Author: Gary Henderson

Gary Henderson is currently the Director of IT in an Independent school in the UK.Prior to this he worked as the Head of Learning Technologies working with public and private schools across the Middle East.This includes leading the planning and development of IT within a number of new schools opening in the UAE.As a trained teacher with over 15 years working in education his experience includes UK state secondary schools, further education and higher education, as well as experience of various international schools teaching various curricula. This has led him to present at a number of educational conferences in the UK and Middle East.

Remote Learning TweetMeet

Last nights Microsoft TweetMeet focussed on Remote Learning.   It was certainly a busy session with my tweetdeck updating faster than I could think; it was a blur of activity.   Overall it was an excellent session and probably the best TweetMeet I have been involved in so far.   I therefore thought it might be useful to summarise the key messages I took away from the event:

  • We are all human

I think this is very important; to recognise that we, teachers, our students, their parents/guardians and the wider school community are all human.  This is a difficult time; unlike anything we have experienced before and for many the unfamiliar circumstances we find ourselves in can be very scary.  Add to that concerns relating to the health and wellbeing of loved ones, of family and of friends plus for some the actual loss of people close to them and we find ourselves significantly outside our comfort zones.  We need to recognise and accept this, and to ensure we consider it when interacting with others.   We need to ensure we provide space and time for these concerns to be shared and discussed and we need to support each other.   High expectations are great but may need to be considered carefully in the current context we find ourselves in.   As we seek to use remote learning to continue children’s education we must maintain our focus that the most important thing in times like this isn’t the curriculum, assessment, EdTech, etc, but is in fact our teachers, students, their parents, families, and the wider school community;  What matters most is people.

  • We are better together

Related to the above is the fact that as humans we are social animals.   We are designed to be at our best when working with others and in this time of isolation this is no different.  For me the TweeetMeet was a perfect example of this.  There were lots of people involved in the session each individually doing excellent things in relation to remote Learning but by coming together and sharing, discussing and exploring things together we are all the better.    At this time of isolation we need to ensure we build the opportunities to collaborate and to share experiences.   Where individually we identify things that work or don’t work, we should seek to share this.    It may be that ideas shared by others won’t work in your particular context, but by at least considering such ideas you will have gained some insight;  Think Edison and 1000 lightbulbs.    The more we share the better.   My favourite phrase in relation to this being “the smartest person in the room is the room”.   And thankfully we live in a time where we largely have the technology available to achieve this through blogs, vlogs, podcasts, video conferencing, webinars, etc.  The world is a pretty big room!

  • Technology is here to stay

For all the discussion about whether EdTech makes a difference or not, whether we should embrace technology in schools or ban it, we often miss an important fact.   Technology is here, and it is here to stay.   Social media, on-demand TV, sat nav, video conferencing, artificial intelligence, user tracking and many other technologies all exist now and they aren’t going to disappear, in fact they are likely only to continue to evolve and to take an ever greater place in our lives.   Given this world how can education avoid technology;  I don’t believe it can.    Technology provides us many tools which can allow us to do new and exciting things and we need to seek to use it.  Just think where we would be in this current crisis without technology.  How would learning work without it?    So, if technology can act as an enabler of learning in a sudden crisis like the one we find ourselves in now imagine what we might be able to achieve with a bit of time, planning and people working together.  This is what we need to consider in relation to life beyond Covid19.

  • The Digital divides will be our biggest challenge

I have written about this already and you can read my post here.   Our biggest challenge is likely to be the lack of parity which exists in relation to technology.   It isn’t just about access to devices such as laptops or tablets for use by students at home, or access to the internet at home.  We also need to consider the many other divides.   Parents at home may have differing abilities to support their children in using technology at home plus students themselves will have differing abilities.  Schools will have different amounts of IT support available to help out staff, students and parents with issues and problems.   Additionally, schools will have different amounts of professional learning and training resources again for use by staff, students and parents.    There will be different levels of IT equipment in schools with some schools having 1:1 devices while others might be limited to a single IT lab or less.   Experience with the pedagogical aspects of using technology to support learning will also differ across schools or even within schools across departments.  Confidence levels and motivation to experiment, plus the school culture with regards technology is another factor which is inconsistent.    If we are to achieve equal opportunities for all students in relation to the opportunities to use technology in learning, these and many other divides will need to be considered.

  • Safeguarding

The final point that stuck out for me from the TweetMeet related to safeguarding and the need to keep students and staff safe during this period of remote learning.    This is an issue which in my view is very complex and is for individual schools to reach a decision in relation to their own context.   That said I have a particular view on this and in particular on the use of video to allow students and teachers to interact.  I am aware some schools have disabled the ability for video calls to be used citing safeguarding concerns, with the view that by turning off video within the schools technology solution they are protecting their students.   If we accept that we are human and we are social animals, then students will seek personal contact independent of our actions, so by disabling video we force students to use other non-school platforms to achieve the personal contact they seek.   I believe this represents a risk.    I also think we need to consider the fact that learning is a social experience so the more social we make remote learning the more successful the learning will be.   Removing the use of video complete with the various visual cues it presents reduces the impact of learning.  I will acknowledge that there is a clear safeguarding risk where video is enabled, however life is never without risk.   For me, it is about engaging parents, students and staff about managing the risk as much as is reasonably possible while still enabling the best learning opportunities possible.

When I started writing this piece my plan was a short summary of the TweetMeet session;  Failed on that one as this isn’t exactly short.   I also must admit this post also only covers the highlights of the session as I saw it and most likely missed loads of other excellent points or discussion threads.   That said, and in acknowledging point 2, I thought I would share.  I hope the above is helpful and look forward to reading any thoughts or comments people may have.

