Month: February 2016

EdTech

I have always been very active in encouraging the use of Educational Technology in classrooms and used to cite the below as 3 reasons why we should:

  1. We live in a technological world
  2. Technology can engage students
  3. Learning is multisensory and technology is also multisensory

In addition to the above I need to note that I do not believe all lessons should use EdTech as EdTech is only a tool for learning.    It is therefore the Learning that matters most, so if technology is not aiding, enhancing or redefining learning, or if technology is being used just because it can then I think it should be left out.

Reflecting on the above I still believe strongly in point 1.   Technology now has a place in almost every aspect of our life and with the Internet of things technology is ever expanding into areas of life within which it previously didn’t exist.   As such we need to use technology in learning.   We also need to teach students about using technology in learning including when it is appropriate not to use technology and when it is appropriate to disconnect, as I believe we all need to.

With regards point 2, I am no longer convinced this point is true anymore as technology has become the norm for students.    The difference which technology brings is the ability to engage with content in different ways as opposed to engaging with technology.    Teachers can allow students to interact with science, mathematics and every other subject in new and interesting ways.   Teachers can engage students in conversations with famous and interesting people from across the world through technology.  One example of this being students having conversations with an astronaut in space as at least one school is doing currently.

I still believe in Point 3 however would expand on it now.   It isn’t just the multisensory aspect of technology which is beneficial but the social aspect as well.   Through technology students can collaborate and work with others.   Technology also helps in developing other skills and attributes in students thought engaging them in critical thinking and problem solving tasks.

The challenges as I see them however are that teachers need to model best practice for students and in order to do so need to themselves be comfortable in using the technology.     Students also have to be educated about the safe use of the internet.  Again teachers have to be aware of the dangers, etc in order to do this and I don’t always believe we are.     I also think we need to build up the digital resilience and work life balance aspects of using technology as well as the ability to critically evaluate information for validity and reliability.

I don’t think we will ever have proof that use of tech directly and positively impacts on student results however this is the wrong question.    Tech is part of life and we are preparing students for this life after school, so surely tech has its part to play.

My Teachers

I have always considered myself to be a positive individual especially where students are concerned.    I have always believed that I need to espouse the potential which is inherent in us all.

#29daysofwriting has made me reflect on this a little.   Lately I have been struggling to identify exactly what to write about so I have taken to using the very helpful list of ideas from @mrlockyer including his suggestion with regards writing about my best teacher as a child.

I have a number of teachers that I consider to have been my best during my formal schooling years, each playing some part in shaping my teaching beliefs and style.    One of these being my teacher of Accounting which I studied as part of an accelerated Higher grade course where I had never previously studied Accounting.

One of the sustaining memories of this teacher was the fact that she told me she didn’t think I would be successful in the course.   She, my teacher, told me I didn’t have the potential.    This is very much contradictory to my beliefs regarding the need for teachers to be positive however until now I have never really reflected on this.

By telling me I couldn’t this teachers spurred me on to prove that she was wrong.   My previous years results had been a little disappointing and had led to me continuing into my 6th year in high school as opposed to going to University at the end of 5th year.    As such I was a little despondent at the time.    Her message was a little bit of a kick up the backside which looking back may have been exactly what I needed at the time.

In terms of her teaching, she worked me hard so her comment was not the first sign of her giving up on me.   At the end of the year I achieved an A grade which I was proud of, proving her to be wrong.

I suspect she made her decision to tell me about my lack of potential based on her initial impressions of me, possibly some discussions in the staff room along with a variety of other data and factors.  I suspect she didn’t do this lightly.   I also suspect she believe this was the message I needed to hear to ensure I achieved my potential as she saw it, a potential she never identified to me.

I still believe positivity is very, very important in teachers of our students however I also believe we need to treat every student as an individual and in doing so maybe a positive, one size fits all approach, may not always be appropriate.    That said I am not sure I would have the confidence to use such a reverse psychology driven approach.

 

Meeting Ex-Students

Firstly I would like to thank @mrlockyer for providing a list of ideas which ultimately led to this post.

