eLearning future: Device independent

It was a single tweet about a university that was providing iPads for staff and students, followed by a Periscope session with a teacher whose school was providing iPads for all its students and teachers  that made my mind up to write this post. For years I have been espousing the need for educational institutions to build their IT infrastructures on a cross-platform, mixed device strategy and I think, at last, we are in a place where it not only makes sense but is actually easy to implement.

What follows is a brief overview of why and how you should look at your IT infrastructure strategy again.

Why

Most of us would agree that a successful learning environment is one that caters to the individual needs of the learner rather than the administrative requirements of the institution.

Even when I was young (many thousands of years ago!!) we all personalised our books by wrapping paper around them and drawing/writing on them. When computers arrived individuals personalised their computers by adding backdrops and moving icons around. Small things but important. Of course, when the first computers arrived pupils were thankful to get any time on a school computer as such time was rare and hopefully exciting.

But now we have many pupils from early ages with access to their own, powerful computing devices which they can freely personalise, manage and modify without any intervention from others.

Why then should we make young people, and indeed staff, who have invested time, learning and money in the use of a specific type of device/software and ask them to learn to use something that they will only see in school? Surely it is much better to build on their own personal investment in a device and create an environment that enhances their chances of success using a device that they already have some experience using?

Moreover, not only would such a strategy encourage the individual it would also take pressure off the IT support teams within the school. Users are much less likely to ask for support if they are using a device to which they have access 24 hours a day and which they have some personal investment in.

How

Let's be clear, this is not going to happen overnight (I hope - because that would be AWFUL). An institution needs to plan and prepare for a change to a more flexible, individual-centred approach.

Let's start with your core, cross-platform toolset. Many people choose between Office365 or Google Apps. I say, WHY CHOOSE??

Office 365 & Google Apps! 

Use both of these great software toolsets and you have a great deal of your learning and teaching needs covered. It's perfectly possible to combine both sets of tools together and to make use of each component as an when it is applicable. This has been made even easier recently by the great updates to Microsoft Office tools for a variety of platforms.

Use the web

Make use of the cross-platform features of the web. More and more great educational tools and resources are becoming available through the web and, for the most part a great deal of the curriculum, even computer programming and video editing can be carried out through a web browser.

Other Cross-Platform Tools

Start to develop your learning and teaching activities that can't be delivered through the above tools by using software that is available across platforms. Many educational publishers are now developing using cross-platform tools since it makes economic sense not to lock oneself out of a specific computing platform.

If all else fails - remote apps

If something is only available on a specific platform see if you can build a remote app server that can be accessed through a web browser (incredibly easy using systems such as Microsoft Azure) and deliver the functionality to users through their web browser.

Where could it take you ....

By moving towards a cross-platform, device independent learning environment you not only free yourself from the 'we must have the latest device' approach but also open up the possibility of removing the need to purchase devices at all in the future. Think about it, we already have Microsoft touting its ability for Windows Phone devices to be used like a desktop PC when connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. This is a trend that will almost certainly be adopted in different ways by other manufacturers and, if it takes you 2 years to move to a fully cross-platform environment you may well be in a position to say to staff that they can choose their own device and use that. Perhaps the following year this could be followed up by a similar scheme for some students. Over a five year period you could move the school from a provider, and supporter, of hundreds of devices to a place where personal, individually owned devices are enabled to be used on a high-speed, high-quality infrastructure that is a bonus for everyone.

Computer Science Teachers - Should they be required to develop an application for others?

For a while now I have been concerned about how Computer Science, and particularly programming, is being taught. This was brought into highlight when I met an enthusiastic young student who wants to get into computer game development. She is keen to learn and has enrolled in an FE College but was more than a little disgruntled when she was told that she would be learning ActionScript, a language that surely belongs in the dustbin of history, especially as Flash is rapidly making an exit from most developers toolbox.

This made me think about the issues we hit in the 80's, when computer programming lost it's 'fizz' in education. Back then we had few real 'programmers who could teach and few teachers who could program. A great deal of programming was taught from textbooks and worksheets using standard application templates, such as the pretty boring 'Video Store' development as a template for 'learning programming'. Computer programming became fairly stale as a subject, compounded by pretty awful exam structures that failed to address relevant and up-to-date topics and this, by and large, acted as a real 'turn off' for young people who wanted to learn how to code to satisfy their own needs.

The low levels of expertise, confidence and experience within the teaching profession and the generally boring lessons being taught (I saw so many that I nearly fell asleep in!!) pushed young people to develop on their BBC B's and Sinclair Spectrums in their own bedrooms rather than in the shiny, new computer suites that schools invested in.

IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN!

What worries me is that it seems to be happening again. Yes, there are examples of keen teachers who produce great lessons and enthuse their pupils. But these are few compared to the army of teachers who are having to teach Computer Science with little or no experience of actually coding themselves.

Developing a computer program is more than just 'computational thinking' and learning some code structures. Unless you have actually developed a piece of software that actually solves a problem and/or adds some value, for yourself and others, then it is really hard to impart the knowledge required to empower young people to get the most from a Computer Science course.