 

Digital Citizenship and Covid19

Before the Covd-19 crisis begun I presented on Digital Citizenship at the JISC DigiFest event and previous to that at the ISC Digital event in Brighton.   In both cases one of my reasons for presenting was my concern regarding students increasing use of technology not being match by an appropriate considerations or awareness of the risks.   I was worried that students were giving away large amounts of data without considering who they were providing to, how it might be used, how long it would be kept or how it might impact or be used to influence them as individuals, and as groups, in their future.   I was worried and believed education and its educators needed to start to do something about this.

Since then the Covid-19 crisis has deepened with the lockdown rules introduced.   I have seen large numbers of schools and other organisations rushing to find solutions to the challenges this crisis has created.   New applications have been put into use, devices issued and configurations quickly changed to enable remote working and remote learning.    Applications such as Zoom and Houseparty have quickly achieved viral status as people adopt solutions to keep in touch and maintain some form of social interaction and community spirit in a time of isolation.   Decisions as to what to use have been based on which apps are easy to use and which are being used commonly by others.     In all of this fast paced change, home working and learning and technology enabled socialisation the phrase that jumps to mind is “act in haste, repent at leisure”.

Teachers, parents, children, the elderly, in fact almost everyone is now using more technology that they previously did, either in new devices, new apps, the duration spent using technology, etc.   With this use we have greater exposure to online risks such as cyber crime and to risks associated with the data trail we leave behind us.

There is also the discussion of tracking apps to help identify where people have come into close contact with someone with the Corona virus of Corona virus systems, or the use of thermal cameras and facial recognition for a similar purpose.   Although in the short term this appears to be in the interests of public good, this data might be used in the future for other purposes related to the tracking and profiling of individuals, or even to help with targeted campaigns aimed at influencing the behaviour of individuals or groups.

To be clear, the current situation is far from normal and far from ideal.   No-one chose for this to happen.   As a result, the decisions which are being made, and which need to be made, are borne out of necessity rather than being purposeful, fully planned and implemented with the implications carefully considered.    There is also the issue that, at the best of times, we cant predict the future yet now are presented with an even more unpredictable future but the need to make decisions now that will influence this future.

If I was worried about Digital Citizenship before the Covid-19 crisis, I am even more worried now.

5 tips for remote learning

As we head towards the end of the Easter break and into the new term and for a lot of schools, a period of remote learning, I thought I would share my thoughts and tips on remote learning.

The first point I would make is that there is no one solution to remote learning.  It depends on your context including the age of your students, previous experience using technology and online learning platforms, individual subject requirements, teachers confidence with platforms and their own personal experience of those that are available and the equipment available to teachers and students, to name just a few factors.

  1. Seek feedback from students: Be clear and open with students, for most the use of technology in this way is new, and for all the current pandemic is new.   As a result, things may not be perfect and issues/challenges will be experienced however if we accept this we can then all work together to review, revise and improve, and to get to the best possible use of technology.  It is therefore important to seek feedback from students often in order to then revise how remote learning is delivered.
  2. Use video conferencing to regularly check in with students learning: A key part of teaching and learning is the interactions between teachers and students. Video conferencing is a key method to achieve this however we should not simply seek to substitute classroom teaching with video conferencing sessions of the same length as traditional classroom-based lessons.  We should however ensure that at the minimum there are regular check in opportunities for teacher and students to interact, discuss and share by video conferencing however this could be at the start of each lesson, once daily, at the start of a short unit of work, etc.   We need to experiment to identify which works best for the teacher and each class taught.
  3. Set clear expectations for video conferencing: Video conferencing presents challenges in relation to background noise, interruptions, talking over each other, etc.   This can clearly be seen simply by watching the use of video conferencing technology within BBC news broadcasts.   For teachers this is no different from working in a classroom, albeit the challenges when interacting virtually via video conferencing are different to those which occur in the traditional classroom where working with students face to face.   Like in the classroom it is therefore important to establish clear expectations as to how students should behaviour while on a conference call as part of the class.   It is also important to review these expectations via feedback from students, especially in the early use of video conferencing to support remote learning, to ensure all, students and teachers, share ownership of these expectations and that they meet the needs of the teacher and learners alike.
  4. Set personal boundaries for responding to students: Remote learning, the use of video conferencing, email and other online platforms can lead to teachers feeling they are always working, and even more so in international schools where students may live and therefore interact with the teacher from different time zones. This is not good for teacher wellbeing.   Boundaries need to be set as to during what times a teacher will interact, how quickly responses can be expected, etc.   I find a useful technique to address this is to have a dedicated workspace meaning the rest of the house means I am not working.   It is also important to consider what devices emails and other platforms are installed on plus how notifications are presented on devices.   On my phone, for example, I have do not disturb enabled for the evenings to stop me from instinctively responding to emails simply by suppressing the notifications outside normal working hours.
  5. Find your balance in lesson delivery: Learning can be delivered in a variety of ways both in real life and via remote learning. In remote Learning you may choose to create video content in advance similar to flipped learning, or you may do live video sessions.  You may provide students presentations to work through, or links to videos online or even worksheets or workbooks for more self-study style learning.  You may ask students to work collaboratively in groups using video conferences or you may ask them to complete questions where you can provide remote live feedback, such as via OneNote.  I do not believe any single of the above approaches to be correct as each has strengths and drawbacks with some requiring significant prep time.  You need to experiment and seek a blend of these and also other approaches I have not listed.    A point that I have seen multiple teachers state is that this is a “marathon not a sprint” so we need to be careful to not burn ourselves out by creating lots of content and exciting learning experiences in the short term, only to find this quickly used up in lessons.

