Some common sense ... perhaps

So, it transpires, that there are more Sats papers missing and now there is a big search on to try to find out where they are and just how many.

The question still needs to be answered about the viability of continuing with a system that few will now have any confidence in.

Perhaps this company ETS, with all of its inadequacies, have done my cause a favour. Just maybe we will now see some more radical rethinking. Today, previous Education Secretary Estelle Morris says in a BBC News item:

Ed Balls should not resign over the Sats problems - but he should use them as an opportunity to overhaul the testing system.

Hope he listens ...

Rockford's Rock Opera - The Registrar commeth !!

Have a look and listen to my first attempt at a 'bubble comment' here.


If you are a Rockford's Rock Opera fan (If not I just can't imagine why not ... go on try it)then here's something that you have been waiting for ... the free video – I am the Registrar .

Fresh out of the exciting Sweetapple stable courtesy of Elaine and Matthew, this new video track will knock your socks off.

To get it to play full screen I downloaded the video with Real Payer 11 and then just opened it in Real Player ... looks awesome projected on the side of next door's house.



Also from them ...

PERFECT FOR LONG HOLIDAY JOURNEYS

We know Rockford's Rock Opera is perfect for entertaining the WHOLE FAMILY on long holiday journeys – on mp3 players or on CD.
Two and half hours of amazing entertainment you'll ALL enjoy again and again. So go on, get the CDs or download the story now!

NEW FREE TEACHERS' MATERIALS

We've completely revamped our education section with loads more lesson plans plus free downloadable characters and scenes - perfect for creating stories of your own.
Over the next month we'll be adding more and more to this section so please check back regularly.

Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of rum ... 16 men on a dead man's chest ... are you a Pirate ?

Are you a pirate? Things have to change ... watch the video and decide where you stand. But as an educator do you stand somewhere different? Is it a case of don't do as I do; do as I say? Or do you just not say? Are we educating our young people to think and act from knowledge or ignorance?

Watch the video (Thanks to the Whiteboard Blog and the original post of Lauren O'Grady for the 'heads up' on this)



PS Breaking News from the BBC 24 July 2008

Oh to have been in Boston now that summer is here

The Building Learning Communities Annual Conference in Boston is a bright star in the sky of educational conferences ... very little selling ( The conference design was superb. Following on the heels of NECC, the contrast is clear. Building Learning Communities keeps the scope of corporate sponsors, vendors, and salespeople to an appropriate place. )... lots of ideas from across the world and just full of wonderful, mind opening potential.

Unfortunately I was not there last week ... but a lot of my friends were and I hope to bring you some of their 'take-aways' at a later date.

The BLC Conference Ning has given me little of the meat of the conference so I have trawled the blogs to get my 'fix'. Reflections on Building Learning Communities 2008 is the blog of Richard Kassissieh is Director of Information Services at Catlin Gabel School in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. and his reflections are well worth a read.

I want to pick up on just a couple of things he says ... firstly:

... Ewan McIntosh and John Davitt focused too much on currently existing technology applications and their effects on social dynamics and power. The dominant educational technology discourse has been enamored with these possibilities for a few years now. We are ready for a more detailed exploration of the intersection of new technologies with specific pedagogical strategies.

This is so right ! It is time to move on .. the examples of good practice must be there and, when we think about it, we all know of some. But they are still in tiny pockets and the institutions don't run on ideas in tiny pockets. We have our 'mavens' and we are now urgent to make global changes in the way people learn and develop as they grow in to their lives.

Secondly:

Small, passionate groups make things happen. And I remember one of Ewan's nuggets from last year: forget the pilot. Come up with a great idea and launch it well.

This is so right ! As I go from school to school and LA to LA the number of 'pilot' projects that people are involved in seems to grow and have a life of its own. Remember the song ...



Hold the light sabre in your hand and the force will be with you ... courage of conviction.

PS

From my feeds today the Next Generation Learning in Kent has a neat summary of Harnessing Technology:Next Generation Learning .

The bit that really interested me, in reference to BLC Conference was what was left over from last time:

Challenges remaining from the first e-Strategy

• Unreliable and unsustainable school infrastructure and technical support.


• Value for money and effective technology management not being achieved.


• Range of technology use in schools is fairly limited.


• Teachers rarely realise the full benefits of technology.


• Use of digital resources largely regarded as optional by teachers.


• Technology not used effectively to engage parents.


• Few schools making use of the extended learning opportunities offered by technology.


• Levels of technology access high among learners when out of school, but in formal education expectations not being met.


• Whizzy web 2.0 technologies common at home, but not in formal settings.

Podcasting in Surrey (without a fringe)

Sometimes people just make my day.

