Category Archives: EdTech

Posts relating to technology in education.

Mobile, Personalised Learning – The Essa Academy

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These are my notes from a fascinating day at the Essa Academy, courtesy of Apple. We were treated to a tour and talks by a number of staff including the Principal - Showk Badat, Abdul Chohan & Jeff Ellis.

I was fascinated by not just the integration of mobile technologies (they are famous for giving every pupil an iPod Touch, and now, every teacher an iPad), but also their innovative New Basics Year 7 curriculum and their elective personalised curriculum for years 8-11. I was also impressed by the fantastic pupils and the excellent learning that we saw.

Below are basically my notes as I took them, I hope they’re of interest to some people and I will reflect on them further in relation to my IT Provision Plans.

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IT Provision in Secondary Schools in 2011

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Another what’s the best way forward? blog post where I try and dissect my own thinking on what IT provision should look like in a Secondary School in 2011.  Continue the current mix of laptop trolleys and IT suites or move towards a 1 to 1 environment of tablets or laptops?

iPad at age 2

Are tablets the answer?

Financial Planning

This year so far has been all about planning ahead for me. We’ve started the process of planning two completely new courses to deliver to our students in ICT, and I’m delighted that both GCSE Computing & Creative iMedia have enough students interested for me to run both courses next year.

Next on my hit-list is managing & planning our IT provision across the whole site for the next few years. Our school has always been relatively cash-rich for a variety of reasons. This is not the case going forward.  Despite Michael Gove & the Conservatives’ claims that they would not cut school budgets we are receiving less money this year than we have previously. This is after we take into account the pupil premium (and being situated in Central Manchester we have an above average percentage of Free School Meals). All of this at the same time as costs are increasing thanks to the Government’s removal of the Harnessing Technology Grant. Historically the IT Support team has been given a fairly modest budget with which they maintain the existing equipment and add some provision each year.  Replacement of entire suites / trolleys etc have then been funded by ‘Summer Projects’ funded from surplus school cash. I am acutely aware that the surplus school cash may well not be here next Summer and it is time we plan and budget ahead carefully for the next 2-5 years.  And so I come to my current position where I am left impressed at the cost of continuing as we are, yet thinking there must be a better way…. Continue reading →

#LWF11 – Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia – Evolving The Dream & Final Questions

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Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.

Another presenter who is challenged by presenting ‘in the round’!

Seeing a massive change in the quality and quantity of informal learning.  Talk about the dream of free knowledge for everyone.  Free access to the sum of all human knowledge.

What is free access?  Free as in speech, not as in beer.  Something more fundamental.  Free to redistribute and re-use all of Wikipedia.

What is the sum of all human knowledge? Wikipedia is not an archive or library, nor a textbook, can be an adjunct to a textbook.  Not designed to lead you through the learning.  Not Youtube, no funny cat videos, try to keep things serious.  Encyclopedia offers a summary of human knowledge.

Joked about being sick of seeing his face on the website calling for donations to the charity.   Around 50 employees and a budget of $21million.  It’s the 100,000 contributors who make it happen.  All design and content is done by the community.

16 million articles across 270 languages.  199 languages have at least 1000 articles.  Over a million in English German and French.  Abandoned China for 3 years due to censorship.  But was made accessible again around the Olympics, just with certain pages e.g. Taiwan, Tianneman being filtered.  But only ranked around no.50 in China as a website.

Showed some funny Chinese menus translated into English and ended up with Stir Fried Wikipedia, probably due to it being first entry for every search on the internet:

Global content comparisons using a graph of % of page hits for the top 100 topics:  Similar written content across countries.  But readers vary more.  Japanese love searching for pop culture.  Germans most interested in Geography!  Sex very popular except in France and Spain - because they are actually having sex while the rest of us just read it on the Internet!

Wikipedia has 408 million unique visitors (per how long?).

Who is writing Wikipedia?  Important to know for young people as it is such a dominant source of information for young people.

  • 87% male. Too many computer geeks!  Want to simplify the editing interface.  Excluding women but also elderly and other less confident users.
  • Average age 26.
  • Double % PhDs – geekier crowd than normal
  • People at the intersection between intelligence, obsession and free time!
  • Invitation is in the edit button to allow people to take part – nice quote from a ‘user’ in a video Jimmy showed

What is beyond the encyclopedia?  Encyclopedia is just the start.

