Month: November 2019

EdTech Summit, Brighton

I had the opportunity to present at the Brighton ISC Digital EdTech summit during the week.  My talk, “Common Sense Safeguarding” focussed on the need for schools to take a broad and more risk based view of online safety as opposed to the previous more compliance driven approach.    Given the number and range of technologies students have access to and also the tools available to bypass protective measures put in place by a school, or even the ability to negate them totally through using 4G, online safety is no longer as simple as it once was.    This therefore needs a broader view to be taken.

In addition, I identified that in our dealing with Online Safety we are not yet effectively addressing the issues which are growing with our increasing use of digital resources and services.    Cyber security, big data, profiling, artificial intelligence and bias, ethics of IT systems and similar broad topics don’t yet have a key place in the general curriculum albeit opportunities exist across different subjects.    We need to ensure these issues are discussed with all students.   It was to that end that I proposed a cross school discussion group focussed on Digital Citizenship.

Overall my view is one that we need to be more aware of the limitation of preventative measures such as web filtering plus need to focus more on user awareness and having discussions with students regarding the wider implications of staying safe and being successful in a digital world.

If you are interested in being part of a group of schools discussing Digital Citizenship please fill out this Microsoft Form and to access my slides from the EdTech Summit please click here.

Digital Citizenship Questions

I think it is so important that schools ensure that discussions in relation to living in the digital world are encouraged throughout the school.   It is only through discussing the positives and negatives of the increasing digital lives we live that we can prepare our students for the world they live in and the world yet to come.

To that end I recently started creating some slides with questions to be used as a stimulus in discussing digital citizenship.

Here is my first set of slides:  Some digital citizenship questions.  I do hope you find them useful and please do let me know your thoughts and any suggestions as to how I can build on or improve them.

 

Safeguarding: A need for a broader focus

Cyber security has very much adopted a “not if, but when” mentality to signify the need for a risk management approach in relation to cyber security risks as opposed to the older compliance driven approach.    It is my belief that we also need to take a similar approach when it comes to online safeguarding of students.

There was a time when having internet filtering on school computers and an acceptable usage policy was enough to check the safeguarding compliance boxes and be satisfied that a schools had sufficiently met its safeguarding needs.   I remember these days when I would check the schools net history on a weekly basis to adjust the filtering and restrict student access to game sites in particular.

Today we find students have phones and other mobile devices which they bring to school, some due to a school BYOD policy and some due simply to the fact that having a smart phone is now part of normal everyday life.   These devices all come complete with internet access, including access to social media.   Where a school might employ monitoring technologies students can make use of proxy servers, VPNs or an onion browser among other methods to attempt to bypass such technologies.   I recently came across a site which would allow anonymous hosting via the Tor network with little to no technical knowledge required.   Student might even simply revert to 4G or even 5G to totally circumvent the schools network and any precautions which may the school may have put in place.     In the near future, DNS over HTTPS may become the norm which would further make it difficult to block and filter.

In this world we need to accept that no matter what technical measures a school puts in place, students will be able to find a way around such measures.    The resultant cat and mouse game between staff and students, with students finding work arounds and then staff seeking to negate them serves no-one, only consuming time and energy on both sides.   It is also unlikely to be successful, so we need to accept that in attempting to safeguard students, preventing their access to certain sites and services is likely to be ineffective.   Given this the safeguarding focus needs to significantly shift towards awareness and education.      We need to seriously look at the discussions in relation to safeguarding which are happening in schools.   The opportunities already exist in various subject areas to discuss the implications of big data, cyber security, artificial intelligence, fake news and data profiling to name but a few.    We need to ensure that such opportunities are taken and that all schools are confident that they have addressed safeguarding and that thorough discussion with students has taken place.   The current political campaigning for example represents a great opportunity to discuss how social media may both report the news but also shape and create it, even influencing peoples decision making.

Online safeguarding used to be a more simplistic compliance exercise, and to some extent these requirements still exist (and the safeguarding guidance certainly still points towards this approach), however we need to take a more holistic view and broader focus.   Simply filtering or monitoring specific keywords or categories or banning devices is not enough.

 

Personalising learning

Personalisation is a term which is used reasonably frequently in education circles as a goal we should seek.   The ability to provide students with educational experiences which are suited to their needs, abilities and wants.    Technology is helping us progress towards this.

Students can use technology to choose when to learn, using online resources, flip classrooms videos and a multitude of other methods.   Students can choose how to learn or the medium they wish to explore learning through whether this be exploring textual content via Wikipedia, video content from YouTube or audio content via a podcast.   They can also make use of the likes of Skype, Twitter or other platforms to engage in two-way communication and learning with experts, their teachers or other individuals the world over.    This brings us to the global nature of learning in this technological age.    Our learning is no longer limited to our local context.   Instead it can span the earth as I myself know having taken part in a Skype session with a school in Saudi Arabia as just one example of learning across geographical borders.   This opens learners up to new contexts, viewpoints and perspectives which were previously inaccessible, however through technology can easily be arranged.   It also allows them to stretch their own learning and learning experiences beyond that presented formally within their school and by their teachers, exploring those areas which are of particular appeal or interest.

Using technology students can choose the tools they want to use in taking notes during lessons, in revising content and in producing assessment materials.  They can also accommodate for their own specific learning needs using accessibility tools including tools for students with visual impairments, dyslexia or students who are second language learners for example.

Technology is a tool which can have significant impact on learning.   The ability for students to personalise learning and learning content is a key to this potential, putting the learner more in control of their own learning experiences.    It is less about us, as educators, personalising learning for our learners and more about providing them the tools and technologies to allow them to personalise learning for themselves.