As the husband of a head teacher I gleefully read about the demise of the SEF. I regarded it as a bloated form filling exercise designed to make the job of the inspectors easier and make the job of self evaluation longer and more laborious than it need be. It's true, it did force schools to focus on self evaluation, but I was mildly surprised to hear about so many heads bemoaning its passing. It's as if the SEF is the only means of self evaluation that a school could undertake. Gove has made it quite clear which areas Ofsted have to concentrate on when making inspections so it would be foolish indeed not to take a good look at these sections in the SEF and use these as a basis for constructing a self evaluation framework based on your own context. I set up a Twtpoll on Twitter, totally unscientific, but hopefully catching a flavour of opinion, and at time of writing we seem totally split.
Earlier this week I finally succumbed to the hype and bought an iPad. In typical fashion I justified it by telling myself that as someone engaged with ICT in schools I needed to keep up with the latest trends; in reality, I just wanted a new cool gadget to play with. Surprisingly, given the cost (£599 for the 32gb model with 3G + data contract), I had remarkably little resistance from my wife.
I'd like to tell you that it has revolutionised my approach to technology, in fact it has changed my life not one jot. There are things are really don't like about it: the lack of camera being the glaring one. Some of the apps that I love on my iPhone are failing to wow me on the iPad. In particular, I'm very disappointed with the iPad version of Tweetdeck. It's true,my favourite app (Reeder) is even better on the iPad than on the phone, but the lack of camera means that I'll still be relying on the phone for Evernote which I use all the time for photo memos. So I'm at a point where I'm thinking that the iPad isn't going to cut it as a device for improving my productivity and I'll be sticking with my iPhone, thanks very much. I'm also still picking up my very oldskool bedtime book made of paper (though this is an area I am going to explore further). Then I gave it to the kids...
Watching Luke, 2 1/2, using it like it was as simple to engage with as his teddybear was simply jawdropping. I quickly downloaded Redfish (the app version of the simply brilliant Flash website Poisson Rouge). True it cost £5.99, but the transfer from pc to iPad has been achieved elegantly and seamlessly. Luke loves it and will happily play with it for as long as he is allowed. The best bit is that he just wanders over.picks it up, switches it on, slides to his games page and off he goes. No intervention from me whatsoever. The rest of the kids (6, 13, 14) are equally engaged by the device and are brilliant at sharing, watching and helping each other with it. It's already at the stage where we're thinking that is one iPad enough?
This rapidly transformed my view of the iPad from being one for cool poseurs to slip out of their manbags (or handbags) at creative meetings to the perfect tool for early years settings. I'm thinking of reading/mark making areas with lots of comfy beanbags and seats with a few iPads for the children to pick up. At £399 for the basic wifi only model (why would you need 3G in early years?) it's not completely unaffordable, and would, I'm sure, radically increase independent use of ICT by children (watching Luke record his own voice using the Talking Tomcat app is quite hilarious).
Further up the school, the size of the screen makes it a far more elegant and accessible tool to use in the classroom for blogging, web searching and so on than the iPod touch. It also makes a great platform for all the games apps for numeracy, strategy and word games, and the screen is big enough for 2 to share.
I would be keen to hear from anyone using the iPad in an early years (kindergarten) setting, as well as receiving suggestions for the best educational apps.
Lastly, when I tweeted about this earlier it was suggested to me by Theo Kuechel that the iPad might be just as good at the opposite end of life to the little ones in nursery - seems somehow appropriate.
This blog has been quiet lately, for two reasons: firstly, I have moved house and BT in their wisdom are taking rather a long time to get me connected to broadband; secondly, I have been running a rather exciting project called Blogtheworldcup. It's a collection of 32 blogs representing the 32 countries that took part, each blog being maintained by a class of children with their teacher.
To date the site has had over half a million hits (and it was only live 1 week before the Cup started) and has about 650 members blogging, commenting and interacting. What's different about this site is that although it is based on Wordpress, like all my school sites, it has the Buddypress plugin installed. This turns the site into something more akin to Facebook with users having the ability to update their own profile; "like" the posts of others; use the Twitter @ convention to send public messages; make forum posts and much more, all withinthe context of a techer moderated platform.
Here's what some of those involved in the project thought:
It has been a privilege to have been involved in this project from its inception and watching what the teachers and children did with their blogs. Here's to the success of Blogtheolympics.net, it's going to be quite a ride.