Yesterday I had wakened early (before 5.00) and had begun my drive down the M1 towards Surrey. My route was to take me on to the M25 and then around to J10 and off to Cobham. I gave myself 3 hours to do it ... it was not enough. I arrived on the M25parkway at just before 7.00 and then stopped and started my way around anti-clockwise ... even had time to count the number of jets I could see in the sky over Heathrow (7). I arrived at the 4S Training Centre in Cobham at 8.33 ... rushed in ... and was greeted by smiles and a really warm welcome. Just down the corridor, in the room we were to work in I met Tim Barette ... more smiles, warm handshake, and 'What can I get you to drink?' and 'Is there anything I can do to help?' and ' Will this be okay for you?' and 'Is there anything else you need?'

Sometimes people just make your day ... thanks Tim !!

Then the teachers came and we podcasted. We used Podium from Softease and it was easy to use and didn't get in the way of what we were trying to do and we recorded sounds and made podcasts and had fun and could see why we might want to do this with children in classrooms.

We took poems as a theme and the teachers read and developed lots of ideas and added backing tracks and 'stings' to their productions. We spoke of building a podcast as a 'design and build' exercise in D & T and commented that preparing the resources ( sound files mainly) was a pre-podcast job.

The scripting tool in the software excited interest and its potential was not lost on a group of primary teachers who could see the cross-curricula application of both the scripting and the podcasting.

The 'witches' from Shakespeare's Macbeth, concluded proceedings.

It was no big deal. Not once did any of the teachers ask how to do something. They listened, watched and then experimented ... brilliant !! I do hope that they enjoyed it as much as I did.

The podcasts they made can be listened to here (Remember it was a first try and was supposed to be fun)

A Sat too far ...

I have always had a high regard for Ken Boston, the head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, but it appears that someone has fed him the wrong information. How can he say categorically that ... the current position is that in Key Stage 2the marking is now 100% complete ... when it so obviously isn't? Newspapers and media agencies up and down England are find this out and today the BBC report yet again on the failure to get the thing sorted.

This all indicates a mess but what worries me even more is the reaction of head teachers up and down the country who have used it as a rallying cry for something I don't understand.

The children have put their heart and soul into this. That's what hurts. I've had to speak to the children this morning to tell them nothing has come back. said one headteacher in the BBC report.

Sats are not fit for purpose and educationalists have been saying this for long enough now for someone, surely, to listen. This latest problem is just that - a problem. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that we should have stopped testing children in this way some time ago and simply haven't.

The fact that heads, teachers, parents and the media have used it as a rallying cry for something or other is strange. None of this is going to materially damage children, teachers, schools or education as we know it ( pity in some ways really, it could have initiated a period of great change). The educational effect will be an absolute minimum and systems that have been developed just to satisfy the beast of Sats have, at best, had there time and effort misplaces and at worst could be accused of missing the point of education itself.

As I have said before, several times, time to stop this. Let's not get sidetracked by a company that has failed to deliver on its contract ( to collect, mark and return) let's concentrate on the real issue. Sats must go !

So where do we go from here?

There are many people contributing to the idea of the necessity to change the game and think what education should really be like in the 21st Century for 21st century learners. With the onset of Web 2.0 has come Learning 2.0 with a, sort of, implication that the next step might be something to do with advances in technology.

I am not so sure. I think social demography has a really important part to play in educating the next generation (and those that come after). We have, for a long period of time now relied on the institutional definition of education and have allowed schooling to be the function of it. This has lead to an over-reliance on the curriculum and its measures which has, in my opinion, led learning into a dark place.

There is need to change.

Charles Leadbeater has written, under the title of 'What Next? 21 Ideas for 21st Century Learning' produced for the Innovation Unit on the future of learning in England, about such things.

The thrust of his argument seems to be about personal responsibility in a group dynamic to make education authentic for learners. This is an all-inclusive view.

One of the 21 for me is the idea of 'third spaces'. Places in space and time between home and school that provide the personal bridge to make it all work. For some this 'space' will be in sport, for others art and music; some will need to be there alone and others in groups that will dynamically change. Technology could provide that space - but should it, will it ?

The report is more than worth a read for those who see and follow the need to change.

So how might schools survive?

Yesterday Will Richardson interviewed Clay Shirky author of 'Here Comes Everybody'. You can catch the UStream of the interview here:



and



One of the clear questions for me that Will asks is about the geographical nature of education and how technology has changed all of that and at the same time speeded up the process. On top of this Clay talks about organising without organisation ... students taking control of their learning, maybe as a subset of institutionalised learning. He goes on to say that he feels that schools as physical environments in which students from a locality study simply has to change.

