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Contents:
The Editor - the story behind it all
Learning Platforms for Primary more
The Giving Nation - Secondary more
Blogging with PGCE students
more
BBC Jam - Will it be
missed? more
ICT for SEN - Forwards or Backwards? more
Interesting Stuff - online story telling, Bull Bingo! more
http://icteachers.co.uk
info@icteachers.co.uk
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Editors
notes:
ICTeachers is and was an idea. It was
originally a group of around 30 ICT co-coordinators who were part of the
BECTa Laptops for Teachers project in 1998. For many of us it was a
revelation being able to email colleagues around the country and we
quickly became a powerful group able to challenge our own local
authorities about funding practices based on what our colleagues were
saying round the rest of the country. It is hard to capture the excitement
of those early years but lets just say that if you went off line for a
week, when you came back you had at least 3000 emails, and they wasn't
spam in those days!
I have to say
that without BECTa's foresight and vision in those days, many of us would
never have known what possibilities existed in the online world and
certainly ICTeachers would have never been started. I got the vision for
it as I was travelling down the motorway after the Education Show where I
had been asked by BECTa to do few seminars on school website building. It
made me realise that I, humble ICT Coordinator of small primary school,
had the skills that national organisations wanted and it made me realise
how powerful teachers working together are.
Anyway, the
original group still exists in BECTAns, a private email group, we have a
few new members that have joined by word of mouth only, but we've all
benefited from each other over the years. ICTeachers consists of far
less then the orginal 30 now but the idea still remains, and the power
that is ICTeachers is based on the fact that teachers together can
make an impact that can shake the educational and the political world, and
I sincerely believe that to be true.
The Editor
md@icteachers.co.uk
Learning Platforms - Primary Schools
Since Becta released its list of preferred suppliers of learning platform
providers in January, there has been an air of anticipation within the
education sector.
There are many
factors that help to make a school effective but
collaboration, communication and involvement are key. By embracing these,
schools are not only effective with their teaching but they are also able
to share their values with their communities therefore increasing child
support and parental buy-in. These 3 factors are fundamental in effective
learning platforms. A learning platform delivers content to teachers,
learners and communities in a secure way.
Making IT Happen
is a unique sequence of online and printed publications helping you on the
journey from the initial vision to the much talked about reality. The
latest issue explores the relationships between Learning Platforms and
pupils, parents, teachers and the wider school community, and their
contribution to the success of Every Child Matters.
Making IT Happen investigates all the steps you need to take along the way
as well as providing relevant and practical debate such as
“…as schools
consider the impact of learning platforms, one of the most important
questions will be to understand exactly what it will mean to their
constituent user groups….
In line with current thinking on personalisation and assessment for
learning, the learners are repositioned at the centre of their own
learning… and can access their learning resources in school or anywhere,
including at home, where parents can see their progress.”
To find out more about Making IT Happen, download the latest issue or
register for the series click
here.
The Giving Nation - Secondary
Giving-Nation is a secondary -school based project run by the Citizenship
Foundation to promote `giving` among young people. It is supported by the
Cabinet Office and sponsored by other charities. The Giving Nation website
provides an on line community and ideas centre for young people who are
interested in `giving. The website also provides top quality lesson
resources for teachers. Giving Nation also run G-Week; an annual
schools action week as, well as the G-Nation awards. Schools can
enter the awards by writing an on-line diary about `giving` in their
school. This enables them to qualify to win one of eight regional prizes
of up to £1000 and a once-in-a-lifetime top prize that offers winning
students the chance to directly experience the work of UK and Overseas
charities
Dami Bamidele
Project Support Officer - Youth Programmes
G-Nation: www.g-nation.co.uk
Web:
www.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk
Blogging with PGCE students - hard lessons learnt and advice to pass on
You'd think that setting up a system whereby trainee teachers could share
their thoughts and experiences via a blog would be a good thing, right?
Yet 6 months later, the last post is now nearly three months old and was
posted by me, not a student (the most recent student post is actually
almost six months old). So what went wrong, and what can be learnt from
the experience?
