Mr Gove’s BETT Speech

Well, what an interesting start to BETT!

I was really cross this morning by many of the headlines flying around, for example, Gove’s Move to Scrap Boring ICT Lessons. What a demotivating headline to read for existing ICT teachers and certainly not the way to go about instigating effective change! Many of the ICT teachers I know work very hard to ensure their lessons are exciting, innovative and engaging and I certainly did when I was head of ICT.  Mr Gove states in his speech; “Imagine the dramatic change which could be possible in just a few years, once we remove the roadblock of the existing ICT curriculum. Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11 year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations using an MIT tool called Scratch.” Erm, Mr Gove, this is happening NOW in schools all over the UK!

Anyway, away from the headline-grabbing soundbites, Mr Gove actually said that teachers no longer have to follow the National Curriculum. This is great! However, again a little outdated. As James Greenwood tweeted;” ”Truth is that many ICT teachers worth their salt have been exceeding the reqs of the NC for a long time”. Having flexibility to do what is right for your students is very important, and, despite what many may be saying in the media and indeed Mr Gove mentioned a great deal in his speech, in my opinion, that will not always be Computer Science.

I totally agree that more could be done in schools to make ICT exciting and challenging, and including programming skills which are relevant for the 21st Century, is an important way. I loved teaching Computing elements to my classes years ago. However, I do think that there is a danger of, as many people said on twitter this morning, “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. There are some elements of the ICT curriculum that are great – animation, modelling, web design for example. I know these can be incorporated into an engaging Computer Science programme, but I am concerned that “coding” will be seen as the only worthwhile activity. It’s not.

For example, I am reminded of my low ability year 9 class, a delightful bunch for whom getting that cat moving backwards in forwards in Scratch was a major achievement. Teaching them programming or coding for a prolonged period of time would be agony for everyone. So, it’s great that teachers will have the flexibility to do what is best and I hope it stays that way.

I also hope that Mr Gove will take teachers’ expertise into account during the consultation process and not simply be swayed by what big businesses, influential voices and the media are saying. Teachers such as Mark Clarkson and Andy Field have been sharing excellent practice and taking a balanced view for a number of years. Those teachers involved in #ictcurric are also very passionate about making the ICT curriculum relevant, challenging and exciting and Open Source Schools and Computing at School have been advocating many of the things he discussed in his speech for years. Mr Gove, his advisors and those baying for ICT’s blood should respect that teachers have a great deal more practical knowledge than academics, enthusiasts and big companies about what works in schools. Although such organisations have their part to play and I respect that they bring different ideas and viewpoints to the discussion, they do not have the professional training, experience and knowledge to be shaping educational policy. Great teaching is about inspiring and enthusing students and giving teachers an official pass to get on with teaching what they think is best for their students, together with the time and resources to learn new skills, is key.

Image cc gpoo

Google Sketchup Resources

Last week I was lucky enough to be asked to deliver a workshop to around 20 international delegates on the use of Google Sketchup 8 for teaching design. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and we created tables, interiors and buildings in the session. I have to say that the results were some of the most impressive I’ve ever seen (far better than my own efforts) and I put that down to the creative, design-brains of the teachers involved!

Sketchup, as many of you ICT teachers already know, is an excellent, free resource for teaching 3D modelling, design, architechture (amongst many other things). It integrates brilliantly with Google Earth and really fires up the imagination. Perfect for a bit of pre-Christmas fun in the classroom!

I’d like to share the resources we used on the day – these are resources for learning, rather than teaching Sketchup. I have included a mind-map of teaching ideas and a quick idea for a pet home project. The resources are all available here. Please use as you wish.

Google Apps Workshops Autumn Term

We are delighted to be running three Google Apps for Education Workshops this Autumn Term with great Google Certified Teachers and Trainers. As always, the workshops will be packed full of ideas, examples and hands-on activities, leaving you full of ideas and enthusiasm for using Google’s free tools in your class and school.

Places on all workshops are limited, so book your place now!

Google Apps Hants  on Monday 17th October.

