The view from NCSL, Nottingham

Last week I attended the Centre for Recording Achievement’s seminar on Personal Development Planning (PDP) and ePortfolios. It was at the National College for School Leadership in Nottingham (fanTASTic venue, btw). In the spirit of reflective learning here’s what I took away from the event.

When I started with Netskills a few weeks back with a remit to look at ePortfolios I was a little puzzled, seeing them as something of a side issue to the big VLE “dead or alive” debate. I’ve come to the conclusion they are actually more important than VLE’s from a learning perspective.

(Actually, let me clarify. ePortflios as technical tools aren’t that important. It’s the process of PDP that’s really interesting.)

Implicit in the case study presentations and explicit in the keynotes was how much the skills involved in PDP were central to being an effective learner and ultimately and effective employee. This came from academics, students and employer representatives at the event.

The ability to set goals, self-manage development, present information and crucially, to actively reflect on learning are key differentiators in a world where a good degree no longer guarantees a good job.

Such was the importance put on PDP skills at the event I had to keep reminding myself that subject knowledge is also a pretty important part of university education. Having said that, though, with the speed of information change you could argue where the balance lies (although I won’t try that here!).

There were a number of issues for me (not necessarily the key themes of the event):

Technology - This was an event about pedagogy and process so there wasn’t much discussion of the actual technology involved in which I felt was a good thing. There are some very good tools available for running ePortfolios but I’ve yet to come across one that I’m excited by as a learner. Any large scale product is going to suffer a bit in that it can’t do everything for everyone and ends up a little clunky and frustrating. There seems to be some interesting work on using social networking tools as a basis for reflective learning. I appreciated Sarah Chesney’s (University of Cumbria) concept of separating the PLS (Personal Learning System – a series of tools and systems) from the ePortfolio (the eventual outcome).

Culture - Change is difficult, either at personal or institutional level and there were plenty of examples of the challenges of overcoming barriers. One that stuck with me was to do with younger students not having an adequate vocabulary to express their reflections which I’m going to do a separate post on shortly. I’m really interested in the transition from Secondary to Higher Education from this perspective.

Culture 2 – Are people generally open to sharing their learning? One case study we saw (Sarah Chesney again) looked at using blogging as a tool for staff development. Initially, the trial participants kept reflective blogs private but over time, as they became more comfortable with it, wanted to share their posts. Even so, this sharing only extended to the trial coordinator and not to the other participants. This made me wonder about what other experiences people have had encouraging learners to share. Does that fact that being a learner can make people feel vulnerable in a professional context create a sticking point for some.

Merging formal and informal learning - One of the greatest strengths of ePortfolios, in my view. I wish I could remember who it was on Twitter (@mattlingard?) introduced me to the phrase “life-wide learning”  but I think it’s a more powerful concept that life-long learning. Life-long learning is only sustainable if it incorporates as wide a range of experiences as possible.

There was also a perplexing/inspiring/baffling keynote from Swedish mathematician Ambjörn Naeve that encompassed Semantic Web, Communities of Practice, “double-loop learning” and “carrot rape” (no, really). That’s going to take a bit more processing so I’ll post about that later.

Oh, this was my AudioBoo that I recorded shortly after the event…

madamepsychosis - by-nc-nd

Over the last 2 days I’ve been following the tweets from the #bectax (link) and #gbl10 (link) events. It’s a great if slightly frustrating way to keep up with goings-on (frustrating ‘cos it makes you wish you were there).

I’ve yet to deliver a presentation or workshop where there is an active  backchannel and don’t have any planned yet but the thought of it does make by blood run cold rather.

These are my current thoughts about it which I wanted to capture and then possibly revisit having experienced it properly.

Why I don’t like the idea…

• Paranoia – I remember making soto voce snarky comments about a lecturer (his name was Peter Cundill) during a session he was running while I was a snotty under-grad. I was showing off and he was particularly unhappy about it. I’m ashamed of it now because I know how that sort of behaviour would affect me. To feel like a whole audience is having a discussion about you and your message whilst your doing it I think would throw me right off my concentration.

• Control – this is especially true about presentations where the twitterfall is visible behind the presenter. If I’m putting together a presentation I spend a lot of time getting the visual side as stripped down as I can. If the audience want to follow what is happening in the backchannel then by all means they can follow it on their own devices. But unless I say otherwise the podium is my space and I want to control the message that is delivered from there.

