Last week I was asked to present to the current cohort of PGCE students on digital technology. I decided to try and make it as hands on as possible so booked us in to a computer room. Conscious of the time available, and the variety of previous experience, I set the students three pre session tasks.
1. Watch the Did you know video from a couple of years ago
2. Post one example of their use of technology so far to a linoit wall
3. Sign up for Twitter
I tried to cover ideas for teaching, learning and CPD in the session, but mindful of the fact I could never cover everything built in a block of time at the end for them to experiment with Twitter. I tried to demo as much as I could, getting them to use online sticky walls, presenting with a Google Presentation and bringing in some ideas and comments from Twitter.
The feedback was pretty positive. There were a few problems with the computer I was using, so the idea I had to grow some further ideas around their existing practice had to be dropped, but generally it went well. I’ve also struggled to edit the linoit wall after the students had posted to it, so I might be inclined to go back to wallwisher next time.
You can see the slides from the session below:
I bundled five links together using bitly, including the slides, the linoit wall and a collection of links for further reading. You can access them here.
You can find the students on Twitter via this list. Some of them are already engaging really well – please do check them out and give them a follow.
The purpose of education is to allow learning to happen.
A little twee? Perhaps.
Maybe I can tell you a few stories to explain what I mean? Are you sitting comfortably?
A few years ago I was involved in a new skills curriculum at our school. We wanted to make sure there was some kind of celebratory event at the end of the year, and because the ethos of the whole thing had been to hand power over to the students as much as possible we did just that. We sent out the invites – to parents, to staff, to primary colleagues. We gave the students two weeks planning time. Then, at 2 o’clock on a slightly damp Tuesday in July we turned over an empty hall to 40 year 7 students and told them they had an hour to impress us.
I’m not sure I have ever been more amazed.
In that hour they so surpassed not just my expectations but also my wildest dreams that I began to wonder what else they could achieve if we just gave them the chance..
Story two
A few years earlier and several thousand miles away a professor was wondering what would happen if you provided an internet connection into the slums of New Deli. Not a classroom, not instructions, just an internet connection.
That professor was Sugatra Mitre and if you haven’t yet heard him tell this story, then I’d urge you to go and do so either via his Ted talk (if you’ve only got 18 minutes) or this keynote (if you’ve got a little longer)
In short, he too, was amazed at what happens if you provide the right stimulus and let students get on with it. His conclusion was that learning was an ‘emergent property’ – we just need to get the conditions right. No teachers, no interactive whiteboards. Just a way of tapping into and encouraging the natural curiosity that makes us all human.
A third story
I was the first person in my family to go to University. I knew what I wanted to be (a librarian). I knew where i wanted to study (Aberystwyth), so I worked for a year after my A Levels to build up some savings and off I went.
My brother also knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to travel. So he saved his money and went off on various adventures around the world.
Both our journeys taught us many things. Both were perfectly valid. Only, our mum didn’t have to have a row in the Co-op with one of my teachers because they didn’t agree with my plan.
I quickly decided that Librarianship wasn’t for me. I switched to a Joint Honours degree with History, got heavily involved in the Student media and then the Students Union and it was those things (rather than the formal education) that gave me the skills, motivation and self-belief to decide a few years after graduating to move into teaching. My brother stuck to his plan. Now, ten years on, my brother is married and living in Canada. He now feels that some more formal education would be useful to him. But it’s going to cost him a lot of money to get it, because he’s “had his chance”.
So what?
Well, if the purpose of education is to let learning happen, I’m not sure we’re doing a good enough job yet.
Why is it that despite those students showing 5 years ago just what they could do, we are still not regularly giving them the freedom to do so?
Why is it that the lessons of the work of Mitre and others don’t seem to be filtering through to our policy makers and school leaders?
Why is that the vested interests and the status quo lead many in teaching to reject, without question, any alternatives to the conveyer belt model of education we have grown into in the West.
A final story.
A scientist takes two frogs and two pans of water. He places one frog in a pan of water and puts it on to boil. The second frog he leaves while he boils the water in the second pan. Once the water is hot, he drops the frog in. It, not unsurprisingly, leaps out. Meanwhile the first frog slowly boils to death.
I suspect that if you dropped us into the current educational system, given everything else we know about people, about learning and about life, we might act like that second frog.
What’s it going to take before we wake up and realise that the water around is boiling, and it’s boiling away the enthusiasm of many of those still sitting in the pan?
I watched with interest the twitter stream coming from @titanicrealtime- especially their use of hashtags to try and get a sense of the various perspectives of different people involved in the sailing and the accident.