Google Apps Zero to Hero in Gateshead in collaboration with Vital and Synechism on Wednesday 16th November 2011

Google Apps to Engage Students & Support Literacy at Holywell High School on Thursday 10th November 2011.

Open For Education

My presentation from the Open for Education conference.

Education is Going Google

Zoe Ross is founder of DoDigital, a social enterprise which promotes the creative use of technology in education. A ICT teacher, Zoe is a Google Certified Trainer and together with other Google Certified Teachers is running a Google Apps for Education workshop on 8th June in London.

Summer Workshops

Last week we launched DoDigital’s summer workshop programme for teachers. As always, the workshops will be fast-paced, hands-on and focussed on teaching and learning, the emphasis being on our core belief that ICT should be creative, engaging and inspiring.

I’m particularly excited by the collaborative workshops that are going to be happening with some of those teachers that have, and continue to inspire me, in my own professional career.

For example, the ICT teachers that are joining me for the Creative ICT for KS3 workshop all share the same philosophy in making ICT a more dynamic, engaging, challenging and exciting subject. Subsequently, the sessions they will lead, from which teachers can choose, cover a fantastic range of topics, from App Inventor to Google Sketchup, Flash and Aviary, which really can transform ICT lessons in school.

There is much interest in Google Apps for Education at the moment, for a variety of reasons, particularly to do with the superb collaborative learning opportunities provided by Google’s suite and the low (free!) cost. Therefore, I am absolutely thrilled that some of those educators with both enthusiasm for Google Apps and experience of using Google tools in a variety of ways within their own classrooms and schools are joining me for the Google Apps training workshop.

Sheffield Deputy Head Julian Wood will also be sharing his considerable expertise and great enthusiasm for web2.0 tools to inspire writing in the Storytech Workshop he is delivering where he will demonstrate how digital technologies can be used to enhance written and oral storytelling and raise achievement in literacy.

There are also workshops in using Scratch & BYOB, Primary Computing, and using Flash and Dreamweaver. They promise to be inspirational days which will support teachers in using innovative technology in their classrooms and schools to support good practice, encourage creativity and help teachers to teach and students to learn. That’s what it’s all about.

City Learning Centres: the end?

In this guest post, Terry Freedman, respected independent ICT consultant, discusses the fate of City Learning Centres.

Becta. The Harnessing Technology grant. Building Schools for the Future. The once-familiar landmarks of the English educational technology landscape are disappearing or gone. The indications are that they are being followed by City Learning Centres. These CLCs, set up around a decade ago to both provide facilities for local businesses and serve as beacons of innovation and excellence to the schools in a locality, are being closed down, threatened with closure, or reduced in staffing and funding. The question is, though: should we mourn?

While many (possibly all) CLCs have carried out excellent work, there is a case for saying that they are becoming increasingly irrelevant, if not inappropriate. Despite the recent cuts in educational budgets, the facts remain that over the last 14 years we have enjoyed an unprecedented investment in educational ICT, at the same time as advances in technology and falling prices have enabled all schools to have acquired a quantity and variety of ‘kit’ which not that long ago would have seemed as likely as finding Shangri La.

During this period there has been a change in perceptions, not unconnected with the developments described above, about the desirability or otherwise of there being a computer lab in schools. The prevailing majority view these days is that the technology needs to be where students want to use it, rendering the concept of a computer room redundant. (I’m not saying I wholeheartedly agree with this view; I am merely reporting its existence.)

All this being the case, is it not a rather archaic practice to have children visit an outside location in order to see and take part in exciting ICT work? If taking a class along a corridor to a computer room is no longer acceptable, how can taking them outside the school completely even be considered?

I have a more philosophical objection to CLCs. They were created in order that schools could see new technology, and do exciting things with it. The phrase often heard was “cutting edge”. Apart from the fact that I, personally, saw almost nothing that I would describe as truly remarkable, surely this is a clear case of the technology tail wagging the pedagogy dog? What makes something exciting is how it is used to solve a problem. Doing something like, say, making and editing digital videos is, in itself pointless. There needs to be a reason for doing so. Besides, the actual technology skills involved in such activities are largely irrelevant anyway: it’s the development of ‘soft’ skills like co-operating with other people through different roles — like scriptwriter, camera person, editor –  that matters more, surely?

