Hi all,

I’ve been asked by Edge, a charity “dedicated to raising the stature of practical and vocational learning”, if I would host a stream for this debate taking place on the 22nd March at 16:30.

I’m not endorsing Edge’s manifesto but having said in my previous post about being nervous for the future of education it seemed a good opportunity to help facilitate some discussion on the topic.

I don’t intend to make a habit of hosting other people’s material on this site.

My blog theme didn’t like the embed code so you can access information on the debate on Facebook here and the debate will be hosted on Facebook here.

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!

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.

However, I’m looking at certain aspects of educational life in Scotland with a sense of professional jealousy.

A lot of the blogs I subscribe to that revel in innovation are from Scottish authors and looking at LTS’s Glow project and their early adoption of iTunesU makes me wish that England, or just Yorkshire, would get its act together.

There’s been a reluctance, in Sheffield at least, to do things centrally so we have a situation where schools have been buying individual learning platforms rather than collaborating across the city in a way that would encourage the spread of ideas, learning, resources, and good practice.

We’ve tried to address this at our CLC  by setting up a learning platform consortium across (and beyond) or partnership but we’re only wee and we don’t have unlimited resources.

Maybe the rollout of Civica’s managed service learning platform willbe an answer but I haven’t seen enough of it to say that with any confidence. My 2 bosses are finding out more at a presentation today.

So, do I have a overly-rosey view of what the state of education technology is in Scotland?

Can my Scottish readers confirm or deny?

Image – Ian Kershaw on Flickr

Image - non-partizan on Flickr

Here’s a thorny wee issue (Guardian again, sorry folks).

We crossed the Rubicon of calculators in exams a while ago, now the Danes are investigating allowing net access during exams for A-level equivalent students.

The article highlights the pros and cons quite neatly so I won’t regurgitate them but it’s a great indication of the fact that learning, the nature of knowledge and the methods for measuring that learning are changing in ways that our exam systems are not ready for yet.

But what do you think? Is this an invetiable development or a road we should avoid going down at all costs?

Flickr image - jwolson

It’s the sound of axes being sharpened!

Merlin John flagged up this article from the Times. Richard Woods, the Times journalist is obvioulsy in a belligerent mood and is fingering BECTA as a good bit of the budget to cut to save a few bob in the aftermath of the current crisis.

It’s the first time I’ve come across this being discussed openly and, although it’s a bit depressing (BECTA provides us with our capital funding) I am surpised it’s not been talked about thus far.

I’ve never been convinced by people saying that the public sector is the employer of choice during an economic storm. Sooner or later, the government needs to pay for it’s rescue packages; massive tax rises are not a vote winner but being seen to come down hard on government “waste” is a much easier sell.

I completely agree that government waste is a big issue. Look at their record on IT procurement in the NHS! Or PFI (it’s delicious that PFI was invented so the private sector took on the risk of large infrastructure projects in exchange for more lucrative contracts. Now the risk is too high for the private sector to feel comfortable so the governmnet is taking on the risk and still paying the private sector inflated rates!)

But with all these things you have to make sure the baby doesn’t end up down the plug hole with the bath water. It’s pretty much accepted that innovative ICT has to be part of school life to give students the skills to use it in the modern world as well as engaging learners.

But I would say that since BECTA is effectively ensuring City Learning Centres’ survival!

The Grauniad has published this article preempting the release of a report by Jim Rose into the primary curriculum and already the fur is flying as the headlines say “History out, Twitter in”.

As ever, the reality won’t match the headlines (and the original article is a little more nuanced than the row suggests) but it’s a little depressing to note that educational debate in the UK isn’t moving on even as we try to remodel what is meant by “school”. We still row about how much information we can squeeze into the curriculum.

A few thoughts struck me as I listened to Radio 4′s PM programme get all fussy over it . (I’m a little giddy with a tummy bug so apologies if this rambles!)

Mainly, why if we see some technology has value in society does it need to be stuck in the curriculum? Twitter’s a good case in point. Yes, it can be a good educational tool and yes it’s a great way of communicating but why teach 9 year olds how to do it? It’s so easy to grasp that given the motivation most kids would be able to master it in 10 minutes.

But there’s another issue; kids aren’t into Twitter. It’s only Stephen Fry and sad cases like us bloggers. It they’re not motivated to learn a particular social application why suck the fun out of it by trying to teach it? If it’s useful enough then they’ll work it out themselves. Did we have to teach them Club Penguin?