This follows the innovative use of Twitter by the National Archives using the cabinet papers to tweet as the UK cabinet during WW2 - @ukwarcabinet
It got me thinking
1. Does anyone know of any others?
2. I quite like the idea of setting this up as a project for yr 9. I’ve sent them away to think about what events they could ‘live tweet’, but what else would you like to see given this treatment?
There’s a growing buzz at the moment around digital badges, and I’m going to try and put down my thoughts, specifically on the following:
Why I was initially so negative, and why I now think I was wrong
One possible vision for the delivery of ICT embedding student choice and badges.
I first came across the idea of digital badges (specifically the Mozilla Open Badges project) from Doug Belshaw. Initially I was so dismissive of the idea I didn’t even bother following the links. I think my initial scepticism came from the following:
All the previous attempts I’ve seen at providing some kind of accreditation for ‘extra curricular’ activities have been deeply flawed and had little student buy-in
I’m not a ‘gamer’. Never have been. Don’t have the skills required, or the patience / curiosity needed to aquire them. This is also true of jogsaw puzzles. It just seems to me there’s a more productive use of my time. While I accept that there is much to be learned from the ideas around ‘gamifiying’ the curriculum I’m probably going to need more persuading than most
A growing concern that any ‘badges’ or rewards system (such as my school’s merit system) is at most ineffective and at worst damaging, through the value it places on extrinsic rewards (read Carol Dweck and others for a demolition of this)
I haven’t yet found the opening for badges in either my use of Edmodo, or in something like Classdojo (Caveat – this says more about me than either of the tools, I know many teachers making great use of both)
Doug’s initial blog post of one possible idea didn’t help dispell any of these concerns, however a few weeks ago I decided to follow some links from this post and ended up completing the Badges 101 quiz. Anyone watching may well have seen the lightbulb going on over my head. This had the potential to be powerful stuff indeed.
If you haven’t registered and completed badges 101 yet, I really would urge you to stop at this point and go and do it. It’ll take you no more than 5 minutes and the rest of this post might make more sense. Then come back.
This idea, combined with the more student centred approach I’ve been trying to develop in my ICT teaching over the last few years (my current moto: Get out of the way) has lead me to imagine a new way of delivering ICT at KS3. I’m sure there any many problems with this, but this is intended as an initial sketch.
Before we get on to this, much of the talk on twitter at the moment is around the idea of replacing ‘ICT’ with ‘Digital Studies’ in England and the great work going on in re imaging what this might look like. This suggestion is not (yet) part of those ideas for two reasons:
1. In Wales we still have the ICT NC which needs to be followed
2. The posts I’ve read on digital studies are still quite teacher centred – the teacher decides what topic is to be followed when and how. I’m looking at the possibilities offered by the technology to do something a little more student centred.
That said, I would urge you to have a look at the digital studies wiki and some of the great blog posts coming out from those involved in developing the idea. You can follow the #digitalstudies hashtag on Twitter to look out for these.
To me, there are two main problems with the current ICT curriculum.
The first is that students are coming in to us with a huge range of existing skills and experience and this is getting wider year on year. This is making traditional ‘teacher led’ lessons virtually impossible. We’ve moved towards a more open, problem solving approach recently, but I still feel there is work to be done providing support for weaker students and letting those at top really fly.
Secondly, in some cases, the work students are doing outside the class that is far more advanced that the work we’re doing in class. I’d like some way for that to be noted and accredited.
So, what would the new system look like?
KS3 would have access to a series of self contained ‘challenges’ based around software, tools, websites etc. Each would be hosted (probably on Moodle) with all the materials needed (either in the form of videos, text instructions or links) along with a forum to provide community support.
Some of these would be compulsory, others would be optional. Some would be quite prescriptive, others would be more open. Some would be traditional ‘ICT’ tasks, others would be more ‘computing’ based, others could open up some of the issues around digital literacies and digital society. Challenges would be of a range of difficulties, and students would be free to start at which ever point they felt appropriate. They could move straight to the assessment task at the end, or complete a series of warm up activities if they needed.
The successful completion of a challenge would earn a badge. Until the Open Badges framework was ready these could be awarded either in Edmodo or using a Moodle plugin
Much of the content would come from existing ICT resources, it would just need to be repackaged. Others could be developed over time, some even by other students as tasks for advanced badges. All content should be able to be packaged up and shared with other schools.
What’s missing / what could go wrong
This is just an early sketch. The number and nature of the tasks would need to be developed with the ICT dept
One of the really nice ideas in some of the digital studies development work is the idea of a bportfolio – a student blog that would allow them to record their thoughts on longer, more pbl style projects. While this isn’t here, one idea could be that a number of the final projects would be published online as part of the task. Students could use a Google Site for this.
With students working on different tasks, the role of teacher would need to redefined. There is the potential for a heavy marking load – although some badges could be created to be automarked.
We’d need to consider how homework would work and be monitored.