Clay spends some time on the idea that we use much of our time learning time collaborating with questions and answers in a variety of groups and yet our assessment systems are based on individual abilities in contrived situations.

Clay comments that we want children/students to be able to figure out which tools they need to use in which situation. And these tools are changing tools. Much of what we want schools to do for out children can't be measured in our current ways.

Will asks Clay if students are just simply going to move out and do their own thing and as I have often said he makes the point that it is already beginning to happen.

Clay redefines the concept of 'digital divide' - he feels that it is not about access but about the socio/political imperative to use the technology to do things which you have not done before. This is a 'peer'/home/institution view idea and not to do with what kit/band width etc that is available.

Interestingly, on the day Apple launched its 3G iphone, Clay doesn't see that the phone is an ' ideal educational tool'. I think he might be missing something here ! Will seems to see that the phone might be a really useful tool but there are problems of 'bad behaviour' with the devices. My view here is that the publicity of the bad behaviour might be the thing that fuels it.

Unfortunately, for me, when asked the question about institutional change, he 'rights off' the early years saying that education there is not likely to change ... I do hope he is wrong ! There is reinforcement here for the idea that we need a system to evaluate collaborative work because it is this that will be really important.

When asked what would happen if there was no institutional education Clay feels that groups would organise themselves to provide it. If this would be the case it would be interesting to see whether it would be on a pre-existing model or if something new would arise ... Phoenix perhaps.

I may well have given my spin to what was said in the interview so it would be better to listen and see what you think.

To Sat or not to Sat ... no question ...

There is no question here for me. Get rid of them and plough the money back into teaching and learning. Particularly learning. John Connell's post of yesterday and my response to it is all part of this agenda. We need to move on from this obsession with measuring what our learners do to supporting their interests and enthusiasms and, as professionals, channel their time and efforts . We are no longer 'training' pupils for jobs but should be providing them with the stepping stones towards a creative, adaptive adult life. And this does not demand to know what Sat level you are ... or for that matter what level you are in anything. Learning and understanding is surely not based on a level of anything.

Today the BBC report that Sats results expected to fall I am totally amazed that such an arbitrary scale can be deemed to rise and fall anyway. But this BBC comment is based on an organisational juggle. Am I bovvered? Not a bit.

It is all okay though because the MPs are going to 'grill' the exam chiefs. What an incredible smoke-screen. Have you heard the one about 'wood' and 'trees'?

There is a problem with the amount of money being spent on 'weighing' our children but this really is not a big issue. But the fact that it diverts attention away from looking forward to the challenges of 'learning 2.0' is a problem.

We must be planning to move the focus of education from pedagogy - in a blended way -towards andragogy and heutagogy. The ownership of the learning must be invested in the learners and it is their active participation in their own learning that education should seek. Selling them the idea that tests show what they can do and what they will be able to do is just not fair ... we need to move on.

John says that, at the moment he 'doesn't buy it', but he does comment that, the context within which education systems need to work is changed. He continues ... The key sets of stakeholders, the world over – governments, parents, business, the teaching profession, universities – remain obdurately tied to industrial-age education ... when we don't live in one any more. A read of The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman will indicate why a change of perspective is important.

Things I ought to have said

Friends, acquaintances, colleagues and some enemies are often telling me to get real. I feel passionately that the direction of education has taken a turn for the worse and that the socio-political invective that drives what happens is not good. In fact I feel that it is inherently bad. Bad for institutions but most of all bad for a generation growing up to things that we cannot yet imagine. Their jobs for life have not yet been conceived and their patterns of life have not been identified. We perpetuate what we perpetuate, with eyes down and a belief in the present and the past. But with a look at the future through past eyes.

John Connell in his blog today has expressed what I feel much more succinctly than I can and I yearn for the coming to pass Learning 2.0 so that we can step beyond it. Change by steady drip does not work ... we have been there and know that the 'old guard' keeps the status intact.

I do hope that this time next year we won't be revisiting this but will, in fact, have moved on.

The Wordle version of 'Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008-14'

Brilliant idea from Ian Usher ... using Wordle as a way of 'understanding' the new Technology Strategy ... thanks Ian.

Enables you to pick out the key words ... am a bit worried about the prominence of the word 'will'.

SATs - time to call it a day !

On Sunday last I flippantly commented about 'not being bovvered' about the delay in the reporting of the KS2 and KS3 SATs results this year. Today I am commenting on the reported mistakes in the marking.

By the BBC's reported account it has failed to meet up to the standards set and many children/students/schools/parents are going to be supplied with the wrong results. Even if the results are correct, if some are wrong, who will believe the others. People will be prepared to believe the good but not the bad ... over inflation is just as much a problem here as under inflation.