Blogging, podcasting, Tweeting only exist because people have some use for them to communicate ideas. I’m not writing this post now because someone taught me to blog, I’m writing because I have thoughts in my head and I want them out of my head, maybe so that other people can go “hmm” or “idiot!”

The technology has no value by itself. What’s important are the ideas that get communicated through it. Start removing other things from the school day and you have to wonder where these ideas are actually going to come from.

These sorts of technologies should be liberated from the curriculum so kids get used to finding and choosing the best way of getting their ideas and learning across. That’s the real skill. If that is by podcasting, Bookr or Voicethread then great, with a little help and encouragement most motivated people can learn to do most things on their own.

It’s more about finding ways to engage learners first. Not relying on ICT tools to do that job for you.

I think the fuss over this article may just be a red herring. It’ll much more interesting to find out when the final report is published just what they mean by giving teachers the freedom to decide what children should concentrate on in class.

That could really make a difference!

What really struck me was the point he makes about the point of education being to prepare people for university entrance. I used to work in a training and development team in a telecoms company. We did a wide range of courses of varying levels of effectiveness but I now think back on the course called “Creativity Skills”. It was 1 day long and it was pointless.

If Ken Robinson is right then having this course in our catalogue was ludicrous – like trying to demolish Edinburgh Castle with a bent toothpick. We employee people having put them through an education system that values non-creative activity, given them a degree and then told them that they can only work effectively if they use their “innate creativity”. Well, that particular part of their brain hasn’t been properly encouraged since primary school and now  we think that a 1 day course will redress that particular imbalance.

Bonkers!

Again, I’m writing a post that has only tenuous links to ICT in education but it is still one small planet  that orbits that particular sun. Look at the post on Thru You I did recently. A fabulous example of creativity and ICT coming together.

There are fantastic tools  out on the web to encourage creativity and they’re either underused in education or actively banned.

Right, I’m off for a jam session with my best mate. Cheers!

Flickr Image - Sean Dreilinger

An interesting juxtaposition of consecutive articles from BECTA recently. The first questions the effectiveness of those “Brain Training ” games that some people including allegedly Nicole Kidman go doolally over, saying that in one study  there was no significant improvement in performance in areas like memory tests compared to control groups. Given that the sample size was tiny  it’s not going to light a fire under the debate but interesting nonetheless.

The second article on the other hand trumpets the value of gaming in enhancing certain skills. Many games require the development of strategies, problem-solving and increasingly creativity (see games like Spore) plus they are fun.

I did a wee post a while back about using commercial gaming releases as an opportunity for informal learning and this kind of bears that out but it’s most interesting that the games specifically written to enhance learning (or to tap into that particular market) possibly aren’t actually that good at what they claim to do.

Links

Video Games Contribute to Development
The Effects of Brain Training Software and Games

The aim is to establish how the good ol’ U of K can stay at the forefront of the global digital economy. What got reported on the release of the interim report was the plan to give broadband to all households by 2012. However, a large number of commentators seem to saying that the whole thing is geared towards to interests of telco’s, ISP’s and the entertainment industry and misses loads of opportunities to be innovative in its outlook.

You can read the stuff yourselves if it takes your fancy but I found this bit quite interesting from an educational perspective. It’s from Cory Doctorow’s column in the Guardian…

“The internet generation is growing up in an age of configurable media, where the tools in homes can be used to remix and reimagine the media around them, giving them a fluidity and expertise in technology that may leave us with a generation of media experts ready to step up and become the next wave of British creators.

“Unless, that is, we continue to prosecute and harass these kids who are using the net to collaborate on and share their remixes, treating them as criminals. No one chased the Beatles through the streets of Liverpool, calling them criminals for playing the popular tunes of the day in order to learn their craft. But today, the multinationals and billionaires who control the rights to the Beatles and other British culture are doing everything in their power to shut down the kids who are noodling with culture using laptops instead of guitars.

“Lord Carter is proposing to shackle the experimenters who represent Digital Britain’s future to safeguard some minor licensing streams for the winners of Britain’s analogue past.

“A real Digital Britain strategy would seek to change the law to legalise noncommercial, transformative use.”

Guardian 10th Feb 2009

I’m tempted to draw parallels between this and the fact that most schools when faced with a new technology that threatens the status quo (YouTube, mobiles, mp3′s, tamagochis et al) have the instinctive reaction to ban it . There are plenty of opportunities that are not being exploited due to a reactive, conservativism in some schools (not all). To use Stephen Covey’s terminology, it solves an urgent perceived problem now but fails to address what is important.