Back in the 80's some of the best computer programming lessons were taught by teachers who had developed software for themselves, some of which made it into the Microcomputers in Education Programme packs that were shared with schools across the country.

Perhaps now is the time to get every computer science teacher to design, develop and ship an application that solves a problem ir adds value to their staff and/or students and share it with others on Github, perhaps with some prizes offered by computer companies? If the process of developing this application was seen as CPD and funded by the school as such - with time and perhaps some money put aside for support - then everyone, not least the students, may gain a great deal from the experience.

If nothing else, it would give CS teachers some real life experience of code development and may help them contextualise their teaching,

College of Teaching - A thought experiment about its role

So what will the proposed College of Teaching ACTUALLY be able to do for the profession?

Having read the BBC News article about the findings of research that suggested classroom design had an impact on academic success I asked  on Twitter how a College of Teaching would be able to support the adoption of the findings from this research into real classrooms.


I posed the question as a thought experiment to try and stimulate some discussion about how the College of Teaching may supplement and compliment the responses already active around research such as this. I am particularly keen to explore how our 'research-led' profession could use a College of Teaching to enable more professionals to make use of research such as this.

Gareth Alcot (@GalcottGareth) came up with some interesting suggestions ....

• research champions providing support advice access online
• work with training schools to support ITT
• research buddies/mentors supporting local/national collaboration between schools
• ...members/authors in school via staff meeting
• as well as local/national events, CoT teachmeets...
• ...research/discussion forum, 
• website with auto alert email, 
• online forum/discussion rooms, 
• >workshops ....

and the ever insightful Angela McFarlane (@AEMcFarlane) added ....

• one thing COT could offer is fora for discussion of research2unpick implications4practice- w authors ideally

Now Twitter is probably not the best place to explore more complex issues such as this so I thought, having stirred the pot, I would ponder on how the CoT could add value myself......

Rather than taking the role of the CoT from a point of view of the 'here and now' I think it is worth projecting a few years into the future when, perhaps, there are a large number of professionals enrolled within the College and it has matured a little, becoming accepted as a mechanism for exploring new ideas with the teaching profession. So the following thoughts are predicated on the assumption that there are thousands of teachers who engage, even in a minor way, with the College on a fairly regular basis and that the College has an 'active core' who engage regularly. So let's envisage this ...

The research, as reported on the BBC, carried out by Salford University would have been funded with a requirement to actively involve the CoT in the dissemination of the research and possibly in the design of the research itself The funding would also require the researchers to engage in a range of 'follow-up' activities with members of the CoT which would include online discussions and even opportunities to support individual CoT members or institutions in setting up small-scale action research opportunities based on their research. Since the funding would include these as part of the initial bid there would be no  issues around capacity to deliver and this would encourage those in the profession interested in the findings to explore them within their own learning contexts.

Furthermore the College could utilise the high-level connections that it has made with the commercial sector and Government to identify building projects, that already have funding allocated, which could be used to apply the results of the research in real-life contexts, possibly with some form of medium-term follow-up research associated with these projects. Again, the commercial sector would be encouraged to link some form of research to their bids, in association with the CoT, in order to qualify for the procurement in the first place. Using the resources within the CoT and the expertise that the College could call upon would mean that such research funding would not increase bid costs a great deal and would provide value both for the institution itself, the CoT and the profession as a whole.

Lessons learnt would be disseminated through conferences, etc. with profits from conferences and speaking fees going towards the CoT in order to help fund further activities.

Those who wanted to take on 'action research' projects within their institutions could be encourage by enabling them to earn academic credits towards post-graduate qualifications and recognition through a CoT-based pyramid of qualifications aligned to other accredited qualifications but based around criteria set by the CoT.

I'm sure there are many other ways that the CoT could be used to move research like this from 'nice to have' to a 'reality' in our classrooms and I look forward to seeing more ideas about its usefulness in the future.

Good code is important

Good, clear, well structured code is key

I responded to a tweet from @CSTeachingTips  which stated 

"Loosen your requirements for style sometimes to keep students motivated to write programs."

My response was

"This just is so wrong. Good structure HELPS those who find it difficult. Motivate them with fun, side activities nt bad code"

Now first let me say that I think a lot of the tips on the site CSTeaching Tips site are great and especially so for inexperienced teachers or those lacking confidence with coding and computer science in general and I like popping in and reading them from time to time.

I also see where they are coming from with this tip. Coding can be hard work. Getting it right, typing in lines of code (although many professional coders will use libraries of code and seem to type less and less) and the inevitable bug tracking can be a pain.

But that's where I differ from the tip that the team gave. It seems to me that keeping to an accurate, well-defined style and structure when coding is one of the most important parts of helping our learners get the most from their coding experiences. Without these structures and conventions it can quickly become very difficult indeed for someone trying to help a learner with their code to track down a bug or a feature that is not working as hoped. This is especially so for the inexperienced teacher.

The key to assist engagement is to teach in creative ways, keep a good pace to a learning activity, provide a variety of experiences within the lesson and aim to make the tasks relevant and interesting. There is no reason a lesson, or series of  lessons, needs to be filled with pure coding all the time. Mix things up with some fun activities that demonstrate a particular issue, concept or outcome. Add some discussion about a topic and set some interesting 'computational thinking' problems that explore the problem solving aspects of Computer Science and there are lots more.