Surely time to call it a day ... it does no good, it doesn't work, it costs lots of money, it diverts attention from real teaching to just focusing on testing and it upsets very many people.

Let's stop it once and for all ...

Copyright ... time to re-evaluate

Copyright laws/rules were set for printed materials and have evolved or have been morphed to include electronic sources since music and photo and video became available. The laws and rules do not seem to fit today's publishing methodology and need a complete rethink. Copyright is too complex for mortals and creative commons has helped but ...

My feeds (apophenia :: making connections where none previously existed )today took me towards a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. This is well worth keeping as a reference guide to common sense and careful thought on the subject.

Is the study of such things soon to be part of the new e-curriculum we have yet to write ?

Large Hadron Collider activation ... not yet !!

Re my previous post on this topic I notice this morning that the clock which was counting down and had reached about 1 day has now been reset to 31 days ... I wonder why?

Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008-14

On 3rd July at the ICT in Education Conference in Birmingham Jim Knight - you can read exactly what he said here - ( on behalf of the DCSF, DIUS and Becta ) announced Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008-14.

This update has the potential to ensure ensure that requirements of today's learners are met. The Government says technology in learning is no longer optional.

This document came out of a Becta stable and is promoted by the Government of the UK but as far as I can see it only applies to England, as Scotland - their early Years Strategy here - has its own and Northern Ireland's is up for review as the EmPowering Schools Strategy was dated to 2008. The Welsh Assembly produced their document Transforming Schools with ICT:The Report to the Welsh Assembly Government of the Schools ICT Strategy Working Group back in April.

I feel sure someone will tell me quickly if I am wrong about this as I am just not sure how this works as the UK Government and Becta who both have responsibilities across all of the countries that from the UK. (Haven't they?)This is, of course, a concern to those of us who work across a number of countries.

On the whole the revised strategy is just that - revised - to meet the changes that have happened since the last version. And it leaves openings for continued revision, though I must say, I am mildly perturbed by the 2008 - 2014 tag. 6 years ... it is a brave person who will predict that far ahead in ICT never mind anything else (see my last post concerning the search for the Higgs boson).

For me one of the highlights is the section on Priorities in managing the change: equity, quality and efficiency. The five priorities listed here:
• Learner entitlement
• Family and informal learning
• Professional tools for teaching
• Mobilising leadership
• Fit-for-purpose sustainable technology.

... address some of the key 'back-at-the-ranch' questions. Of particular interest to me is that of 'personal ownership' and integration and I feel that item 87 will present many challenges and opportunities:

87. This means that increasingly leaders will need to ensure effective
management of a ‘mixed economy’ of publicly funded and personally owned
technologies, and ensure that no learner or family is disadvantaged due to
lack of access to technology. This raises significant issues, including those
relating to licensing and liabilities, data protection, and health and safety.
Becta and its partners will provide advice and guidance on each of these
areas. Industry partners including internet service providers, hardware
and educational service providers, will be fully involved.

To conclude - this strategy has been conceived and developed over time by people who have a group, vast working knowledge of the current state of the ICT game. But, it is institutional and organisational. Clay Shirky has much to say on such things in his book 'Here Comes Everybody'.

Somehere below the Swiss/French border ...

... there lies the most powerful machine thing in the world ... the Large Hadron Collider ...



Okay, so you have no idea what this is but billions of your pounds or dollars or euros have gone into building it and this is what it is:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.

Now what is significant about telling you about it now (before it could be too late and you get swallowed up into an absolutely tiny or rather massive black hole) is that according to the countdown timer on the LHC Countdown website there are about 2 days and 7 hours .... rather depending on when you are reading this ... before they switch it on with a vengeance to go searching for the illusive and exclusively reclusive Higgs Boson, better known as the 'God particle'.

After this allocated period of time scientists (and I hope the rest of us) will be able to see the universe born again and again and again about 30 million times a second.

That should keep them busy for a bit !

“We are now on the endgame,” said Lyn Evans, of Cern, who has been in charge of the Large Hadron Collider. ... just not too sure that the definition of 'end game' is one I am confident about.

Its worth having a read of the countdown page and if you have any paranoias then it will certainly manage to feed them.

Hope I can add a PS to this post in about 3 days time ... I do hope these physicists know what they are doing.



Of course this could just be another web hoax ... couldn't it?

What fun ...

Go on ... just try it !!

Imagination Cubed !

Thanks to my friend Allanah in New Zealand for this one.

SATs results delayed ( Who cares?)