You could argue that the point about playing around with new kit is that you don’t know what kind of problems you could solve with it until you’ve experimented with it. You might suggest that we may not even think of these problems until we’ve explored the technology. You’d be right. But surely the answer – or at least a better answer – would have been to have given the money to schools in the form of an innovation fund? When I headed up a large team in a Local Authority I set aside around £1000 a year for ‘innovation’. This was nearly ten years ago, so that was an even more substantial amount of money than it sounds.

We used this money to try out new-fangled devices like visualisers (document cameras), tablet computers, mobile devices, student response systems and other exciting stuff. Sometimes, of course, we acquired evaluation versions, which saved us money, but the money was there if we needed it. The innovation fund idea was definitely a good one, because it enabled us to experiment and then – and this is the critical bit I think – advise colleagues on (a) whether the kit was worth investing in and (b), if so, what they could do with it. We were able to demonstrate the equipment and even use it for real purposes, such as when we wheeled out the student response system for senior management meetings.

Having an innovation fund, together with an enlightened approach by my bosses which meant that failure, ie buying something which turned out to be useless, was very much an option, proved pivotal to our success as a team. We were able to discuss what kit to buy, and then try it out and discuss it when convenient to ourselves. Had we have been obliged to book a slot in a room belonging to an external organisation in order to try out equipment which we had no or little say in purchasing, I daresay we wouldn’t have done so. Apart from anything else, there simply would not have been the time.

There are problems with giving people the brief of doing something ‘cutting edge’ without also imposing on them the obligation to answer that most dreaded of questions: ‘so what?’. I saw some pretty mundane stuff at one particular CLC, but because the person in charge did not feel an obligation to assess its impact on learning and achievement it went largely unchallenged.

Also, some pretty silly buildings were constructed, the kind designed by architects out to win design awards rather than provide a working educational environment. And the waste! When you give people the task of spending a sack-full of money on software, spend it they will – regardless of whether something even better could have been acquired through Open Source means.

Equality of access is another issue. Where CLCs were built next to or as part of an existing school, as often as not that school would either be given, or would assume, greater rights of access than other schools. That meant they could take up valuable time and resources  using the CLC as, in effect, an extra classroom, while a school down the road would have been delighted to have had more opportunities to do real cutting edge stuff.

So what is the future of CLCs, and what might we hope for? There’s no doubt that many CLCs have excellent staff who have developed brilliant practices, expertise and resources over the years.  It would be unfortunate to lose all this if losing it is unnecessary. A great idea would be to implement the solution adopted by one Local Authority I am familiar with, that of creating a virtual CLC. This dispenses with the need for a dedicated building. Instead, the CLC staff are based in different schools on a rotational basis. They work with pupils and teachers in the schools, taking the relevant kit with them. That requires a discussion about aims and problems to be solved, and assessment, and involves no loss of teaching time taken up travelling to and from an external centre. There are no extra facilities or building costs, only the staffing costs (which, admittedly, are often substantial).

Clearly, such a solution is not without its challenges, not the least of which is moving equipment around and setting up shop in a new environment every year. But it has the merits of not only addressing many of the drawbacks of CLCs as we have come to know them, but of retaining the staff and, crucially, keeping alive the main underlying reason for having CLCs in the first place, that of encouraging innovation.

Terry Freedman is an independent educational ICT consultant. He publishes the ICT in Education website and blog, and Computers in Classrooms, the free e-newsletter for those with a professional interest in educational ICT.

Becoming a Google Apps for Education Certified Trainer

This article first appeared as a guest post at ICT in Education.

The Purpose of Education

A Two-Way Street
Yesterday, I visited a group of 8 and 9 year old children taught by Peter Rafferty at Green Park School. I came home and deleted all I had written in several days of planning this blog post.

The way in which the children conducted themselves and the work they shared left me astounded. Several pupils discussed and explained their work and one boy took to the interactive whiteboard for 15 minutes to give a relaxed and proficient demonstration of how he customises his WordPress blog, adds his own widgets and edits the html code.

