog 'Never Mind the Optics' has recently used a combination of Wordle and blockposters.com to create some key word revision sheets for his classes. He has written about his experience of doing this here.

3. Change

No one likes change. But thing are changing…

The key message (hopefully) from my presentation was that we need to understand how children are changing, technology is changing and how the curriculum is changing before we understand how we should change or pedagogy to support all three of these things.


4. Changing children and young people

I think that children are changing. One of the reasons for this is that I think that now children and young people have increased access to knowledge. This knowledge is normally found via the Internet.

In the past parents, teachers and responsible adults used to the gatekeepers of knowledge. In short we would normally decide when a young person was old enough to know about sex and drugs and rock & roll. This was one of the reasons why we had a curriculum that tried to link essential knowledge with age-and-stage.

In the majority of cases knowledge was often only introduced when it was believed by the professional that a young person was emotionally ready to receive it. There were of course, as with anything, exceptions to this rule.

The Internet and increased use of mobile technology has changed all of this. Now children have access to unlimited knowledge. Unfortunately sometimes children come into contact with knowledge that is unreliable and also content they are emotionally unprepared for. I’m convinced that there is a link between this and behavior in schools – but I have no evidence to back this up.

A recent survey commissioned by Channel 4 looked at the online behaviors of young people between the ages of 12 – 24. In uncovered some interesting statistics that included:

• They personally own 8 devices (including MP3 player, PC, TV, DVD player, mobile phone, stereo, games console, and digital camera)
• They frequently conduct over 5 activities whilst watching TV
• 25% of them agree that “I’d rather stay at home than go on a holiday with no internet or phone access”
• A quarter of young people interviewed text or IM (instant message) friends they are physically with at the time
• They have on average 123 friends on their social network spaces
• And the first thing the majority of them do when they get home is turn on their computer

The questions is what does this mean for schools?

I think that Schools should:

i) Collect their own data. You should know how many children in your school have devices, have internet access at home, have the ability to play an mp3 file etc…

ii) Teachers should have an understanding of the websites that their classes use for school work and for non-school work. They haven’t got to use the sites just have an understanding of what they can do. This knowledge will also contribute to the relationship building between the teacher and the class.

iii) Collect data on student ICT skills. Schools and teachers should know what ICT skills young people have. This is particularly important at the transition between primary and secondary stages. Again data needs to be collected on animation skills, digital video skills, web skills search skills etc…

iv) Make sure that all school staff are adequately trained in Internet Safety and Responsible Use. I find it worrying that young children have so many ‘friends’ on social networking spaces. Schools need to re-define what we mean by that word ‘friend’.

Unless schools do this how will we ever stretch children and set appropriate assessment tasks.


5. Changing Technology

Technology is changing faster than we ever imagined it to. In reality schools will never be able to stay up-to-date and keep up with technological change. But we need to try.

Microsoft recently wrote a report called ‘Europe Logs On’. Where it predicts 5 technological changes that will occur by 2012. In reality these changes are already occurring but there is just not wide scale adoption yet. Schools need to change and adapt resources in parallel to technological change if we want to try to keep up.


Change One: The Three Screens

The distinction between your computer, television and telephone will become more blurred. You will be able to do core functions of all devices on any of the devices. I big step forward in this paradigm was the recent development of TV catch up for the iPhone. I still can’t quite believe I can watch the news on my iphone over my normal phone network.

What should education do in response: Any education content that is developed need to be optimized for use on mobile.

Commercial publishers – please take note.

Change Two: The rise of connected entertainment

You will be able to interact with your media. The BBC red button was just the first step in this direction. BBC iPlayer that allows you to re-watch television programmes that you have missed is another important development.

What should education do in response: We need connected education.

The Climate Mystery by Cogin, Microsoft and the Discovery Channel is the most advance form of connected education that I have seen to date. An education soap opera with a social networking backend to allow real time global collaboration between users. This combined with well thought out mini games to allow a non-threatening but competitive environment for children to learn.

 

Change Three: The whole web will become social.

The web will become more personalized and as much about people as about information. Other people will be used increasing more to filter the information from the web.

What should education do in response: Teachers need to learn the value of the social web

I don’t know very much about science or what resources are good for science teachers. But I have a whole personal learning network that know more about science teaching than I do.

