BETT 2020: Its almost upon us.

Its BETT this week!  Will be popping down to have a brief look on Thursday and also to speak at the EdTech UK Conversations event also on Thursday.   Given the shortness of my visit to BETT I am unlikely to be able to make the most of the various talks and presentations which will be going on.  Sadly, there is little I am able to do about this although I will be planning for a more significant visit to BETT next year assuming my brief visit turns out to be worthwhile.

I expect the BETT event will once again have lots of Interactive Panels and Projectors on display, something which I am not so positive about.    A quick look at the exhibitor list highlights 39 vendors in the Interactive Whiteboard Category;  Am not sure why this 25+ year old technology still occupies such a significant portion of what BETT has to offer.   Of particular interest to my visit will be those exhibitors focussing on STEAM and also AI solutions.   There’s lots of buzz around AI, and I like what Century.Tech are doing, however there are also lots of people saying they are using AI where I am not sure they really are.  I note “Find a stand sharing an AI product that has no AI” on the BETT Bingo card which seems to agree with this perception.   I will also be very interested in any solutions focussed on supporting the development of digital citizenship in schools.  Digital Citizenship has been a particular focus of mine recently and I must admit that the lack of a category for this in the BETT show guide worries me.   My hope however is that vendors covering Digital Citizenship will simply be under different categories.   The Microsoft, iSAMS, Century Tech and Netsupport stands will also all be on my list for a quick visit.

I expect it to be a busy day in terms of travel, BETT and EdTech Conversations.   I look forward to it, to catching up with people and also meeting new people or meeting in real life for the first time.  I will try and share my thoughts and experience shortly after my visit.

Hosting a TweetMeet

I am currently looking forward to being one of a number of hosts for a Microsoft TweetMeet due to happen on 21st January focusing on the topic: “Devices for Student Success”.   The event promises to see educators from all over the world sharing thoughts and ideas in relation to educational technology and in particular how to bring about success through using iPads, laptops, MS Surfaces, Chromebook, mobile phones or other mobile devices.

I have been involved as a participant in previous Microsoft TweetMeets looking at topics such as Future Skills contributing my thoughts and ideas to the questions posed.  In my experience the discussions are vibrant and fast paced, and I have come away having enjoyed the experience.   As a result of the above I have been eager to get more involved however previous TweetMeets have fallen at times when I have been unable to allocate sufficient time to make hosting worthwhile.   As such it wasn’t until now that I have been able to get more involved and become a host.

I have also previously hosted twitterchats and my initial expectation was that TweetMeets would be very similar and in some ways they are however TweetMeets, in my view, are much more structured and organised.   There are a whole set of resources for use in preparing along with tasks for each of the weeks running up to the TweetMeet itself.  This includes a OneNote notebook with a breakdown of activities for each week leading up to the event, suggested tweets to share along with images and also guidance on using the likes of Wakelet, Flipgrid and Tweetdeck among other apps.   I have found this to be very useful indeed.    It is also interesting, in the run up, getting to know the other hosts and getting their thoughts and experiences in relation to the topic in hand.    Preparing your own Wakelet and Flipgrid video and then sharing these with the other hosts helps to build the team of hosts ahead of the event itself.   I must admit I have always struggled with creating videos of myself however I enjoyed the process of creating my Flipgrid which you can view here.

At this point the event is now less than a week away and I am looking forward to the discussion.  It is also quite apt to have a discussion regarding devices just prior to the BETT conference beginning and at a time where in my own school we are currently exploring the devices options which are now available.

For those considering getting involved in future TweetMeets, I heartily recommend it however I do note that to get the best out of the experience you will need to be willing to dedicate at least a few hours per week leading up to the event.   Like a lot of things, you get out what you put in.

I look forward to the Tweetmeet on the 21st Jan at 6pm GMT, and hope you are able to join us.

 

 

Digital Citizenship

AI, Driverless cars, drones and the other societal changes with Tech may bring
Cyber Security, Data Protection and Big Data
Mobile Devices: To ban or not to ban?

For a while now I have been sharing various online articles which I believe relate to Digital Citizenship via twitter and also sometimes via linkedIn however it recently came to me that it might be useful to curate these tweets so that teachers looking for discussion material in relation to specific aspects of Digital Citizenship might be able to use them.

