Thursday, 10 July 2008
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
Windows Live Writer, Teachmeet and Computers in Classrooms
Windows Live Writer, Teachmeet and Computers in Classrooms
Here are a couple of items of news that may interest you. Windows Live Writer is a free blog post editor. Teachmeet is an unconference designed to allow teachers and others to spread the word about exciting stuff without boring their listeners into submission. Computers in Classrooms is a wonderful e-newsletter/magazine that I always look forward to reading. Mind you, I am slightly biased because I produce it.
Windows Live Writer
For some time now I have been using Windows Live Writer for writing my blog posts. I've tried quite a few of these things, and most of them are over-featured to the point where they are not useful. Well, not to me anyway. On the other hand, ordinary text editors and word processors are either under-featured, by not making it easy to insert blog-type things like pictures from the internet, or create a load of unwanted code in the background.
Unfortunately, it has seemed to be in beta format for, well, forever -- until now. Actually, to be more precise, it went out of beta back in November, but I have only just discovered it!
The new version is much better than the old one, with the facility to insert video and maps, and with the option of a British spell-checker. I have also installed a number of plug-ins, such a word counter, Flickr browser and smiley inserter.
Now, that image to the left was just inserted through the Flickr plug-in, and it was much faster than my usual method of browsing through Flickr directly. The picture insert feature has been improved too. It is now much easier to insert a link to the photo's URL and to set margins.
The word count facility is pretty good, though you have to remember to select the text first.
As for the smileys, not sure how they will turn out, but in the offline draft mode I'm working in now they are looking good.
I tried using the map-insert feature, but couldn't get on with it. For a start, it is too US-centric. I mean, it didn't recognise Downing Street as a London placename for heavens' sake. Also, it seemed to takes ages to think about what to do next whenever I changed a parameter. Shame really.
OK, how about the video-embedding feature? Couldn't have been easier, except for the fact that, unfortunately, it embedded code that was not recognised by the content management system I use. Worked fine in Blogger though.
Not a foregone conclusion Q2
Not a foregone conclusion Q2
In recent weeks I've been exploring some questions, mainly to clarify my own thinking in these areas. Regard these posts as my thinking out loud. Feel free to chip in with your own reflections.
My original list of questions was:
1. Is it always better to use a computer than pen and paper, in terms of productivity, creative output or better learning?
2. Do computers always enhance pupils' self-esteem?
3. Does government funding lead to better spending on educational technology in schools? Is it better or worse if caveats are attached to the spending?
4. Is it always better to use templates to guide pupils' work?
5. Do free resources supplied by governments enhance or diminish the quality of teaching (and therefore, subsequently, learning)?
6. Do the standards laid down by various national curricula or schemes of work really level the playing field, or do they merely mask inequalities of provision caused by other factors?
7. Does it matter if schools do not embed educational technology in the curriculum?
Today I'm looking at the second one.
When I posted this list on the Technology & Learning blog a few weeks ago, Carl Anderson said "No: think of cyberbullying". That's a good point, though not the one I had in mind when I wrote the question. What I was thinking about at that time was the tendency of many writers to say that computers enhance pupils' self-esteem. They often have in mind children with behavioural or learning difficulties, who have somehow been branded as a "failure" by the "school system".
I see a number of issues here. Firstly, at the risk of sounding out of step with the times, or just for the sake of argument, why is it up to schools to enhance children's self-esteem anyway? I'm not saying we should do the opposite, of course, ie deliberately set out to make children feel bad about themselves, but is not pandering to some sort of narcissistic complex to say that we have to look for ways to boost kids' egos?
In "real life", employers don't have "Boost employees' self-esteem" as one of their objectives. Well, not in any of the places I've worked in, anyway. As a rule, self-esteem comes from doing a job to the best of one's ability. When you do, getting a pat on the back is a nice bonus, but that is all it should be: a bonus. So what we really ought to be doing is teaching children to obtain a sense of satisfaction from doing the best they can.