When I was asked to speak at the SSERC Conference I asked on Twitter for some people to recommend resources to me. I was able to make the assumption that because they were coming from people that I trusted that they would be of value in the classroom.

One of the links came from Nick Hood (PT Physics at Glenwood High School in Fife) Nick sent me a link to his delicious links. Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows you to save websites that you find as a list on to another website. Anyone can see your list and it will also tell you if other delicious users have also saved the same link. It’s a powerful way to share peer-reviewed resources amongst teachers. I’ve been using delicious for years and find it incredibly valuable. More info on delicious here.

Here are some of the links I was recommended by my professional learning network before yesterdays conference. I would have never of found them without using the Internet socially:

• Nick Hoods Delicious Links – links to hundreds of other great resources

• BrainPop UK – Great little animations that explain things in a simple way for children. Some BrainPop movies are always free (others you pay for)

• 60 second science podcast – from Scientific America

• Interactive Science Simulations – from the university of Colorado

•  Visible Body – a 3D immersive anatomony and physiology model (30 day free trial)

• 10 Science Apps for the iPod / iPod Touch – Many of these Apps are free

• Science Songs – Different songs about Science topics

• Topic Box Science – Links to other recommended science websites

• 3D mouth – everything you need to know about teeth in 3D form

There were lots more…

Change Four - The 3D Internet

Increasingly you will be able to interact with information and people on the internet in a 3D way.

Many young children (eg: 5 – 8 year olds) are already interacting with the 3D internet. They occupy sites like Club Penguin and Lego Universe. I think it’s unlikely that these children will ever grow into social networking sites like Bebo – that are mainly text based. 3D immersive environments are incredibly engaging for children is if they are used in the right way

What should education do in response: Embrace and prepare for the 3D internet and make sure that staff are trained on the responsibilities of using it and the safety messages that they need to give to young people.

In the Consolarium we are already working a number of 3D Internet projects. CANVAS is currently our flagship project but we have other ideas and projects in development.

WonderVille 3D is a good Canadian example that combines a 3D simulation and static content. You have to navigate around a world to find information and the answers to problems.

There are other good examples of science education in the 3D world that are already available in Scilands in  Second Life. The challenge for us is to now make these environments safe for young people.



Change 5 – The rise of the Smartphone

Internet enabled mobile phones with robust web-browsers will be the norm by 2012. The iPhone and Google’s Android Platform and good examples of current models. I recently read somewhere that my iPhone has more computing power in it that the first Apollo Space mission.

What should education do in response: We need to rapidly consider how we integrate technology like mobile phones into the classroom.

Mobile phones are no longer phones any more. They are mini computers that you can make phone calls on. They can be used to take pictures, record video, record audio, surf the web, download lesson content and there are a variety of powerful Apps that also have strong education value.

Schools teaching Advanced Higher should think about how they can make more use of iTunesU (The ‘U’ is for University). Many university departments (such as Oxford) now give the content of their lectures away for free over iTunesU. School need to make more use of these high quality and free resources.

In my opinion in terms of Science and the use of mobile technology Saltash.net Community School in Cornwall have got a good approach to the use of mobile technology for learning.



6. Changing Curriculum

The Science curriculum is changing. I get a little fed up when we talk about A Curriculum for Excellence and people tell me that they are doing it already. If we are doing it already, why have we wasted all this time and money developing a new curriculum? For me Curriculum for Excellence is about thinking differently and then doing things differently.

It would be unprofessional of me to comment on the content of a science curriculum as I have no expertise in this area. But I do worry that across the Scottish teaching profession that teachers are still thinking in subject boxes. In my opinion schools need to start working in clusters and thinking about how a young person progresses through the 3-18 curriculum. Then we need to think about Curriculum architecture and only then should we start thinking about content. Which takes us back to thinking about 3-18 in a planning clycle.


7. Changing Pedagogy

I think that for good learning to take place there needs to be a combination of good pedagogy and either interest or engagement. I think there is a difference between interest and engagement. If a child is interested in something then combined with the right support from the classroom teacher learning is likely to flourish.

Unfortunately, children are sometime required to learn things that they don’t find interesting and that is when we have to teach things in an engaging way.

Technology is engaging and teachers should think about capitalizing on this as they develop learning activities.