I was driving home from Essex last evening and tuned in to the BBC radio 4 PM slot to pick up the headlines. Top report of the day was that the SATs results for 1 Million pupils would be delayed by one week !!

I had to pull over into a layby as I was laughing so much at the report and the response from the Department. Just WHO CARES ... the Department and the BBC made me feel that a national catastrophy was at hand and that we must all come out fighting (or digging for victory or something). They didn't manage to tie it in with the 'global credit crunch' but I did get the idea that if they could have they would have.

Not withstanding the amazing cost of the five-year contract to ETS and the 'softer' costs to schools, parent, teachers and children and the fact that we are the only country that perpetuates this 'test it, test it, test it' regime are 'WE BOVVERED'?

Well I fancy NO, is the real answer. If the results are delayed a week or a month - so what. What are the real implications of the calamity? For the children absolutely nothing, nil, zilch ... and it is them we do it all for, isn't it?

Okay, I concede that some children/students may have been built up for their results coming in (possibly based on a reward system !).

The Department seems to be bothered about the damage it has done to the credibility of the exam system. The company has ' learned lessons'. What have the rest of us learned ... and are we BOVVERED !!

Podcasting in Wickford, Essex

4th July found me making the drive round the M25 (it was totally clear!!) to Essex to support my colleague Philippa for two sessions of podcasting with Softease's Podium.

We had two splendid sessions made the more inspiring by 'frontman' Alan Drew, Curriculum Development Advisor, ICT, for Essex County Council who had put real time and effort into his opener about the nature of podcasting. This presentation really set the scene for the 'hands on session' to follow and also showed how Essex are using their 'e-folio' portal to support and enhance teaching and learning. Alan explained that the materials he had used and much, much more on podcasting was available through the portal and cemented, for the teachers, the importance of building up their familiarity with it.

Now its up to the Lead Teachers and ASTs who attended to run with the ideas ... they know why they should, they know how they can and they have the means to move podcasting forward in their schools.

Failed again ...

Its been that sort of week really on and off. Some real highs - meeting people with passion and enthusiasm for what they are doing and how it affects young people. And some real lows - not running enough and listening to people who want to move forward but are constrained by the institutionalisation of their current positions.

And ... this blog failed to make the shortlist in the Computer Weekly Public Sector IT Blog awards. Ewan made it and so did Ian (Usher) ... oh well perhaps next time ... :-)

I wonder who will come out on top ?

I wait with bated breath ...

On 3rd July at the Improving Today, Excelling Tomorrow conference being staged in Birmingham by ICT for Education magazine , Jim Knight will let us all know what the Government is thinking of next with regard to its ICT Strategy for education.

I am told, via Merlin John's blog that the presentation will: ... focus on "driving up standards in the use of ICT, learning lessons from past mistakes and identifying excellent practice to help schools further embed technology into the way they work".

Excited ... you bet ... can't wait to see whether we are going to open up and move on or .....

PS

2nd July ... can't find any mention of what was said if anything ...sorry ... if you find anything please let me know

PPS

3 rd July ... Still can't find any find out what Jim said ...

Defining the edublogger

What is the definition of an edublogger?

An international all-day "meetup" of educational bloggers and those using collaborative technologies will take place on Saturday, June 28th, at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio just before the start of NECC. All are invited--whether you yourself blog, are just an educational blog reader, or even just want to hang out with an interesting group of people. The event is free, and you can indicate that you are coming (and see who else will be there) here at the Edubloggercon wiki. This event is based on the idea of an "unconference", and is being organized by the participants in real time here on the wiki. It's maybe better referred to as a "collaborative conference." Through the generosity of ISTE, we have access all that day to rooms at the Convention Center and there will be free wi-fi: beyond that is up to you. So come and help us plan a fun and stimulating experience. It should be great!

Minds meeting minds ... it will be great to trawl the participant's' blogs for outcomes and patch those in to the editorial statement of Annika Small (ex Futurelab CE) where she asks: 'What have you changed your mind about and why?'

You can get a flavour of the event by watching the video. Ewan was there !!

No 'ifs' .. but some 'buts'

Ray Tolley happened upon the poem below on a NZ site ... it was in the appendix to Andy Walker's investigation into personalised learning experiences for students and opens up a whole set of contradictions for me.

The Things We Steal From Children

By Dr John Edwards

If I am always the one to think of where to go next.
If where we go is always the decision of the curriculum or my curiosity and not theirs,
If motivation is mine,
If I always decide on the topic to be studied, the title of the story, the problem to be worked on,
If I am always the one who has reviewed their work and decided what they need,
How will they ever know how to begin?