I'm helping Matt Shaw from Sudley Juniors (great blog site, by the way) run an ICT Inset day this week and one of the bits I'm doing is on Google Sketchup. If you haven't come across this piece of software before, it's a 3D drawing tool allowing you to create objects such as a house and to rotate them so that the creator can view them from any point of view. The basic version is free to download and is more than adequate for use in primary school. What I've done here is collect a few Sketchup resources together as a starting point for those wishing to explore this neat tool.
As someone who spends a lot of time showing teachers how to use blogs it's probably unsurprising that I get hooked up in the technicalities of blogging: how to add slideshows, how to create surveys etc. It's nice when I get a gentle reminder every once in a while that blogging is only a tool and it takes the creative spark of a teacher to make something worthwhile happen.
I had just such a reminder yesterday at the Manchester Head Teacher's Conference. I had been asked to run a seminar with Jack Sloan, a year 2 teacher from Chorlton Park where I have done quite a bit of teaching over the years. It was listening to Jack talking about the wonderful and creative work that goes on in his class that caused me to reflect that yes, his class blog is one of the best Keystage 1 blogs you could ever hope to visit (in my opinion, the best, and I'm proud to host it), but actually it wasn't the blog itself that was so impressive, rather the extent to which Jack has used this very simple technology to create a truly empowering learning environment for his children.
A particular highlight was the traditional tales unit he did using Jack and the Beanstalk as the basis, and you can follow the development of the project from first ideas, design work and peer critique all the way through to the finished movie.
For the last 2 years I've written an annual blogpost listing my favourite websites and web apps to support blogging in school. The last one was in Feb 09 so a revision is slightly overdue (the original is here).
The number of tools that you can create stuff with, then embed the results in your blog is now truly immense and choosing a top ten is nigh on impossible - some apps are brilliant, but are niche in their use. So this list really reflects my current classroom favourites - at the risk of suffering from bloat, I found it was impossible to pick ten, so the list has grown, and that still doesn't leave space for excellent tools such as the timeline tools, Dipity and Timeglider; wordcloud generators Wordle and Tagxedo; live blogging tool, Coveritlive and many others. I'm also deliberately mixing up the list from past years, so do have a look at previous posts to see what is on those lists too. Finally, I'm going to categorise them, too, being aware that any categorisation is pretty arbitrary as many of the tools mentioned could easily fit in other categories.
Where possible, I've given alternatives in case personal preferences or local authority filtering etc. gets in the way. And if I've missed an indispensable tool or website, please feel free to add it as a comment.
Personal Productivity and Sharing
Many of the tools listed under productivity are indispensable to me in my everyday interactions with the internet and my personal learning network and I don't always use them in the context of blogging. However, I also find them incredibly useful tools to add interactivity to my blog for example through using Google Forms to add a survey (see below).
Google DocsImpossible to describe in one paragraph. You get spreadsheets, documents, slideshows and forms. The latter is particularly useful for bloggers as it allows you to generate a survey which you can simply embed into your blog and it auto collates the results into a spreadsheet for you. Here's my blogpost on using Google Forms for datahandling.
DeliciousOne of the first social bookmarking tools was Delicious. Others such as Diigo and Digg have come along with extra features, but the great thing about Delicious is its simplicity. I use it for myself to collect useful resources (my Delicious page is here), but I also use it with children as a research tool and too put links on blogs (Here's Chorlton Park's Y6 Delicious page.)
TwitterThere is lots of lazy and ill-informed criticism of Twitter (celebs tweeting what they had for breakfast etc.) I would simply say that developing a worldwide network of educators through Twitter has opened my eyes up to more ideas, opportunities and resources than any piece of CPD I have ever attended. Follow me on Twitter here.
SlideshareSimply a way of putting the PowerPoints that you and your class make online. It doesn't support all the fancy transitions and sound that you can put into a PowerPoint which is a good thaing as the class have to concentrate on content. Here's an example of an embedded Slideshare that I made with PowerPoint:
CompfightTeaching children (and teachers) to respect intellectual property is always a challenge and I always try to do this by being scrupulous in my modelling on my own blogs. As an image search engine my first port of call is Compfight. And if that doesn't come up with the goods, then I'll try the Creative Commons search engine which also includes video and music. For more royalty free resources try my Delicious tag here.