To that end I created three Wakelets based on three themes which I thought we reasonably common in relation to Digital Citizenship.

  • AI, Drones, Driverless cars and the other societal changes with Tech may bring

https://wke.lt/w/s/kJ3z2B

  • Cyber Security, Data Protection and Big Data

https://wke.lt/w/s/XFOeIs

  • To ban or not to ban?

https://wke.lt/w/s/09MVpQ

Now it may be that in future I may expand the number of themes.  I suspect this is highly likely, but for now the above are hopefully a good starting point.

In addition, for ease, I have created a separate section on my site for this curated Digital Citizenship content in case anyone wants to bookmarks it.  This section is also available via the sites menu structure.

Pledges for 2020

It’s that time again to make some pledges for the year ahead.    I think it is important to document this to give the older me, in a years’ time, something to look back on.   I have long accepted that memory is far from accurate and therefore there is a need to keep a record.

So, what do I want to achieve in 2020?

As it happens, I already have a few plans in place for the year ahead, so this seems like a good place to start.

2020 sees me planning for a memorable family holiday significantly out with the standard break away we have had over the last two years.   My hope is this trip will be filled with memories but also will provide us something to look forward to for a fair part of the year, plus will open up our horizons to considering where we can visit in future.   As a family we are creatures of habit, visiting the same places rather than exploring new locations; This is something I would like to see change this year.

Another plan for the year involves me presenting at DigiFest in March.   This is something I want to try and do more of, whether this is presenting at events or contributing to online events, etc.   I want to collaborate and contribute to the #EdTech , #DigitalCitizenship and #Cyber sectors more actively in the year ahead.    Additionally, I want to try and establish at least one group of interested individuals to engage in discussion around one or more of the above topic areas.

Exercise is something last year I improved significantly upon, getting to the end of CouchTo5K.   I would like to repeat this feat in 2020 and consider how I might build on this, although to be honest I will be perfectly happy if I can at least match my accomplishments from 2019.

I would also like to repeat my reading target in the year ahead, aiming to read at least 12 books during the year.   This is something I have achieved in each of the last few years however this year I would like to see how I can make use of my reading to inform and support my professional development more.    As such I want to spend time this year drawing together the strands and ideas from the various books I have read.

My main target for 2020 is going to be one of reflection.   I need to reflect and think carefully about what I want to achieve.   This is very much related to my questioning of my aim to be “happier”, a target I set myself at the start of 2019.   I now question whether such a target was constructive to me as an individual despite sounding like a well meant and aspirational target.    Is my focus too much on the future and past and not sufficiently looking at the moment and the now?    But linked to this if I spend to much time reflecting on the past I may miss out on opportunities in the present.   I suspect this will be hard for me to consider however seldom is anything worthwhile easy to achieve.

Another target for me is to seek some sort of new challenge.  Am not at this point sure what that new challenge is.    My initial thoughts focus on establishing some sort of discussion forum or group and growing it, such as the #DigitalCitizenship group I mentioned above.  Another thought revolves around either starting to regularly podcast or videocast; I have thought of both in the past but never took it much further than simply considering.   I suspect this is partly due to both being slightly outside my comfort zone, however anything that is likely to be a challenge is likely to be at least slightly outside you comfort zone.   Given this, it may be that establishing a video or pod cast maybe something for me to take on in 2020.

Last year I summed everything up, in terms of what I wanted to achieve, with the word Balance and I think this is something I will stick with.    Balance between personal and work, between reflecting and living in the moment, between relaxation and (positive) stress, etc.  Everything is very much about establishing a balance which you are happy about and which allows you to enjoy life as it happens;  As that famous saving goes, “enjoy life now, this is not a rehearsal”.

And so my pledges for 2020 are set…….game on!

 

 

 

2019 in review

I need to state that for me 2019 is a year I would probably prefer to forget.    It is not with any great ease that I say this however some of the events of 2019 have caused much stress, upset and difficulty.   On the other hand, and trying to take a positive from the year, myself and my family have progressed beyond the issues of the opening few months of the year and hopefully learned from them.   I hope that we are stronger for them but either way, they are now in the past and it is time to progress onwards.

So, looking back to my pledges as stated at the end of 2018 (You can read these here), what have I or have I not achieved.

