Month: October 2019

Microsoft Bootcamp

Last week I attended a 3-day Microsoft Bootcamp in the Microsoft London offices.   It was a pretty packed programme across the 3 days covering a diverse range of topics however as I sit on the train on the way home let me try and summarise the key points.

Accessibility

The session on accessibility led by Hector Minto (@hminto) is the one that sticks in my mind the most.   In fact from discussing with some others, it stuck in their minds too.    During the session a variety of accessibility tools were demonstrated with the most important factor being that these solutions are already available within Windows 10 and the Office 365 suite.     Some of the ideas where horribly simple;  Horrible in the fact that these simple approaches hadn’t been something I had realised could have a significant impact.    A larger pointer for when demonstrating on screen or a slightly different windows colour scheme were just two of the tips.    Adding Alt text to images in documents and on social media posts was another.    The ability to add subtitles to video via using Microsoft Stream or the use of PowerPoint and inline translation were also discussed.

It is clearly for all of us to do our bit, and generally this only requires making small changes to our normal practices.

The “MEC” or Microsoft Educator Community

I have been aware of the MEC and the variety of resources available within it for some time.   The three-day event however highlighted how the MEC could be used as a vehicle for CPD.   I, myself, have recently seen the power of training codes and badges on motivating people to undertake CPD in relation to educational technology and the event only served to strengthen this view.   One of the keys tasks I believe I now need to undertake is to curate the MEC content which I believe is most valid and will have the biggest impact with staff at my school.

Microsoft Teams

A fair amount of the event was focused on how Teams could be used in schools, colleges and universities.    It was notable that the actual platform used throughout all three days, to facilitate collaboration, discussion and sharing, was in fact Microsoft Teams.   People were posting questions, links and other content so that all attendees could benefit from the shared knowledge and experience of the group.   I can clearly see the benefits of using Teams to support educators from across department, across a school or even across institutions to get together and work collectively to bring about continual improvement and to tackle challenges.

A number of the events sessions included remote sessions delivered from the Seattle and also Glasgow, a reasonably diverse choice in locations.    These highlighted how Teams could facilitate opportunities for learning more akin to that experience by the increasing number of remote workers which now exist.   This also, again, highlighted where Stream could play its part in the recording of such meetings complete with the automatic creation of subtitles which were easily searchable by users.

Microsoft OneNote

A number of individuals shared how they were using OneNote in their institution.   I found a particular presentation by Esam Baboukhanto be very interesting.    Esam pre-prepared regular checklists and review questions in OneNote in order to get students to take greater responsibility for their learning.   He also mentioned the use of review questions which students were required to undertaken to get them to revisit learning in order to aid better memory retention.    The use of OneNote as a tool to aid such spaced retrieval practice was something which I hadn’t considered however I can easily see how this might work well.

Overall

It was a tiring three days with lots going on.   The event itself was specific to FE and HE, whereas my current context is that of an independent school.   I had decided to attend given the large number of students we have which study A-Levels which otherwise they would study in an FE institution.    In hindsight I made the right call as the event was very worthwhile.   I left with plenty of notes and an equally high number of points either for consideration or for action.    All attendees also left with Microsoft Trainer accreditation, thereby able to deliver training and issue training codes via the Microsoft training platform.   For those who are considering attending a Bootcamp I would definitely recommend it.

I am also looking forward to continuing online discussions via Teams with those who attended the event and with others who have attended previous events.   I suspect, despite what was an excellent event, I am still to experience the true benefits of the event.   I suspect such benefit lies in the network and community of individuals sharing their ideas, resources and thoughts on the Microsoft platform, and on other EdTech following attending a Bootcamp.

 

Keeping students safe when the dark web is so easily accessible.

I just heard about software to allow the easy setup of a website on the Dark Web with little technical knowledge required and no costs other than the requirement of an internet connection.  Simple, easy and instantly anonymous.