And now for the other side…

Why I love the idea…

• Feedback –  What a fantastic motivator to make your presentation the best it could possibly be! My aim would be to get tweets that were agreeing, disagreeing, offering alternatives, building ideas etc. What I wouldn’t want to see is comments highlighting a weak presentation style. I know I’ve delivered poor presentations in my time and yet the feedback from delegates is very complimentary and polite. People who haven’t appreciated I suspect have chosen to remain silent and anonymous (at least to my face!). The backchannel appears to be fearless even though it’s not necessarily anonymous.

• Interaction – OK, I mentioned my need for control before but I love engaging audiences and getting their thoughts. With Twitter you have an amazing tool for doing that in a much broader way than by raised hands and voices alone. I hope I would be brave enough to open up questions to the backchannel. If I was watching a presentation like that I think I would be really engaged.

• Networks – A perusal of the backchannel comments after an event is a great way of finding out the individuals who have a real interest in the topic you were discussing and that’s a great way for establishing those links.

• Engagement – I’ve heard some people argue that if people are tweeting during a presentation they can’t be concentrating on it. You could say the same thing about taking notes in that case! With Twitter people can take notes in a much more socially constructive way and that is likely to make your presentation MUCH more effective anyway.

So, on balance I think I like the idea providing I can keep on my toes as a presenter!

The most exciting thing about it is that it turns a presentation into much more of a social event. To some extent that means that the training I had on how to be a good presenter is gradually becoming obsolete – that was based much more on the one to many delivery model.

I also think it makes a conference hall a much more honest environment where people are able to express themselves in a way that they perhaps didn’t on their paper feedback forms.

Whether I’ll still believe that after having gone through the experience remains to be seen!

Credit - GenBug on Flickr CC

The 19th March is my final day as the Training Officer at Sheffield East City Learning Centre. I’ve been here for nearly 5 years and have pretty much loved every minute so I’m leaving with regret.

My next role will be with Netskills, a JISC supported group working out of Newcastle Uni helping HE, FE and other types of organisation use web-based technology in their teaching, learning, administration and research.

I more than a little nervous about a change of sector but it was a conscious decision based on  a number of factors too boring and personal to mention here.

I thought now would be a good time to take stock of a few thoughts about the move.

I will miss:

• working with young people. The potential for fun, frustration, surprises and discovery is massive. I’m sure working with a different set of people will be enjoyable too but I predict a little less knockabout fun. Working with young people is extremely energising (and curiously draining all at the same time).
• working with this team. In all the jobs I’ve done it’s been the relationships with the people around me that have made the good times brilliant and the bad times bearable. This bunch of reprobates have been great to spend time and work with.

I will not miss:

• running any more sessions on using Revelation Sight & Sound (great software but enough’s enough)
• the drive to work – 250 miles a week is a drain on time, momey and energy.
• some really rubbish devices and badly designed software.

And finally…

• I am extremely hopeful for the future of school education because of the level of passionate dedication from many of the teachers I’ve worked with and on my Twitter network.
• I’m also nervous about the future so long as there is this lack of political vision and willingness to take risk without fear of being pilloried.
• The iPod Touch. The Canon EOS450D SLR. The Sony V1E HD camcorder. My ultra-reliable Dell laptop. My two monitor setup on my desk. At 5pm, these are the devices that they will have to prize from my cold, dead hands!

I will be continuing this blog but the focus will change somewhat. Exactly how, I’m not sure yet.

Thanks to all the fantastic CLC staff, teachers and students I’ve worked with in Sheffield!

Cell by skatejpg CC on Flickr

This idea has been knocking around in my head for a few days. I’m not even sure it’s a practical suggestion but when you’ve got an itch you gotta scratch.

There’ve been quite a lot of new developments regarding CPD in the UK recently, the most obvious being the arrival of VITAL so it’s occupying a bit of my brain.

I’ve blogged before (and here) about my disillusionment with traditional CPD models where learners choose courses from a list, turn up and then hope to goodness that it changes their skills/behaviour. In many cases it might, but it seems like a hopeful scatter-gun approach to learning, not very effective if you are managing CPD for your staff.

I really like the Enquiring Minds model that Futurelab has written about where learning is directed by the learners, establishing a community that effectively teaches itself or drafts in outside help (professional or otherwise). It’s worth a look at and it’s being put into practice all over the shop (this for example).

The thing that interests me is the challenge of managing this group of learners especially if you are in a large organisation like a school or university. Groups of learners would have to be of a size that was self-sustaining without being overly big.

Also, not everybody wants to learn about the same things at the same time so how do you manage learning where the needs are so fluid?

And this got me thinking about Cell Groups. If you’re not familiar with the term, in a nutshell they’re a way of organising fellowship groups in churches (no wait, come back!) where a large congregation organises itself into small fluid groups where membership can grow and change over time. If a group becomes too large to sustain it is free to split. If members of one group feel they are a better fit elsewhere then they can join a different cell.