All registered Scottish teachers should already be able to using 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)

Some possible ways to use technology to engage our students

 i) Use their tools (eg: social networking spaces)


ii) 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.


iii) Provide a real audience for students work (Wikipedia, blogs with comments, school radio podcast, science television station on YouTube etc…)


iv) Be creative with on-line technology tools. The ones I specifically mentioned were:

Comic Life / Comic Brush (www.comicbrush.com) - I showed an example of a cartoon where a girl is having a conversation with red blood cells.

Pixton (www.pixton.com) - I showed an example of a comic that has been made about Newtons Laws.

WorldWide Telescope (www.worldwidetelescope.org)

A powerful tool to explore the universe and to teach about space.

 

As well as providing a great way to learn facts about the universe. Science teachers should also think about how this could be used in different way. For example wouldn’t Worldwide telescope be a great stimulus for creative writing. Where children imagine want it was like to explore planets and far off lands?


Google Earth (www.earth.google.com)

The days and night feature of Google Earth combined with other layers such as the Earthquake layer have obvious links to science education. Its also worth exploring Google Sky, Google Moon and Google Mars.

GPS and other data can be collected from data loggers can easily be imported into Google Earth to provide a special dimension to any real data collected.

Computer Games

Computer Games again combined with good pedagogy can provide a great contextual hub for learning to teach science. Good games for science education include:

• Endless Ocean – where you can explore the ocean as a diver. There are obvious links to marine biology but also to buoyancy, sea water, pressure, Oxygen, physiology etc…

• Spore – This is a game about evolution and you evolve from a micro-organism to intergalactic planet habitation. Obvious links to biology, diversification, evolution and adaptation.

• World of Goo – a crazy game for the Wii where you have to build things out of…goo. Good for introducing concepts such as texture and viscosity. Also the principles of different forces on structures and you have to build complicated bridges (out of goo) to move between levels.

8. Changing Professional Development

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)

Also consider reading about the daily practice of other Scottish Science Teachers such as:

• Nick Hood - Mr Hood.net
• Sinclair MacKenzie - Never mind the Optics
• Jaye Richards - Mimanifesto

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.

Mobile Phones in Schools: Friend or foe? (Times Educational Supplement Magazine Article, November 2009)

I’m quoted in an article by Meabh Ritchie in this weeks Times Educational Supplement Magazine. I think it’s a good piece by Meabh that is mostly positive about mobile phone use in schools. It has been written in response to Chris Keates from the NASUMT who recently suggested that Mobile Phones should be categorized as 'offensive weapons' in schools.

I just want to make a couple of points on the article to put my quotes that are contained within it in a little more context:

Firstly, I still find it a little strange that Mr Keates would like to see mobile phones re-classified as potentially offensive weapons and to be honest I've never been exactly sure what he ment by this exact classification.

In my experience a potentially offensive weapon would be something like chemicals in science or a chisel in design and technology. But we don’t ban these things from schools - instead we teach and work with our children to use these tools safely and responsibly.  For me this is the key.

Of course a union or local education authority could suggest that children just don’t bring their phones to school? But I suspect that many parents would not be very happy about this for perceived safety and security reasons.  So instead we end up giving children mixed messages. Students are allowed to bring their phones to school, because they are important, but they are not aloud to use them.

It’s like saying, ‘don’t press that big red button’ – of course they will use them, they are children!

A better way for schools to manage something like mobile phone use in class might be to develop robust policy at a local level? This policy should put the decision of whether children should or shouldn’t be allowed to use mobile phones in class directly into the hands of the individual classroom teacher. I think it would be better to trust the profession with this decision rather than suggesting a blanket ban?

I can 100% understand why some teachers wouldn’t want to use mobile phones with children. But that’s up to them.  I am also NOT SAYING that if you choose not to use a mobile device then you have classroom management issues. What I AM SAYING is we shouldn’t stop the teachers who want to make creative use of this technology to craft innovative and engaging learning experiences in schools.

Every year we hear some horror stories of children misusing mobile phones in class. To my knowledge these stories normally come from classrooms where these devices are banned. Why don’t we start from a basis of trust, emphasize responsible, safe use and apply common sense to deal with any issues?

Anyway, have a read of the article below or in the TES Magazine. Let me know what you think and feel free to leave any comments below or over on the Times Educational Supplement Website. As always I am open to  criticism and feedback.