The five points above are the key suggestions I would make in relation to remote learning.   You will notice they are inter-related in a number of ways.  They are purposely not over specific, as given the different contexts of teachers across a single school never mind across the globe, I don’t believe it is possible to be specific and precise without either ruling out some learning opportunities that would work or proposing approaches which in some contexts may detract or damage learning.

To all engaging in remote learning, good luck, and please do share your thoughts, successes and what hasnt worked as together we can get through this, and together we can learn a lot from this experience which may help us start to reshape the educational experiences of the students yet to grace our classrooms.

Automation in Office 365

I spent the other day playing around with PowerAutomate, formerly called Flow, to create a simple Automation to manage staff leave requests.   It was a simple project to automate the approvals and sending of confirmation emails for info and for record.    Following completion of the project I thought I would share a guide for the steps I took.

First create a form.  I am not going to provide a guide for this as it is reasonably straight forward and there are other guides online for this.

Now www.office.com and select All Apps

Now select the Power Automate option

In Power Automate in the search box you can search for a template.   Automate comes with a wide variety of different templates for you to use plus, where there isn’t a template appropriate to your needs,  you can take any existing template and simply modify it.

For this example I want to start with a MS Form which a user will submit which then requires an approval before resulting in an email to the approver and user submitting the form.    For this I searched for Form Approval.    The “Start an approval process and send an email on Microsoft Form submission” template appeared to be closest to what I was looking for.

On the resulting screen which looks like below, scroll to the bottom and click the Continue button

You will now be presented with the Power Automate editor where you can customise your Automation including any emails involved.

Now lets start with some of the customisation:

  1. Give your Automation a name so that it will be easy for you to identify it.
  2. Select the Form which you wish to use with this automation. This sets the From which will trigger this automation.
  3. Again, select the Form which you wish to use this time to get the info from the Form to use in your automation.
  4. Select how the automation will work where multiple approvers are selected. The automation can require all to approve, one person to respond or allows for other custom settings.   In this case I will use First to respond as anyone in the approval list should be able to approve a request.
  5. Give your approval a title. This will be the text which appears in the approval email received by those you set as the approvers for this automation.
  6. Add here the list of users who will approve a submitted request. Simply enter their email addresses here separated by a semicolon where multiple approvers are to be listed.

The next stage is to customise the approval email which will be received.   We do this in the Details section.

In the Dynamic content window a list of variables and other functions will be available.  This will automatically include the fields you setup in the form you created for use with this automation.   Click in the details section then click on a variable such as Date (From) above to add it.

I note that there is very little formatting available in the approval emails.  I also recommend leaving an extra line space between elements as I found the formatting to a little on the picky side.   As such a details section like the below:

Would results in an email which would look like below:

The last part of the setup process is to configure the emails which will be received for an Approved or a Declined request.    Below I will cover setting up the email for an Approved or Yes condition however the process is identical for configuring the email corresponding to a Declined or No condition.

The first thing I would do is turn on HTML support within you email.  This provides you with significantly more control over the formatting and look of your emails.

To do this first access the advanced options via the Show Advanced options link.

Now change the Is HTML option to Yes.  Having done this you now have the ability to use HTML in your emails.

We can now go about configuring this email.

To configure the emails follow the below steps:

1. Enter the email addresses of those who receive the approval/decline email. This can be multiple email addresses using a semi colon to separate them.   You can also use the Add Dynamic content to gain access to variables such as the Approvers email variable and the Responders email variable.   This means the automation could be made to send the confirmation email automatically to the person who submitted the form, the Responder, and to the person who approved the automation email, the Approve

2. Next give the email a subject line.

3. Finally create the body of the email. Again you can use dynamic content to add variables such as the various pieces of data which a user has filled in on the form along with some other variables such as the approvers email, etc.   As we have selected HTML formatting you can also use HTML tags such as <br> to force a line break, <p> for a new paragraph, etc.  This gives us a lot more control over the email design including fonts, colour, sizes and even including images.     Looking at a very simple email it might look like the below:

And this would result in an email like below:

Having configured the Approved email make sure to go and repeat this for the rejected/declined email.

With everything now setup the final step is to make sure and save your automation using the Save button in the top right.  You can then Test your automation to make sure it works.  Simply click Test.

In a separate browser window visit the form which you linked to this automation and either preview it and complete or visit the sharing link and complete it.   Having clicked Submit on the form the automation should run and your approvers should now receive their approval emails ready to approve.   Having approved the relevant confirmation emails should be received.

Congratulations you have completed you first Automation.    This first automation highlights a limited amount of the power of PowerAutomate.  Go ahead and start exploring!

Digital Divides

The digital divide has long concerned educators in considering those students who have access to the internet and devices at home, plus support from parents in relation to device use, and those who do not.   Covid-19 has had me thinking about this, what this now means for schools and students and how we might leap the divide which exists.

Divides

The digital divide as a concept seems quite simple and tangible; either they have access, or they don’t.   This disguises the complexity of the issue and in my mind the existence of divides, plural, rather than a singular divide.

Firstly internet access; Some households will have super-fast broadband while others may have nothing whatsoever with a multitude of options in between.   The issue being this isn’t necessarily an issue of parents choosing not to have access but could relate to the location of their home and the available options in relation to internet connectivity.