If I am the one who is always monitoring progress.
If I set the pace of all working discussions,
If I always look ahead, foresee problems and endeavour to eliminate them,
If I swoop in and save them from cognitive conflict,
If I never allow them to feel and use the energy from confusion and frustration,
If things are always broken into short working periods,
If myself and others are allowed to break into their concentration,
If bells and I are always in control of the pace and flow of work,
How will they learn to continue their own work?

If all the marking and editing is done by me,
If the selection of which work is to be published or evaluated is made by me,
If what is valued and valuable is always decided by external sources or by me,
If there is no forum to discuss what delights them in their task, what is working,
what is not working, what they plan to do about it,
If they have not learned a language of self-assessment,
If ways of communicating their work are always controlled by me,
If our assessments are mainly summative rather then formative,
If they do not plan their way forward to further action,
How will they find ownership, direction and delight in what they do?

If I speak of individuals but present learning as if they are all the same,
If I am never seen to reflect and reflection time is never provided,
If we never speak together about reflection and thinking and never develop a vocabulary for such discussion,
If we do not take opportunities to think about our thinking,
If I constantly set them exercises that do not intellectually challenge them,
If I set up learning environments that interfere with them learning from their own actions,
If I give them recipes to follow,
If I only expect the one right conclusion,
If I signify that there are always right and wrong answers,
If I never let them persevere with something
really difficult which they cannot master,
If I make all work serious work and discourage playfulness,
If there is no time to explore,
If I lock them into adult time constraints too early,
How will they get to know themselves as a thinker?

If they never get to help anyone else,
If we force them to always work and play with children of the same age,
If I do not teach them the skills of working co-operatively,
If collaboration can be seen as cheating,
If all classroom activities are based on competitiveness,
If everything is seen to be for marks,
How will they learn to work with others?

For if they…
have never experienced being challenged in a safe environment,
have had all of their creative thoughts explained away,
are unaware what catches their interest and how then to have confidence in that interest,
have never followed something they are passionate about to a satisfying conclusion,
have not clarified the way they sabotage their own learning,
are afraid to seek help and do not know who or how to ask,
have not experienced overcoming their own inertia,
are paralysed by the need to know everything before writing or acting,
have never got bogged down,
have never failed,
have always played it safe,
how will they ever know who they are?

World Web 2.0 Educational Projects

Terry Freedman has collated a number of educational projects that use Web 2.0 technologies and has produced a booklet outlining these. It can be downloaded freely from here.

Also on this download page is the highly acclaimed 'Coming of Age V1' ... more than well worth a read.

This is what Terry says about the Web 2.0 Projects booklet:

The purpose of this booklet is to give you some practical ideas about the kinds of things you can do with Web 2.0 technology. Please note: this was not intended to be a compilation of projects using cutting edge applications. I simply invited teachers to share what they have been doing.
In many cases the projects were in their infancy. Also, almost all projects will need following up in some way. For example, what were the longer term benefits, or what exactly was meant by “amazing results”?
All the descriptions have been provided by the teachers themselves. I received quite a few submissions, via an online survey, but only a relative handful have been included here, for a variety of reasons:

•Some people asked for their projects not to be made public. I have respected that wish.
•Some projects were not viewable by the public. I have actually included some of these where the description was detailed enough to give the reader an idea of what was going on; otherwise, I couldn’t see the point.
•I have not used submissions where there were very few details and no website to check out.
•I have omitted repeated descriptions of similar projects, but have included the URLs referred to.

As you will see, I have arranged the projects according to the age range they address. However, I do think it may be worth your while looking through all of them. I, for example, found several ideas for podcasting in primary (elementary) schools from the projects listed in the higher age groups.
I hope you find the booklet useful, and I should be extremely grateful for any feedback you would like to give me.

Thank you.

Terry Freedman

Words of visdom from NZ

Reading my feed of the Flux blog took me to an account of how schools in New Zealand are managed and governed and how autonomous their set up seems to be.

And just for those reading who think I should have written 'wisdom' in the title and made a mistake I decided to use my new word 'visdom'. This is a 'mash-up' word implying wisdom and vision together ... perhaps it will make a dictionary somewhere !

The huge quotation that I bring here is this:

When the elephant gets on the trampoline, everybody else has to jump at the same rhythm ... so don't let the elephant get on !! (the last bit is mine)

I wonder what, if anything, our primary schools heading for their version of BSF can make of this?

The Government responds to Tanya !!

Last week the Government announced its response to the Tanya Byron Review on e-Safety. You can read the press release here or go to the full Action Plan here. Again, it is good to note that there is a version for 'young people' .

Qualification in Podcasting

Working away for a week has meant that I almost missed the bit in the Guardian about a qualification in Podcasting !