____________________________

Friend or foe?

Feature | Published in TES Magazine on 27 November, 2009 | By: Meabh Ritchie

One teaching union has branded mobile phones potential offensive weapons. But there’s a growing realisation that, despite their nuisance value, they also represent a huge untapped learning resource - and a cheap one at that

As the best-of lists of cool gadgets for the past decade start to fill Sunday newspaper magazines, all-singing, all-dancing, camera-boasting mobile phones will be up there with the iPod and Google as some of the Noughties’ best technological advances. But when it comes to the classroom, the devices are deemed far from desirable.

When Notre Dame High School in Sheffield announced that it was considering using mobile phones and MP3 players in lessons last month, the news was met with shock and indignation from the tabloid press. Notre Dame’s assistant headteacher, Paul Haigh, described mobiles as “a huge untapped resource”, enabling pupils to get involved in technology without the school buying more hardware.

But the move was blasted by the NASUWT, which called for a ban on mobiles. Chris Keates, its general secretary, branded them a “potentially offensive weapon” and blaming them for a range of offences against teachers, from staged incidents where pupils record teachers’ reactions and then post the video on YouTube, to manipulating photos taken in class and posting them online.

Ms Keates is aware her position has been seen as anti-progress, but argues that protecting teachers’ privacy doesn’t equate with shunning new technological methods.

“I don’t subscribe to the view that teachers aren’t knowledgeable about technology,” says Ms Keates. “This idea that because a teacher says, ‘I don’t find mobile phones useful in my lesson,’ they’re a technology Luddite, is insulting to the profession. Often the suggestion comes from people who’ve lost touch with the day-to-day realities of the classroom.”

Despite the outcry, increasing numbers of teachers are using their initiative to incorporate mobiles into parts of lessons. Even aside from web capabilities on smart phones, the humblest mobile phone will feature a camera, a voice recorder and text messaging, which can be used across the curriculum. Teachers with experience of using mobile phones in a learning context argue that the debate should shift away from why they should be used to how.

For Ollie Bray, the national adviser for learning and technology futures at Learning and Teaching Scotland and the deputy head at Musselburgh Grammar School, classroom management is key, and the same would apply with any new piece of equipment.

“The teacher and students should establish a set of rules for the use of phones in class,” he says. “If someone decides to break these rules or makes a mistake, then this might result in the loss of privilege or some other sanction.”

Using a mobile phone doesn’t necessarily require the most up-to-date technological knowledge. However, most of the successful, educational examples of mobile phone use in the classroom have been at schools and colleges with a solid grounding and support for ICT, suggesting that it is teachers who are confident in their own understanding and knowledge of technology and its use who are happy to try them out in a learning context.

“Some teachers need to be more confident in asking pupils for help and asking them how they are already using this technology out of school to help them learn,” says Mr Bray. “Do some teachers have a problem with pupils using mobile phones, or do they have a problem with classroom management? And how are senior leadership teams tackling this through monitoring supervision?”

Mr Bray, who also happens to be an NASUWT member, acknowledges the risk to teachers, but believes that banning phones won’t minimise this risk. Health and safety is already assessed when looking at many aspects of school life, especially outdoor activities, and the same should apply to mobile phone use.

“School trips go ahead because the risk is acceptable, some go ahead after extra control measures have been put in place and some are not allowed to run because the activity is too risky. How much is the use of mobile phones in school ‘actual risk’ or ‘perceived risk’?” he says. “How many schools have thought about risk-assessing the use of technology in the same way that they would a school trip?”

At Sheffield College, pupils (between 14 and 19) and parents have to sign a contract agreeing to appropriate behaviour before they’re allowed to use mobile phones in school. David Pickersgill, the manager of the college’s digital centre of vocational excellence, says that giving pupils that responsibility has a positive effect on their behaviour. Of course, there is still a risk that the contract will be broken, but this is something teachers have to take on board. “That doesn’t mean that they should be banned for everyone,” he says.

Sheffield College is one of 115 colleges and 29 schools working under the MoLeNET programme, part of the Learning and Skills Network’s mobile learning initiative. In total, it has provided 21,000 learners (mostly post-14) with mobile phones and other handheld technologies, and is expanding.

