Tag: new academic year

Thoughts on a new academic year

As a new academic year begins, this being my 26th academic year (has it been that long??) I just thought I would share some thoughts and maybe predictions.

Artificial intelligence

I don’t see the discussion of artificial intelligence in education going away as there is such potential.  The use of AI to support students, to help teachers and rebalance workload and much more.    It also makes for a good talking point for conferences or for developments.    I have two problems though.   One being that I think there will be a lot of talk, especially from vendors, without the reliable evidence supporting the impact and benefit of their tools.    As such I feel there will be a lot of misdirection of effort and resources when looking across schools in general.    Two is that artificial intelligence is all well and good, but it needs the relevant access to devices, to infrastructure, to support and to trained and confident teachers.    These digital divides need to be addressed before schools in general can then seek to use AI and leverage its potential benefits.

Online Exams

The issue of online or digital exams feels partly related to the sudden growth in AI and the resulting potential for AI marking of student work and therefore for AI based marking of student exams.    Again, I see this as another talking point for the year ahead but again am not sure we will see much real progress, possibly seeing less progress in this area than in AI.     The issue is that exam boards are taking things very tentatively so there first step will be “paper under glass” style exams which simply take the paper version of an exam and digitise it rather than seeking to modify the exam or examination process to benefit from the new digital medium.    For me the key benefit of online exams will be realised when they are adaptive in nature so can be taken anywhere and at any time.   This then means that schools wouldn’t need access to hundreds of computers for their students to sit an English GCSE exam as the students could sit the exam in batches over the day or over a number of days.    This would help towards the digital divides issue as it impacts online exams as schools wouldn’t need as many devices, but they would still need the infrastructure and the support to make digital exams work.

Mobile Phones and Social Media

Oh yes, and then there’s this old chestnut!   I suspect the phones and social media discussion will trundle on.   Students are being given phones without any parental controls and then schools are having to deal with this.   And some schools are taking the prohibition approach which is unlikely to succeed and may just deplete patience and resources.   I continue to believe we should be seeking to manage student mobile phones in school, so might restrict use in some areas and at some times but embrace and use them at other times.   We need to spend time with students talking about social media and its risks and benefits helping to shape the digital citizens which the world needs.

I also note here that social media is being blamed for the lack of focus and ease of distraction in students, and through association it is the fault of smart phones.    The world isn’t that simple, and having recently finished reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari I am not more aware that other factors such as increasing levels of societal pressure to succeed, increased consumption of processed foods and our on-demand culture are all having an impact on our children.    Yes, social media, and by extension smart phones are playing their part but they are not the root and sole cause of the issues in relation to attention which we are seeing in schools and more broadly with children.

Fake news and deepfakes

This links to AI and also to mobile phones and social media, in the increasing ease with which fake news content can be convincingly developed including the use of images and video, and then shared online.    As fake news becomes an increasing issue, which I suspect the US elections will draw some focus on, there will be an increasing need for schools to consider how they discuss and address this challenge with their students.   More locally within education and within schools will be where we start to see increasing use of AI tools to create “deepfakes” by students and involving other fellow students, either “just having a laugh” or for the purposes of bullying.     This will be very challenging as the sharing of such content will quickly stretch beyond the perimeter of schools, spread through social media, messaging apps and the like, but where the victim and likely the perpetrators will be within the school.   

Wellbeing

This one came to me last, but if I was re-writing this I would likely put it first.   We talk about wellbeing very much but every year we look to see if the exam grades have gone up and are faced with increasingly compliance requirements around safeguarding or attendance or many other areas.    Improvements in results, or even the efforts to improve results mean more work, which means more effort and more stress.    More compliance hoops equally mean more effort and more work.    So how can we address wellbeing if educators are constantly being asked to do more than they did previously.   And exam results and compliance are just two possible examples of the “do more” culture which pervades society possibly driven by the need for economic and other growth as something to aim for.    Although growth and improvement is something laudable to seek, it cannot be continuous over time, not without deploying additional resources both in terms of money and human resources.    As such there needs to be a logical conclusion to the “do more” culture and my preference would be for us to decide and manage this rather than for it to happen to us.    AI can help with workload for example giving more time for wellbeing however my concern here is that this frees up some time to simply do more stuff, albeit stuff which might have an impact, but not positively on wellbeing.

Conclusion

The above are just five areas I see being cornerstones of educational discussion in the academic year ahead.   I suspect other things will arise such as equity of opportunity, although I note this links to pretty much all of the above.   There will also be other themes which arise but it will be interesting to see how these particular five themes develop during the course of 2024/25.

And so with that let me wish everyone a successful academic year.    Let the fun begin!

A new academic year

And so a new academic year begins.  The students are back and the school is once again buzzing with activity at the start of the usually hyper busy first term.  As the autumn term and the new academic year begins I thought I might share some of my plans for the weeks and months ahead.