But please, please don't relax standards and styles, it will only make things much worse.

Digital Strategy for Learning & Teaching

Following an interesting Twitter chat about digital strategies on the #BettChat group I decided to share some of the things I have learnt over the years about developing digital strategies for learning and teaching. My experience helping develop these strategies ranges from small, country primary schools, large inner city secondary schools and even whole City strategies designed to address the needs of over 100 schools.

Rather than take days, weeks and months to finish such a document I decided to open up the process of developing the document by sharing it here and writing it, mistakes, errors and all, using a Google Drive document, for all to see. This will very much be an on-going work in progress and I would appreciate any comments, feedback etc. from any experts out there.

So here it is - Developing a digital strategy for learning and teaching

IT Skills Gap Whitepaper - Some thoughts

IT Skills Gap - Time for companies to step up

The recently released BCS Whitepaper on the IT Skills Gap provides some sober reading for those in business and education alike. One statistic that stood out for me was ...

'IT is the sector most affected by high staff turnover, with an overall figure of £1.9bn per year. The research suggests the average IT worker takes more than seven months to reach their peak productivity, at a cost of £31,808 to the business.'

This is interesting on a number of levels:

Surely 7 months is far too long to allow an IT worker to reach their peak productivity. This suggests that companies should be looking at their induction / on-boarding programmes in more depth and looking to find ways of securing a more productive worker in a shorter period of time. Of course, we all know the reasons for this tend to be a little self-fulfilling .... the new hire enters an under-resourced, over-stretched unit where no one has the time to fully bring them up to speed because their time is spent on 'must have now' activities. Thus the new hire has to find out much of what they need to know through a process of gradual 'osmosis'. And why is the unit under-resourced and over-stretched? Why the IT Skills gap of course!!

That £31,808 cost to the business for having a relatively un-productive worker for 7 months should wake up managers into thinking about the costs that they apply to on-boarding their IT Workers. Even for relatively small organisations such a cost is large and they need to develop strategies that reduce it over time.

The document pushes the ideas of broadening partnerships with local organisations and widening the talent pool from which to draw IT workers. This is the way I would go to address this on-boarding issue. Companies should look to have links with academic institutions, schools, colleges and universities and build those links into concrete opportunities for everyone. Actively engage with schools and colleges in the area to develop educational programmes that deliver the skills that you WILL require and the culture that you are looking to develop within your company.

If a group of companies worked together to develop one or more support programmes with local schools and colleges around computational thinking and computer programming or IT Service and Support then they could, with relatively little investment, start to develop a pipeline of potential IT professionals that would help them close the local IT Skills gap. CISCO started to do this with their CISCO Networking Academy but for many schools and colleges this ended up costing them too much money and other resources. The same was true to a lesser extent for Microsoft, although the costs their were less.

One of the best models I saw was back in the mid-90's where a local IT consulting company 'donated' some of it's consultants time to working within  local schools to teach pupils about computer programming. The best pupils were offered further training, free of charge to the pupil, with the expectation that within a year they would be earning the company money, whilst still learning, and that by the end of three years they would be ready to earn as a fully-fledged developer. The scheme worked because the company was local, they understood local conditions and knew the local schools and colleges who they treated as real partners.

They understood realities of education but counted that for every year they would be able to bring in enough new recruits to make it viable. They treated it seriously and worked WITH the schools and colleges to develop their educational programmes to not only fit in with the potential qualifications on offer but also to fit in with the atmosphere in the institution. They sent their BEST people into teach alongside the teachers, supporting the staff in schools to bring their programming expertise to the classroom activities and helping to give some validity to the process of developing computational thinking. As important, they brought an understanding of the current and near future needs of the commercial sector. After all they needed to have developers who would develop using the latest, most commercial technologies not ones that had been set by an exam board 3-5 years before.

Undoubtedly the cost to the company was considerable but they had done the sums and it made sense to them. It also made sense to the schools and colleges. Having experts from business working with their staff and students in the classroom was a real bonus to everyone.

Perhaps local Chambers of Commerce should initiate some activities that involve schools and companies that need IT workers working together to develop the skills, knowledge and cultures that will help reduce the local IT skills gap?

Both schools and companies will need to resource it appropriately but for companies it will surely help reduce that figure of £31,808 that it costs for a new hire to become productive?

Learning to Code ...... Needs more fun

Learning to code needs to be more exciting and involving

I've been an educator for over 30 years and been involved in computing and IT-related fields since I built my first ZX81. Back in those days you had to do your own coding if you wanted to get anything worth using on your computer. So I've programmed in BASIC, assembler, PASCAL, the wonderful LOGO and many more, including things like HTML, etc.

I've written small utilities, modified open source software to fit my purpose and even built a large web application that utilised Microsoft SQL Server at the back end and integrated tools such as JQuery, etc.

So I was interested to see what tools were being presented at the recent BETTShow 2015 that aimed to develop coders of the future. Having surveyed some of the tools I was overwhelmed by how potentially boring, and therefore harmful, they could be in the hands of a teacher who is not a coder and is either wary of coding or just 'not that in to it'. These teachers, and I am not being negative about them personally, tend to follow a script that is in a published lesson plan and rely heavily on a pre-determined route of lessons. But that's just not how coders are developed, or how computational thinking should be introduced and nurtured.

