Tag Archives: Internet

Slumdog Pythagoras – Minimally Invasive Education

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Inspired by Sugata Mitra at the SSAT National Conference I decided to try and ape his ‘minimally invasive education‘ within my own Maths classroom.

In a really tough December week this two hours shone out as a great teaching and learning experience.

Before going any further, please head over to my previous post to read about the inspiration for this lesson.

In a nutshell, Sugata discovered that children can teach themselves with the aid of the Internet.  His hole-in-the-wall experiment inspired the book that inspired the film Slumdog Millionaire.  He has since been investigating how to apply these findings in Western school systems.

I followed some basic rules that Sugata has developed.  I split the students into groups, each with a computer and then gave them a problem to solve.

The rules are simple:

  • Students were told to get into groups of their choice of around 4 children.
  • They had one laptop per group.
  • They could walk around and cheat, looking at what the other groups were doing.
  • They could move groups if they wanted to.
  • No input from me other than some encouragement and praise.

My Year 7 class (11-12 year olds) are an able group who I have done a little group work earlier this year.  I gave them a simple question:

Who was Pythagoras?

And with it, the text (but not diagram) of a typical GCSE question:

A ladder is leaning against a wall.  It is 5 meters long, the base of the ladder is 3.5 meters away from the wall.  How far up the wall does it reach? Continue reading →

SSAT #NC10 – Sugata Mitra

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Bio

Sugata Mitra is currently Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University.  He has spent many years in a huge number of research posts.  With regards to education he is most famous for his Hole In The Wall Experiment whereby he put an Internet enabled PC in the wall of an Indian slum in 1999 and left it there for anyone to use.

You can see the talk here, or watch his similar TED talk here.

Reflections

Sugata was charming and engaging.  The driving message that he had was that given some time and an Internet connection, children are quite proficient at teaching themselves.

He first discovered this in his now famous Hole In The Wall experiment.  I won’t go over the details of that here as you can watch the videos above or read about it in detail on Wikipedia or it’s own dedicated website.  Sugata explained that he did not go looking for this effect, however his experiments demonstrated that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Sugata calls this minimally invasive education. Continue reading →

A Progressive Approach To The Internet In School

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A post I’ve been meaning to write for many months…

Battles:

I have had my battles with Internet filtering in the past, but I’m now the man in charge.  Every school I have worked in so far in my opinion has had an old fashioned ‘head in the sand’ view to filtering and acceptable use of the Internet within school.  I’ve ranted about this in the past.

Reversing a Head In The Sand mentality. CC licensed image from David Barrie at Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/addictive_picasso/

Battleground:

I would estimate that 95% of our pupils now own a mobile phone, and that 80% of these have unrestricted access to the Internet on these devices.  This doesn’t factor in devices such as netbooks, iPod Touches and PSPs that are also brought into school.  What this leads to is unrestricted, unfiltered access to the Internet within our school, and at a pace and quality that is ever increasing.  I also regularly receive requests from teachers to block this that and the other as a classroom management tool.

Battle plan:

I strongly believe that in response to this situation we need a new approach to Internet access within schools, something that still protects our children but also that prepares them for the World in which they live.

This comes in 3 parts:

  1. An Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that is relevant, understood by all parties and linked closely to general school behaviour policies.
  2. Relatively unfiltered Internet access.
  3. Quality monitoring solutions.

Continue reading →

Facebook Groups in School?

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Facebook recently updated their Groups feature.  Allowing finer control over groups which you set up, who can join, who can post, who can share etc..   Their are also improvements to how you are notified about group updates and a new feature called ‘docs’ that provides a Google Docs-esque shared notepad / document. Group chat is also built in allowing you to talk to everyone in that group at once. For a demonstration head over to Mashable or watch this video:

So, the million dollar question… Could this be used in education? Could it be part of a VLEesque home-school link? Continue reading →

Influencing Policy Part 2: Becta-X: Old Conversations, New Connections, Bright Future?

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I was honoured to be invited to Becta-X (the x stands for exchange) during the Easter break.  The conference brought together 75 leading educators and 75 leading people from the Media sector.  Thanks to @TomBarrett for getting me the invite – truly much appreciated.

The aims of the day were:

The way the digital media industry influences young people is both a threat and a real opportunity to education. As part of its “Fit for the Future” programme Becta has asked Just-b. Productions to independently bring together thinkers and doers from both these two worlds

We hope this participatory and distributed forum will break down walls between these two sectors, between big and small, between speaker and delegate, between real and remote participants and create fresh thinking on all sides.

I’ll not describe the entire order of events, if you want the details or indeed just the perspectives of others then please have a skim through some of these posts from other educators who were in attendance:

Fred Garnett / Tom Barrett / Doug Belshaw / Dai Barnes / Kristian Still / Nicola McNee / Ewan McIntosh

As you will see from those posts there was some discussion and reflection afterwards as to how much of a success the event was.  My 2-cents worth: Continue reading →

Surfing the wave – How I filter MY Web

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The best bits of MY web (Image by Niffty on Flickr)

The Internet I love (Image by Niffty on Flickr)

Inspired by Simon Job, this is a post about how I surf the torrential tidal wave of information that is out there on the Internet, how I filter it down into a manageable stream to consume and how I save the best bits for later.

