Month: September 2019

A VR Conference

Attended my first ever event in VR on Saturday evening, listening to Steve Bambury discuss his views on VR in education.

The Engage platform used for the session was reasonable intuitive to use with a limited set of controls to get used to.     You can easily wander around within the presentation environment or can make use of the ability to teleport as you can in lots of VR apps.    Engage also comes with a short tutorial, which I made use of, to help you get used to how things work.

Within the platform the event organiser has the ability to display slides which in the event I attended were displayed on a big screen towards the back of the environment.   The organiser can also mute or unmute attendees which is useful in avoiding audio issues and in particular audio feedback.

My Selfie in VR

Through their controllers attendees are easily able to make use of common hand gestures including raising a hand to ask a question, waving and pointing at objects or people as needed.   You can also bring up a virtual tablet device which allows you to capture photos from the session, or even a selfie or two, as well as take notes and access your settings.

For me one of the key takeaways from the session was the ability to collaborate across distance.  In this case Steve was in the UAE while I was in the UK.  Am not sure where some of the other attendees were from however I suspect some US attendees may have been present.   Clearly VR allows people to discuss or work collaboratively independent of distance although time zone would need to be considered.      Another advantage I can see was the openness of the environment which to me would facilitate students exploring locations, ideas and concepts with a degree to freedom which is not easily replicable in the real world.

It should also be noted that VR allows you to replay previous events, such as being able to step back into the presentation at a later date, viewing it from a different perspective or just revisiting or revising the content.    This might be useful in terms of reviewing a session, its successes and challenges, prior to identifying next steps or areas for improvement.   Additionally, just prior to the session, I explored some of the pre-prepared content which comes with Engage, such as a David Attenborough presentation focussing on Dinosaurs.    There appeared to be lots of content to view being a mix of proper VR experiences and 360 degree videos.   I expect with a bit more time I will explore some of this content.

Overall I enjoyed the experience and can see how it might be useful for CPD and for collaborative activities with students.   I think my next step will be to play with creating my own event and how this would work, with a particular focus on how students might interact and work together within a Engage environment.

 

 

 

 

 

CIO Summit 2019

Interesting day at the CIO Summit down in London yesterday.   This was my annual visit to an event focusing on IT in the wider, including corporate, world rather than within the education sector.   I make an effort to do this simply to try and get a wider view of IT, digital transformation and digital innovation to help provide some context to my work in school.   There were four key messages which definitely resonated with me.

Its about the problem we are solving, not the Tech.

The CDIO of HMRC, Jacky Wright, outlined the importance of focussing on the problems you are seeking to solve rather than coding, or the technology you have available.   This is a message I have often heard Mark Anderson (@ICTEvangelist) state in relation to education, in that it is not about the technology, it is about Teaching and Learning.   In a more recent post I think he hit the nail on the head when he said its not really #edtech after all, its simply #Ed.  It would seem that this need to focus on the end outcome or product and not be distracted by shiny or new technology is something which impacts on the wider IT world rather than just education.

Culture eats strategy

The importance of organisational culture was stated by a number of presenters.   Like a focus on the problem being solved, mentioned above, a focus on culture was identified as being more important than the Tech being used.   I liked Rackspaces mission of providing a “Fantastical Experience” as both setting the tone and culture which they seek to achieve within the organisation.   I wonder whether schools could be a little more inspirational in the missions they set rather than the usual “developing the best learners” or “preparing students to the future” style of mission which we commonly see.  At the end of the day the culture of an organisation is key in what it achieves or does not achieve.   The people, the leadership team and the staff, shape the culture.

Sustainability

A number of presenters discussed the issue of sustainability in relation to technology.   This is a challenging area given that technology may be both part of the solution and part of the problem.   In being the problem, as we consume more data, use more technology and even personally have more devices, we need more power.   We also consume valuable resources in the manufacturing processes plus make use of valuable metals in the various tech products.   This all adds up to using more energy at a time when we want to be using less.    Thankfully tech can also be the solution here in using AI to match availability and demand, in harnessing greater amounts of renewable energy with greater levels of efficiency and in supporting remote collaboration reducing energy consumption associated with travel.     A particular area of discussion in relation to sustainability was that of the supplier chain.   It was highlighted that organisations need to be aware of the energy consumption of the third parties they use rather than treating this as an issue for the third party.  If you are using Microsoft or Google cloud services, the resultant energy usage associated with their data centres, as used to store and process your data, needs to be considered in thinking about your organisations carbon footprint and energy usage.   In addition, looking at devices, including PCs, printers, etc, we also need to consider how suppliers source their resources, manage energy use during production and also to what extent their devices can be recycled, refurbished or reused.