This is what the newspaper said:

The new qualification from the NCFE (formerly the Northern Council for Further Education) will allow learners to investigate the process of planning, preparing and producing a podcast.

It aims to help students understand the concepts of podcasting and to develop creative, information technology and communication skills. It will be available in centres across the UK from September 2008.

Podium Podcasting in Newham

A totally awesome day with about 40 or so ICT co-ordinators in Newham at the ITASS powerhouse - the Credon Centre - who arrived to experiment with the curriculum implications behind podcasting. They were very receptive to the ideas that underpinned the ICT and could focus on the classroom contexts while still maintaining a personal, watching brief on the kit they needed to get it all sort out.

I was first up and began with the Ninja Podcasting video followed by the wonderful Common Craft explanation of podcasting:



Then I did my bit with Podium ending up with the participation slot for the witches from Macbeth!!

I was followed by an extremely well planned an executed session by Ken Maslin of ITASS and Emma Parker, Primary Strategy Literacy Consultant who explained case study projects that they had been involved in using podcasting. They introduced us to various versions of 'The Nig Nang Nong' and how explained how motivating the whole thing about recording was for the children.

These were my favourites:





After a superb lunch Pippa Dorma, LGfl Consultant, explained the LGfL approach to podcasting and got the assembled mob to do clever things with Audacity.

A brilliant day with enthusiastic teachers ... lucky children !!

Words, words, words ...

Words just excite me. In text or in speech the way that words shape thoughts and actions have always been a joy. Calligrams, words which explain themselves by their shape, size, colour and juxtaposition have certainly inspired many poets and the idea of creating shapes and patterns with words really does appeal.

I have just come across a Web 2.0 app that takes this to a creative place that I feel is stimulating and different. It is Wordle.

This is what they say about themselves:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

RSA Edge Lecture with Sir Ken Robinson

It would have been great to have listened to Sir Ken Robinson in person as he delivered his views on how we can make change in education happen and then make it stick so that it evolves as times and pace continue to change ( if you get my meaning)... but I was not there on 16th June to hear him.

Fortunately the MP3 of the event is available here.

Formal .V. Informal education

One of the feeds that I read avidly because it is always thought provoking and at the cutting edge of creative educational thought is the feed to Flux - the blog of FutureLab.

In continuation of the theme of what makes education education Emma Agusita writes:

There are a number of central characteristics evident in informal education practices which reveal a persuasion for socially just’ and holistic approaches:
Relinquishing control of the learning process
redefining the value of what constitutes learning
encouraging self-awareness & reflection
facilitating critical skills, freethinking & experimentation
engaging though innovation and equal access & participation

All of these factors are exciting but, at this time, the one of these that really interests me is the 'relinquishing of control' ... I am anxious that childhood should not be wasted on conventional, institutional education but should, by design not chance, be focused where the child is. By gradual progression and sympathetic mentoring learners should develop their own sense of learning and then 'buy' at the intitutions the learning that is for them.

Institutional education is still in its infancy and has not yet grasped the concept of being a 'service industry'. It fails to inform its buyers of the products it has in a way that makes them accessible. By attempting to be fair and equable it has developed a grand 'several sizes fits all' approach which is not personalisation.

We have exciting ways to go yet.

Does it all add up?

I have just finished reading the Review of Mathematics Teaching in Early Years Settings and Primary Schools by Sir Peter Williams and am left wondering if it all adds up.

Just to take some of the key points from a political standpoint:

There should be a maths specialist in every primary school in 10 years

Isn't that potentially two General Elections away? Never mind the advances in technology over that period that might/could/ought to change the shape of education, who is to say that the next Government will be of like mind? Would that we could effectively predict what skills and competences our young people will need by then. I don't suspect that it may not depend on their ability to ..play with shapes, time, capacity and numbers

The training of the maths specialists will start in 2009 so by 2019 the school down the road will have a maths specialist and two whole generations of children will have come and gone from that school without the benefit of this 'expert' help to do things that could easily (in authentic terms) be questioned as worthwhile or even necessary.

I have been unable to find out the actual figures for the training of ALL teachers in support of the old numeracy strategy and that, together with the training of co-ordinators working on the 'new framework' does add up to an awful lot of maths training over the last few years.

The review says:

All children should be competent in basic maths by the age of seven

Just about the same moment as our Continental neighbours are beginning the formal education of their young people. And what does this competence mean?

I do agree with the idea that we need to remove the negativity towards the subject. This is largely generated by a starved media who will latch onto what they consider to be a good story rather than bother to investigate the truth.