I was wondering whether this sort of model would work for CPD.

• In a school different cells would be formed for different special interests depending on where individuals’ needs for development lay, for instance, aspects of SEN provision, social networking as a learning tool, new literacies etc.
• Each cell would direct it’s own learning, collaborate, share experience and comment on each other’s progress.
• Within a cell, leadership wouldn’t necessarily be by any one person. It could be fluid or even non-existent, relying on leadership by consensus.
• When an avenue of development is judged by the group to be exhausted then the cell changes its focus or disperses and members join other cells or split to investigate other avenues.
• If individuals feel they are better served in different cells then they can switch mid-stream with the new group helping to support the new arrival in catching up.

The key thing is that these mini-communities

It’s all quite Darwinian. If it worked well then, with a bit of gentle direction,  the cells would form around topics that were of most professional benefit to the learners themselves and therefore the institution.

It could also be quite chaotic and difficult to manage from the leadership’s point of view. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Not sure. The role of the leadership team would be to support learners in taking their development seriously and helping them to reflect and put into practice. With learners owning their own development the benefits would be greater than just plonking someone on a course and hoping for the best.

I’ll probably find that it’s already been in use for years and I just hadn’t noticed. Typical, really.

So, itch scratched. I’ll probably read this in a few weeks time with my head in my hands but the reason for having this blog was to record ideas, however naff.

If you have any thoughts on this I’d love to hear from you.

Go on, put me straight.

Hallam Cascade by shanerounce (CC)

I can’t quite believe that we’re already through our first semester of the MSc at Sheffield Hallam. It’s been a challenging few months in which the learning has come thick and fast. It’s been tricky trying to get back into the mindset of a student, particularly difficult in the last month or so as the family is going through a bit of upheaval (more later – it’s all good).

The final piece of work was to do an evaluative case study on a work-based project or around 3,000 words, backed up by the literature. It was originally going to be about using Glogster as a way of improving year 9 students’ skills in examining character development in a Benjamin Zephaniah novel with a teacher from Handsworth Grange Community Sports College in Sheffield.

It looked like it was going to be quite a cool project but in the end OFSTED descended and we had to can it.

Luckily we were able to try something different fairly quickly with the same teacher. Instead we had a group of Year 11s come in to do an exercise using photo-story software to reflect on their responses to the poem Vultures by Chinua Achebe.

This sort of digital media work has been our bread and butter at the CLC for years now in lots of different contexts so it was nice to be able to examine it working in more details and get some data.

I don’t claim any great insights here but in the interests of sharing feel free to have a read and give me any constructive comments. I’m releasing it under a Creative Commons license (first time I’ve actively done this).

Link to the document here.

Digital Visual Literacy and Photostories by Chris Thomson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.electricchalk.com.

Image - Mr Ush on Flickr

I’m not going to BETT this year. My work is already funding my MSc so a I don’t feel I can ask Keith to fund a trip to Olympia, especialy given I have no pressing need to go.

I’m a little sorry as it’s only in the last year that I’ve started to follow the ed-tech community through Twitter and there seems to be a lot more interesting stuff round the fringes. Follow the #BETT2010 tag to explore some more.

I’ve rashly suggested that people could play a Twitter version of Tag while they are at Olympia but didn’t think what the rules could be.

Here’s my suggestion…

• It’s Tag in reverse. The idea is that players actively try to get caught as an excuse to meet other Twitter users in the education technology network.
• I’ve suggested that @dughall is it but as BETT happens over a number of days the first person that day to get to stand D10 (next to the Grand Entrance)and announces it on Twitter using the #tagbett hashtag. People who are “IT” have to tweet where they are every time they change location (stand, seminar, event, cafe etc) or every 10 mins or so until “found”.
• People following #tagbett then have to get to get to the location and find “IT”. When “IT” changes person both people have to confirm that they are now (or are no longer) IT.

Is that too massively complicated? Please comment and I’ll refine the rules…

Image Credit - Tom Barrance

Film Education’s CP3 conference is a routinely excellent occasion and well worth your attention if you are involved in using digital media in education. I’ve blogged about it before.

The last event was in Liverpool (way back in July) and CP3 has now completely revamped its site and updated it with the resources from the event. Have a look…

This is extraordinarily good value! You can download podcasts and transcripts of the keynotes and the materials from the many workshops (the best bit of the conference). The quality is as high as ever.

Have a look at James Durran’s Keynote and Tom Barrance’s Image, Text and Sound workshop as good examples.

Keep your eye on the website for details of next year’s conference.