But leaving all that aside, the reasons that children's esteem is said to be enhanced by the use of computers are that it enables them to present their work nicely, and if they get something wrong the computer seems more impersonal, and therefore not as bad, as a real life teacher giving you the same message. In fact, neither of these is true without substantial work "behind the scenes".
For example, helping children produce nice-looking work may entail the use of templates, word banks, and a limited range of formatting options. Making a correction message seem less unpalatable requires careful thought about the wording of the message, and how the child is helped to get to the next stage.
Certainly, merely having a computer in the classroom, with not much thought about the programs on it or how they will be used, is not likely to enhance anybody's self-esteem.
It's alright to be bright
It's alright to be bright
I love this quote from their website:
Are you ready to see if you are as bright as a 10 year old?
You can send off for a pack of materials, which I have done, but this has also made me think of the plight of bright children who are being bored into submission in their ICT lessons, or at least not being stretched. So what kind of things can the educational technology teacher do to raise the stakes on a more long-term basis?
I've addressed this problem to a large extent in my seminal work, "Go On, Bore 'Em: How to make ICT lessons excruciatingly dull", which you can purchase right now from Lulu. But before you rush off and buy half a dozen copies (it makes a great birthday present, and is better for you than Easter eggs at this time of year), here are some more ideas that I have tried to good effect.
If you want to show secondary (high) school teachers or trainee teachers what can be achieved with ICT, take them to a primary (elementary) school, or at least make them aware of what kids at even Reception level are capable of doing. Here is a conversation I had in a secondary school after the Head of Geography had shown me around.
Head of Geography: So what do you think of the database work we're doing with our 14 year olds?
Me: I think it's brilliant. In fact, I thought it was brilliant when I saw similar work being done by 9 year olds last week!
OK, that's my style, which may not be yours, but the point is: tell it how it is, and show it how it is!
Find out what the pupils in your classes do in their spare time. Here's another conversation I had in a school (funnily enough, with another geography teacher).
Geography teacher, having come into a lesson where I was supporting a teacher with her class of 13 year olds: Hey, Terry, could you show me how to create a website for the geography department?
Me: Certainly. But why not ask Valerie over there (Valerie was a pupil)? She has been running her own website for two years now.
What would be the point, in an ICT lesson, of Valerie having to sit through a lesson on creating websites? She ought to be helping the teacher take the lesson!
Think of what you think might be a difficult problem, and then make it more difficult. You might just get it right.
Ask the pupils themselves to think of their own solutions to a real-life problem. In my experience they will either come up with some ingenious solutions, or realise that they don't know how to put their solution into practice -- and get down to the business of solving that particular problem.
Think out of the box. I hate that expression, but in this context it's useful. Why is it that so many ICT lessons involve solving "problems" like adding up the scores of basketball games, or working out the number of seats you have to fill in a theatre to break even? There has to be something a bit more interesting than that kind of stuff.
Get classes of pupils to help you deliver ICT training to other teachers. I have done this, and it worked brilliantly. The teachers loved it because they had one-to-one tuition, and the kids loved it because it made them feel important and valued.
In your own mind, redefine what you understand by the term "bright". One girl I taught, who was always being chucked out of lessons for misbehaving (but not my lessons, I hasten to add), and who was in a lower stream, was absolutely brilliant at teaching ICT to younger kids. And not just trivial stuff either, but spreadsheets.
For me, the bottom line is this: children always rise or fall to the level of your expectations, and if you set the right conditions in your classroom, they will exceed your highest expectations.
Not a foregone conclusion Q1
Not a foregone conclusion Q1
A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article in which I posed a few questions that I've been thinking about of late, and over the next week or so I'd like to explore them one at a time. Today I'm considering question 1, which was:
Is it always better to use a computer than pen and paper, in terms of productivity, creative output or better learning?