Cyber Security

This topic was always likely to arise as part of discussion.   I found the presentation by Brigadier Alan Hill particularly interesting in discussion his views.   The key issue is ensuring that the risk associated with cyber security is understood at a board level and then working on constant review, testing and preparation for cyber events.      As he identified any plan made won’t survive an encounter with the enemy however the act of having and more importantly testing a plan will at least make you and your team as prepared as they possibly can be for when, and not if, a cyber incident happens.

This was my 2nd CIO Summit event and once again I found it to be useful and informative.   Towards the end of the event the importance of sharing ideas and best practice with IT peers was discussed and for me attendance at this event is a key part of this.   Our best chance for innovation and for security is collaboration and cooperation;  we are all in this together.  And so as I write this on the train on the way home I look forward to reviewing my many pages of notes and identifying the actions to take as a result of this event.   I cant wait for next year.

A bit more VR

Once again decided to experiment with the VR this week, this time trying two new apps although both this time were paid apps.   The apps in question were Gravity Sketch and Masterpiece VR.    In both cases I didn’t have too long to experiment with them so the below are just my initial impressions.

Starting with gravity sketch, the first thing I found was that the app seems to be very powerful and with that comes a complex set of controls.  This is an app you would need to spend some time with to properly get to grips with it before being able to confidently use it.    I found myself quickly able to draw various shapes and models reasonably easily however I think trying to make a larger product from these shapes would take me a greater among of time.   I particularly like the tool that allowed me to extrude a shape.   I found myself quickly making the body for chess pieces, something which isn’t quite as easy to do when you are limited to primitive shapes as you are in some other apps I have tried.   I can see this app having great potential in Design Technology lessons in particular.

Masterpiece VR, I felt, wasn’t quite as powerful in terms of the tools available when compared with Gravity sketch however as a result it has an easier user interface to get to grips with.   I was quickly working with virtual clay and making a sculpture.  I could easily edit my sculpture cutting sections away or moulding areas to suit my needs much in the same way I would envisage you would work with real clay.  Note: I have little experience of working with clay sculptures so I may be totally wrong on that point.     Now I do not attest to being an artist in any shape or form, however I was easily able to create the start of a basic sculpture.  As such I believe this app could easily be used by students in art lessons to develop much more impressive creations than anything I might be able to achieve.   This is definitely an app where experimentation could be encouraged without the need for significant training in advance.

In both of the above apps the tools are provided to help students get to grips with the ability to create within a 3D virtual space.   As this kind of working becomes more common within the creative, the design and the entertainment industries I think it is useful to introduce students during their format education.

 

 

GDPR and third party solutions

I have previously written about third party related cyber risk in relation to data protection and GDPR but I think it warrants a little bit of a further discussion.    To start I will state what I believe is the key message:

A third-party system in use by your school, such as a cloud hosted MIS or Learning Platform doesn’t mean that data security and data protection isn’t your problem.   Its still your data and although the third party might be processing it for you, you are still the controller.   You are still responsible for the data and for ensuring that adequate security measures are in place, and that you can prove that they are in place, or at least have received reasonable assurances to the fact they are in place.

There is also a second key point which I feel needs making in that cyber security and data protection decisions should always use a risk-based approach.    The approach and level of detail required in impact assessment for a learning tool where student emails are the only personal info and for a school management system containing name, address, medical, academic, pastoral and other personal data, are totally different.    The greater the risk the greater the time and effort required to ensure that an appropriate assessment and appropriate decision making has taken place.

So, let’s take two different scenarios and look at them.   The first scenario is a good old cloud hosted solution while the second is the one which is often overlooked, being a locally hosted solution using a third-party product.

A cloud hosted solution

I feel this is the more accepted and therefore easier of the two scenarios.   Here we have a school using a cloud hosted MIS for example.   The data is held on hardware outside the school on a third-party platform.    The school must therefore ask a number of questions relating to how the third party keeps data secure, how they will provide the data in the event the school requests it and how the data will be deleted should the school cease using the service, to list just a few.     Most of this info will be outlined in the terms and conditions or any contract which was signed so it is relatively easy to get the information.   There will also be questions related to how the third party tests its security through penetration and/or vulnerability testing as well as what their process is should a data breach occur.      I often ask vendors to confirm when their last penetration test took place and, in higher risk systems, ask them to provide a summary of findings.    The answers to the above questions will help the school to establish a view on the risk associated with the platform plus to document that appropriate consideration of cyber security and data protection has taken place.