Devices; Some families may have a computer/tablet at home while others may not.  Where a computer does exist, it may be a shared device or even a device used by parents to enable working from home.   Where a shared device this represents a challenge for a child to gain access especially where other children or even adults need the device while a child is seeking to undertake time bounded work.  This device also may or may not have some of the software used within school.   It may not have an up to date operating system and may therefore represent a cyber risk to users using it.

Mobile Phones: I mention mobile phones separately to devices above given how common mobile phone ownership is among students these days but even this assumption hides a layer of complexity.   Some students may not have phones, albeit a small number these days, however those that do have phones may have limited data packages meaning use for schoolwork could quickly become costly to families where Wi-Fi at home is not available.    The size of screens may make phones less ideal for work set or, like devices, phones may not have the needed software.  I note that many schools are deploying homework or school management apps currently and therefore I believe most schools are already taking a stance that parents will have a mobile phone;  In the most cases this is true but I do wonder about what is in place for those where it isn’t true.

Support: In schools the availability of IT support is critical.  If staff, as users, have difficulties, they may quickly disengage and re-engaging them with technology is often much more difficult once this has happened.    In schools this is easy enough, although as I will explain later even this is an oversimplification, but at home this is dependent on parents.   Parents need to support the specific usage of a tech tool as set by the teacher as well as providing the required technical support.   Some parents are likely to be very tech savvy and quickly able and willing to support their children in engaging with technology and learning through digital tools.   Equally though there will be many parents who themselves will feel out of their depth and unable to support their children in using what technology they have access to at home.

Schools: And even in our schools there are divides.   There are divides in terms of the equipment available with schools, with some school issuing devices to all teaching staff whereas in others there is little available beyond a classroom computer fixed in each classroom.   The available internet bandwidth may differ between schools as may the availability of IT support and training.   Also, the overall school attitude to IT and to IT strategy may differ with some schools engaged in experimenting and innovating and other schools scared to explore, scared of risks around GDPR, etc, or where EdTech may even have been given only passing consideration.

Moving Forward

The above divides can easily be seen as providing an impossible and wicked problem; How do we address all these different issues?    In my view when presented with a problem like this our best option is to seek to make progress and avoid overthinking or spending too much time in planning.   It is simply a case of act, review, adjust, act again, and a continuing process of iteration.   But where to focus?

I would propose three key areas first:

Infrastructure: One of the biggest limiting factors continues to be access to fast reliable internet across the country.  Here I am referring to the UK however this issue can be applied to any country.  Generally, this is a governmental issue and needs addressing at a national level however it is one which schools can have some impact either through access to the schools infrastructure outside normal hours or possibly through mobile service provider solutions as two possible approaches.

Devices: Next is access to devices for students to use at home.  How these devices are provided isn’t important, whether this be devices the students/parents own, or devices provided by schools or other organisations, the key thing is that students have access to a device.   Ideally this should follow internet access however at a push it doesn’t have to; If students have devices they can at least use software locally installed, or free Wi-Fi hotspots should they not have access to reliable Wi-Fi at home. Yes, this will require funding and I am under no illusions as to the extent of funding required, however in the meantime we can at least attempt to achieve what is reasonably possible through partnerships between schools and also with charitable and commercial organisations.

Training: My next focus area is training for parents not in the technical issues of IT but in how they, as a parent, can support their child in using technology in their learning at home.   I remember my old man helping me with Maths homework but at that time it was all pencil and paper, so he didn’t need anything more than a bit of maths knowledge and an interest in supporting me.   Now we still require the above but in addition parents need a little IT know how to access online platforms and understand how information might be stored/organised and what might be expected of students using these platforms.   Schools need to seek to support parents in this area.   Now there already are lots of examples of this in resources being created in schools and shared online.   Each school needs to consider what it offers and look to build on this.

Conclusion

Providing printed copies of worksheets to all because some may not have reliable Wi-if is no longer the answer.  Sending worksheets to student via email or via an app may be progress, but is it enough and should we be doing more?   We first must seek to find out what our students and their families have in terms of technology.  Armed with this information we can then look to how schools can support students learning using technology at home.   This will take some creativity to get correct and for some schools with limited resources I suspect this may still be printing out booklets, but for many there are at least steps which can be taken now or in the near future.  The digital divide (or divides) is an impossible problem for which a solution may not exist but at least we can seek to continually improve and give students the best technology enabled learning experiences possible, preparing them for the technological world we now live in.  And if you needed evidence of this technological world we need to prepare students for just take one look at the world today with the massive growth of work from home during this period of isolation and the use of video conferencing tools to stay in touch and even to socialise.  I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

Two weeks of remote working

Its now been 2 weeks of working from home so I thought I would share how I am getting on.

For some time I have discussed with my IT team about making us of opportunity to work from home more often however few have taken me up on this, and personally I haven’t taken up my own offer very often either.    I found myself wondering why would team members come in to work, travel to and from work, when they could actually sit in the comfort of their own homes and work from there?

The last two weeks have given me some answers to the above question with two factors in particularly sticking out.