This is no doubt a typical case of 20-20 hindsight: when I relate what
happened, it will all seem so obvious. But like many things, it wasn't
obvious at the time.
First, let's place the whole thing in context. I teach on a post-graduate
certificate of education (PGCE) course. As the name implies, this is a
course for people who already have a first degree, and are now intent on
becoming qualified to teach. My specialism is ICT (information and
communications technology), and the course covers teaching in the primary
(elementary) school.
As part of their course, the students have to maintain what is known as a
Record of Professional Development (RPD). This is a college requirement.
As far as the Training and Development Agency, the body that sets the
standards for qualified teacher status (QTS) is concerned, the students
have to pass a few online tests. The one for ICT is pretty basic: some
tasks in office-type applications which you could pass quite easily just
from everyday experience (or at least, one would hope so).
So, my idea was simple: the students could be encouraged to reflect more,
and thereby make their RPDs all the richer, if they had a means of
"listening in" on what their peers were thinking. With this is in mind, I
explained the idea to the students, told them how to set up a blog (or
another blog if they already had a personal one), whilst I set up a site
that aggregated the blogs so they could all be viewed in one place.
Everyone was, or at least seemed, enthusiastic.
So what happened?
1. The first warning bells should have rung when I asked the students what
they knew about blogs and Flickr. A third of the students (34%) did not
know what a blog was, and 55% knew but didn't have one. I think this is a
reality check. We in the "edublogosphere" can easily be lulled into
thinking that everyone and their dog is blogging. It just ain't true.
Blogging is still, in my experience, a minority sport. And who were these
34%? Old fogies? People who've been living on a desert island for the past
5 years? No! Young people, mostly in their early 20s, one or two in their
mid-thirties I would guess. I'm by far the oldest in the class, and I know
more about this stuff than they do!
When it came to Flickr, the stats are even worse: nobody had a Flickr
account. In fact, 97% of the group didn't even know what Flickr was; the
remaining 3% knew but didn't have an account.
So the first thing one would need to do in a case like this is patiently
explain why blogging etc can be useful, show examples, do a proper
presentation. Unfortunately, it all had to be rushed because I see the
class on 6 occasions in the year, ie 6 times on their course, for 3 hours
at a time. There simply wasn't the time to give this attention it needed,
and in retrospect the sensible thing to do would have been to leave it at
that, and not attempt to set up any kind of group blogging, but to plant
the seed and perhaps give them lots of references to blogs throughout the
course.
2. It's pretty firmly established, I think, that in order to get new ideas
adopted you need the buy-in of the powers that be. In this case, the
administrators didn't really know what blogging was either, and I didn't
make the time to try and explain the benefits. Mind you, once the course
supervisor looked in on the blogs, after a few weeks of them running, she
could see the possibilities straight away. However, by that time something
else had happened....
3. One of the students decided that he really enjoyed blogging, and at
first his posts, while long, were both reflective and entertaining.
Unfortunately, as time went on they became increasingly upsetting to some
people, including the course administrator, who didn't appreciate being
insulted by some of his comments. Had I known he was posting such stuff, I
would have had a word with him. But, I was not aware; in fact, I was not
aware of anyone posting anything, because the email alerts system I'd set
up had stopped working. I didn't realise that of course: I thought the
lack of emailed alerts signified that nobody was posting, whereas it
signified that the alerts system had stopped working. Oh, and whilst we're
on this bit, I had made it very clear that these were meant to be
professional blogs, to feed into the RPD, not personal blogs as such.
In the end, I removed his blog's feed from the aggregator, as he wouldn't
listen to reason. So now he can insult people if he insists on doing so,
but unless he puts in the time and effort to publicise his blog, nobody
else will know about it and neither I nor the college will be
inadvertently complicit in his approach. This was an interesting example
of a situation in which one person felt they have done nothing wrong, but
where others feel aggrieved by his comments.
Unfortunately, one of the effects of his long posts and the fact that they
tended to upset individuals seems to have been that the other students
felt less and less inclined to put their heads above the parapet.