Most good coders develop software to scratch one or more 'itches'. They are incentivised by an internalised need to get something done for themselves.  The challenges inherent in programming are accepted as exciting hurdles on the way to a goal and it is this goal that helps them conquer the bugs, the need to learn new things and the requirement to break things down into smaller, easier to handle goals.

Many of the resources presented at BETT just did not support the inexperienced/time-constrained teacher in creating a classroom/teaching environment that was both exciting and involving. Whilst they may have taken teacher and pupil through the mechanics of coding and, in some cases, attempted to create some excitement through various 'challenges' they fundamentally failed in helping a teacher establish a 'hacker' culture.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't believe that this is easy. If it was we would not have 'dumped' computer science in the late 80's, early 90's.  But just because it is hard doesn't mean we can't aspire to provide it. There are obviously some great Computer Science teachers out there, creating some excellent resources for their pupils  but often, when these resources are transposed into the class setting of a less confident teacher their effectiveness is dulled.

Somehow we need to find a better way.

Teacher Support with Google Apps - 1

Supporting Teacher Development with Google Apps

The revision history feature in Google Docs is not only useful for going back through drafts, it can also be used to provide active, real-time support for staff, assisting them to make better, more effective interventions.



I've just had some great feedback from a school that I have been working with for some time.

The Head decided that she wanted to shake things up after a less than outstanding OFSTED inspection - not bad but not where she wanted to be - and so we worked together to introduce Google Apps for Education across the school. That was several years ago and things went really well, with more lots of exciting learning activities that seemed to breathe new life into the teaching staff and, importantly,  engage the students.

Last year she asked how we could take things further and I suggested that we could use some of the features in Google Apps to support staff in THEIR learning journey more effectively. We discussed it with staff who were a little wary but one department, English, put their heads above the trench and volunteered to pilot some activities.

We discussed the issues that they felt may be important to focus on and, in the end, everyone agreed that supporting staff in developing their understanding of the types of interventions that they were making to support individual learners and resultant learning outcomes would be a good place to start.

Again, we narrowed down the focus a little more and decided to look at creative writing. They were already using Google Docs to develop creative writing activities and using this to support staff seemed a sensible next step.

So how did they do it?

Well, staff told their pupils what they would like to do and got agreement from them to allow the Head of Department and the Head to have access to the shared Google Docs that they would be developing over the year. Then, when a member of staff made an active intervention with an individual, one that they regarded as significant, they commented on it in the Google doc. The HoD and the Head could then log in and review the revision history within that doc to see if the intervention had produced some form of outcome, positive or negative.

Importantly, the teacher, the HoD and the Head could all discuss what was happening pretty quickly so that if there needed to be some other intervention made or if it was unclear that anything positive had resulted from the initial intervention something could be done about it.

In many cases the pupil themselves would be included in the discussions, at some level, to find out their experiences. The whole activity was focused on HELPING the teacher improve the learning outcomes for the pupils and not associated with any form of performance management process.

How did it go?

Well after a year of piloting this the majority of the English department have found it useful. Some did not want the pupils involved, and that was fine, but still felt that they gained value from the HoD being able to review and discuss their work.

One member of staff decided that it was too intrusive and withdrew from the pilot, preferring to seek other methods of support from the HoD. But the majority of the staff actively encouraged pupils to get involved in discussing how their interventions had helped, seeing improvement in behaviour and outcomes from most of the pupils that they taught. In some cases staff reported that previously un-cooperative or 'quiet' pupils had become more engaged after working with the teacher to give them feedback about their interventions on different tasks.

All the staff who stuck with the project thought that their teaching had improved due to the timeliness of the interventions from the HoD and especially the ability for them to 'discuss' progress and developments in the evening through chat. The majority of the staff felt that the Head's comments were less useful as they were more generic and less focused on the 'here and now' activities that were their focus (to which the Head breathed a sigh of relief since the prospect of rolling it out to other departments and the subsequent workload was causing her concern).

What's next

At the main staff meeting this term the English staff presented their experiences and declared their intention to extend the pilot to ways of supporting students with exam preparations. Subsequently Geography, History and, interestingly, Science have also asked to develop their own activities using this methodology.

Uniforms - Do they help prepare pupils?

Uniforms - an on-going discussion piece

I really don't know the answer to the question of whether we should impose uniforms in schools. This is a starting point for my thoughts on the subject.


In recent weeks I've seen a number of keynote addresses and been in a range of business meetings in a variety of large and small business environments. Last week I watched the major Windows 10 keynote where Microsoft showed some of the new features in Windows 10, arguably one of their most important presentations in years.

One common feature across all these keynotes and meetings was the total lack of shirts, ties, jackets and any form of 'corporate uniforms.


Some of the most powerful people in business, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and many more have eschewed the corporate uniform and thrown their ties in the bin.