Did you attend the Liverpool conference? Review it for us…

Image - Netbook by -eko-

We’ve embarked on a project with some of our primaries recently to investigate using web2.0 applications for teaching and learning.

One thing that has come out even in the first few weeks is that actually, all is not as rosey as it could be. I’m becoming a bit more pragmatic when it comes to a vision of a web2.0 future.

Working in a City Learning Centre means that I’m lucky enough to have time to investigate new technologies and road test them before we use them with schools; not always possible if you teach for a living as well.  This time has been extremely useful when trialling excellent products like Animoto, Voicethread, Xtranormal, Glogster etc. No matter how good some of these apps are they require a bit of work to ensure that they can work well in an educational context.

Some apps make it easy for you. Glogster is a prime example. They have bent over backwards for the education community, creating a separate service that keeps sub-teens away from the more outre elements of their social networking platfom and makes it a cinch to register a class set of logins. They are also really attentive, a few exasperated moans about a glitch on Twitter were speedily met with responses from the Head of Business Development (@andrewconnelly) and their education specialist (@glogstereduman).

Animoto is also a stand out as they have a system for signing up temporary accounts (expire in 6 months) that give full access to the service.

Animoto could do a bit more for education, though. Having time limited accounts is actually a bit of a handicap when you have to keep applying to renew each one indivually. I created about 20 accounts for our various projects 6 months ago and have no way of renewing them as a batch, I have to re-apply for each one separately as far as I can see.

The Glogster model makes an educators life more easy. I can see why Animoto operates the way it does – it has to monetize its offering and having loads of full access, free accounts may sap vital revenue but also put a strain on servers.

But from some teachers’ point of view, these technical hold-ups may make the difference between engaging with this new technology or following the path of lesser resistance.

Given the range of resources available, creating separate accounts for each is likely to take up a huge amount of time. I know one solution is getting the students to choose the apps and get skilled at creating their own logins that they have responsibility. But for teachers who are testing the waters, that’s quite a brave step.

From a commercial point of view, surely getting students hooked on the technology in the classroom is free advertising.

Mind you, that’s an ethical humdinger right there! More thought required, Thomson!

Are you just starting using web2.0 in the classroom. How are you getting on?

I was trying to come up with a fun way of explaining web2.0 this summer (a little like our VLE animation from last year – starting to look a little dated now) and came up with a stick men thing but gave up because I was boring myself. This is much better than I would have managed.

I particularly like way she divorces the ideas from the technology and her positive-thinking approach.

Cheers Sacha.

I’m quite pleased with the way the blog looks and the visitor numbers are good (nearing 60,00 hits after 10 months ain’t bad, although I suspect that I only get a few dozen regulars) but I’m a bit demoralised that visits are short and virtually nobody is leaving comments.

I had a few aims when I started:

• Keep track of all the resources, apps and equipment I came across. I have a useless memory!
• Experiment with blogging as an educational tool.
• Keep track of my own professional development.
• Create a forum for the teachers I work with to share ideas and the outcomes of projects.
• Contribute to the wider edtech community.

The first 3 I think I’ve done OK with. Aaron and I did experiment with a link directory for all the web2.0 apps and resources sites I came across but it was clunky and no one used it so when we did the latest redesign it joined the d-ed pool. More on this shortly, though.

We’ve successfully used blogging as part of a transition project in the CLC and othe bits and pieces we’ve picked up like Fliggo and Prezi have been invaluable in other ways.

My thoughts about edtech are certainly a lot clearer since starting the blog. Writing opinion pieces forces you to think critically about what you are saying. It’s even helped me to plan out where I think I want to move my career in the next few years.

I”m really disappointed about the last 2, though. I may be a being a bit unfair on myself as I’m comparing myself with some big hitters in the blogging world but the lack of comments does sap the enthusiasm somewhat…

…and I know that has everything to do with the blogger rather than the readers. I perhaps need to particiapte more in discussions on other blogs but I have this chronic problem of writing responses to other people’s posts and then chickening out and not sending them.

So, where now?

I think I can live without comments. I know people are reading the blog and the fact that it’s a useful development tracker makes it worthwhile keeping going. Worrying about comments suggests vanity.

What I’m not so sure about is the bit about keeping track of apps and resources. There are better blogs than mine for reporting the latest stuff to come out (See Free Technology for Teachers or follow @russelltarr or @web20classroom). They’re very prolific and I can’t keep up enough to be adding much value.

With Doug Belshaws’s discussion of heuristics in mind, Aaron and I are hopefully going to put together a searchable directory of education-friendly web2.0 apps that allows people to rate the apps’ usefulness and share classroom experience.

Image credit – http://www.flickr.com/photos/cayusa/