Month: December 2023

Reflecting on a difficult term

And so it’s the end of the autumn term and the end of the 2023 calendar year; Where has the time gone?   I think on reflection the speed with which time is flying partly relates to age (I am no longer 21!) but also the nature of working in schools where we sprint from one term to the next.   I suspect that as we are busy and as we each sprint to the finish line of each new term, this results in us not getting our heads up and engaging in new experiences, or taking in our surroundings or achievements, and the very things which make memories.   So, with the end of the term and the year I thought it a good opportunity to reflect firstly on the term, and then in a later post I will look back on the whole of 2023.

Firstly, I need to acknowledge it has been a very difficult term for me on a personal level, especially the last few months.   Now am not going to go into the nature of the challenges however I have found my life torn apart and things I had taken as read and as fact suddenly changed overnight leaving me staring at a very different future, and 2024, than I had originally anticipated.  Throughout I have tried to keep a brave face on things, and at times this has been very difficult and as we head into the festive period I am finding it even more difficult.   I think the next few months will just be about pushing forward from day to day and trying to establish a new set of norms but at this point it is very difficult to remain positive, although I am doing my best to keep my spirits up.   Am not sure what the future holds for me, but maybe the current situation is what is needed to bring about some change, to build new memories, time will tell.

The autumn term saw me much busier with external events and speaking opportunities than I have been previously.   Speaking at the Schools and Academies Show (SAAS), EduTech Europe in Amsterdam and a number of other events provided me plenty of opportunities to share my thoughts and ideas particularly around the potential for AI in education, while also providing me a focus which helped keep my mind off my personal challenges.   Looking at my schedule forward into 2024 and I already have a number of events in my diary including a return to EduTech Europe for their 2024 event.     I will admit engaging in these events has been fun, if also a bit of a challenge when factoring in my day to day role as Director of IT but thankfully I have a great team of people who work with me which has given me the time and focus I have needed in order to contribute to these events.   I am definitely looking forward to trying and contribute to the educational discourse, including on AI, cyber and digital citizenship, to name but three topics.

From the day to day side of things this term has seen significant work on using PowerBi in a number of different contexts to analyse school data.  It has also seen quite a bit of work going into delivering both cyber security and digital citizenship awareness materials to staff and students, with one of my colleagues doing a particularly excellent job getting out into departments to deliver short awareness talks to those who may not attend the bigger annual events.    Additional to this there has been some progress made on esports with us now looking towards the F1 sim racing for next year, plus looking at progressing our current esports offering for students.   I am also looking forward to speaking on this subject to a number of other schools during the course of 2024.  I think I have managed to find a good balance of getting my hands dirty in some areas, whereas being more strategic and less operationally involved in others. This is something I need to continue to work on.

In terms of fitness, I haven’t been able to establish the same patterns of effort this year as I have managed in the last couple of years.   As such my running has been very much up and down, with some weeks with 20km covered, often followed by weeks of no running.    As we approach Christmas though I am trying to get back to a pattern of effort, using the downtime post the end of the term to get back into it and hoping I can carry my running on into the new year.    I suspect I will fall short of my 500km target for 2023, however I don’t think I will miss it by too much.  

Its been a busy term!   I don’t think I will be able to reflect on it in any more positive terms despite there being some positive events and memories buried under the less positive (read: crap) memories.    Just now need to try and relax and collect myself over the holidays and then move on from there.    Life goes on!

Digital (or not) headaches

I have followed the work of Ian Phillips for quite a while in particular his discussion of digital headaches.  There are definitely a number of things in relation to the use of digital technologies in schools where these result in headaches however there are also non-digital headaches which the use of digital can help towards addressing, plus some other headaches which are much larger and more strategic that they impact on education in general.    Here I would like to share a few thoughts on the later of these.

The ”do more” narrative

I have been working in schools for over 25years now, starting my teacher training all the way back in 1994.    Over the period I have seen the role change significantly in terms of the things teachers are expected to do beyond their classroom teaching.   The change has been gradual over time, so gradual that it is easy to have missed or to underestimate, however the change has been there and is significant in my opinion.     Technology has helped in some ways through allowing easy sharing of information, collaboration and record keeping although this doesn’t take away from the fact that there are still the same numbers of hours in the day, but greater expectations on what “needs” to be done during this time.   So, is the digital headache of too many systems, or less than ideal user interfaces really the problem, or is the problem that we need all of these systems and different interfaces for all of the different things we are expected to do and which are now considered important?   Do we need to reset and try and work out what it is that really matters most in schools?

Measuring impact

During my time in education I have felt a definite increase on the focus on measuring impact.  Now I will acknowledge the need for accountability and for measuring impact to maximise the quality of the educational experience, but I wonder if we may have gone to far.    And where we go too far, I feel that sometimes fall into the trap of considering what we measure as being what matters rather than focussing on measuring what actually matters.   As such we can suddenly get drawn into focussing on the things OFSETD or ISI focus on, on looking at league tables and standardised test results and similar and considering these above all other things.    And technology with all its data and data analysis potential can help us here, but the issue of high stakes measurements remains.   Is the digital headache effectively measuring and analysing all of our data, or is it simply that we have been drawn down the rabbit hole of frequently weighing a pig hoping it will fatten, while under increasing stress and pressure to ensure we can evidence a fatter pig?      Do we therefore need to consider data and accountability but also the human and social aspects of education, and find a more appropriate balance?