Now these large and small businesses don't make these changes lightly. If dumping the old ways of corporate uniforms did not lead to better business results then it would not be sustained. Forget that many of these companies are technology companies. The majority of their employees are not coders or 'techies', they are accountants, sales people, admin officers, designers, customer support professionals, lawyers, middle managers, project managers, etc. In fact all the roles that we should be preparing our students for in the future.

It turns out that companies have found out that it's the culture that they create within their organisations that makes the difference between success and failure, not the definition of 'professional' through the clothes that people wear. Defining that culture and helping individuals take on-board the culture that leaders want to encourage is key to helping creativity, collaboration and the delivery of important outcomes is the way to ensure that organisations succeed.

So the question is - do we do our pupils an injustice by creating school cultures that rely on old-style corporate uniformity? OK, it may be easier for the organisation in the short term BUT does it make sense for the pupils and, almost as important, to the organisation in the long run.

More thoughts to come .....

Office365 and Mac Office 2011 - A little schizophrenic like WIndows 8

I've recently being doing some work for a client and have found myself using their Office365 and Office 2011 for the Mac tools. The experience has not been horrible for the most part, in fact for the majority of my work, writing policy documents, reports, etc. it has been very positive. But, and it's a big BUT for those of you looking to push out Office365 in a MacOS school or organisation in general, there are little things that will drive you MAD!!

A little like Windows 8, where the constant to'ing and fro'ing between Desktop and 'Metro' environments can cause even IT professionals to throw their hands up in exasperation, the combination of Office365 and Office 2011 for the Mac can be more than a little annoying.

Missing features
First, although Office365 has many of the 'core' features found in Office 2011 for the Mac there are some notable omissions. Examples include being able to merge cells in a table and selecting columns and rows in a table and there are others. The same kinds of omissions can be found in Excel online as well and I'm guessing it is the same for Powerpoint and Outlook. Now that's OK because if you have Office 2011 installed on you Mac then you can just choose to edit the document with this and it will sync changes to the document in OneDrive. Except that it's not quite that easy because ....

Different features
....... some of the styles and features in Office365 online are not there in Office 2011 for the Mac. Or  if they are then they are not obvious enough to be found quickly and easily, which is how your staff and students will expect them to be found. Things like Table Styles seem to be different and other features are just different enough to make the transition between online and client-based Office not easy for an average user.

OneDrive
.... and don't get me started on OneDrive which is not even working as an integration into the Business/Education version for the Mac. I just hope that when they unify the OneDrive code so it is not two products, that they can sort this out - very frustrating.

Office 'next' for the Mac
So I'm hoping that the much delayed 'next' version of Office for the Mac will help cure the issues and bring the Mac version back into line with the main Office suite on Windows and in the cloud, and I hope it comes soon .... real soon....... because otherwise using Office365 and Mac Office 2011 can't be recommended for a school.

BETT2015 - Miles Berry on Primary Computing

BETT 2015 - Miles Berry on Primary Computing

One of the benefits of NOT going to BETT this year was the ability to sit back, relax and view some of the talks and content through the web.

Whilst the feed on the BETT web site was pretty rough there is now a growing number of videos elsewhere, including an excellent 45 minute talk by the wonderful Miles Berry.

Miles is always thoughtful, often challenging and never dull and so it was with his 45 minute talk on Primary Computing at the BETT Show this year.

Also, do you notice that it is indeed a rare photo of Miles when he is NOT smiling - says a lot about his whole approach to life and learning I think.

The video is embedded below, along with some thoughts of mine and a link to the slides from the presentation.

I know teachers are pushed for time. I know you have to mark those Class 5 maths books before tomorrow. But do take a look ......

Miles Berry Talk - How to teach Primary Computing - from Bett2015

Slide deck from the talk - click here

Some thoughts from the talk .......

Miles presents some good, common-sense ideas that should make teachers think about how they can develop the new Computing Curriculum within their school. But the talk was not simply about the practicalities of the new Computing curriculum. It was riddled with challenges that he puts up to make staff think about learning and teaching in general. One of the key challenges was presented early on and it is the Plowden Challenge that I'm keen to stimulate some thoughts about.

The Plowden Challenge
Miles quoted the Plowden Report from 1967 "“… build on and strengthen the children’s intrinsic interest in learning and lead them to learn for themselves”. This is something that seems to have got lost in some schools. Burdened by the various teaching frameworks, curriculum documents, lesson planning frameworks and evaluation activities that staff have to consider nowadays the challenge to instill a love of learning for the sake of learning seems to be disappearing down a plughole of accountability.

Often when I ask teachers what are the main elements of a good lesson they come out with things like 'learning objectives' and 'starter' and 'plenary', few, if any, mention the love of learning and many even miss the word 'learning' itself! Good teaching should always aim to develop a love of learning BUT THIS IS EVEN MORE THE CASE when you consider good teaching for Computing. Computing changes so fast and requires so much on-going learning that anyone who wants a career in the broader field of computing, let alone Computer Science, needs to have a love of learning if they are going to succeed.

I may be an old fart who was brought up in a time when University courses were free and you actually got paid an allowance to go and learn. However, I wonder whether the focus on developing learning around the prospect of developing a career has not robbed many of our younger students the opportunity to just learn for the sake of enjoying learning? Perhaps Computing, where career success requires this enjoyment, may help us bring it back across the curriculum as a whole?