Data

This is definitely one of my projects for the year ahead, looking at how we as a school might better store, process and present data.   The key for me is the use of Microsoft PowerBi in order to allow data to be easily explored by end users, in a way that is more user friendly and intuitive than a large complex spreadsheet.   Now a key here, and likely the hardest part of the process is ensuring the data is appropriately structured, and in the resultant need to clean up existing data ahead of then starting to analysis it.

Embedding technology

I would like to spend more time with teachers using technology in the classroom this year.   I have become a little disconnected from this in the last year as I focussed on the infrastructure, systems, cyber security, etc.   As such it would be good to spend time with those teaching diverse and different subjects, to allow me to review and evaluate my thoughts and practices in relation to teaching.    Hopefully, it will also allow me to identify areas where I can help and support technology use, especially where technology can make things easier, quicker, more effective or generally better for teachers and students.

Digital Citizenship

This is a particularly important topic in my view, in the need to discuss the risks and benefits of the internet, technology, social media, etc.    We don’t truly know the long term impact of the technologies we are using today, in particular the impact of social media, so in the absence of an answer, we need to at least promote discussion.    One of the challenges here is finding time within the busy school curriculum for this to happen in a way that goes beyond the often superficial discussions which currently happen.    It is my hope to work with students this year in discussing digital citizenship, plus also possibly to look at developing some content which can be used across schools.

Virtual Reality

Now this is a bit of an experimental project, looking at how VR kit might be used more within schools and also hopefully examining how schools can create their own VR content.    For me this ability to work within VR and to create your own VR content is key as otherwise you are reliant on the content of others, such as the VR hardware vendors.   Over the years I have seen a number of technologies fail to live up to their promises where they are reliant on content created by the vendor or third parties.

Running

I was doing well in May, June and July, managing to run 300km however this fell to near zero in August so as the new academic year begins I hope to pick up where I left up.   Given I am at 500km for the year so far, it would be good to get to at least 750km for the year so that means I have 4 months to achieve 250km, so that’s around 65km per month.

Conclusion

Now the above are only 5 areas which jump to mind for the year ahead.   The board in my office has many post-it notes relating to projects and tasks which I will be addressing in the year ahead.

I look forward to it being another busy, challenging but worthwhile academic year.    All that remains is for me to wish everyone all the very best for the 2022/23 academic year.   Onwards and upwards….

New Academic Year Resolutions

And so the new academic year, 2017/18 begins…..

Firstly let me wish everyone all very best for the academic year ahead.

Following reading a twitter post be @darynsimon I thought this made a good opportunity for me to write down some of things which I hope to achieve in the academic year which now lies ahead.

Management Information

As I have previously written, in schools we have a massive wealth of data however I don’t believe we make the most of it.    I think there are two reasons for this, one being the fact that data is often held in the rows and columns of large spreadsheets such that it isn’t easily or immediately accessible to those who wish to use the data.    The second reason is that the data is set out to show us what we hope to already see.   For example showing the statistics of boys versus girls.    But what about the correlations which might exist which are not readily visible or expected.     As such one of the things I want to work on this year is trying to make data more accessible, including making use of Microsoft PowerBI to hopefully achieve this, and also trying to make use of various statistical analysis tools to analyse the data in new ways and hopefully identify new correlations which can then be acted upon.    I still believe it is what goes on in the class which matters most however my hope is that data might give us new insights and allow us to make better decisions.

Sharing and my PLN

I want to spend this year sharing my thoughts and ideas online plus further developing my PLN.   This includes developing a series of sessions on digital literacy and on preparing students for a digital future.    I also want to revisit using video and possible video blogging, which is something I looked into a couple of years back however failed to make much progress.   I would now like to get back to this and hopefully this time get further with it.

EdTech

As I now enter my second year as a Microsoft Innovative Educator I want to experiment a little more with a variety of edTech solutions during the year ahead.   I would like to try and be a little more creative with my use of technology.  Part of this will include looking to make greater use of the Office 365 suite in both working with colleagues and also in working with students.     Yammer is one resource in particular I intend to experiment with.     I also want to have a look at how Flow might be used to streamline my day and, as mentioned above, looking at how PowerBI might be used to better manage school data.

Reading / CPD

Over the calendar year so far I have started reading a lot more than previously and this is something I want to continue to do throughout the academic year.   I feel such reading is both relaxing but also a valuable professional development and personal growth opportunity.   In addition to this I am also challenging myself to prepare for a formal IT accreditation with plans to undertake the CISSP exam in December of this year.    This will represent a significant challenge in preparing for what is quite a significant exam however I consider the challenge to represent desirable difficulty.   In my view only by pushing ourselves can we truly hope to grow.

I look forward to the year ahead and to seeing what 2017/18 will bring.   I also look forward to sharing thoughts and ideas with other educators both in person and online during the year ahead.