Library is much much bigger.  Wikia is Jimmy’s next project to take over the rest of the library.  Place for people to dig deeply into, used example of comparing the entries for Twilight the novel.  No need for the ‘source’ in Wikia, more opinions and discussions.  Went on to talk about Lostpedia, which was created on Wikia to write about Lost the TV programme.  Believe that the writers took great inspiration from the fans documenting it, the show was something of a wiki in it’s self.

Jimmy’s final point: How can we get the learners involved in the creation of their learning?

As big a sales pitch as some other talks today, but enthralling.  If only because of the influence it has on our learners, it’s so often their number one source.  Who needs to know the dates of Kings & Queens when it’s a search away?

Final questions with Jimmy, Lord Puttnam & Graham:

Good point in the questions that the whole idea of Wikipedia was seen as complete madness beforehand.  Which feeds into the ideas from Stephen & Lord Puttnam of this next multi-billion making innovation potentially being in the sphere of learning.  Lord Puttnam later added that he thought that great innovation would stem from the games industry.

Great anecdote from Lord Puttnam about someone challenging a member of parliament in parliament as they searched on their phone about a speech from the week before and pointed out that what they were saying was not true and that they were contradicting themselves.  Something that happens more and more in the classroom.

Great question asked of Jimmy as to whether a step by step learning based wiki could be built that would transform free education with a crowd sourced curriculum.  The foundation have tried a variation with wiki-books but it has struggled as software not suited to assessment etc..  But also problems with fragmented educational standards.  One of the big things that inspire people to take part is that they know someone will use their contribution.  Jimmy thinks that people would feel that schools couldn’t use their content in the classroom -I’d disagree with this quite strongly.  So many of us blog about our teaching BECAUSE we hope someone else might find it useful in their classroom.  However he does think it should be possible.

Final question was about what 3 things you’d have in a new school.  Lord Puttnam points out that it’s easy to do great things in a school but it’s really difficult to scale to every school.  Jimmy would want to see increased teaching of media competence and the ability to assess the quality of a source of information, in context of Wikipedia – how do you use it as a starting point to go deeper into a topic.  Fantastic point to finish on.

And that’s it – battery nearly flat on the laptop, and internal batteries exhausted – interesting day of live blogging, will read back later and see if there was any quality to it or if I just missed the salient points through distraction!

#LWF11 – Lord David Puttnam of Queensgate

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Lord David Puttnam, man of many hats, but perhaps pertinently Chairman of Futurelab:

Joked that Stephen Heppel and he had have achieved so little in the last 20 years!  Not yet a state where what’s best for the child is also what’s best for the child.

Left film industry as it had ceased to be inspirational in it’s use of tech and thought more could be done in educational policy.  Sadly was wrong in hindsight.

Barely begun to explore how technology can transform education.  Digital creation economy is fastest growing.  PwC report shows us as poor exporters of our services.  Education has prospective growth as an industry for the UK.  Could be a driver of growth in modern & competitive world.  More dignified than Financial Services!

Significant division within government on the role of technology in education.

Platforms and technologies have become embedded in the daily lives of teachers, they too are now digital natives.

How did we get ourselves into this mess when BETT has 70 education ministers from around the world?

Digitising old practices seeks to simply get the old outcomes only faster.

What would a digital curriculum look like if disruption did take place?

Apple re-imagined the computer and phone. Disrupted those markets.  Even got a joke about Flash in for the iPad 2!  The App economy has consequentially changed the landscape for software.

Mobile tech is close to reaching every single human being on Earth.  So where is the specific disruption that will change the way we learn?  When will we recognise the learning that takes place in creating a Youtube video or collaborate within an online World?  Our job is to build ontop of these experiences and develop them into learning opportunities.

Worst possible moment to abandon use of tech within learning, but exactly the right moment to re-start the discussions about technology in learning.  Need to talk about what the World of work will look like in 2020-2030 when the students of today begin work.

Next multi-billion invention may be in the field of learning.  Fitting in with Stephen Heppel’s evolution from earlier.

Imagine being able to lower the amount of time spent in school, increasing the productivity.  Would allow us to revisit the economic discussions around school.  Higher productivity, higher skills, higher wages could let the teaching industry enjoy higher prestige.

