OllieBray.com

My Nominations for the Edublog Awards 2009

 
The Edublog Awards 2009 are now open for nomination.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).

Google Crome - OS Demo

Google Chrome OS is an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web. According to Google built around the core aims of speed, simplicity and security. 

Here is a nice little introductory video here:

If you want something more robust, this demo video gives you more of a feel for the Google Chrome OS user experience:

Google chrome OS is obviously meant to target the net-book market - my big question is will it work if you are not connected to the web? Will it use Google gears?

Wikipedia is good for pupils and teachers: TESS Article - November 2009

At a number of recent conference and staff training events I have been speaking about Wikipedia in schools. Many of my thoughts on this are based on my original post that I wrote back following the 2009 Handheld Learning Festival. You can read the full article in more detail here.

On Friday in the Times Education Supplement Scotland there was an article about some of this work.  This was partly related to some of the things that I was talking about during my keynote and workshop at the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers Annual Conference.

The article is reproduced here for reference purposes. I have made some comments about what I think about his article at the bottom of the post.

____________________________

Wikipedia is good for pupils and teachers

News | Published in TESS on 20 November, 2009 | By: Elizabeth Buie

Scotland’s games-based learning guru Ollie Bray has challenged the orthodoxy that teachers should shun Wikipedia as a reference source in the classroom.

Mr Bray, depute head of Musselburgh Grammar, who is currently seconded to Learning and Teaching Scotland as national adviser for emerging technologies in learning, argues not only that pupils be allowed access to it in their lessons, but that teachers use it to show pupils how to evaluate the reliability and credibility of information.

Speaking at this year’s conference of the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers, he said teaching pupils to use and evaluate articles on the online encyclopaedia, written and edited by millions of users globally, fitted with Level 3 literacy outcomes in A Curriculum for Excel lence. These require pupils to look at techniques in assessing sources and reliability of information.

Although many teachers and academics criticise Wikipedia for lacking reliability and accuracy, and favouring consensus over credentials in its editorial process, Mr Bray claims teachers can’t stop pupils using it at home, so it is better to teach them to use it responsibly.

Wikipedia flags up entries which contradict each other, he says. “We, as teachers, should be looking at these disclaimers and working with young people to discuss why articles are disputed or contradict themselves. If we start with the belief that everything is subject to opinion, then we can work on how to validate it.”

He suggests teachers and pupils study the “discussion”, “source” and “history” tabs on the website. The discussion area will show pupils the extent of debate that goes on to find compromise in a disputed area, while the editing tab will allow them to contribute to the discussion and increase their knowledge.

Teaching how to use Wikipedia should fall into the same category as internet safety and responsible use of technology, says Mr Bray. When people talk about “inappropriate content” on the web, it’s about sexual or racist content, but it should also include biased information, he believes. “There is extreme content on the internet, but kids only find it because they go looking for it.”

Teachers should be teaching pupils how to validate where knowledge comes from, says Mr Bray.

Pupils should also be entitled to use sites such as YouTube, he argues, but the picture is “very mixed” when it comes to allowing teachers and pupils to access them. His authority, East Lothian Council, has unblocked YouTube access for teachers and pupils, he says; some authorities block it for both, some for pupils only, and others allow staff to view it after 4pm.

A debate is necessary, he argues, about which approach is right.

Economic factors are also involved, he says: “Why is it fair that children in East Lothian can get access to hundreds of hours on Channel 4, National Geographic or the Scottish Parliament, when other schools and teachers have not got access to these resources?"

“It means that children don’t get to benefit from it, or the teacher or head has to spend a lot of time copying the resources, or the department has to spend time procuring resources which are available for free.”

____________________________

Overall I am happy with the piece – after all I did say these things (plus a lot more) at a recent conference!

I would just to clarify a couple of points:

• I don’t consider myself a games based learning guru – but I have had some success in using technology (including computer games) in the classroom.

• I have no evidence to suggest that some education authorities block or filter Wikipedia BUT I know a number of schools, departments and teachers who frown upon its use. YouTube is a different matter and I’ll come back to that in a separate post.

• Although I think that appropriate use of Wikipedia fits the Level 3 outcomes of A Curriculum for Excellence – I also think that its use is equally important in the level 2 and level 4 outcomes as well.

• I think its important to clarify my statement “There is extreme content on the internet, but kids only find it because they go looking for it.” – I’m not saying that sometimes children do not come across inappropriate content by accident BUT I am saying the research shows that many young people do go looking for inappropriate content – see BBC article here

• Finally, I’ll come back to YouTube is a separate post.

I would welcome any comment on the above, either below, by email or on the TESS website.

"Why it’s all Ollie Bray’s fault..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: geoblogs

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.

Catch up and quick up-date...

 
The last seven days has been a bit crazy. I’ve been all over Scotland speaking to teachers and school leaders. Events in the last seven days have included:

• Literacy, ICT and CfE at Drummond Community High School Edinburgh

• Games Based Learning to Support Literacy Workshops at the Dingwall Academy as part of the Highland Learning Festival

• A breakfast keynote for leadership teams and QIO’s from the Central Scotland Headteacher Partnershi pat Stirling Management Centre

• A Keynote at The Scottish Association of Geography Teachers Annual Conference on Geography: past, present and future in Edinburgh last Saturday

• A Google Earth Worksop at the same conference.

Now I know that I’ve promised to post slides, links and notes from the about talks and I will. But I am currently in Brazil at the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum (more on this later). I’ll get notes from the above session up as soon as I have a chance – but it’s likely to be next week!

More soon...

Ollie

Creating Classroom Comics

Regular readers of this website will no that I have a real passion for the use of comics and graphic novels in the classroom. My favorite free on-line comic creation tools at the moment are Comic Brush and Pixton.

Comic Brush (www.comicbrush.com) is a bit like a free version of Comic Life and it allows you to make on-line comics for the iPhone / iPod, comic strips and full length comics. It is easy to use and you can either insert your own pictures into the comic strip or download an art pack (small charge) or do a bit of both. The art packs are great as they allow you to introduce licensed characters / artwork such Judge Dread or manga into your comics.

Here is an example of a comic brush comic that I made quickly about the recent Handheld Learning 2009 Conference. All the pictures I have used in the comic were taken by James Clay.

(click on the image to make it bigger)

Pixton (www.pixton.com) is equally as good but serves a different purpose. With Pixton you can really develop the fine detail of a character right down to facial expression and gestures. Pixton is free to use but you can also pay for an education license that gives the teacher more control over student accounts.

Here is a quick example of a pixton comic that I used recently to set some tasks at a recent Learning and Teaching Scotland whole staff event.

The problem is despite these tools being free they may be blocked by some local education authorities and they rely on a reasonable bandwidth in order for them to work properly.

As a result I like to remind teachers that you can actually produce fairly good comics in PowerPoint. I recently produced an Innovative Teacher InnoVid on the subject which some people may find interesting (version embeded below).

You can find out more information about InnoVids here.

And if thats not enough comic stuff for you you could also have a look at these 100 tips, tools and resources for teachers.

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.