Maintaining the safety of students online is a key part of a school’s overall efforts to safeguard students.   When I first entered teaching, this was relatively straight forward.   Students only access to devices in schools was likely to be the PCs in the computer suites where they had limited ability to make changes due to not having administrative access.   In addition, the school would have internet filtering in place to protect the students, where the students main tendency was to seek out games as opposed to any other inappropriate content.   I remember as the ICT teacher in one school, regularly having a look at the schools internet statistics and reviewing the most commonly hit sites for signs of games or other inappropriate content.   It was normally games I would find and therefore games I would block.    For those students who decided they wanted to bypass the schools restrictions the tools available were limited and the required knowledge to make them work was often greater than that which the majority of students possessed.

Fast forward around 15 years, to today, and the students are more aware of the content which is available on the internet, plus the search tools are better.  As such I suspect it is no longer games which are the most prevalent inappropriate website category in schools.     In addition, in many schools, students now come to school with their own device, either a device required by the school or a mobile phone.   The tools available to bypass school restrictions are now easily accessible, numerous and also easy to use.   These tools often aimed at supporting the right to privacy can easily be used for other purposes such as hiding malicious or inappropriate online activity.   I note for example how VPN providers can now be seen advertising their products on TV or heard on the radio.    In the last couple of days, as mentioned at the start of this post, I have also heard of the easy availability of software aimed at allowing individuals to setup websites on the dark web to anonymously share content without fear of it being traced back.

The technical solutions of the past, filtering and monitoring, are no longer sufficient as simply put, monitoring and filtering doesn’t work.    This isn’t just a school problem, this is a societal issue.   The societal issue is beyond the scope of this post however within schools we cannot sit idly by, we need to take action.   We need to take a wide view of online safety which with the removal of the ICT curriculum, somewhere these issues were often discussed and explored with students, has become increasingly difficult.   Time needs to be found to explore the issues around living in a digital world, to explore online safety, ethics, privacy, security, etc however sadly for now I am not sure where there is space for this in the already packed curriculum.    Given this, for me, all schools need to ask themselves what they do in relation to online safety, and what more could they do?   This is a question that should be asked at a senior level.   It is also important that schools get together, not just to share good practice but to collectively work together to ensure we strike a balance between preparing students for the technological world and keeping them safe.  We are all in the same boat and therefore maybe we need to find a collective approach to a collective problem.

 

 

Exams: Why should 1/3 of students fail?

Not so long ago I read of a discussion in relation to whether the GCSE English Language should be scrapped.   Part of the reasoning behind this is identified as being due to the subject identifying a third of students as having failed.    As a headline I think it is difficult to disagree with.  How can identifying a third of students as having failed be an acceptable thing to do.    On reflection my view is that this issue is less about English Language subject and more about the educational system as it is now and as it has been for over one hundred years.

I remember when I worked within an FE college and I was involved in enrolment following the release of the GCSE results.   A-Level and Level 3 BTec courses had clear admissions requirements in terms of the minimum number of B’s or C’s required to gain entry to each course.   This often included the need for a minimum of a C in Maths or English.    I also remember working with students on their university applications, post A-Levels, where once again universities have entry requirements which students must achieve to gain entry.    Once again there might be a need for three C’s to get on their preferred university course.

The issue with the above is that a certain set of grades will gain entry and other lower grades will not result in entry.    It is easy to therefore perceive some grades as being passes and as a result the other remaining grades must be fails.     The education system as we know it is built on the ability to group students in terms of their ability, as described by their grades, and through this identify the opportunities which will be available.     As a result of this, independent of the U, or ungraded option, there will always be a perception as to some grades, those that easily permit entrance to the next level of education, being perceived as being passes and the remainder as being fails.

An alternative is to have qualifications which allow all students to pass.   From the headline point of view, improving from only two thirds of students passing to one hundred percent of students passing sounds logical and a success worth celebrating.   The issue is that it is unlikely to result in any real change.     FE colleges will still need to set requirements, meaning some passing grades will permit entry while others will not.    Universities will also set their requirements and again some grades will allow students to pass onto the next level whereas others will see their application fail to get them in.

The above alternative continues to be based on an education system where students pass through the system based on their age.    Given this there is a need to differentiate the students hence assigning grades to students based on their exams and coursework.