4. In the normal run of things, I'd have been posting to the blog
regularly and frequently in order to keep the pot boiling. Unfortunately,
the apparent lack of interest on the part of the students came at the same
time as a member of my family became increasingly ill. Even I have limited
reserves of energy, and so it was perhaps natural that in looking for
something to stop doing, I readily identified the course blog.
So, how would I do it differently in future, given that there are some
things I can't change, namely the number of sessions I teach and the
students' knowledge of blogs etc at the outset? Here is my list of
suggestions, but I'd be pleased to hear from others about it.
First, get the administrator on board. If I can convince her of the value
of this approach to discussion and sharing views, she might, at the very
least, exhort the students to try it out for themselves. Perhaps in the
longer term I could even convince her of the need to make it a compulsory
course element. That would not be feasible at the moment because of other
factors.
For example, the ICT sessions take place in a large, but crowded, computer
lab that is locked when not being used by a tutor. It is possible to make
arrangements to let the students be in the room, if you can arrange
supervision. So, for students to be able to blog when they feel like it,
especially if they don't have a computer at home, the set-up is hardly
conducive to that. Next year things are changing. My understanding is that
the computer labs are being disbanded, and the students will use laptops
in the room they happen to be in. Much more sensible, but in the absence
of any further information about how this equipment will be made
available, and what sort of access to the internet it will enjoy, it's
hard to forward plan at this stage.
Another factor is that other tutors are not all confident or competent in
the use of ICT at a pretty basic level, from what I understand. That isn't
necessarily a problem in itself, but it does mean that they may not
themselves see the value of blogging, and therefore not be very
encouraging of the students' efforts. Of course, that may not matter: all
you need is just one "evangelist" apart from the ICT person to get the
buzz going (the ICT person may merely be perceived as a geek!).
Second, prepare a booklet about blogging, and its value in education. The
blogging section of Coming of Age: An Introduction to the NEW Worldwide
Web would work here. Distribute the booklet in the very first session, and
show a video or two to illustrate the benefits. (The videos I would choose
are the Teachers TV programme on Blogging, http://www.teachers.tv/video/167,
and Dean Shareski's video featuring Kathy Cassidy, "Telling the New
Story":
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7879323924488591491&q=kathy+cassidy
. Actually, I did try that, but the sound could not be turned up without
awful feedback setting in. This is the trouble with anything like this:
technical issues, even low-level ones like this, get in the way. Yes, I
could have called technical support, because I couldn't sort the problem
out myself, and they may have fixed it -- but I would have lost 15
minutes. More to the point, it's difficult to try and promote the value of
using ICT when the ICT you're using to do so is going wrong: in this
situation the medium really is the message.
Third, make sure there is a reason for the students to visit the blog at
least once a week, by posting content on it regularly and frequently.
Fourth, take a leaf out of Darren Kuropatwa's book and assign a class
scribe to post a blog every day about some aspect of teaching or learning
that they've thought about. Actually, I think that could work quite well.
Fifth, make sure that whatever my session is about, I post information
about it on the blog -- well, not just information, because I do that as
it is, but thoughts, opinions, latest news etc, just before the session,
and then assume in the session that the students have read it.
Anything else?
*** Make life easier for yourself by subscribing to Computers in
Classrooms at www.ictineducation.org: practical advice for teachers who
use ICT ***
----------------------
Terry Freedman, Independent Educational Technology Consultant
Home page:
http://www.ictineducation.org
Books:
http://www.lulu.com/terryfreedman
Subscriptions:
http://www.terry-freedman.org.uk/db/premiumsub/
Consultancyservices:
http://www.ictineducation.org/db/consultancy/doc_page17.html
BBC Jam - Will it be missed?
I wouldn't be sorry to see it go. £150 million of our licence fees being
thrown at (in practice) replicating what UK software houses have already
done seems at best a questionable use of licence payers money. More
accurately, it appears to be an attempt by this government to charge UK
taxpayers extra for their TV licences, to plough into making the BBC an
even more centre-controlled arm of the DfES.
Wasteful - yes.
Duplication of effort - yes.
Anti-competitive - yes.