Funding

Working in technology in schools, funding is an issue, but it is also an issue across many other areas including non-tech resources, salaries, buildings, etc.   Now I want to be careful here as the argument for more funding can be a little reductive, suggesting with more funding all the issues could be solved.   I don’t believe this is the case as schools would still need to decide what they use their funding on, how they manage the short term and the longer term, their vision and priorities, all of which would impact on their use of funding and the impact of said funding.   From a digital point of view there is a direct link to funding in that good technology use in classrooms and the wider school relies on the basic infrastructure, device, software, support and training being in place and this requires investment, not just in the immediate term, but ongoing to upgrade, replace and maintain.  Is funding however a digital headache?    It is definitely a headache which impacts on the digital side of things in schools, however I feel it is a far broader problem so maybe not a digital headache after all.

The efficiency narrative

Linked to some of what I have written above is the efficiency narrative that we need to do things more efficiently.   If more efficient we will be able to do more, or it will cost less to do as we will complete tasks quicker or more thoroughly.   But is this what schools are really about, doing things quicker or doing more things?    If we can get students to complete their A-Levels at the end of year 11 would this be an improvement, and if so at what cost?    A lot of the narrative around AI solutions in schools has been around AI as a digital assistant to help teachers do more or do things quicker.   From a digital headaches point of view it might be seen that technology introduces some inefficiencies, for example in individuals dealing with emails, or processing data, etc, but is the headache a digital one or just the use of digital solutions to try and solve a bigger problem?   Do we really want efficient schools which churn out students as a product with ever increasing uniformity and speed, or do we want a messier education system which takes time to nurture individual students and allow them to flourish?    

Conclusion

Technology is a tool which can, in some cases, magnify or reflect the issues of those using it.    It may be that we then perceive digital headaches in technology however I wonder that some of the digital headaches may be representative of bigger societal or education sector challenges.   Do we therefore need to get to the root of the problem, get past the technology layer, and look to the wider issue at hand?   

Digital Exams

I suspect digital exams are the way of the future albeit I see challenges in getting there after around 100 years of doing things on paper.   Change will be a key challenge but is not the only challenge as was evidenced by the digital exam I supported this morning.

Now our support for these exams goes above and beyond what is normally possible however myself and my team do this to try and ensure the students have the best experience of their online exams.   We had around 35 students sitting the 2hr online test and myself and two of my team had made ourselves available.  A ratio of 1 tech (if I count myself as such although this is debatable these days) to 10 students isnt something that could be achieved if exams such as the GCSEs or A-Levels went heavily digital so this is the first point to consider.    If exams went largely digital the tech staff to student ration would be way higher than this and I would suspect run to 1:100, 1:200 or higher.  But for this exam we were heavily staffed and this morning, this was a good thing.

In terms of our infrastructure and Wi-Fi as a school we have invested heavily in infrastructure to support 1:1 devices and the embedded use of technology throughout the school.  As such having the infrastructure to support digital exams isnt an issue although going forward we would need to look at additional Wi-Fi capabilities in the large sports halls where exams might be held, but where we hadn’t previously installed more than a single access point, which may struggle as soon as you have 300 students sitting a digital exam at once.

Client devices is easy as we are 1:1 and for those external students sitting the digital exam with us, as we operate as an exam centre during the process, they are simply told to bring a suitable device and we then provide them access to the Wi-Fi.   So all good so far.

And this is where the difficulties appear;   During the course of the exam a number of students were unable to start their exam.   Their devices were ok, they had access to Wi-Fi, they had the software, but still they couldn’t get in.    The issue was on the exams platform end.  The admin portal we could see showed everything was fine and they were listed and had joined the exam, but on their devices it wouldn’t let them proceed.   The usual steps were taken by myself and the team;  Log out and back in, shut down and restart the app, etc, but to no avail so the next step was a call to the exam board help desk to see if they could resolve the issue.    After around 40 minutes or so the issue was resolved and the students went about their exam but this was maybe 5 students from 35, 14% of students.    How would that work when there are 300 students, that would be 42 students with difficulties?     And what about the students themselves, nervous enough about an exam and then presented with issues while their fellow students get on with their exam, forced to listen as we wade through a help desk automated call options to finally reach a person who could help?    And even when we did get through to someone they then had us work through a resolution check list of steps, where most we had already done and were unlikely to resolve the issues at hand.

This is where we will see the challenges in terms of the infrastructure provided at the exam board end to minimise the risk of things going wrong, and then the support provided to deal with issues where they do go wrong.   If the infrastructure is robust then you hope to have a failure rate of maybe 1 or 2% of students, which would be manageable even at 300 students.   I wonder if the exam board from this morning would ever release data on its failure or issue rate;  I suspect not however from our exam session the rate was around 14%.   And if the support is there then you would quickly be able to get to someone who can help and then resolve the issue, ideally in 5-10 minutes as a maximum, rather than the 30 to 40min we experienced.     For me it is clear that for digital tests the work the exam boards need to invest heavily up front as otherwise students will suffer.

It s a bit like EdTech in general;  If you don’t invest in the fundamentals which includes your infrastructure, including hardware and software, plus your support provision, it is likely your tech will not be reliable enough to provide a good service to users.    From an EdTech point of view this is bad enough but put this in the context of students sitting their terminal exams which might shape the options they have available to them at the next step in their educational journey;   the stakes are too high for things to go wrong.