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…

Image credit - Drinksmachine

For over a year there’s been a link to my blog from the Online Stopwatch site which is designed and run by my friend Aaron. This has been lovely as his site is insanely popular and it has generated a vast amount of traffic to this blog.

Last week I was getting about 600 hits a day which looked great in Statcounter. I’ve had 135,000 hits since I started counting in September ’08.

Trouble is, of those between 80-90% of my visitors stayed for less than 5 seconds and the vast majority never make it off the home page so it’s all a bit of an illusion.

I’m really not that interested in having a popular site. As this blog has progressed it has become more of a CPD tool for me and a way of keeping track of thoughts. Most of my contact with the rest of the ed tech community happens on Twitter now rather than through comments on the blog.

So, a few days ago I asked Aaron the remove the link.

Unsurprisingly, visitor numbers have plummeted from 629 pages views last Tuesday to 30 this Tuesday.

…and it feels very liberating!

If you’re reading this it is more likely that you came here for a reason other than accidentally clicking on a link and that for me is much more valuable than a huge visitor number vanity figure.

So, thanks for visiting. Happy St Patrick’s Day.

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.

"Hello, Cup Cake!"

On Thursday night I start an MSc with Sheffield Hallam University with the rather twisty title, Technology Enhanced Learning Innovation and Change or TELIC for short. Check out this link for details.

My main reason for choosing this particular course is for the IC bit of TELIC. I reckon I’m OK with most of the TEL (I still have stuff to learn) but I struggle when it comes to understanding how to influence change in an organisation, especially one that is resistant to it.

I’m a little nervous. I managed to get a 2:1 in Geography from St. Andrews back in ’96 (same degree as Prince William, folks) but that was mostly by accident. I’m hoping I’ve grown up sufficiently to take this seriously, especially as work is funding it. Any sort of learning requires you to make yourself vulnerable in some ways so I hope I don’t fall flat on my face.

So 1) why am I doing it and 2) why am I talking about it here?

Well…

1. a) It’ll be good for me. I haven’t been a proper “learner” in the formal sense since my teacher training in 1997 so I can put my brain through its paces and hope it manages the pressure.
   b) It’ll be good for my career. I know having a “badge” doesn’t indicate competence in the workplace but I’m hoping what I learn will help me move to the next stage. And if Ed Balls gets his way (or anyone else for that matter) then it’s unlikely I’ll be doing this job in 18 months time! This might make me more employable.
2. I anticipate that what I learn may be of use to those of you who read this so expect the occassional post on books, article, theories, workshops etc. And sharing what we do is my way of taking responsibility for my own learning and being open to challenge from all of you lot.

If you want to follow my adventures in Academia then there’s a new Category on the blog. There will also be stuff on Twitter and Delicious (tagged MSc) so follow me on those as well.

Wish me luck!

CC Image credit – clevercupcake on Flickr

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/ 

We’ve just finished hosting quite an exciting event at one of our partner schools where members of staff have been showcasing their skills and their students’ skills in ICT. The aim was to create some real momentum towards developing ICT in the curriculum as the school moves towards it’s BSF rebuild in a few years’ time.

It was particularly exciting from my point of view as it was the teachers demonstrating, not us. It’s great as it shows where teachers have taken on the skills we have introduced and taken them to the next level.

I’ve been reflecting on CPD and growing ICT skills since BETT. I went to one seminar by NAACE that was effectively saying that sending staff on a load of courses is not an effective model for CPD. 

As someone who runs occasional courses for outside agencies on stuff like white boards and digital media I’ve been getting increasing demoralised that I’m not actually doing  much good. People have a nice time and they say lovely things on their feedback sheets but I’m skeptical about how much actually changes in the classroom given the investment of time and money.

The seminar also pointed out that the best way to develop skills was to develop collaborative communities of learners within the institution who share their own experience and knowledge and offer support…

…which made me think of another seminar I went to by Futurelabs on their “Enquiring Minds” project. Checking the website will be a much more useful and effective way of finding out about it than me telling you but in a nutshell…

An Enquiring Minds project is one where the enquiry is driven by the students. They establishing what they already know and care about and look for areas that they feel warrant further investigation. Drawing on resources like their teachers, each other, parent, local community, online community etc they research new topics and work towards ordering their findings and presenting them back in a method of their own choosing using whatever media they think appropriate.

The feedback from schools trying it out with students seem to be encouraging.

So what about staff? If it’s an effective, empowering way of learning for students surely it would also work with adults.

I have this rosey, glowing vision in my head of an elightened school leadership team fostering an Enquiring Minds-style collaborative learning community (pat pending) where the staff themselves assess their current levels of knowledge and determine which areas they want to develop. Working in “interest groups” with people of differing levels of skill and experience they research, draw on other sources of information and help and facilitate their own learning. The results are then shared widely across the school/LEA community and the process starts again. Some areas of development will be school wide (say for example when the school invests in a new piece of MIS software) but other areas wil be uncovered by teachers seeing good practice elsewhere, reading blogs or pure, naked inspiration!

No doubt this is already happening in some schools so it would be great to hear how well this works in practice

Have a look at the Enquiring Minds site and let me know if I’m talking rubbish or if you like the idea.