Only this weekend I had been discussing with other teachers whether WordPress was a suitable blogging tool for children of this age, and several teachers held the view that WordPress was too complicated. The pupils I met yesterday demonstrated with great aplomb that this is not the case. They made me view things differently and see previously unknown possibilities. That is, for me, the purpose of education.

Opening Minds
I was lucky to be brought up in a home where books were plentiful, school was supported and hard work expected (although as a teenager ‘lucky’ is not a word I would have used). However, my experiences as a teacher, particularly my time as head of year, have taught me that this is not the case for many children.

Someone* recently tweeted that during a reading survey, some children indicated that they had no books in their house. This is the reality for a large section of society for whom sensational and imbalanced red-top media, which serves merely to perpetuate stereotypes, is the only acceptable reading material.

For the young people, and indeed adults, for whom this is the case, education can and should help them to think more broadly about previously unknown topics, enabling them to see the possibilities of what they can achieve and encouraging them to fulfil their potential.

Education, for so many people, is their escape route; a way out of poverty, abuse or a lifetime of mediocre achievement and happiness. However, many young people do not have the confidence in either themselves or those adults around them to enable them to see this. It is very daunting for students who would like to break out of the mold that society and their upbringing has created around them. Education can ensure that they are given access to ways in which they can take alternative paths and help them to construct a roadmap to guide them through the minefield of life.

Giving young people, and adults, the confidence to think for themselves, challenge widely held opinions and present their ideas in a coherent and persuasive manner are all, in my view, key purposes of education.

Thus, supported, relaxed and collaborative learning environments in which children are encouraged to try new ideas and see different possibilities in their world, are essential components of any formalised education system. This was demonstrated deftly in the classroom I visited yesterday and I look forward to seeing them again to continue my own education.

*If it was you, please let me know and I’ll credit you!

Google Apps for Education UK User Group #GUUG11

Image cc Graeme Fowler

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the Google Apps for Education UK User Group or #GUUG11 organised by Martin Hamilton at Loughborough University.

It was a fantastic event and a great opportunity to hear and discuss how Universities such as Loughborough and Portsmouth have rolled out Google Apps for EDU. Niall Sclater, the Director of Learning Innovation at the The Open University gave a particularly engaging discussion of how his organisation has adopted Google Apps for their students.

Similarly, it was interesting to hear from Jaguar Land Rover about how their business has migrated to Google Apps and given that the scale of these organisations is very different from the schools and businesses I usually work with, very informative. Much of the focus for these larger organisations was naturally, on the migration and use of Gmail as opposed to the entire Apps suite, so I look forward to hearing more in the future about how some of the innovative and collaborative practices that are going on in schools can be utilised at University level.

Interestingly, most Universities had also rolled out Apps to their students first, which replicates experiences in schools where students are the driving factor in change and Google is talking their language.

From a personal perspective, using Google Books , particularly the awe inspiring fact that over 15million books are now available to search and read online, and Youtube for Edu remain exciting opportunities for all educational organisations. Understandably, given the audience demographic, there was much interest in these fantastic resources during the panel session.

In fact, the opportunity to meet the hugely enthusiastic Google Apps for EDU team again was great, especially the open question and answer session at the end of the day. As someone mentioned yesterday, the opportunity to hear it from the horse’s mouth is invaluable when dealing with the ever-evolving innovation of Google Apps.

The Google team were keen to point out that they are focusing on usability improvements and that there will be many more exciting Google Apps announcements in the coming months. Great!

From a staff and productivity point of view, the ability for users to use Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office to sync their office documents to Google Apps is a great move and the promise of the reintroduction of being able to access Docs offline using HTML5, both of which which will be rolled out later this year.

Overall it was a suberb event, organised in a brilliantly slick and understated manner by Martin Hamilton and his great team who could teach many event organisers a thing or two.

In terms of my own presentations, I demonstrated using Google Labs in the Open Mike slot and shared the stage with Mark Allen to discuss how Google Apps for EDU is being used in primary and secondary schools. My slides for my second presentation are below.