  1. Work has an ebb and flow about it, be that the specific meetings, the movement of students between lessons or the school bells. There are also the longer term ebbs and flows and sports events on Wednesdays, weekly assembly and head of department meetings on Mondays.   There is an inherent structure in these ebbs and flows.   Now I am working at home I am finding it difficult to keep track of where I am within each day and also to keep track of where I am in the week.   The last two weeks have disappeared plus I have often found myself wondering, “what day is it?”.    I suppose the answer to this challenge is to build a new structure at home, however I don’t think this is as easy as it sounds given the previous structure for me personally was built up over 20 years working in schools and colleges.
  2. Humans are social animals. We want to be around other people and to interact whether this is formally in meetings or informally discussing the football results in the morning or as you pass someone’s desk.   Now video conferencing helps in allowing us to communicate but it simply isn’t the same as real life face to face contact.  It also needs to be scheduled whereas our normal day to day interactions include many incidental conversations as you walk to the staff room or to a meeting.    These meetings and discussions were never planned but their existence added to the rich colour and uniqueness of each working day.   Working from home doesn’t quite have this same social dynamism.   I am not sure how we might address this issue, and I think randomly video calling staff across school might be a little strange or even creepy.

Now it may be that as more time passes and I become more used to working from home that I miss the issues above less and less.   Or maybe I will find solutions to allow me to address these challenges while still working remotely.

Would be interested in how everyone else is finding this work from home experience?

 

EdTech beyond Covid-19

I believe things will never quite be the same again following Covid-19.    These unprecedented events have the potential to act as the catalyst for a number of EdTech changes in particular.   For example, I have read a few comments over the last week where EdTech initiatives which have been slow to progress, often being discussed in schools over a number of years with little movement, have suddenly been quickly progressed due to Covid-19 and the immediate need for online remote learning.   Due to this I thought I would share some thoughts as to what might change beyond the current crisis:

Flipped / Blended Learning

Over the last week or so since schools closed teachers who previously hadn’t had much experience of creating video learning content have suddenly found themselves creating content.   Some of this video has been live through Zoom, Hangouts or Teams, or has been posted for on demand access through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, FlipGrid and even TikTok or through school Virtual Learning Environments.    Although discussions of flipped or blended learning have been ongoing for some time, Covid-19 has led to a peak in interest plus to a rapid upskilling of teachers driven by a specific and immediate need.    With this greater interest and skill level I would predict that we will see greater use of video, and in particular pre-prepared video which can be used or accessed on demand within schools and learning, similar to the lecture capture concept which has become more common in Higher Education.

Digital Skills

The current situation has required the rapid upskilling of teachers to facilitate online remote learning.   Lots of resources have been quickly pulled together and curated by various groups of individuals and organisations.    The importance of a teachers digital skillset has become never more apparent and with this it is likely to see increasing levels of importance beyond the current crisis.  Schools will need to asses what their strengths and areas for development are in relation to the use of EdTech by staff, and how they might address the identified needs.    I should also mention that infrastructure and IT support are also likely to need to be considered as these are cornerstones of successful EdTech usage.

Remote / Distance Learning

The benefits in the use of video to engage remote learners, allow for remote teachers and also provide on-demand learning materials has become clear to a significantly greater number of educators during this period of lockdown.    It may even be that parents and our students are now more aware of what is possible, and therefore are likely to have greater expectations as to what schools should provide once we progress beyond the current crisis..    As such I believe the student absent from school may no longer be excluded from the days learning in the way they have been in the past, and we may see students accessing learning remotely becoming more common.

Personalisation rather than differentiation

Remote learning has shown us how students can actually access learning in their own time, space and also personal way.    In addition, some of the tools such as Microsoft’s Accessibility tools, for example, also allow for the language to be changed or the font size or background colour, all customizable to meet the end users, the students, needs.   This customization at the point of consumption, as opposed to differentiation at the point of delivery, is likely to significantly increase.   As such teachers are likely to need to think about how the learning they design, deliver and facilitate will offer sufficient flexibility to allow for students to personalise.

Work from home

When we talk about schools we immediate think of the physical buildings, same as when we talk about work, there is a physicality about it.   I saw a great tweet referring to school being the students as opposed to the physical building.   What covid-19 has taught us is that this physicality is in our heads, an illusion, and that in reality our school or place of work isn’t as reliant on the physical space as we thought.    Our school or work can, to a greater or lesser extent, exist virtually and online.    This is likely to be a significant challenge as we are, as humans, creatures of habit and therefore not travelling to a physical place of work, or to a physical school, may be a difficult change for us to adjust to however I think we will see increasing consideration around flexibility.    Workers may be allowed work from home days and some schools may adopt timetables or schedules including virtual school time or virtual school days.  We may also see a growth around online only schools.

Online socialising

For me our students online social media habits have to date been seen in a very negative light, being thought of as being anti-social or changing in their behaviour or attention spans.   The last week has however shown how the online world can provide opportunities for socialising as much as the real world can, albeit in different ways.    We have seen virtual pubs, lots of online Karaoke, community groups and much more form quickly online to overcome the challenges of social distancing and the potential harm of individual isolation.   Thinking about children, and how parents may be overprotective and concerned of the dangers in the real world, therefore leading our students to be more isolated than they would have been in the past;  For me I remember parental comments about returning home “before the street lights come on”.   This kind of freedom to socialise in real life isn’t afforded in anyway to the same extent for the current generation of children.  Is it therefore any wonder they would look to use the online world?    I think going forward there will be a greater acceptance of the benefits of the hyper connectedness which our students already experience through the many apps they use.

The Bigger Players

We have seen over the last week a number of school services overwhelmed by increasing demand and traffic as schools and workplaces across the globe shifted to remote learning and remote working.   Even the big players like Microsoft and Google have had some issues in this period of unprecedented demand.     In looking at these issues, although the bigger services were negatively impacted by demand they also tend to have greater capacity to upscale and recover quickly, greater resiliency, where need arises hence I think we will see a number of small EdTech companies disappear as they loose out on business to the big players.   This shift will have both positive and negative implications.  We may lose some interested and useful solutions to a difficult financial climate while homogenising on common functionality which will be seen across all schools.