Sheffield College received a grant of £300,000 to be invested in mobile equipment, including 200 smart phones, and the devices have revolutionised learning even more than anticipated. Hair and beauty students are able to look up hairstyles online when they’re in the salon, take photos of their work and then post them online to receive feedback. Animal and husbandry students can take quick notes on their phone while doing fieldwork, or if they want further information about something technical they don’t understand, they can look it up online.

For a vocational, ICT specialist college, using mobile phones is seen as a pragmatic, common-sense approach. “Whether they can or can’t be trusted (to use phones), when they get into the real world, they’ll need it,” says Mr Pickersgill. Ideally, he would like pupils to be able to access the internet all over the school “just like we would if we want to work in Starbucks or even McDonald’s”, in order to give them a sense of the real, working world.

The government technology agency, Becta, seems to agree. It recommends a “gradual adoption” of mobiles until their use is “as natural as any other technology” employed in lessons. According to a report the agency published at the start of this year, secondary schools only have on average a laptop for every 61.4 pupils and a desktop computer for every 4.3 pupils. As phones become an essential piece of kit for young people, and as the technological capabilities of phones expand, why wouldn’t schools take advantage of free resources?

At King James’s School in Knaresborough, Paul Walters, the school’s ICT development manager, decided to capitalise on the resources that pupils were carrying around with them everyday. “The last poll I did, 98 per cent of our pupils had a mobile phone anyway, so it seemed to me ridiculous to try and ban them,” he says. “It’s a piece of technology that kids live by - they’re never without it - so it feels artificial to prevent them from having it. It’s just a part of their life.”

In Mr Walters’s opinion, the last thing schools want is for the “rabble- rousers” to be in command of the technology. “At our school, it’s not a case that every kid is walking around with a phone doing what they like with it. For a lot of the time, they’ll be switched off and put away.”

Three years ago, mobile phones had been banned and they were causing disruption. Now that they are permitted, the phones hold less of an attraction to the pupils, and it has proved easier to regulate. “A better argument would be about appropriate use, asking, ‘Why are you doing that with your phone?’ rather than ‘Why do you have your phone?’ I think it depends on your own school circumstances, though. You’ve got to look at your relationship with the kids.”

Teachers have used mobile phones as an aid to take photos of English texts or the whiteboard for future review; timing experiments; downloading and listening to foreign-language podcasts; and recording someone reading a poem for revision. A research report into the MoLeNET programme also noted that a further advantage of mobile phone use in schools is increased communication between teachers and pupils regardless of location, or if pupils can’t attend school for whatever reason.

Yet developing a school culture that encourages pupils to communicate with teachers via mobile phones also has its risks: communicating one-on-one, out of school hours, means that the boundary between teachers and pupils becomes blurred.

When details surrounding the affair between Christopher Reen of Headlands School and one of his pupils became public in September, it emerged that he had sent hundreds of text messages to the schoolgirl, who was not yet 16. In the same month, Helen Goddard, a music teacher, was charged with having a relationship with a pupil during which she had communicated with her regularly via text message. Back in February, James Davies, a Welsh TA, was sentenced to 12 months in prison after sending suggestive text messages and engaging in sexual activity with two schoolgirls.

There is genuine concern that wireless communication can quickly become informal and breach formal rules of interaction between pupils and teachers. But there are ways for this to be avoided while still using mobile phones for learning. The NASUWT, NUT and Becta all advise a whole- school approach to safeguarding teachers’ privacy. For a start, schools should have a system that prevents teachers giving out personal email addresses and mobile phone numbers.

With effective ICT support in schools, these risks can be minimised. At King James’s School, pupils text and Bluetooth the school’s wireless system, so there is no direct pupil-teacher communication. Some schools provide standard phones for teachers’ professional use, so pupils know that any teacher could access it, and individual teachers are unlikely to use it from home.

Bringing mobile phones into the school environment does present a risk, but it is one that has to be tackled and managed, rather than brushed under the carpet. They are here to stay and will only become a more prevalent part of our lives. “Schools are no longer just a building, and learning no longer just takes place between 9am and 3.30pm,” concludes Mr Bray.