BETT 2015 - Hue Cameras - Fun, cheap & robust

If you have time at BETT 2015 today why not pop and have a look at the Hue cameras on Stand SN41. I've seen these little cameras used in a lot of schools at all ages and teachers always rave about them. Plus they are really inexpensive and staff tell me they are reliable and robust as well.

Put the FUN back into your classroom and take a look at a Hue camera.

BETT 2015 - HP makes a potential win into a fail

I am building a quick list of things I would go and see today if I were at BETT and one of those things is the HP Stream line of devices. These small, inexpensive windows machines have had good reviews and come in both laptop and small form factor desktops. They are clearly aimed at the Chromebook buyers and should be considered by schools looking for devices to have in schools.

HOWEVER ....... I went to the BETT page for HP and opened up the web site address that was given on that page only to find myself in the HP USA web site. Perhaps this was a mistake so I went to the second HP BETT pages and same thing. Plus the address given for HP was their Palo ALto headquarters. COME ON HP, seriously!! 

I'd still like to see the HP Stream devices though so if you get to see them why not do a quick review from a teachers point of view?

Bibblio - Find & Organise Learning Resources

On my virtual tour of BETT 2015 I stumbled across Bibblio which is a little like Pinterest for education resources. You can create collections based around topics and share them with other people. You can also follow other people and view their collections.

The whole site seems slick, easy to use and, for the right age group, potentially very useful as an educational tool ....

HOWEVER ... there are resources that can be accessed through the site that may contain content that you would not want your pupils to see through a school recommended resource. It really depends on your approach BUT with issues like sex education and access to sexually explicit content a hot topic at the moment then being able to access 'Laci's Guide to BUTT SEX', however informative and actually open and honest it is may not be what your school would want. So do check out the resources before you jump into it.

Overall, one to look at if you are teaching older pupils.

BETT 2015 ETAG Reflections 7 & 8

Reflection 7: Leadership and professional development

OK, first of all how does this statement align to the section on Evidence???

“This workgroup focussed on the need for teachers to develop and exchange clear, evidence based strategies for using digital technology, improving their skills to use it effectively”

Right, I hear you mumbling … but it gets worse. The team want to set up an overall ‘CPD Directorate’ to ‘collate and share ….’. Do I hear you mumbling “jobs for the boy(girls)”. How on earth will a central directorate be able to support the individual CPD needs of teachers across the country and what school is going to prioritise such a system over the structured, targeted CPD that they barely have time for now. Really, really I expected more than this rather, dare I say, old-fashioned approach to this from such a group of experienced and, individually, innovative people.

Reflection 8 : Assessment and accountability

I really like the suggestion that institution should be required to describe how they use digital technologies to improve learning and that assessors such as OFSTED should be required to have a good understanding of strategies that could be used when they assess institutions and providers. Of course the challenge here is to provide examples that can be used to benchmark these descriptions and strategies. So let’s get some descriptors from good school development plans shared across the profession.

However, the focus of the assessment recommendation on the move towards digitally enabled, high-stakes assessments, whilst welcomed, perhaps misses an easier target. Digital tools enable much richer assessments to be carried out as part of the learning experience that, in turn, would provide learners with just-in-time feedback on their progress and enable them to make adjustments to their learning in a timely fashion. Embedding these types of assessments would not only provide real impact to support outcomes within the current high-stakes exam regime but would also give the designers of future digitally-enabled, high-stakes assessments useful data about pupil interactions with digital-based assessments. Yes, lets work towards more digital exams but given that these will take a long time let’s not forget the other assessments that can help now.

BETT 2015 ETAG Reflections 3 & 4

Reflection 3: Re-stating a truism is no bad thing

Almost hidden within the ‘Process and Rationale’ section is this statement:
‘A clear story throughout is that simply adding technology to existing practice adds expense and misses the point of what might, and should, be achieved. A worksheet on a tablet is still a worksheet, but more expensively so. An undergraduate timed essay, but typed, still misses the point of the new intellectual tasks that emerge through connected learning. The hardest thing about moving forward is deciding what to leave behind.’

Which is probably at the heart of the issue of digital tools as an aid to learning and has been for over 40 years. Merely moving old ways of learning and teaching onto a digital platform fails everyone.

• It fails pupils because it does not empower them to take own their personal learning progress or reflect the ways in which they will be required to use digital tools within work and society in general.
• It fails educators by not enabling them to take advantage of the power and flexibility that digital tools offer and the ways in which using those tools can change the workload burden to enable more focus on interactions with learners.
• It fails organisations because they do not see the potential benefits coming out of a large cost-centre where expenditure is ever increasing but outcomes are not easily quantifiable.

But here’s the rub…… this is not a new statement and I wonder what there is in the ETAG report that will inspire Head teachers and College Principals to take up the challenge and reach for the future that ETAG espouses?

Reflection 4: Risk – that’s all very well but ….