Data Protection/Cyber

Although most of the above is positive I do have some concerns.  I am worried that as people rushed to find solutions to overcome isolation, maintain social connection, etc, that they didn’t show due care for the protection of their personal data and for the resultant cyber risk.   Great communities may have formed overnight using free services but what data did we give away regarding these groups and the individuals within them.    It worries me that when things do settle down, we may realise that some decisions made have negative consequences.   I suspect the pendulum which swings between individual privacy and public good, and which previously tended towards individual privacy may have shifted somewhat and may now tend more towards the public good.   In some ways this may be a good thing, but what may be a good thing in a crisis may not be a good thing when everything returns to normality or near normality.

Conclusion

It may be possible that I am wrong about the above and that the world simply acts like an elastic band and springs back towards the normal which existed prior to Covid-19.  It may equally be that Covid-19 acts as a catalyst for wide ranging change and a new normal, distinctly different from what existed before, is established.   The likelihood is that the world will find a position somewhere between these two possibilities, with some schools embracing change and others not.    It is also worth noting that the world education sector is likely to see some significant change especially around fee paying schools operating internationally.  I know from my own experience working in the Middle East that some of these schools rely fully on fee income and that this period where parents may be unable to afford fees due to job losses will result in significant uncertainty and some difficult decisions.   For ex-Pat teachers this will be a period of great concern.   My thoughts go out to these schools and their staff, and in particular to the schools and staff I personally worked with.  My thoughts are also with those who have lost loved ones, and to those who will likely lose loved ones on the weeks and months to come.

The above represent my thoughts on what might change following this crisis.   Only time will now tell how close or far I am from the truth.

 

 

 

Human behaviour: some thoughts

I haven’t shared a journal style blog in a while and what with the way things are I thought now might be a good time to get some thoughts down on paper (or screen!).   Its day two for me of working from home [or at least it was when I wrote this], having been in work all last week but then developing a cough and temperature over the weekend leading to me taking the decision to stay at home.    This decision was far from simple, or at least felt much less simple than it should have been.    My thinking was that I had a little bit of a cough but it most likely was from my run in the cold earlier in the week.    I was looking to justify to myself how it would still be acceptable for me to go into work.   I didn’t like the thought of leaving my team to it, to them working in the office at my request on Monday but without me being there.   This felt like a betrayal of my team and therefore I needed to find a reason or justification which would make attending work acceptable.  My initial thinking paid little consideration to the potential impact I might have had going into work or to the signal I would be providing the team, showing them that it was ok to behave heroically and attend work in spite of illness, personal wellbeing and the potential risk to others.

The issue of risk to others is one that particularly interests me and possible the issue which helped me eventually make the correct decision to remain at home.    In thinking about this risk, the concept of near-misses and remote-misses in relation to the World War II bombing came to mind.    Heading into World War II psychologists were worried about the significant impact on mental health which widespread bombing of London would have.   There were fears that society would collapse.   The reality was far from this, as people came together and developed a community spirit and resilience, almost the opposite behaviour as to what was expected.   As psychologists sought to understand what happened they came upon the concept of near and remote misses.    A near miss meant a person physically felt a bomb go off and saw the aftermath in the dead, including friends and relatives.   These people suffered psychologically and often physically from bombings.   Remote misses referred to those people who heard the bombs fall and saw the damage to building but who did not experience any direct loss or see injuries and deaths first-hand.   The vast majority of Londoners fell into the Remote Miss category.   For these people, they were spared and may have seen themselves as lucky, and with each subsequent bombing they survived they felt more and more lucky, and even invincible, each subsequent bombing reinforced their belief that bombs didn’t impact on them.   It is through these people that the community spirit and resilience built despite all the death and destruction across London during the bombing.   Taking this idea and applying it to the Corona virus we have near misses in those who either contracted the virus or have loved ones who have contracted it, and even died from it, but we also have the remote misses in those who haven’t contracted the virus, or had mild symptoms or even who are infected but asymptomatic but who were aware through the news, social media, etc.   The remote misses, like in London, significantly outnumber the near misses and through this and the sense of invulnerability or “it won’t happen to me” which may have developed, may have been behaving counter to the guidance being offered by the government.   As such “social distancing” wasn’t being adhered to as it wasn’t important, or at least wasn’t perceived to be important.   To be clear, the concept of remote misses helps to explain behaviour but it doesn’t excuse it.  For me, in understanding behaviour and my own thinking, I was better able to question it and arrive at what I consider the “right” decision.

The other factor which eventually led me to the decision to stay away from school was the potential that my own behaviour might model for others my expectations.    If I would consider going into work more important than my own health and the potential risk to colleagues, then this communicates to others what I consider important and therefore what I expect of them.   Even if I verbalise the importance of everyone looking after their own health first, if I had gone to work this would have provided an indicator counter to what I had spoken.    I realised I needed to be conscious of the non-verbal cue my attendance, complete with a cough, would send.

Social media posts have been quick to condemn those who didn’t adhere to social distancing guidance however I am not sure such condemnation serves much purpose.   Now to be clear I am not condoning those flaunting government advice however I do think it is important to at least to try to gain some understanding as to how certain behaviours occurred.    Online for those occupying the moral high ground, their decision-making processes look simple and flawless.   These people knew what was right and acted accordingly.   Or at least that’s what social media would have us believe.    The reality I suspect is not so simple or at least for me it isn’t, as the decision to not go into work with what I considered a minor cough, a decision with a hopefully obvious “right” behaviour, caused me to stop and think and to wrestle with my own thoughts.