If we are to consider a system where all students are to achieve, we need to acknowledge the students learn at different rates.   We therefore need to allow students to progress through education at different rates.    The different rates of progress can therefore be used to differentiate students and identify when they are ready to progress to the next educational level.   Again this seems like an enviable solution in that students either complete or can be considered as having not yet completed or achieved.   They haven’t failed as the opportunity to complete always exists, being available for them at a time that suits their learning and rate of progressions.     The issue here is once again perception in that quickly there will become a view as to what the expected rate of progression will be.   This might be that by the age of 18 students will progress to university.   Instantly with this perception the media will be able to quote the percentage of students who proceed on or ahead of this target and therefore the percentage which do not.    Again we have those that progress as normally expected, those which pass, and those who progress at a slower rate, and therefore have not passed;  those which are perceived to have failed.

I don’t like the idea of one third of students failing.  It simply doesn’t feel right.   That said it is difficult to find an alternative solution that wont simply see us back in the same position a couple of years in the future.

 

Some thoughts on web filtering

Have been given school based web filtering some thought recently with a particular focus on how lots of things in life are part of a continuum, where the polar opposite extremes are often viewed as what we want to achieve, or not achieve, yet are impossible to actually get to.   We tend to end up achieving a position somewhere in the middle.

Take web filtering, which is all about safeguarding;   we clearly want to achieve total safety for our students online, one extreme, and want to avoid putting them in a situation where they a presented with everything inappropriate, and potentially damaging, the internet has to offer, the other extreme.  I don’t expect anyone to be able to argue with, or to want to argue with, the above.   Why wouldn’t we want to achieve safety online for our students?

The issue is this isn’t possible without preventing them from having any access to technology and the internet, and we want to provide students access to tech to help in preparing them for the world we all now live in, a world filled with tech.   Now I know some schools ban devices however I believe this simply shifts the problem in that students either will do their experimentation at home or will do it in the next phase of their education or life, in Further education, Higher education or in the working lives.   We therefore won’t have prepared them or equipped them with the skills to remain safe, which I think is a key element of safeguarding.    We won’t have prepared them for the future and in fact we may be setting them up for problems when they suddenly find themselves outside the insulating bubble of the school, and having to deal with technology, social media, etc, all on their own.

Let’s assume that we have decided that preparing students for a technological world is important and therefore we allow them ready access to mobile devices, computer labs, etc, around school.   Now how do we approach the filtering situation?

One approach might be to have aggressive filtering and monitoring with a view that this will make students safer.   Sadly, this isn’t as easy as it once was.    Technology designed to support privacy of data including HTTPS and VPNs, to name but two, make it increasingly more difficult to monitor activity.    It is now more difficult to argue with students as to why they shouldn’t be using a VPN when VPNs are now routinely advertised on TV and radio as a measure to protect personal data.   This issue is even more evident where devices belong to the students and the organisational control which can be exercised on school owned devices either cannot be applied or can be easily removed by students.   We also have the challenge of student mobile phones which can be used as a personal hot spot for internet access via the phone service provider thereby bypassing the school network and its protective measures.   There is also the potential issue of devices, such as iPads, with 4G capability in addition to normal Wi-Fi and with the introduction of 5G this is also on likely to become more common.

The other concern I have with filtering is that it might be viewed as a compliance issue and therefore once set up some may consider the issue of online safety addressed.  Internet filtering is however never perfect, plus some of the tools available which are generally positive, can be misused leading to negative outcomes.  There is also the issue that the internet services which are available are constantly changing.   This therefore requires ongoing review along with a more holistic view of how online internet safety is managed including awareness, support for students and support for, and engagement with, parents.

The need to keep students safe online is clear and something few can disagree with.   The challenge is how we actually implement this safety.   This is not so simple.    It isn’t a simple compliance matter of blocking certain categories or sites.   We want to provide students access to the internet and its services so they can learn the skills they will need for the future, so we can’t block everything, yet we want to block as much inappropriate content as is possible, in a world where monitoring and blocking is becoming increasing difficult and/or ineffective.

For me, it is up to schools to decide the best approach for their own setup, their own infrastructure, students and culture.   It is also key that schools continuously review their approach to assume it keeps pace with changes in student habits and in the technologies available.   Although there isn’t one single solution for all schools, for each school there is a solution.