Up until recently I had been out of the UK for a number of years only returning to the UK and to the area within which I taught for a number of years, recently.   As such I haven’t had the opportunity to bump into ex-students or at least the likelihood was very small indeed.

Being back in the UK the Christmas period brought me back to the area where I once taught, and into a local pub with my son for a few festive beers.    It was after a short while that a young man who apparently knew and worked with my son came over and introduced himself as one of my students from around 11 or 12 years ago.   He remembered me and our lessons together with some detail.   He said very positive things about how I had helped him and had an impact on his life.

I consider the fact that a student would remember me after 11 or 12 years as a very positive factor.   The fact that in addition to this they would feel the need to come and speak to me as their ex-teacher.   Also the fact they would be so positive about their experiences in my class.

We all hope to have an impact on the students which we teach however to hear it from an ex-student is an amazing feeling.    At least with this student I can feel I have been successful.

This is one of the reasons we teach!  To have a positive impact on the students which we teach.

[Note: I do acknowledge the conversation mentioned above happened in a pub over the festive season so their may have been an element of the beer speaking, however I hope that wasn’t the predominant factor in the discussion]

My Favourite Books.

Yesterday I wrote about my favourite apps so following some valuable suggestions from B Yusuf today I am going to maintain the same approach but with a different theme, this time looking at my favourite books.

Let’s start with one of my favourite leadership books which I have often recommended to others especially new middle leaders.    The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey by Ken Blanchard.   This is a nice short and very accessible book which focuses on how to manage people and the tasks they are assigned.    I think it is very useful for new middle leaders where the tendency might be to lead by example and in doing so offer to help and do things to help your team thereby accepting the duty of care for their monkeys.

Next is a book I have recently read, The Silo Effect by Gillian Tett.   This is an excellent book about how Silos form in organizations, how they can be dangerous and how to overcome them.   I think this is quite appropriate to education where we have such clear demarcations evident through our schools.   Staff are either support, teaching, MLT or SLT.    Teaching staff operate in departments.   The Silo Effect points out why we need to have this kind of structure and demarcation, the disadvantages and how we might seek to overcome these disadvantages.

I have always been very interested in the idea of divergent thinking.   As such my next book is Lateral Thinking by De Bono.   I particularly like the book as not only does it seek to provide explanations for why we might be less creative than we could be, but it also provide little activities which can be used with students to illustrate the point.   I have previously run a series of lessons on creativity in a school in the Middle East using so of the activities and the students loved it.

My next book is The Shallows from Nicholas Carr.    Giving my focus on educational technology my book list had to include at least one book which looks at technology.    This book brilliantly tracks how various now accepted technologies were at one time or other considered as disruptive including the watch and the printing press and resultant novels printed using them.    This puts the current concerns regarding student technology use and the impact into a different light.

My final book is my favourite leadership book which I keep coming back to.   It’s a bit of a classis.   Stephen Coveys The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.    Quite simply a classis book in identifying priorities and managing life in what is becoming an increasing complex world.

Once I get past Feb and #29daysofwriting I hope to get back to reading more.   I may in future share further opinions with regards the books I have read.   Please feel free to suggest any books you think are worth a read.

 

 

My 5 favourite apps.

I thought I would take the easy way out today and share my favourite apps as they are currently.   Now the following apps are in no particular order:

Plickers

I have always loved plickers as not every school is as lucky as my current school and has a 1:1 student:device environment.    As such apps such as Kahoot which allow students to interact and answer questions in real time are not always possible.    Along comes plickers which allows students to use a QR-Code style card to select an answer based on the orientation of the card.   All the teacher needs is a mobile device with internet access and a camera and they can instantly gather student answers ready for sharing via their classroom data projector.     As such you can accomplish very similar to what you can with Kahoot but without the need for each student to have a device.