Even then I am just not sure about the context and content of the teaching. Teachers are only just beginning to get to grips with the New Framework for Maths (did you notice when it changed from numeracy to maths?). I just wonder how teachers will respond to this, some will obviously see the implications as a potential career move.

If this is the report on Maths then I wonder what Jim Rose will say in his Primary Review that moves things forward. And how does all this sit alongside the thoughts and ideas coming from FutureLab about re-imagining learning spaces and what effect will it have on the Primary phase of BSF?

So what have you changed your mind about ?

Reading the intro to Futurelab's Vision magazine had me very, very excited.

Vision Magazine 7 link here.

Annika Small (read her here on Al Upton's blog), the outgoing CE of Futurelab, championed the cause of disruption and variation - something I have been doing ( without the platform) for many years now. She begins by quoting from a question asked by the Edge Foundation (hence my title to this post): What have you changed your mind about and why?

She highlights that changes of the mind lie at the core of almost every breakthrough in science, art and thought and further comments that lasting innovation rest on a rupture with the principles of the past.

This philosophy is so close to the thoughts and outpourings that I have bored people with over many, many years I was just emotionally heartened to hear someone else expounding similarly.

It is, as she says, obligatory on our part to institute a total re-think as to the purpose and nature of education and learning. It is only by unlearning what we think we know and what has plotted the map of our current progress that we will be able to move forward.

The current FutureLab magazine has an article on building primary schools for the future and intimates at the need to utilise the £7 billion effectively. It asks, as FutureLabs project on re-imagining learning spaces for open-minded flexibility and points towards the fundamental questions such as - from Hannah Jones (special projects director leading the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Programme at the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) - what sort of learners would we like? and, from me, how and when and where and from whom would they wish to learn?

The article examines the fundamentals of educational development and poses the thought that - the classroom itself is seen as the final stumbling block to the imagination ...

We need to re-think before it is too late and another generation moves through our institutions without access to means that should be universal. We need to think what the purpose of our systems are and to take account of student voice. We have not done this yet.

So what do we need to change our minds about and how do we move on?

Podcasting at Killhope

Yesterday was spent in the far west of County Durham, so close to Cumbria that it didn't matter, at Killhope Mining Museum. We, that is Shelley Dendy and myself, numerous members of ITSS, at least eight teachers and about 36 children plus the centre staff were there to podcast. Authentically podcast.

The theme had been set by Paul Hodgkinson and was based on the life of a 'washer boy' in the lead mine in Victorian times ... read the challenge here:Podcasting%20Challenge.pdf

What a tremendously exciting day ... more details later but you can listen to the podcasts of the day here.

3G iPhone

Just spent the last hour and a half listening to the news about the 3G iPhone from WWDC08 ... it will come in to 22 countries around the world at $199 on July 11th ... that is about £100 and it is totally amazing what they have done with it.

I want one now !!

See all of the pictures here.

JKR speaks at Harvard

I have to confess to not being a Harry Potter fan. It isn't that I don't think that the stories would be good it is just that, on the whole, I don't actually read much fiction, and, if I were to start I am not sure I would begin there.

However, I picked up from my one of my feeds (Open Education) that J K Rowling had delivered the Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.

The video of her speech can be found here.

The writer of Open Education clearly makes a plea for people in such a powerful position to remember that it is the students' day and that they are there to enhance it and make sure that it is totally memorable for them and for their assembled family members. This is what was said:

Delivering a memorable graduation speech is one of education’s most difficult challenges. Somehow the orator must deliver some words of inspiration that add to the festiveness of the occasion all the while recognizing that the ceremony is about the graduates and not the speaker.

All too often, the presenter instead interferes with the ceremony, serving as a distraction to all present. Under the worst of conditions, the graduation speaker manages to actually subtract from a day devoted to the achievements of those who have completed their college studies. In fact, the tales of such negative moments are legendary.

On the other hand, a properly created and delivered speech serves as the perfect supplement for the special day. Similar to a burst of bright sunshine, a well crafted speech adds a scintillating glow to the events taking place.

Delivering such a memorable talk at Harvard University just might be the most challenging of all. Like the World Series, the speaker is on an especially distinctive stage with a multitude of observers examining every word.

For me the speech was a masterpiece beginning with disarming the audience and then opening a discussion on how failure has the potential to set people free from constraints. She argued that rock bottom could be seen as a firm foundation and that it could be built upon. She went on to talk of empathy and commented that ... well, no ... please read for yourself ... here it is far better in her words.

I was reminded, towards the end of her speech, as she said:

... written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

... of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that suggests, if you want to extrapolate the idea, that every time we look at something, or think of something, or do something we affect it. We change it.

So let's look closely at how young people learn ... so we can better understand it and help to change it ... for their futures.