Family

As mentioned above, as a family it was a very challenging year.   My hope had been to spend more time together and build more opportunities for memories, etc however this didn’t happen.   Time was spent however some of it building memories that would be better forgotten.   Sadly, I am not currently comfortable going into more detail on this topic but maybe some day in the future I will share more.

It is worth noting however that we did have our eldest down between Christmas and New Year which was very nice.   As he is now in his 20’s we don’t see him as often as we would like but he does have his own life to lead so it was very nice that he took time to travel down to us for a couple of days.

We did also have our 2nd annual holiday away which was very nice and something, for a large number of years, we lacked as a family.   It is now our hope that in 2020 we do something particularly special in terms of holidays and to avoid this becoming a wish/dream only we have actually went ahead and booked significantly in advance as opposed to our usual act of last minute bookings.

Exercise, Wellbeing and Reading

Finally completing Couch to 5K

On the exercise front I achieved my plan for completing couch to 5K, in fact I almost completed it twice, so I am very happy I managed to get into a constructive exercise habit.  I even ended up going for a run on both Christmas Eve and on Boxing Day which is something I didn’t foresee happening at the outset of the year.   For me this was significant progress as I have never really been a sporty or fitness person.  Sadly, following recent testing, it seems my blood pressure may be higher than it should be which means I clearly need to do more on the exercise front.

Again, I achieved my target of reading 12 books and a number of them I very much enjoyed and think they added to both my knowledge and understanding.   My library of books is starting to look quite impressive in my eyes at least.  The one issue I have had however is that my reading has not been constant enough throughout the year, instead being made up of a number of smaller sprints through books.  This is something I want to consider next year.

And feeling happier; That was an ambitious target.   Sadly, with everything that happened at the start of the year, various stresses throughout the year and my more recent concerns I am not sure I have achieved this.   And sadder still is the fact, if there was anything important to achieve this was probably it.   I suppose the challenge becomes asking what makes me happy and do I even know what makes me happy?   Not an easy question to answer.   And from my recent reading there is also the question of whether seeking to be “happier” is actually something I should be doing or whether I should be focusing more on taking all that I can from what I have.    Possibly a little too deep and meaningful a question for so early in the calendar year but maybe something for a future blog post.

Professional development

I think I have developed as a professional this year on several fronts albeit I haven’t done many Udemy or other courses and haven’t picked up many certificates.   What I have done however is read and explore topics, ask questions and challenge ideas and try to get more involved in communities discussing areas which I find of interest.   I have also attended and event presented at some excellent events.

Work

Development of an IT Strategy was a key focus of a lot of the year however as the school sought to clarify and launch a vision of its own, I decided that the IT strategy take a back burner.    Discussions on mobile devices were ongoing and some progress made including starting the trialing new devices.   We have also been made progress in relation to deploying One-drive and Microsoft Teams.    If I was trying to sum up the year, I would possibly use the word “momentum” as I fell a number of projects which had been slow burning for some time gathered pace and made reasonable progress in 2019.   Clearly in the year ahead this is something I need to build upon.

Overall

A year ago, I summed up my plans for the year with one word; Balance.    Sadly, I don’t think I achieved this as early in the year events threw things so far out of kilter that it most likely wasn’t until the middle of the year that I got close to achieving any balance.   From then it has simply been a fight to catch up.

As I said at the outset, 2019 is a year I would rather forget however to forget is to lose sight of the number of valuable, albeit at time painful, lessons learned.    I need to take as much as I can from 2019, one thing helped by my keeping of a journal through large parts of the year.    Maybe reflection will be something I need to spend significant time on in 2020.

And so with this it is on to 2020, with my plans for the year ahead to be shared shortly…

 

My decade in pictures

I am planning to write a reflection on the last decade however recently while sorting out some photo libraries the idea of sharing a photo log of my last decade came to me.  Now I note I dont have photos for everything which may have been worthy of inclusion but I think there is enough to make it worthwhile.    Have included only a caption for each photo and no other explanation.

2010:

Myself at other consultants at a UAE school
My first big conference presentation at GEF

2011:

UAE National Day, 2011

2013:

Birthday present to my wife
First trip to Kuwait
Presenting at a Conference in Kuwait
Getting involved with Teacher recruitment for UAE schools.