PicasaDeciding to move your own image collection online is a big step, but one that is well worth it. Other services include the ever popular Flickr and the more commercial Photobucket. My current favourite is Picasa as it automatically syncs My Pictures on my PC with the web. It also has some great photo editing tools including a cool collage builder. You can also download the Picasa software to your PC for faster editing and easier management of your albums. Incidentally, if you would like to make online collages from photos stored on your PC (or from the results of a Google image search) then Shapecollage is simply fab.
Creativity
AnimotoThis is a brilliant tool that takes images and video and mixes them into a very slick movie incorporating sound, titles and your own audio track (or just choose from the free music on the site). As a teacher you can apply for a free educator account, too (click here). Criticised by some as being anti-creative as it does all the mixing for you, in the right hands it is brilliant for children to select their own images to send powerful persuasive messages through making adverts or persuasive movies etc. I've blogged about it here.
Glogstergenerates superb interactive posters that can incorporate audio and video (from Youtube) as well as slick animated graphics. Fantastic for topic work, election posters, displaying poems etc. It also has a social element, and for that reason you need to sign up for the educator version (link in title) which effectively gives you your own Glogster site for your class.
Vokiis the ever popular talking animated heads generator. Children will love playing with the characters and using them to demonstrate their language skills, poetry reading, foreign language acquisition etc. You can record audio directly into Voki, use audio recorded elsewhere or simply use the text-to-speech capability of the site.
Photopeachis the simplest slideshow generator I have come across. It's a great first web tool to explore if you are new to the business of blogging. As well as simple slideshows it will also allow you to generate questionnaires. Here's my most recent post on how to create a Photopeach slideshow and put it on your blog.
Collaboration
Voicethread Imagine putting up an image and then capturing all the comments that people make about it verbally. That's the premise of Voicethread. Put up an image, or series of images and get collaborators to add their comments via a USB mic, a keyboard, or even a webcam. This brilliant tool can be used in all kinds of educational contexts. Here is one from the children of Chorlton Park telling us about their dreams for the world.
You can try the service for free, but it's well worth upgrading to an education account.
Wallwisheris a brilliant tool for capturing ideas. Think opening sentences for stories, arguments for and against, plenaries capturing what we have learned. Signing up for an account gives you control over your wall and enables you to control your wall, keep an eye out for updates and delete anything off topic. Setting up a wall is so quick and easy that it's possible to do it on the fly and to get the class adding to the wall, simply share the URL.
Primary Pad Primary Pad is an amazing collaborative word processor. Multiple people can edit the same document in real time with each person's contributions showing up with a different colour. Think of several groups around the classroom on netbooks working on their own writing tasks together with the teacher "dropping in" on their group via their own pc and making suggestions, editing mistakes and marking etc in a non-intrusive way. Or use it as a research tool where children are all independently researching and contributing to a project document - a bit like a wike, but much simpler and everyone can see everyone else's edits in real time. Based on the code from the now defunct Etherpad, Primary Pad is not free, but well worth subscribing to.
A colleague recently asked me for advice about the following quote in a model e-learning policy from a north-west local authority:
"A risk assessment will be carried out before children
and young people are allowed to use new technology in schools and settings."
Straight away I want to ask some questions:
What is the definition of new technology? PCs have been around for 25 years plus, so do they count?Is this risk assessment to be carried out before each use of the technology in question?What exactly is being risk assessed? The ability of children to destroy keyboards, break buttons, snap earphones on sight, or electrocute themselves? The financial risk of acquiring new equipment and whether it will actually work or not? Or, as I suspect, that one of the little darlings will go off message and try and access something inappropriate on the Interweb. Worse still, the teacher hasn't done their homework as to the likely search results for "Roman Goddess."
I then asked my Twitter network where this would end. Would we be expected to risk assess PE lessons. And apparently we do... in some cases. One teacher said that they had a bunch of "generic risk assessments" for things like PE. Generic risk assessment?!? Surely a risk assessment is only valid if it is carried out by the responsible person for a specific circumstance or activity? This is bureaucratic nonsense designed to do nothing more than cover backsides. Another teacher tweeted that they didn't risk assess literacy, to which my reply was that if you teach the children to read you are exposing them to all kinds of material that might be considered inappropriate, so she should undertake a risk assessment immediately. The notion that you now have to risk assess the normal everyday routine of school life and teaching and learning is completely bizarre. Sorry kids, playtime is banned, it's waaay to risky.