This section goes through some of the well-trod pathways of why we should risk failure in the hope of ultimate success. It’s all true and I agree with everything the report says here BUT it’s been said before and the vast majority of educational institutions are still crippled by the risk averse culture that is the safety blanket for man a senior leader. Perhaps we should have seen examples of risk taking that ended in failure but which produced successful outcomes based on the lessons learnt? 

BETT 2015 ETAG Reflections 5 & 6

Reflection 5: Evidence – surely there must be some ….

Really? A whole section of the report devoted to tell us that finding evidence about the impact of digital technologies is difficult. REALLY! I don’t believe that there is no evidence out there.

OK, much of the evidence may be that digital tools played a part, small or large, in improving learning outcomes but there must be evidence somewhere or how can we say we are part of an evidence-based profession?

Even I, in my small way, managed to collect evidence of effectiveness with the use of simulations in science learning and also in the use of effective feedback to support low achieving learners. In fact in the 80’s I was collecting evidence about the use of LOGO to support low achieving pupils ability to make use of complex geometry concepts in maths.

ETAG 2016 MUST include some evidence as to the effectiveness of digital tools to help enable improved learning.

Reflection 6: Access, Equity and Funding

ETAG says

“Increasingly education technology means on-line. Cloud-based computing enables cost savings, ensures content and software is always up-to-date and allows access anytime, anywhere and on any device. Collaborative learning crosses institutional and geographical boundaries. Resources and opportunities are global.”

How true this is and I’ve been shouting on about this since 1997. At last the technology is catching up with the vision and today should be the start of your move towards an Internet-based strategy for infrastructure, services, tools for learning, teaching and administration. This is perhaps the one, major step that most schools could make that would help them begin their journey to change.

Opening up the learning resources you use to enable learners, staff and parents to access them for anywhere is a first step towards connected, collaborative learning for all.

I will be doing a post about this soon and discussing ways you can model your approach to get the best out of this approach.

The four key recommendations in this section are:

• Schools, Colleges and Universities should provide learners with an entitlement to a substantial minimum level of fast broadband connectivity which is based on number of learners and a rising expectation of increasing, institutional and personal use.
  
• Schools, Colleges and Universities should provide learners with a minimum entitlement to a safe, secure, resilient and robust organisation-wide Wi-Fi system for all their devices with access to both use, and contribute to, all learning resources when learners are not on the premises/campus.
  
• School, Colleges and Universities should build BYO (Bring Your Own) approaches into their immediate and medium term digital technology strategies.
  
• Schools Colleges and Universities should have access to an independent, objective help/advice/support service for technology procurement and deployment.

It really is difficult to argue with the first three of these and, to my mind, they seem a given if schools are going to realise the potential benefits of digital technologies. Again, I will be doing a post about this in the near future as it really is the only way to go.

It’s recommendation number 4 which is perhaps the most challenging since whilst it is probably a good idea I wonder how it could be created. Good Local Authorities used to fulfil this role but even then there were many, mostly secondary schools, that did not see the need.

BECTA could have done this but never really managed to make it happen and academy chains are meant to provide this sort of expertise but often end up not taking into account the individual needs and contexts of different schools.

Procurement is hard. Group procurement is even harder. Advising individual schools or groups of schools about procurement for their specific needs is MUCH harder and, importantly, much more costly. I think I will do a post about this as well soon …… I’ve seen enough procurement in my time to have some pretty robust views on the whole topic.

BETT 2015 - ETAG Reflections 1 & 2

The Educational Technology Action Group presented its first report at BETT2015. Here are some reflections on that report, both positive and negative, that some of you may find useful. I've split my reflections into small groups so that people could check them out in smaller chunks. Below are reflections 1 and 2.

Reflection 1: “ETAG” – REALLY!!
Honestly, I sometimes despair at the British educational establishments never ending requirement to have names such as this. In the US they have the ‘Horizon’ report which seems so simple and explicit – what is coming over the horizon ….

Reflection 2: ETAG Membership
Now don’t get me wrong, I respect, admire and like many of the people on the list of members but where are the real practitioners who could inform the discussion based on the day-to-day realities of school, college and university life? Only the wonderful Dawn Hallybone stands out as someone who really knows what is going on in classrooms. I don’t really know much about the work that Gary Spracklen is doing at IPACA, I had a brief look and it seems to be exciting in terms of Chromebooks, but actually ETAG needed a non-techie who is enthusiastic about technology and leads a school to be in there too.

Prof Stephen Heppell, who Chairs ETAG, is always good for some ‘exciting’ thinking and others such as Diana Laurillard, Peter Twining and Angela McFarlane are clearly deep thinkers with a great track record in proposing thoughtful challenges to education. However, overall I was not ‘wowed’ by the list of names, especially as some lack credibility with staff in schools, colleges and universities who are meant to take up the challenges posed by ETAG.

BETT 2015 - Virtual Session 2 Bomberbot

I always like a free trial, although often the free trial is a recipe for disaster for many systems since it rarely comes with free CPD! SO when I saw that Bomberbot had a free trial I thought it would be a good idea to spend some time on the system in my virtual BETT tour.

First you sign up your school and you receive an email from Bomberbot with your school code. You then can sign up as a teacher using the school code. This takes you to the main Bomberbot screen where you are given a brief tour of the main features of the admin system for setting up classes and students. FIRST ISSUE: It looks like you need to do this all manually which is a big issue if you are in a large school. QUESTION: Does Bomberbot enable set up from a school MIS or, at the very least csv files?