Finding comfortable ground between the mobile phone being an essential classroom tool and an offensive weapon, however, may still take some time

Using mobiles for learning

• Identify and support champions - volunteer teachers who are prepared to take some risks.
• Initiate discussions about using mobile phones for learning (perhaps using pupil voice work) and survey ownership, device capability and the ways mobile phones are already being used in the school.
• Involve those who have responsibility for curriculum, student management and technical support to plan how they will be used.
• Provide hands-on, small-scale opportunities for teachers to try out appropriate uses for mobile phones.
• Encourage teachers to design activities that make the learning purpose clear and to anticipate management issues at the classroom level (such as rules and etiquette).
• Inform parents of the learning purposes for mobile phones and involve them in establishing appropriate ownership, management and ethical arrangements.
• Anticipate and address technical issues ranging from battery-charging to network access, security and data protection.
• Develop new school policies that shift the focus of attention away from the device to the uses, security and behavioural issues that are the real concern.

Source: Becta (http://emergingtechnologies.becta.org.uk).

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, it went something like this:


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

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

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

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

Carrying on:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Tools for Teachers: BEd Primary Focus @ Edinburgh University

I’ve had the opportunity to speak to the Secondary PGDE Students at Edinburgh University for a few years now. But this week I was given the chance to speak to the BEd Primary Students on ICT in Education.

I’ve been trying to up-date my handout and slideshow for my ‘new tools’ talk for some time now - I’m still not quite happy with it but its getting there and I used it on Tuesday.

If you were at the presentation I hope you enjoyed it and as promised here are the slides and links that I referred to. Please feel free to get in touch and leave a comment if you have any questions.

New Tools For Teachers - Primary Focus November 2009

View more presentations from Ollie Bray.

Main content and links:

1. The use of ICT

Generators

Use generators to liven up your lessons and to set learning / home learning objectives in a more creative way. Some good examples include:

• Fodey – Includes the famous wizard text and the newspaper generator

• Wordle – Turn paragraphs of text into beautiful work clouds (try it with your exam syllabus departmental development plan or anything else you can think of!)

• Smoke Signal Generator - Make smoke signals come out of your location. Imagine if you were learning about Japan and your lesson objective floated out of Japan on a Google Map.
  

2. 21st Century Students

21st century students expect a new level of engagement and they have very high expectations. Many young people now exist in a high tech, multimedia rich and highly glamorized world. We need to be prepared to deal with and capitalize on this in our classrooms.

Tips:

• Think about your own on-line presence (social networking, ex-directory in the phone book, be careful what you post etc…)

• Make sure you know what resources your students have at home. For example how many of them have a computer with Internet access? How many have the capacity to play an mp3 file? How many have a games console? If you don’t know this information how will you set appropriate and imaginative home learning tasks and get a real understanding of prior learning?

• Also make sure you know what skills your students have. Many of their ICT skills will be more advanced than yours. Lots of children have made an animation, edited a video and created a website. Make sure you know what skills your students have . Use these skills to build progression and to extend learning.

• Regularly talk with your students about what websites they use. Not only will this keep you up to date but it will also provide you with opportunities to coach and nurture children and young people in Internet safety and Responsible Use. It is particularly important that primary teachers gain an understanding of appropriate behavior in virtual worlds - this will be the on-line environment that they grow up in. Teachers have a responsibility to keep children safe where ever they are - that includes on-line.

• If you have gathered the above information it will make setting appropriate assessment tasks so much easier.

• There is some interesting research on young people and on-line behavior here.

3. The Basic Tools

Search

Tips and good search engines:

• Use the Advanced Google Search – remember you can use this to get specific file type returns such as just PowerPoint or shockwave flash (animation) files.

• Quintura - provides a really good visual search – excellent to use with children on project work.

• Google News - searches the most up to date news web sites.

  
  

Images

• Don't forget Advanced Google Image Search

• Flickr can provide really good and powerful images that can be used in education. Many of these images are are licensed under creative commons. Which means if properly attributed they can be used in education for non-commercial purposes.

• Flickr Slideshow - this will be the quickest and most powerful lesson starter you ever make. More details here.
  

• Big Huge Labs - make your own motivational posters that are truly cross curricular. More details of how I did it here.
  

• The BBC Day in Pictures – great starter or discussion activity.

• The BBC 3 minute news bulletin – children like to watch the news if you give them the chance!

• Microsoft Deep Zoom - great for creating immerse works and for story telling. More details here.