Young people have less time to listen to ‘corporate speak’, dialogue makes online connections work.  Expect to be active participants within a discussion.  To win back their trust we need to engage effectively with their World.  Need to move technology to the core of their learning.

No matter how gifted or charismatic you are you will never effectively teach someone who does not relate to and respect you.

No education system can be better than the quality of teachers.  Teacher training in digital age has to be continuing. With paid time out for development.

We have to become far far more persuasive in getting our message across.

Another impassioned and inspiring call to action – I think he and Stephen may have been talking before today!

LWF11 Prof Andrew Blake – MD: Microsoft Research Cambridge – NUI

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Talk about NUI - Natural User Interfaces (no touch).

Obvious plug for Kinect.  Showed Anybot robot that allows you to attend a meeting without actually being there. Talked through other examples of such tech.

Challenges of creating Kinect: Have to be able to capture body pose.  Come in many shapes, sizes and flexibilities! Depth camera made all this possible.  Prof Blake spent quite some time doing the Professor thing by going into the science of Kinect.

Similar tech that developed from Autism work is now allowing computers to detect emotion in faces.

Big final plug for Computer Science.  Is changing the World.  Seriously concerned about the decline in uptake in schools.  NOT the same as ICT.  Computer Science is about providing the computing and is an exciting intellectual challenge.

Final point is salient from this morning’s last few talks and a good call to arms on what was otherwise a bit too geeky a presentation for my liking!

#LWF11 David Braben – Frontier Developments & Legendary Games Designer

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David is one of our greatest games designers, I was excited to hear him talk as I’ve been playing his games since the 80s!

What motivates kids today?  Fame, money, instant gratification.  Not hard work and days of graft.  So are today’s kids doomed?

Games are a great weapon for education, as Dawn greatly pre-empted.  Games motivate kids in small easy steps with a real sense of progression and feedback, linking back nicely to Derek’s first talk of the day.

Ironically kids will do the hard slog ‘grinding’ in games, and di get the ‘secret learning’ that Dawn spoke of.

There is great learning even in ‘violent’ games, e.g. creation of content within Halo.

Crucially games are accessible. On consoles rather than PCs.  There are not huge learning steps needed to produce something with the game creation tools.  The motive and learning is there already as kids have played the games.

Most of the more raw tools are not easily accessed by teachers and pupils, e.g. XBox

David learnt on Acorns etc when programming was more accessible and ‘cool’.

How hard can it be to create something?  Not that hard.

David and a group from Cambridge have come up with Raspberry Pi, a device and open source framework to help take things to the next stage and look at Programming.  HDMI, ARM CPU, Linux, Wireless but made in small indestructible capsule.  Could you give one to every pupil?  Looking to trial this year.

Always had a problem with ICT, as every kid he talks to says ICT is dull!  Focussed on MS tools.  Such a far cry from the self-driven learning that happens and the skills needed for the industry.  Turned interested kids off and confirmed to those with little interest and experience that it wasn’t for them.  Showed UCAS data showing Computer Science applicants crashing with the first ICT students going through school.

Wants to give kids with no home PC’s access to the Web and to programming and all that it includes.

David showed a real passion for re-engaging our young pupils with computing rather than ICT and a good understanding of the issues that the discrete subject of ICT faces.  I think Dawn & co’s work shows that we need to move away from ICT as a discrete subject sooner rather than later.  And in it’s place push Computing as a more viable and interesting option.  Interesting take on the access to traditional PCs in the home.  I really need to accurately survey our pupils and find just what technology they do have available in the home.

#LWF11 Dawn Hallybone – Games Based Learning in Primary

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Disclaimer: I would consider Dawn a friend, thanks to many interactions via Twitter & Teachmeets etc even though we’ve only met a handful of times..  I won’t go into great detail about the work she has done as her blog has details of it all. LWF Bio.

Dawn discussed using Nintendo DS & Wii with the pupils are so engaged in their learning that Dawn doesn’t really need to be greatly involved for large parts of the lessons.  Writing and learning underpins the gaming experience.

Sharing via Twitter and Teachmeet have been great inspirations for Dawn.  Redbridge game network has allowed them to share their knowledge and their resources.