The first lesson is really, really simple and, to be honest, plain boring. The graphics belong in the 1980's and the activities could have been done better with the LOGO that we used on a BBC B, never mind a high end Windows 8 machine! It involved using arrow keys to move a robot around a screen, sometimes around objects but, frankly, I've taught 4 year olds who would have got bored quickly with this.

Looking at the other lessons were still presented with the same, rather awful user interface and the same, rather boring activities.

The price of Bomberbot is expensive for what it is, the activities seem boring to me and the user interface is back in the stone age. It's a shame because an online learning environment for coding would be great but this is not it. Perhaps they should go take a look at Kahn Academy. 

BETT 2015 - Why computational thinking?

One of the trends that seems apparent at BETT 2015 is the push towards teaching computational thinking. Working on my first post demonstrated the need perfectly.

I wrote the initial draft of my first Virtual BETT session in blogger and then copied it into a text editor to do some edits before finally copying the text back into Blogger.

Somewhere in that process the text styling took on a life of it's own!!

The horrid black text on a white background would not go away even after changing it in the Blogger designer and even re-copying the text back into a different text editor, stripping out any possible codes and posting back.

Time to pop into the html view within Blogger.

5 minutes later, after changing just a few words in the html the blog looks better - still not quite how I want it - but better.

The process was very simple. Break down the problem into small chunks, work out a solution and apply. Computational thinking at it's very basic.

Perhaps the lesson to be applied to teaching computational thinking is that I HAD A REASON to address a problem or idea. Just typing in code from a worksheet is not a real reason - it's  little like copying text from a blackboard which is how I was taught biology!!! We need to challenge learners with realistic, exciting and engaging reasons to apply computational thinking. Only then will they take up the challenge to invent their own futures through code.

BETTShow 2015

Virtual BETT - Session 1

This year will be the first year in over 25 years that I will not be attending the BETT Show. I'm not sure whether I am sad of relieved. Travelling to BETT has just become more and more of a chore over the years and my remote location now makes it just too much, especially as Excel is hardly a great destination.


I picked the following picture from the BETTSHow catalogue images as it seems to represent what the show has ended up becoming - crowded, with  people who are in various stages of interest, indifference and exhaustion. Last year I arrived later than planned on the day that I attended and, arriving at 1300 I was stunned to see vast numbers of people LEAVING the show. Many years ago even two days would not enable someone to take in everything that was on offer.


Anyhow, I thought that instead of going I would see if I could attend virtually and use the online information from different companies, tweets and blog posts from people I respect and other resources to try and get a feel for what was going on at the show.


Today, I have had a quick look at the new exhibitors to see if anyone exciting is on the list and what some of the new trends may be .......


First thing you notice in the 'New exhibitors' section is that, once again, BETTShow web site is completely messing everyone around in that it has many companies who were there last year, so it takes you longer to review 'new' companies than it should!!

OK .... so I started this yesterday and it soon became clear this was not going to be a 'quick look' ... so here is my first thoughts ... many more to come.

Trend 1 - Different ways of exploring the development of computational thinking.

The first company I saw was Fuze Technologies who are showing a Raspberry Pi based system which is basically a Pi inside a solid looking case with an equally solid looking keyboard - very BBC B ish which is quite in keeping with the Pi's Acorn heritage. The unit looks solid and easy to use but after logging into their site and downloading some teaching resources their Fuze basic and the lesson plans that introduce it just look rather boring and, being honest, not much fun or even well structured. However, if you are going to use a Pi and want a robust base to put it in this looks good, as does their robotic arm. But don't rely on this if you are an inexperienced teacher who is not strong at coding as many of your pupils may start pushing your knowledge to the limit very soon.

Next was Grok Learning, out of Australia, providing an online environment to learn programming. They are clearly new and have some early Python activities that are based around the same approach as sites such as Kahn Academy and w3school  where there is a window for instructions to be typed or edited aand the results are displayed in another window or pane. This approach works very well with Kahn and w3school so it should work well with Groc. I tried some of their free, entry level activities and they were easy to do, if somewhat limited. I'm also not sure what their prices are for school site or bulk licences. However, this is definitely one to watch - perhaps at BETT2016??

Loopy Computy is introducing a range of kits and activities to support learning programming in Primary. The very 'Heath Robinson' approach will be of interest to many Primary teachers who like to give their pupils a chance to learn by building things themselves. Using Scratch as the programming language makes things much easier and the Ohbot will certainly make for a good BETT scene stealer. My concern would be about future support and the robustness of the kits and the Ohbot in the hustle and bustle of a Primary School classroom. I've used similar robotic kits in a variety of contexts in my time and they were fine when they first arrived but once a key part was lost or broken or there was not enough kit left for it to be used with enough pupils in the class then it soon became a store cupboard squatter. Worse still, if the teacher was too worried about the equipment to let the pupils have real control over the building and the robot just became a 'toy' to demonstrate how things could be done - OUCH!!

Look out for more comment from my virtual tour of BETT 2015 ....