3. The audience tools

Tools such as blogs, podcasts and wikis allow you to quickly publish information to the Internet. Most importantly they can be used as an alternative to traditional assessment and give the children a real sense of audience. Use these tools to make your own World Wide Wall Display.

• Some Good Blogging Tools include

  wordpress, blogger and typepad.

• Audacity is a free audio editing piece of software that will also w you to edit voice and audio recordings. It is also available as a Portable App – which means you can run it off a memory stick.

• Think about getting your students to write Wikipedia articles. Also make sure your students know how to use Wikipedia. I've written in length about his here.

• CANVAS (Children’s Art in the Virtual Arena of Scotland) – Is a new LTS project that will allow children to display artwork in an on-line world. More information here.

4. The Creative Tools

• Comic Brush – On-line comic book creator (a bit like Comic Life – but free!)

• Pixton – Sophisticated on-line comic book creator

• Go Animate – Robust on-line combined on-line / animation software

• Google Earth – Watch my 15 minute mini-note from Teachmeet NorthEast on how to use Google Earth in the Classroom here.

5. Computer Games Based Learning

Good case studies of games based learning available on the LTS Consolarium website.

Here are some examples of web based games that can be used for home learning:

• Classic Sim City – Useful for teaching about towns, cities and settlement.
• Ordnance Survey Map Games – Good for homework.
• Fantasy Farmer – Manage a farm for a year
• Stop Disasters Simulator – Can you protect the world against floods, volcanoes, earthquakes and other nasty stuff?
• Sim Sweat Shop – What is it really like working in a sweat shop in a less economically developed country?
• An idea for setting web based games for homework activities

Remember the use of off the shelf games and games consoles can make a massive contribution to education. For more information in the use of computer games to improve literacy have a look at this recent workshop that we ran in the Highlands.

6. Don't stop learning

The future of CPD is on-line:

• Find CPD opportunities using CPD Find

• Record your CPD using CPD reflect

• Download CPD from LTS iTunes U

• Take part in a CPD event in GLOW (eg: Glowing Thursday’s?)

Develop your personal learning network by finding out more about:

• Teachers TV – good classroom and professional development resources

• Slideshare – A place to up-load and view PowerPoint and other presentations

• Microsoft Innovative Teachers Network – join and collaborate with teachers globally

• Twitter - A micro blogging service. You can follow me here.

Follow some other teachers blogs and find out about their classroom practice. For starters try:

Tom Barrett - Primary School Teacher, technology advocate and all round good guy form England

Jen Deyenberg - Primary School Teacher, Technology advocate and GPS Jedi from Canada

7. Finally

If you were at the presentation. Please leave any comments and feedback from the presentation below or get in touch via email (see top right for details).

Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum–Brazil 2009 (3 of 10): Innovative Schools

This year’s Worldwide Innovative teachers forum was combined with the Worldwide Innovative Schools forum to create the Microsoft Worldwide Education Forum (does that make any sense?).

Over 110 applications were submitted globally by schools who were wishing to take part in the programme. Out of these 110+ schools 30 schools were chosen to attend the Innovative Schools Forum in Brazil. Two of these schools were from the UK and both were from Scotland. It’s also worth noting that Scotland was the only country in the world to have two schools represented at the forum – the applications must have been good!

The two Scottish schools were:

1. Stirling High School
2. Calderglen High School

As part of the schools strand of the forum the schools set up displays on the Tuesday evening about their schools and their local contexts. The displays also contained information and ideas for possible curriculum change, models of future curriculum architecture and individual school vision. The two Scottish Schools are shown below:

Stirling High School, Stirling

Calderglen High School, South Lanarkshire

It was interesting looking around the school displays (until Kristen kicked me out!).

One of the things that struck me was how much attention Stirling High School were getting. On the Stirling stand the Principles of Curriculum Design within A Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) were proudly on display as the schools vision.

The principles and priorities seemed to impress many of the international delegates - particularly when they found out it was actually Scotland's vision. I found this very reassuring and although I know there may still be confusion about A Curriculum for Excellence at local level its nice to have in reinforced that we have the big picture thinking right.

There are two types of Microsoft School within the schools programme - Pathfinder Schools and Mentor Schools. Both Stirling and Claderglen are Pathfinder schools. You can find out more information about the Microsoft Innovative Schools proramme here.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the impact of the event on the two school over the next twelve months.

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.