As it was, I stayed home, doing what was the right thing.   Hopefully the next time a similar dilemma arises I will also do the right thing, however for now I am more conscious of how easy it is for us as human beings to consider, to rationalise and justify, but despite this still manage to arrive at the wrong answer.

 

You can read a little about direct hits, near misses and remote misses here.

JISC DigiFest: Digital Citizenship

Following my DigiFest session I thought I would share some thoughts which went into my session.

It is important to firstly acknowledge that our views on technology are very much the result of our experiences.  My experiences include learning to code in Basic on the Commodore 64 at an early age, before moving on to AMOS basic on the Amiga and then QBasic, Visual Basic and C++ on the PC.    This early use of technology, and the ability to develop software to solve problems has very much shaped my views.    Now, today I walk around with a mobile phone with over a million times more memory than my commodore 64, from less than 30 years earlier, and the growth rate across the period has not been linear.   A perfect illustration of this lies in how long it took various technologies to reach 50 million users.    Radio took 75 years whereas TV only took 38 years.   Bringing us close to today, Facebook got the time to 50 million users down to 3.5 years before Pokemon go managed it in less than a single month.   It is clear from this that the pace of changing is quickening.

Looking at our use of technology today we find that most of us now use technology for communication or entertainment in the form of mobile phones, social media and on-demand TV.   We are also increasingly being required to use technology to access governmental services, council services, banks, etc.    Technology is now integral to our lives and here to stay, complete with the ever-quickening pace of change mentioned earlier.

The more I think about the pace of change and the way that technology is becoming an integral part of our everyday lives the more the movie Ready Player One comes to mind.   In the movie Wade Watts makes use of virtual reality to live a double life, living as Percival in VR.   As the film progresses it becomes clear that his two lives aren’t as separate as he would like and that events in virtual reality impact on real life and vice versa.   For us, like Wade Watts, our lives in real life are inseparably linked to our digital lives.   In fact, I believe that it no longer serves us to think of digital citizenship as the term implies that there is something else available, a non-digital citizenship, when in fact there is not.    Possibly the discussion should not be of digital citizenship at all but simply citizenship.  As Danah Boyd, in her book, Its Complicated said, although the apps might change our online connectedness, our need to share and the challenges around privacy are “here to stay”.

Resulting from this new technology there are benefits or potential benefits and we need to acknowledge this.  A couple of examples include the current exploration of self driving vehicles plus the recent use of choreographed drones as an alternative to traditional new years day fireworks.  In relation to current events around the globe, there is also the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to identify new antibiotics and other drugs.   We need to prepare to make the best of these new opportunities and to ensure the students in our educational establishments are prepared.

But with the above benefits, there are also risks.    Fake news and the ease with which videos including interviews can be faked will increasingly make it more difficult to tell fact from fiction.   We also have challenged to individual privacy and risks around habits and potential addictive behaviour plus also the potential for platforms to go so far as to actually shape and influence human behaviour.

The danger in the benefits and risks of technology is the currently common resultant binary views of either technology as infinitely good or inherently bad and evil.    Sadly, these views are seldom of little use as to view technology as purely good is naïve whereas to consider it as purely negative equally naïve and simplistic.   The reality is that technology and more particularly the use of technology for a given purpose will lie in between the extremes of good and evil, positive and negative.   Any use of technology is likely to have its positives but also its drawbacks or unintended consequences and therefore we need to consider carefully the pro’s and cons and seek a balance.

Looking at how we prepare our students for the world and the issues listed above I can see the things which we do satisfactorily, through our eSafety programmers, however I can also see those areas where little or nothing is currently offered.   We currently discuss the importance of privacy settings on social media, of having strong passwords, of how online content, once posted, will remain permanent and of the need to be aware of bullying online.   These areas are currently covered.    Sadly, however little is said in relation to the conflict between user convenience and individual privacy, between individual privacy and public good, and between social media reporting on or actually creating the news and truths which we come to believe.     These are the areas which we need to discuss, for which there isn’t a single answer and therefore where the most we can do is help students develop their own views through discussion.  It is through discussion that we can hopefully ensure that students, when presented with the infinite challenges of technology use, will approach them with their eyes wide open.

This brings me nicely to raising a couple of examples, from the many examples available, which would make valuable discussion topics for use in our schools.

Algorithms and AIs can be manipulated by an individual or organisation, to their own ends.   

Do we understand why algorithms might exist?     Do we understand why an individual or organisation might seek to “game” an algorithm and the potential gains which may arise?   The use of a series of mobile phones to fool googles traffic analysis algorithm into identifying a traffic jam where one doesn’t not exist, resulting in it redirecting traffic away from a given street, being one simple example of what is possible.

Governments can filter and censor content based on political motivations.    

Do governments need to be able to filter content for public safety?   But could their filtering be used to shape public perception or to revise fact to their own political ends and political gain?   What is truth and should governments be allowed to control and revise truth?    We have already seen governments filtering internet content with their filtering then being identified as being lacking transparency and in their own self interest; Filtering of TikTok being one possible example of this.

Online companies can gather and sell your data for profit.  

Do companies need to gather all the data which they gather?   Do they have the right to sell this data?   Where data is anonymized is it possible for data sets to be combined which then might reverse the anonymisation process?   A simple example of this being a cellular carrier selling on viewing habit data.