We can’t (currently) add modules to our school moodle (which is managed by the LEA). This would potentially mean students working across three platforms – Moodle to access materials, Edmodo to submit and get their badges and Google Sites to publish some of their work.
Badges are explicitly NOT linked to NC levels. This is part because we now longer use them to mark work for students. However, tasks can be matched back to help teachers track progress.
Whatever happens, I would like to see the following kept
The principle of student choice
Projects at a variety of depth and length, the completion of which earn badges
Students at all years in KS3 get access to the same ‘menu’ of choices.
Students supporting each other through a community behind each task
Opportunities
Those students who fly through this could move on to advanced badges. This could include creation of other tasks or perhaps these could become digital leaders.
So, what do you think? What have I missed? What other opportunities are there to make this even better? What else could go wrong I haven’t thought about? I’d appreciate your comments below!
I thought it was about time I provided an updated list of the the RSS feeds I subscribe to. I use Google Reader to follow 200 feeds – mostly educators blogs, but also blogs of other people that interest me, various bookmarking and search feeds as well as newspapers and friends, family and students. You can download the opml file here.
Caught this in a tweet from @isalyian tonight and found myself wanting to share this much further. The always brilliant Dylan Wiliam on the future of jobs, schools and how we get the best from teachers. Although it’s a US talk many of the messages apply equally here.
I’m conscious that I’ve been talking in the abstract in many of my ‘rebooting’ posts, so I wanted to try and be a little clearer about what I mean and how some of the things I teach have changed this year. This is the second of several posts that will hopefully outline how I’ve changed what and how I teach this year.
Unit: Yr 8 – Tudor Life
How I used to do it -
A series of stand alone lessons that covered things like the structure of Tudor society, Tudor schools, Crime and Punishment etc etc. At the end of the half term, students would produce answers to two questions of their own choosing which they researched and presented on a page of A4 per questions. How I switched it
Driving Question: What should go in a museum exhibition on life in Tudor Wales?
Structure: Research project moved to the start of the unit, with a greater opportunity for AfL and improvement between two research questions. Followed by a team based, body smart challenge to create an exhibit suitable for a museum.
Lesson 1
Go for five – Medieval Life (what do they remember from last year?)
Textbook Challenge – What was different about life under the Tudors – students build on the things they remembered from last year and use a range of textbooks to find out what stayed the same and what changed into the 16th century
Homework: At somepoint over the next two weeks try and visit a museum and post some examples of how they get the information / ideas over onto a class wallwisher or linoit board.
Lesson 2
What questions could we ask about life in Tudor Wales?
Brainstormed possible questions. Discussed the difference between Open and Closed questions, and looked at why we may not be able to answer some questions.
Students wrote down 5 possible personal inquiry questions, and selected one to research first.
Homework: Complete first research task
Lesson 3
Group peer assessment on the first research target.
Share good examples from around the room
Individual targets set for each student to put into practice for their second question
Homework: Second research question
Lesson 4
How were things different in Wales
Nb – This lesson didn’t work as planned. Next year I’m likely to do something more teacher led looking at the Act of Union and the translation of the Bible into Welsh
Lesson 5 – Nb – Tables moved from islands to one large square and pupils sat around the outline looking inwards.
Hand in second research question
Review linoit board of museum ideas.
Over the course of the lesson students had to put themselves into groups and identify a question they wanted to address in the museum. Groups who wanted similar topics had to agree a different focus to avoid duplication.
Students produced rough plans of how what they would need to research and bring in to build their exhibits. These were signed off by me by the end of the lesson
Lesson 6
Students had the hour, in their groups, to produce their exhibits. At the end of the hour we spread them around the room and people walked round and reviewed and commented on each others. The rest of the history dept, form tutors and Head of Year were all invited to drop by to see the work.
Work was photographed and put on the class blog and the items that could go on perminant display were put up.
Homework: Print off a copy of the photo of your work to stick in your book.
Lesson 7
Evaluation of their work, each others work, and the project as a whole.
Feedback was very positive, although many students would have liked more time to construct their exhibits.
I’m conscious that I’ve been talking in the abstract in many of my ‘rebooting’ posts, so I wanted to try and be a little clearer about what I mean and how some of the things I teach have changed this year. This is the first of several posts that will hopefully outline how I’ve changed what and how I teach this year.
Unit: Yr 8 – The problems of monarchy – Elizabeth I
Nb -This is a slightly idealised version of the lessons as they unfolded between my two classes and the version I will try and deliver next year.
How I used to do it:
A series of lessons (some of which I really liked and were really good!) on marriage, Mary Queen of Scots and the Armada. Also a lesson looking at sources and answering the question ‘What did Elizabeth I look like’?