Foldr

This is relatively new to me however is excellent although it does require the IT services team to set it up.   Basically Foldr allows users to interact with their network folders and files via their iPad.   It also allows users to do this remotely including using a web interface on a laptop or desktop instead of using the app where needed.    This is a great tool to marry up the mobile technology solutions with existing network user areas.

GoogleDrive

We want collaboration and sharing however we cannot fully predict how collaboration will grow once started.    Through Google drive we put the ability to share in the hands of the users thereby allowing the collaboration and sharing to grow organically as opposed to be centrally controlled by the IT Services team.   Now there are many other benefits to Drive including Google Forms, etc however it is the collaboration aspect which I find to be most important.

Twitter

I just love twitter for sharing ideas and for discussion.     I wouldn’t have found StaffRm to post this or #29daysofwriting if it hadn’t been for twitter.

Evernote

I need somewhere to drop occasional notes or to scrapbook ideas I come across on websites, etc.   I also need to be able to access these notes across different devices.    This is my use for Evernote.   I have found it invaluable.

Overall the above are just five of the apps I regularly use, and my current favorites.    Please feel free to share your comments and your favorites.

 

On Demand Learning?

I have had a reasonably relaxed weekend for once, running a few errands, watching some rugby and watching some football.    All this has meant that some of the things that I had planned to do were put to the side including getting involved in #appsharelive and also in #sltchat.

Thankfully though this is not a complete loss.   Through the wonders of technology I can see what happened in #appsharelive via the youtube via of the event.   I can follow what happened in #sltchat via Storify.    It is not the same as actually being there in the moment, and of being involved however it is far better than having missed the events altogether.

We now live in an “on demand” world where we can preview and review events as and when we see fit.    Yet in education we continue to have lessons which occur with set hours within the day.    Each lesson focuses on a specific subject.

The question is how can we use technology to leverage the need for “on demand” content?    Flipped leassons may be one approach however I am sure there are others.

 

Mandatory Testing?

As I was heading to work on Friday I heard a BBC news story regarding new proposals for “testing” of 4 year old children at the start of their school experience.    This immediately had me asking about the differences between assessment and testing.   I am not sure there is a difference however I am quite happy to listen to anyone who is able to explain this.

For me, independent of the age of students, one of the first things I need to do is to “test” or assess them.   I need to find out a little about them, about the things they like, about the things they are good at and the areas within which they still need to develop.    I have worked in secondary education, further education and higher education and across each stage the first thing I have done with new students is to assess or test them in order to help in planning their learning experience.

So this led me to ask why the story was so new worthy.    My first assumption was that it related to the differing perspectives and definitions for the term of “assessment” and “testing”.    It could be that some see the two terms as meaning the same thing, as I do, while others see each term as meaning something different.    This differing perspective leads to the debate around whether the proposal in question is a good or bad thing and therefore to a news worthy story.

Upon thinking on it further and accepting the commonality of the two terms I came to think that it is not what the two words mean or “are” which is the issue but the reason why we undertake them.    In the case of my testing at the start of working with new students, this is done as I know the benefit such testing will have in terms of providing the best learning experience possible.   It is done because good teaching demands it be done.    In the case of the news story they are discussing mandated testing.     The reason for mandating such testing may be linked to the reasoning I used in deciding to test however the fact it is mandated detracts for this.

The other issue is what is done with the results.   In my example the data is solely for me and to inform learning.  There needn’t be a score or a rubric attached.   In the case of mandated data collection those mandating it want the data which therefore required quantifiable and comparable scores and grades or at least we might assume this is the case.

Maybe we need to trust teachers more rather than mandating what must be done as the act of mandating something changes the activity being mandated!

 

Reflections on 3 years of blogging

It’s been 3 years to the day since I started my blog and wrote my first posting.    Since then I have wrote a total of 75 postings.    I need to admit that 11 have been posted in Feb this year as part of #29daysofwriting.   So overall I have roughly been posting 1.7 articles every month.

A lot has changed for me over the period.    To take just one example, back in 2013 I was living and working in the UAE whereas now I am back in the UK.   Technology has changed.    We now live in a world of mobile devices with Google apps and office 365 facilitating increasing levels of communication and collaboration.  The world as a whole has changed.