They have developed great cross-currciular learning projects, with games based learning as a small inspirational part of it.  Kids enjoy their ‘secret learning’

Dawn’s school and the Redbridge network have began to look at evidence.  There are clear signs that Maths & English are improving, very clear signs that engagement, attendance and punctuality are improved considerably.

Again this is an example of fantastic innovation in Primary classrooms, this innovation needs to spread into the Secondary classroom.  How can we do this?  Costs are higher and timetables don’t make things easy.  I think we need strong leaders who can remove these traditional constraints.  And again, as Dawn said it;s about sharing the good practice that has gone one already.  Borrowing the great work that has happened via the Consolarium in Scotland that Derek Robertson spoke about earlier.  One school in the research group is Secondary.

Inspirational as ever – well done Dawn!

#LWF11 David Samuelson, Pearson – Game Based Learning

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David Samuelson is the grandly titled Director of Games & Augmented Reality Type!

A third of Pearson’s revenues now through digital content.  Showed wonder, focus and engagement of playing games through Philip Toledano’s photography . Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi‘s state of flow covered again.

Learning in games:  Discussed the phenomenon of Farmville and the wealth of stats that are crunched by players.  Then onto Poptropica which is developed by Pearson, 10 million visitors spending at least 25 mins per session.  Jeff Kenney had the inspiration for a 2D world that kids could explore.  Now a publishing platform that has different islands for different books and IPs.  Kids now creating and sharing videos online of their playing in Poptropica – fantastic learning takes place.

Sandra Day O’Conner: “If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn”.

Shifts are compelling in the game world. Women bigger proportion now than 17 years and younger boys.  Fastest growing sector. Will soon be bigger than move and music combined.

David is interested in mash-ups, looking at how new technologies can be integrated into their learning products.  Spot & Topsy & Tim now available on the iPad.  Ladybird developing other brands on the iPad.

Newsgames is a new book by Ian Bogost about playing games in journalism.

Gaming has potential to engage and enthrall in many aspects of learning.

Although mentioning a number of Pearson’s products throughout his speech (as you would expect), David showed a genuine enthusiasm for games based learning and a good knowledge of the opportunities that are available.

#LWF11 Ray Mcguire – Sony Vice President Sony UK

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Inspired by Ewan McIntosh & David Muir to blog while I watch at Learning Without Frontiers 2011, instead of making notes and probably never getting round to blogging them!
Ray started by talking through the position of Sony within the industry and then talking through his daughters life mapping key tech developments such as the birth of Facebook and her first mobile phone against pictures of her early years – nice.  Still to this day she is not allowed to use technology in schools.
It’s not long since this technology hit us.  When is the right time to invest in technology as it changes so quickly?
33% drop in ICT GCSE uptake between 2006-2009.  Doom and gloom?  Depends who’s looking at it and what are they looking for?

Government view: avoiding double dip recession and encouraging growth.

Education view, needs to be a commercial relationship.  Infrastructure needs to be in place.  Content is key.  How do we use these things and how do we blend them into the learning environment that we know.  Not changing pedagogy, enhance with rich digital content.  Overlay a web-based area on top of a VLE. Free content, sponsored content, museum content.  PURCHASED content, allowing revenue such as textbooks now.

A can of worms.  Who is responsible?  Who are the stakeholders – all of us!  Funding?

We need value for money, there is a STEM agenda (not well understood), deflated after cuts, relevant content to engage.

How can Sony help?

Private & Public partnership.  Integrate games & interactive media into curriculum.  Promote digital content creation as a career choice.  Bring textbooks to life.

National Digital Curriculum needed.  Broadcast great practice.  Create practice based

Sony will:

Develop Second Sight PSP – great but there are cheaper free version of VR Codes out there now?  Teacher packs for LBP.  Eyepet PS3 AR. LBP best game creation tool?  Sony will collect evidence? Vital for getting government engagement. www.interactivelx.com (iLX) – sponsored by Sony to collate evidence. Also running courses and supporting teaching ideas.

Summary: Time is right now. Can’t wait. Collaboration required. Needs high level endorsement. Needs budget.

Not sure how engaging and interesting this talk was on reflection.  Was a considerable plug for Sony.  But at least a call for more collaboration between the industry and the education sector and an acknowledgement that the government needs to help.