A locally hosted solution

This is, I feel, the more difficult scenario.   The third-party platform is hosted on the schools own network and hardware and therefore the security of the platform can be directly impacted by configuration decisions of the school itself.   The school therefore should ideally be conducting regular penetration testing to check the security of the infrastructure on which the third-party solution sits.   The issue here is that some third parties at this point believe that the security of the data is therefore down to the school as they control the network and network setup.   This is the kind of response I have received from a number of solutions vendors only recent.   To a point they are correct but only to a point.   The network should be constructed with “privacy by design” in mind such that it is developed with security always in mind, but the network infrastructure is only half the solution.    The other half is the third-party software.   It too should have been developed with “privacy by design” at the forefront of thinking and it is for schools to question whether this is the case.    For me, this means asking questions in relation to how the company approaches checking their application for vulnerabilities.    This ideally should involve a proactive search for vulnerabilities including the use of vulnerability assessment or through bug bounty programmes.    There is also the acceptance that the finding of vulnerabilities should be treated as a “when” as opposed to an “if”.    As such companies should be able to demonstrate that they have a plan in place for when a vulnerability is identified in their platform.   This plan should involve notifying clients in a timely fashion.   In relation to being timely I think it is important to consider the ICOs requirement to potential report data breaches within a 72 hour period, so it would be preferable that disclosure happens sooner, and ideally within 24hrs, rather than later.   It is this vulnerability notification process which I seem to often find to be particularly lacking in third party vendors supplying solutions to schools.

As schools take on more and more third-party solutions, and as more and more of these solutions are integrated and communicate with each other, the cyber security and data protection risk related to third parties only increases.    Schools therefore need to ensure that this is carefully considered and that they have taken all reasonable measures to ensure that their data and that of the students, staff and parents related to the school remain secure.    An easy starting point is therefore contacting third parties and asking some of the questions listed in this post.

More thoughts on VR: Free VR apps

This morning I continued my experimentation with the HP WMR headset I am currently playing with, trying the below apps:

  • Home: A VR Spacewalk
  • Sharecare VR
  • Geogebra Mixed Reality
  • VR Museum of Fine Art
  • Google Earth VR

I picked the above due to being free and also being listed by Steve Bambury on his list of Educational VR Apps.

The first app I tried is one I had tried in an initial demo I received on using VR so is an app I was at least passingly familiar with.   Basically, you are put in the position of an astronaut on the International Space Station.   The app is reasonably intuitive once you get going, with instructions offered to you at each stage.    I must admit to feeling a little disoriented at times but on reflection this isn’t surprising as, being an astronaut, you would be working in zero gravity resulting in no clear sensation as to which way is down.   Overall a fun little app which may have a place in science or possible design technology lessons or even to help provide context for space-based stories written within English lessons.

My next app on the headset was Sharecare VR.   This app lets you pull apart the human body and look at its constituent parts including the skeletal and circulator system.   I didn’t find this app instantly intuitive however it is relatively simple meaning with a little effort I got to grasp with what you can do.   I can see clear uses in Biology lessons looking at how the human body is constructed and getting a better understanding of the various parts.   It may also be useful in Sports Science or Physical education courses.   My feeling is this app might be useful either as a starting point before teaching specific areas of the human body or might be useful to provide the context to ensure students see how individual components of the human body relate.

The possibility of using Geogebra in VR sounded interesting to me as I am familiar with the desktop based version so I was eager to use this app. Must admit to being a little disappointed by it however not being a Maths teacher, this may be simply because I don’t quite understand how the app might be used in lessons.   The app comes with a number of geometric shapes and patterns in 3D which you can scale and move around.  The controls are rather simple however I felt they were maybe a little too simple resulting in limiting what you can do.    Overall this isn’t an app I really think I can pass any judgement on; Will leave that to the Maths teachers.

The Museum of Fine Art as a VR experience sounded interesting, being able to explore a Museum but in VR.   My first issue was that the space I was experimenting in was a little small to get the best out of this app.   I suspect it would be so much better using the backpack mounted and therefore wire free Z-Series workstation however on this occasion I was wired to the PC in its desk-mounted setup.   A bigger space also may have made things better.   The app easily lets you explore the virtual version of the museum and walk, or teleport, around various exhibits.   Each exhibit comes with a description providing information on the exhibit.     I found this app quite interesting albeit I am not sure why, after using it and exploring once, you would want to then revisit.   It may however allow art students easy access to revisit masterpieces as and when they need without the difficulty and cost of travelling to a real rather than virtual museum.

My final app for the weekend was Google Earth VR and I must admit I really enjoyed this one.    I found myself visiting schools which I had worked with previously in the UAE, visiting my family home, doing a flyover of my current school and also visiting a couple of famous locations.   The provided tutorial easily prepares you to be able to get the best out of the simple control system so almost immediately you can begin flying around earth.    I found myself stepping back when jumping into a location on the edge of the Grand Canyon so you do have to be careful.    The limitation I did find is that some locations don’t have detailed street view maps available so you can only fly over rather than step into the location.   This was the case for some locations in Al Ain in the UAE which I was hoping to explore, having previously lived there, however exploring the UK seemed to work in most locations.   The free ability to fly around the UK and visit different locations is likely to have potential applications in a variety of lessons including providing context in English lessons, exploring different structures and architecture in Art or in Design Technology lessons or visiting different parts of the world for geography lessons.   I am sure the free form ability of the app will present applications way beyond the above suggestions.