It took my good friend and colleague, Peter Ford from Northamptonshire to introduce a measure of sanity to the proceedings with his simple "Fordy's VAIN analysis for assessing technology".
V - Where is the VALUE for learning?
A - What ADVERTS and ADD-ONS accompany the technology, and can I Iive with them?
I - Is it INTUITIVE enough to hook and sustain my use and that of colleagues and pupils?
N - Does it mitigate NIGHTMARE scenarios with moderation, privacy and admin options?
The trouble is, Peter, I'm not sure that's what the jobsworth responsible for the quote at the top had in mind.
As everyone knows, safeguarding is at the top of everybody’s
agenda at the moment, and part of that agenda is e-safety. I recently attended
a Becta ICT Mark assessor’s conference and we had a very interesting discussion
about this subject. Some key points emerged:
·It’s not sufficient to just let a third party
filter and manage your web connection, you need to know how to monitor your web
connection yourself;
·It’s not just about blocking. Ofsted may take an
equally dim view of over-zealous filtering that prevents pupils from accessing
resources that they need to use to complete their work;
·E-safety needs to be embedded into the culture
and curriculum of the school.
Here
is a link to an e-safety audit I did some years ago and I am very pleased
that it is more or less in line with current thinking – I’ve tweaked it to
update it, but it might provide a useful starting point.
Becta have produced a useful e-safety poster with questions
and links. Becta are currently out of stock, but I have a number of copies
which I can post out to interested parties. To download an electronic version, click
here.
It seems to me to be quite clear that gone are the days when a school could just expect the local broadband consortium to filter the internet and leave it at that.
I read an interesting post on Doug Belshaw's blog this morning about how he has decided to "uncopyright" everything on it, leaving it up to the "consumer" as to whether they linked back or gave any credit to Doug in derivative works. This got me thinking about Creative Commons, of which I have always been a big fan. Everything on this blog has a Creative Commons license for re-use and remixing, all I require is an accreditation in the subsequent work. Doug's post, however got me questioning this as a valid strategy: is it arrogance to suggest that any of the musings/doggerel/resources that I post on here are worth protecting? Probably. Are not virtually all of my own ideas derivative of someone else's thinking? Most certainly.
On the other hand, by uncopyrighting everything it gives a degree of legitimacy to those wanting to pass off other folk's content as their own. A couple of years ago someone notified me of a blog that was just lifting my posts and pasting them into their own site without accreditation, and I have to admit I was pretty annoyed about it, going so far as to send the author a fairly robust email (which worked and they took my stuff off). How would you feel if material that you had created found its way onto unsavoury websites, or used by a political party whose views did not coincide with yours (e.g. the use of publicly licensed images of Winston Churchill and Spitfires by the BNP)?
Finally, Doug is in the enviable position of having someone pay his salary (he is an e-learning director of an academy in Northumberland) and therefore his motivation seems to be to share his thinking for others to take in any direction they want (I hope that's a reasonable summary of his position). I'm not, and I have to make a living by my own means. It seems reasonable, therefore to think that some sort of protection is needed. However, if one of my aims is to spread my reputation as far and wide as possible as someone who might make a difference to ICT in a school, would it not be better to uncopyright everything and rely on the ethical stance of most educational bloggers to link back and credit where credit's due?
What are the implications for work created on school blogs by children? Is uncopyrighting a step too far for this type of environment?
Ultimately, the kind of people who are happy to pass other people's work off as their own don't give two hoots about copyright, Creative Commons or any other type of intellectual property rights, so does it really make a difference? Maybe copyright is for the rich who can afford a lawyer?
Campaigns against mobile phone masts still seem to create waves locally, something which I might have a touch more sympathy for if those campaigning against them placed their phones in the nearest recycling bin. Some schools have been affected by the issue too over the installation of wireless networks being opposed by parents. One would have thought that the exponential growth in mobile phone use would have resulted in a similar growth in the types of cancers that one might associate with the placing of a source of microwave radiation near the brain, namely brain tumours and the like. This is precisely what the Danish Cancer Society studied recently. Looking at 59,684 brain tumour cases diagnosed over 30 years from 1974 to 2003 among 16 million adults they measured the rate of increase in the disease over the same period resulting in a rate of increase that was so low as to be insignificant, moreover the number of tumours potentially caused by phones was undetectably small.
The scientists concede that more longitudinal studies need to be carried out, but it's hardly the smoking gun that the nimbies campaigning aginst phone masts might have hoped for.