I have been using Google Reader for the last 3 years or so to read the latest updates from my favourite websites and blogs.  I have just spent about the last 4 hours tidying up my list of 400+ websites which I follow after reading an article on Lifehacker about how to declutter and streamline you google reader inbox.

I hope there are some useful tips about Google Reader, Delicious & Instapaper for newcomers to rss, and to old timers with a bulging reader like myself.

I’ve split this little guide into three sections:

  1. How I read just the best bits of the Web that I want, filtering out the noise.
  2. How I save the best bits to read later or for future reference.
  3. How I find retrieve my archived information.

I’d be fascinated to hear how you filter the Web to your liking, and whether any of this was of use to you :)

Simon Job has created a great little graphic to explain this process:

Using The Web

Using The Web

Continue reading →

We’ll post it

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Snail's Pace by Randy on Flickr

I have complained bitterly all year about the speed of our Internet connection at school, it hampers learning day after day and shows no sign of improvement.  I thought it was just me being difficult until a Capita support technician’s comment on the phone last week as an update failed and crippled our SIMS FMS system.

“So whereabouts in Manchester are you?”

“Hang on, you’re not in the Trafford black-hole are you?”

“Oh.”

“We’ll post the update out to you”
:(

Glad it’s not just my imagination then!

Roll on the new Academy and hopefully a new connection.

Questionnaires Take 2 with Twitter, Google Forms & Wallwisher

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I had an observation lesson today and decided to pull out all the technology tricks!  We happened to be at a point in the scheme of work looking at data handling and collecting data in particular.  I decided I’d develop the Questionnaires lesson which I used at interview last year.  60 minutes should be enough to do it more justice.

So here’s the plan:

  • Discuss data quality based on previous lesson
  • Tweet a link to my questionnaire and a Wallwisher for feedback on the questions
  • Fill out my questionnaire full of deliberate mistakes in class
  • Look at the live data spreadsheet
  • Groups look at the data for one question, suggest problems with the data collected, and suggest improvements to the data.
  • Discuss findings, looking at key points of: Leading Questions, Bias, Open/Closed Qs, Personal Qs, Options Boxes, Group boundaries etc.
  • Look at Twitter feedback on Wallwisher, compare to our own thoughts
  • Each team leaves one learning point on our own Wallwisher.
  • Compile new Qs into anew Questionnaire

Continue reading →

Home Access – Free Computers & Internet for Low Income Families

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Gordon Brown finally announced the Home Access programme last week. Organised by Becta this scheme will provide 270,000 households with a voucher that is redeemable for a computer along with 1 year’s Internet access, a suite of software and also support.

Families will be eligible if they have a child in Years 3-7, they have not been beneficiaries of a similar scheme in the past and they are entitled to Free School Meals or a range of other Income based benefits.

The scheme is independent of schools, although they can organise to bulk apply for the packages (I have heard this results in delays).  Parents need to call the Home Access Grant Helpline on 0333 200 1004 for an application form, they will be told over the phone if they are eligible.

All of the packages on offer include ‘Assistive Technologies’.  I saw a presentation on these at BETT last week and they do look impressive.  The base package consists of a piece of Mind Mapping software, Mind View3; Text Help Read & Write software that includes spell checking, grammar suggestion and text to speak capabilities and finally issist iZoom screen magnification software.

The second package includes specific hardware solutions such as trackballs, high contrast keyboard stickers, larger keyboards, trackpads etc..  The third package which is not ready to go yet, is for those with more specific physical needs and will include home visits and assessments if necessary.

Although not run through our school I am keen to ensure that every child that is eligible for this benefits from it, so we will be sending a letter home to all of our Year 7-9 pupils encouraging them to apply.  I will then run some form-filling drop-in evenings at school.  Over half of our pupils have English as a second language so I’m sure some of the parents will appreciate the help in completing the forms.  I’ll also be liaising closely with my SEN department to ensure that those with additional needs benefit from the assistive technology packages.

I spoke with a representative from Becta about this package.  Many of our pupils benefited for the laptops for pupils scheme a year ago, so won’t be eligible for the new schme, but would certainly benefit from the software package.  He confirmed that the package will be available in all of the approved retailers and should be under £50 which represents a considerable saving.  They are also looking into making it available to schools for their own systems.

Further details and promotional materials for schools are available from the Home Access website if you register as a school, however feel free to borrow my letter.

And also check out @simonhaughton ‘s Etherpad of ideas: http://parkfield.etherpad.com/4?

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Google’s New Operating System

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So today Google announced that they will be introducing their very own Google Chrome OS.

This follows in the wake of excellent the Google Chrome web browser which was released last year.  Designed initially for netbooks, it appears that the OS will effectively be little more than a web browser.  The beauty of this is that it will be incredibly quick and run on relatively underpowered/old hardware.

Continue reading →