It is clear that there are a number of very useful and interesting free apps available for a WMR headset like the HP unit I am using.   I suspect and hope this will increase over time.   The apps I looked at provide a useful starting platform once you have a headset and suitable PC or Laptop.    My next plan is to explore a couple of paid apps where I think I will focus on free form apps most likely mainly focussed on the STEM or STEAM subjects.    Am looking forward to seeing what additional applications to education might be possible.

 

 

 

A simple policy?

Have been doing my annual review of IT related policies recently including our acceptable usage policy.   The thing that has hit me is that these documents have a tendency to try to be detailed and cover a wide range of possible scenarios identifying what users, including pupils and staff, should or shouldn’t do.    Having recently read “When the adults change, everything changes” by Paul Dix I have found myself rethinking how such policies should be written.

In Pauls book which focusses on managing behaviour he advocates keeping rules clear and simple, picking only a limited number of around 3 rules and ensuring all across the school consistently enforce they rules.   The idea of simplicity is the one that has stuck most with me.   By making rules simple, and limiting the number of them, they are much more easily understood and shared across the school community.   It is very difficult to remember a list of 25 different rules let alone ensure that all across school fully understand them and can apply them all consistently.

This led me to consider what is most important in terms of IT acceptable use and I came up with a limited list of guidelines albeit more than the 3 Paul suggested.

  • Respect privacy, intellectual property and copyright
  • Be safe and secure
  • Be responsible
  • Protect school data
  • Report issues

I think the above sums up how we should all use IT.    Obviously to help understanding of each guideline I have also put together some additional details of explanation however it still all easily fits on a single side of A4;  The previous version took up several sides of A4.

I wonder how many other policies might be simplified down to a number of simple descriptions or phrases such that they are easier to understand and apply.

 

VR – First Impressions

During the week I took possession of an HP Windows Virtual Reality (WMR) headset with which to experiment with, courtesy of ThinkBlue.    It has been a busy week, being the week before the school restarts, so I haven’t had quite as much time to experiment with the equipment as I would have liked however I thought I would share some initial thoughts.

One of the first Apps I tried was Tiltbrush and I must admit I loved the ability to paint and create in 3D space.   Being able to walk around a 3D creation, to zoom in and out, allows a level of freedom I haven’t quite experienced before when creating artwork on a computer.   I will admit I am far from an artist, as such I will be very interested in seeing how students and also teachers within the Art department make use of Tiltbrush and in the artwork they may end up creating.

The main potential for VR, for me, lies in platforms which allow creativity such as Tiltbrush as opposed to preproduced content which the user simply works through.   That said I had to try 1943 Belin Blitz a VR experience focussing around a Lancaster bomber crew taking part in the world war 2 bombing of Berlin.    I will admit to enjoying the experience and can see how it might add to student learning and engagement in a topic.   That said, it suffers from the usual issue of preproduced content in that you simply work through it.    Having reached the end that’s it finished as its unlikely you will revisit the content meaning it is difficult to justify the high cost of VR equipment simply to run through preproduced content.

Blocks by Google was my next app to try.   Like Tiltbrush it is creative platform which allows you to produce 3 dimensional designs using geometric shapes.    I found thee platform very intuitive and easy to use.   Having followed the basic tutorial which is provided I was quickly able to progress and start building my own designs, in my case choosing to create a military fort.    Sadly, I only had a limited amount of time to spare so only started to get to grips with what was possible.  Again, I cant wait to see what students and design technology students in particular are able to create.

Now my main focus is on how VR might be usable in schools however I couldn’t resist the temptation to engage in a little gaming.    Beat Saber was my choice of games and I will admit that it is an excellent and engaging little game.    Within no time I was slashing away at coloured blocks all to the rhythm of the music included within the game.    I didn’t quite expect the game to be quite as much fun as it is plus also never expected it to involve such physical effort.    I found myself sweating after on a short time of playing.    If looking for a tenuous link to education maybe I could link it to either Physical Education (PE) or maybe to Dance?

I have only had the VR headset now for a few days and within that have only managed a couple of hours of use.   I can already see some initial ideas as to how this technology might be used in schools.    A couple of ideas that have occurred to me already are how students might be able to create their own VR environments for others to explore or how VR could be used to create 3D components that then could either be incorporated into gaming experiences.    I look forward to exploring VR more over the coming months.