How I switched it:
Driving Question:
How successfully did Elizabeth I solve her problems
Lesson 1 – Review previous terms work and update log books. Divide class into 7 groups. Each group gets one topic from the following list: Marriage / Money / Beggars and the Poor / Foreign Trade / Religion / Mary Queen of Scots / Spanish Armada.
Homework: Initial research into topic.
Lesson 2 – Using netbooks – 1 per group .
All groups access a shared Google Presentation via the classblog. Each group has a slide waiting for them.
Run through the ground rules (only write on your own slide. Remember I can see everything)
Start throwing out questions and let students try and find the answers. Add to their slide.
Regular debriefs about what people have found.
Focus on how they’re using the internet to search, common misconceptions and different approaches.
At the end of the lesson show each group the link to their own shared presentation.
Lesson 3 – Students bring in their initial research from lesson 1, plus have access to a netbook and a stack of textbooks.
Explain outline of presentations (need to focus on three things – what the problem was, what Elizabeth did that was successful and what wasn’t)
Lesson is planning outlining and working out what else they need to find out.
Homework – Begin building their presentations
Lesson 4 – Review presentations so far. Give WWWs and EBIs. Focus on content and on presentation (no long text on slides)
Sourcework lesson on what Elizabeth looked like.
Lesson 5 – Group presentations. Homework: Improve the slides based on feedback from the class (Nb – In one class this ran into two lessons)
Lesson 6 – Show off improved slides.
Each group score Elizabeth out of 10 for the problem they studied. Create a success continuum – each group represented by one pupil. I try and persuade them that their score is wrong. They have to argue back. At the end groups can change their score based either on what I’ve said or on their relative position (although they don’t have to).
Lesson 7 – Conclusion
Piece of writing that answers the driving question. Students select three case studies from the seven and summarised the extent to which she succeeded.
Reflections
Generally really happy with this as an improvement. While it’s true that some topics weren’t covered in as much depth as before, I think the students got a better sense of the historical debate here (which they didn’t before) as well as more focus on effective research and presentation.
Other things to consider next year.
There are some ways to improve the netbook lesson outlined in yesterday’s post.
Some kind of framework (KWL grid maybe) might help during the construction of the presentation.
Can I try and fit this into a bigger picture of development over time? (this is true for most of my yr 8 units)
Make the presentations publicly available at the end of the project.
Last month Olchfa was visited by Leighton Andrews, Minister for Education in the Welsh Government, as part of a visit to Swansea to see how technology is being used in teaching and learning. As part of that visit, he dropped in to my room for a few minutes to see the kind of things we’ve been doing with technology in History.
The lesson he saw was inspired by the work of Sugata Mitre and the experiments he’s done bringing his experience of putting computers into walls in New Delhi slums, into classrooms in the UK. (TED talk / Keynote from UK Partners in Learning)
Each group of 4 students get one netbook. One student logs into the Portal and accesses a shared Google Presentation which has been set up waiting. Each group has one slide on the presentation, which is also being projected onto the whiteboard.
Following a quick check for understanding and ground rules, I start putting questions onto the first slide and the students go off and try and find an answer. These are added to their side (in their own words) along with a link to the website(s) they used to find the answer. These get regularly reviewed as the lesson goes on, and are used as a platform to talk about research strategies, reliability of websites, techniques for summarising etc etc. The key point is that these ideas arise naturally out of their work rather than being artificially introduced. Feedback from all pupils I’ve done this lesson with is than an overwhelming majority feel they were better equipped to use the internet outside of school as a research tool than they were before.
I repeated the lesson the following week for my Head of Department observation. To be fair it didn’t go as well on this occasion (isn’t that always the way?), so at the end I asked the students for some suggestions as to how it could be improved. To their credit they nailed most of the problems. They suggested that the groups needed to be changed (and to be fair this is an issue that Prof. Mitre addresses, I just didn’t follow his advice), and that the addition of offline resources (eg textbooks) would encourage everyone in the group to join in (I’m less convinced about this second one if I get the groups right)
To that, I would add that I need to go for less questions, but greater depth. An extra suggestion that came from Emma was that giving the questions out in advance would perhaps reduce the sense of rush and frustration that some of the students were showing.
Feel free to borrow and adapt the lesson, and remember to ask your students how to make the lessons better (Credit to Andrew Field for the idea) – they’ll probably come up with better ideas that you would on your own!
Looking for images on Flickr to use for my new metacognition posters, I came across these three images by Darren Kuropatwa that I thought were worth sharing. I’m likely to use these when talking about this concept with PGCE students and others. Click the images to take you to the relevant pages on Flickr.
The above list is collated at this tumblr blog from Twitter and Google Reader. Until the recent G Reader update which removed the RSS feed from the 'shared items', things I thought were worth sharing were kept here.
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