I have at time found the process of blogging to be difficult in terms of finding the time, identifying appropriate topics and also motivating myself to undertake the actual creation of blog pieces.     That said it had been a worthwhile experience.    Looking back the blog provides me a window on my past thinking and on how my beliefs, ideas and thoughts have changed over the period.      The process of blogging has required me to think through my assumptions and question my beliefs.   It has required me to consider different viewpoints and perspectives.    It has also resulted in discussions with other educators from across the world who have shared both views consistent and inconsistent with my thinking.    This again had required me to re-evaluate and question my perspective and viewpoint.

I am glad I have put the effort into blogging and I intend to continue doing so going forward hopefully with increasing regularity.     I look forward to reading the blogs of others so if you aren’t blogging yet I would encourage you to start and of you do please let me know so I can have a read.    Looking forward to it!!!

Keep Sharing!!

 

 

 

Silos of Data

Day 11 in the #29daysofwriting house and the housemates are getting a little restless………

Sorry couldn’t resist!  This posting every day is starting to feel a little like the diary room on an episode of Big Brother.   It is also getting steadily more difficult to decide on the topic of the day.

Today I would like to just spend 29mins writing on systems.   In schools we have a large number of different systems.   We have a school (or management) information system, an HR and payroll system, an email and file storage system, a library system, a bus/transport system and a multitude of other systems.

Each system is designed for a specific purpose.   The SIS (or MIS) system has all the personal details of students along with their academic performance data.   The library system has details of students, books and loans.   The HR system has details about all of the staff.

Each system reports its data in a specific way.  The SIS system can produce class registers and parental reports, while the HR system can produce staff lists and the Library system information about student lending habits.

The issue is that even where the systems are supposedly “integrated” in actual fact they are not.    The data exists in Silos, independently in each different system albeit linked by a common identifier such as a student ID number or other ID number.

Having recently read about the impact of Silos and how overcoming them can have a significant effect it makes me wonder about the Silos in school systems.    If we could extract all the data into a single common location where we could apply various business intelligence tools to analyse it we would likely be able to draw new conclusions and through doing so be better informed.   We might be able to identify linkages which previously weren’t apparent.   Maybe students in particular classes or with particular teachers borrow more books and maybe, of these students, a majority perform better.   Obviously I speculate here for illustrative purposes.    The key point being is that we might be able to identify patterns which currently cannot be identified due to the Silo’d nature of data.

Seeking creativity

Posting number 10 of #29daysofwriting and todays post is a musing on creativity in schools.

Today I attended an IT event at my school where colleagues explained the EdTech journey the school has been on.   I am not long in the school hence have largely came in late in the day.   Within part of the presentation a colleague identified the pedagogical reasons behind the selection of the core apps to be used across the school, citing a number of areas which largely corresponded to the 4 Cs (Collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking) plus a few other points.

This got me thinking about creativity and how we might go about developing creativity in our students.

Makerspaces might be one opportunity to develop creativity in that this puts students in a position where they have various resources available to them to solve a problem or to create something.    Taken as a single event a makerspace session largely taps into a students inherent creativity rather than further developing what they have.   If they are not very creative then they will struggle.   That said, students generally have the potential for creativity especially in their younger years.    The opportunity to work in teams, collaboratively, may impact on creativity possibly as they gain access to new ideas through working together.   Also the repeated use of makerspaces may help in developing a students tendency towards being creative however I am not sure how it might help in making students “more” creative.

I wonder about the act of teaching creativity, or more accurately of teaching about how we think and therefore how ideas which may be considered to be “creative” might be hidden from us due to the way we think.      I have read De Bonos book on divergent thinking and I wonder about how some of the example activities contained within might be used with students.   I believe building an awareness of how we think and how we learn might help students in developing their ability to think creatively, and outside of the box.

We talk about developing creative students however can we put our finger on where we are doing this, how we are teaching or facilitating learning which develops creativity?