Mary Aiken in her book, the Cyber Effect, identifies the need for us to “make sense of what’s     happening” and only through discussion is this likely to occur however one concern I have is where these discussions might happen.   In the current crowded curriculum they tend to be banished to the IT classroom, a subject which not all students will study.   I don’t think this is sufficient.   These discussions need to take place throughout schools, across the subject areas, across the stages, with students, with staff, with parents and with the local community.   Discussing the challenges of technology needs to become part of the culture, simply the way we do things around here.

As Danah Boyd stated, “Collaboratively, adults and youth can help create a networked world that we all want to live in”.  If I am to ask anything following my session at DigiFest, I would ask this:  Lets begin with a discussion in our schools, colleges and universities, any citizenship related discussion where technology has its part to play complete with its pros and cons, but let’s do it today.

You can access my full presentation from DigiFest 2020 here.

Final Note: As we now engage in much more home and distance learning due to the Corona virus it may be more important than ever for these discussions to happen, and to happen now!

 

 

JISC DigiFest: Thoughts from Day 1

I thought I would share some initial thoughts following day one of JISC DigiFest.  The event was launched with a very polished and professional pre-prepared video displayed on screens scattered around the events main hall, focussing on the rate of change in relation to technology and some of the technological implications of technology on the world we live in.   The launch session also included a room height “virtual” event guide introducing the sessions and pointing you in the direction of the appropriate hall.    In terms of the launch of a conference this was the most polished and inspiring launch I have seen albeit on reflection there wasn’t much particularly innovative or technically complex about it.

The keynote speaker addressed the changing viewpoints of different generations of people focussing particularly on Generation Z, the generation which currently are in our sixth forms, colleges and universities.   I took away two key points from the presentation.   The first was how each generations views were shaped by their experiences particularly between the ages of 12 and 20 year old.   Jonah Stillman used thoughts on space as an example showing how Generation X might have positive views focussing on the successes of the moon landing whereas Millennials may have a more cynical view following the Challenger disaster.   Additionally, Jonah mentioned movies as a social influencer and how those in the Harry Potter generation may view cooperation and trying hard, even where unsuccessful, in a positive manner.  Those born later than this may draw on another series of films, in the hunger games, resulting in a greater tendency towards competition and the need to succeed in line with the movies storyline of everyone for themselves and failure results in death.     The second take away point from the session resulted from the questioning at the end of the session around what some saw as the absoluteness of the boundaries between generations.    I think Jonah’s use of the word “tendency” addressed this concern in that the purpose of the labels was for simplicity and to indicate a general trend and tendency rather than to suggest that all people born on certain dates exhibited a certain trait.  It increasing concerns me that this argument keeps coming up when surely it is clear that there is a need to use simplistic models to help clarity of explanation and that no model, not matter how complex will ever truly capture the real complexity of the world we live in.

My 2nd session was actually the delivery of my own session.   I will be sharing some thoughts in relation to my presentation along with my resources in the near future.   For now I will simply say that the session was not one of my best.   I do however hope that my main message, in the need for greater and broader discussion in relation to citizenship within the now digital world we find ourselves living in was clear.

The third session of the day focussed on  digital literacy programme one particular university had developed.   I found it interesting in this and a later presentation, how digital literacy or digital citizenship appeared to often fall to the library in universities in terms of developing and delivering a programme.    In schools I feel the same topics tend to fall on the IT teaching department rather than libraries however it is interesting that something which should be permissive would find itself localised in educational institutions in a single department rather than being supported across the institution.   It was interesting how the programme the university developed had evolved over time, which seems to me to be the correct approach given how quick technology is changing.  I also found it interesting in that student voice suggested needs which then later students indicated they did not find useful.  In other words students themselves were not an accurate judge of their own wants and needs.     Session five followed a similar topic again looking at digital literacy however the presenters made use of a fairy tales as a vehicle to deliver their message of the pros and cons of the digital world we live in.   I must admit I enjoyed this presentation in its novel approach to delivering the concept in hand.

Session four focussed on partnerships between a university, a local council and a number of corporate organisations focusing in particular on data analysis and business intelligence.  I think schools have some way to go in this area as they regularly gather huge amounts of data however little is actually done with it beyond reporting it to school leaders, parents, etc.   I think the challenge is that schools often lack the resources which a college or university may have at their disposal, such as having data scientists as part of the staff body.   That said, the sessions seemed to indicate the potential for schools to leverage partnerships to fill this gap with minimal to no outlay on their own resources.

My final session of day one focussed on digital transformation, and like the key notes was insightful and inspiring.    Lindsay Herbert discussed the bear in the room, which is similar to the elephant in the room but more dangerous.     I particularly like the way Lindsay stated early on that the world was a “terrible place” citing issues such as the corona virus, fires in Australia, storms across the UK and ongoing technological change.   She then quickly moved on to the fact that we are inherently brave in our attempt to not only exist but to strive to flourish in this world, before then going on to identify various success stories where the bear in the room was tackled.    She left us with 3 main tips, all of which struck a cord with me, in that transformation starts with a worthy cause, requires lots of people and needs to be learned and earned rather than purchased.   The third tip in particular strikes a cord for me as I have encountered change where it has not gone as smoothly as I would have liked, and where significantly more effort was expended than had originally been attended;  In retrospect this may have been the change being earned, plus certainly involved a lot of learning.

Day 1 was useful with the keynote and closing session of the day being my highlights.    Have plenty of notes to digest when I get back home.  Roll on day 2.