Undermining competitiveness of UK software companies - yes (and these are
some of the few world class export companies the UK still possesses - long
term government-sponsored economic suicide)
I saw the huge stand at BETT and the fanfares - more waste there than any
of the commercial firms managed, even!
It certainly begs a few questions about what the BBC should be, should
produce, and should charge for licences. From the blog below -
"Last month, a third and final government report into the health of the
service further criticised the corporation for its failure to produce an
online curriculum that was "distinctive and complementary" to teaching
materials already in the marketplace. "
What I saw then, and earlier this month, was not particularly impressive,
and for this amount of money remarkably poor value for money. Putting that
money into UK schools would, I suspect, generate better results in
teaching, learning and UK competitiveness.
Best wishes
Rik Ludlow
Do you agree with
Rik? Either way write to me and I'll include your response in the next
issue. (The Editor)
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ICT for SEN - Forwards or Backwards?
Remembering my excitement at our first 8-bit machine (no hard disk -
no floppy, but we did have a cassette tape recorder to record our
programs) - I recall spending a computer club with my little crew of
1970's "nerds", and after 2 hours we had programmed the machine (in
machine code!) to draw a square on the monitor. Not bad on a machine with
4K of memory!
Now, the potential for enrichment via ICT is immense, and in the hands of
a trained and dedicated teacher I observe teaching that is light years
more effective, and children learning at a higher rate, than could
reasonably be achieved 30 years ago. I taught a lesson on fractions this
morning using the latest Numbershark - and the visual demo capability
meant that some almost non-verbal children with acute SEN were learning
the concept of multiplying fractions in a way that I for one could not
have taught without such a tool.
On
the other hand - I see massive amounts of budget "blown" on ICT which is
so rapidly obsolete, insurance premiums soaring, training budgets
struggling to keep up with the demands of such rapidly changing
technology. I look at the learning needs of our children. I see children
with acute SEN being taught, no longer by a teacher trained and qualified
to help them but by a well-meaning & scantily trained teaching assistant.
I see children with dyspraxic tendencies becoming more obese as they sit
at their playstations. I see children glued to an ever wider spectrum of "ICT",
iPods, TVs, computers, gaming stations, who appear to be less and less
capable of managing the simplest of social interactions.
I
just wonder whether we are in danger of losing sight of the purpose and
value of education. Are "Little Britain" and "Big Brother" really the end
product nirvana of all this extra tax expenditure?
The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
(Malcolm S. Forbes, 1919-1990, American publisher, businessman)
What do you think? Fair comment? Let us know.
Check this out, excellent online story for KS2+ children.
I had a tear in my eye! Excellent resource, and very cleverly done,
worth a look.
http://www.inanimatealice.com/
Bull Bingo - or how to keep awake in
staff/INSET meetings
HOW TO STAY AWAKE IN TEACHER INSERVICES:
Do you keep falling asleep in teacher meetings and in-services?
Here's a
way to change all of that.
1. Before (or during) your next meeting, in-service or staff
development, prepare yourself by drawing a square. 5" x 5"
is a good size. Divide the card into columns-five across and five
down.
That will give you 25 one-inch blocks.
2. Write one of the following words/phrases in each block:
* no child left behind * test scores* core competencies
*communication *
standards * multiple exposures * benchmarks
* proactive * win-win * think outside the box * action plan
* result-driven * assessments * knowledge base
* at the end of the day * touch base * mindset
* differentiated * retention * skills * background knowledge
* effective learning * exemplars * implementation * reflection
3. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those
words/phrases.
4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally,
stand up and shout "BULL!"
***TESTIMONIALS from satisfied "Bull
Bingo" players***
-- "I had been in the meeting for only five minutes when I won." -
Adam
W., Wiltshire
-- "My attention span at inservices has improved dramatically." -
David
T., W Sussex
-- "Great! Staff development will never be the same for me after my
first win." - Dan J. Dorset
-- "The atmosphere was tense in the last inservice as 14 of us
waited
for the fifth box." - Ben G, Hampshire
-- "The speaker was stunned as eight of us screamed 'BULL!' for the
third time in two hours.
If
you have a favourite joke or a video you would like to appear here, send
it!
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