2014:

New Year 2014 and a Bond theme
My sons broken arm and 4 surgeries

2015:

2015 New Year Go Karting
Last days in Abu Dhabi
First days in Somerset
The Tor in the distance

2016:

Santa and some Christmas elves

2017:

A new home

2018:

The views on my first attempts at Couch to 5K

2019:

Finally completing Couch to 5K
Microsoft Bootcamp

 

 

 

ISC Digital, Brighton: Some thoughts

The need for sharing and collaborating across schools was the key message I took away from the Brighton ISC EdTech Summit last week.   We need to share what works, the challenges, the successes, the approaches and the journeys taken.  It is only through this sharing we can be more consistent and effective in our use of EdTech.

Now before I go any further I need to get the journey off my chest.   A 3 train journey on the way to Brighton including a rush to the 2nd train following a delay on train number 1, followed by missing my planned homeward bound train, which would have been a 2 train journey, and therefore requiring a 4 train trip.  Am not the best traveller on trains especially when no seat is available and the above pushed me to the limit of my patience.    All this plus taxis, so total travel of 7 trains and 4 taxis.    But enough of that, now I have it off my chest, the key thing was the conference itself.

The event started with the launch speech by Ty Goddard and Ian Philips asking all attendees to engage and not just by liking or following on social media, but by contributing to the conversation.   This message was re-iterated by many of the speakers, that there was a need for increasing dialogue and discussion in relation to EdTech, to what works and also to the journeys taken and all of the wrong turns, diversions and U-turns which arise as part of implementing EdTech projects in schools.

Richard Teversham from Apple was next up highlighting the fact that we now live in a world where every job is a technology job.    I particularly liked his explanation of how we were in the third age, a people age, and that it was people first, before technology.   My own experience seems to agree with this.   Technology is great but it needs someone to understand how it might be used and how it might benefit teaching and learning, then it needs someone to actually use it.   It needs people and these people need to be motivated and interested in how the technology might enable learners, they also need to see the potential.  In relation to potential Richard explained that “with technology great things can happen” and I tend to agree.

As the event went on it was highlighted that there was a need to have a clear purpose in using EdTech solutions before any implementation.    I particularly enjoyed an open panel discussion where all attendees were invited to contribute to a discussion about how the impact of EdTech might be measured.   Ty Goddard summed this particular session up well with the suggestion of a need to refocus on establishing “Value” as opposed to “Impact”.    The term “Value” to me is softer and doesn’t conjure up the image of exam results as the sole impact measure, plus it is likely to be more inclusive of the various ways that EdTech might affect (I had to careful avoid using the word impact there!) learners, learning, teachers and teaching. This session also provided me the opportunity to finally meet Bukky Yusuf who I have been interacting with via Twitter for a number of years.   It is always nice to meet edutweeps in real life.   I should note I also met Abid Patel in person for the first time during the course of the conference.

The conference also provided me the opportunity to present and I had the pleasure of presenting with Louise Jones, a fellow Scot.    Her session was a bit of an eye opener particularly when she discussed “voice first” and raised the issue that traditional web searches return 1000’s of answers, but when you ask Alexa you will get only a single answer;  As such what are the implications for our learners where they are likely to increasingly make use of voice first services?   The existence of free web services was also raised and how we need to increasingly ask ourselves why a given service is free and how the service provider is themselves benefiting;  few companies create a service, at their own cost, just for the good of society.  I also liked her discussion of how version history and meta data, and the ability to replay the creation of documents by students might surface information in relation to the students thinking processes.

The whole event was finally wrapped up by Priya Lakhani from CenturyTech with an inspiring talk as to how AI can impact the classroom and also pointing towards what she described as “BS AI”.   The final video of the conference being from Taylor Mali in relation to What teachers make.    If you haven’t seen the video I suggest you watch it as it summed up the conference for me;  I will say no more in order to avoid spoiling it.

It was a very useful, informative and enjoyable day.   I also managed to get my Irn Bru into a few of the photos shared via twitter!   But on a more serious note, the key in the days events is not the day itself but what comes from it and if Ian and Ty’s comments are to be taken as their aim, it is their wish that what comes from the event is further discussion.    I expect that they will be successful in this and that discussion will follow the event.

So, with that in mind I hope to build a group of educators to discuss digital citizenship, an area I am particularly interested in, including curating ideas and resources.    You can register your interest via this Microsoft Form.

 

 

 

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.