The important issue for me is what might be called "appropriate use". So, to take an extreme example, if you were quickly exchanging phone numbers with someone you just met, it probably would not be appropriate to ask them to wait while you fired up your laptop so you could enter their details in a database. It may be appropriate to enter their details into a phone or a handheld computer. It may be better in the immediate term, though not necessarily in the long term, to use a pen and notebook.
It seems to me that whether the use of a computer is "appropriate" from an efficiency point of view depends on a range of factors:
Does the data need to be stored electronically?
If so, is it quicker to enter the data electronically now, or quicker to write the details now and enter them later?
Should you even keep the data electronically?
Clearly, the answers to these questions will differ according to circumstances.
Efficiency is not the only consideration. When it comes to creative writing, many people find it better to use pen and paper. So, although it is apparently inefficient to write something by hand and then type it up, in terms of quality it may be the better option. I have to say that recently, much to my surprise, I discovered that I could write sections of a book chapter better by hand than with a computer. It was a pain having to type it all up later, but somehow the use of a notepad seemed to free up my creative juices.
"So what?", you may ask. Well, I certainly think it has implications for the way schools organise their computer rooms (if they still have them), and how they organise the pupils in lessons. For example, I have always advocated that pupils should have space to work away from the computers, both on their own and collaboratively. Those computer rooms which have been designed to house as many computer workstations as possible, with no room for anything else, are not only hopeless from a collaboration point of view, but may also leave something to be desired from a personal creativity point of view.
In fact, my ideal computer lab has easy chairs and coffee tables too, and my ideal rest and relaxation area has computer workstations dotted about. Whichever way you look at it, the technology should serve the learner, not the other way round.
The future, our lives, our technology and our learning, a talk by Ewan McIntosh
The future, our lives, our technology and our learning, a talk by Ewan McIntosh
In his presentation at the Naace Strategic conference 2008, Ewan makes a few interesting points....
For example, Ewan does not believe that there is such a thing as a key influencer. He also thinks that institutions, such as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, are not as important as what I suppose might be called "People Power". I think there is something in that, definitely. I have thought for a long time that it's a pity that schools and teachers in the UK are so frightened by league tables that they are, on the whole, very reluctant to take any risks.
I thought the presentation itself was lively and provocative. I have to say I enjoyed it, even though I disagreed with some of it, such as the idea that there is no such thing as a tipping point or a key influencer.
Anyway, have a listen, and judge for yourself.
Conference discussions
Conference discussions
At the recent Naace Strategic Conference I spent some of my spare time (what little there was of it) to find out from delegates what they were enjoying, what they were learning, and just their general impressions and thoughts.
My original intention was to get around as many people as possible collecting soundbites. But in the event, people gave much more in-depth responses, and we had some good discussions. I think it is interesting to listen to the general issues discussed rather than to get bogged down in the particulars of local issues. I have a feeling that they are pretty similar everywhere.
One of the people I spoke to was Ewan McIntosh. He makes a lot of sense, but I also happen to disagree with a great deal of what he says. Or, at least, I don't just accept it without question.
For example, he says that we should get it right first time, and that the expression "a step in the right direction" serves only to make us feel better about our failure to do so. But that is to deny the possibilities and restrictions which exist at any point in time. It is, indeed, almost to deny the role of historical development.
But also, what is "right"? A little later in the discussion I expressed misgivings about the lack of research into the long-term benefits of using Web 2.0 etc, and Ewan changed the goal posts by talking about the abundance of research into assessment for learning. I have absolutely no problem with assessment for learning, which is why I was using AfL techniques before the term had even been thought of, but it is by no means axiomatic, despite being seemingly obvious, that using Web 2.0 approaches is synonymous with AfL.
Perhaps this is just quibbling. I think a more important issue is the danger of being "right". As I was reminded in a discussion over breakfast with consultant Colin Watkins, the history of education in England is littered with the corpses of approaches which were unequivocally "right" at the time:
English across the curriculum;
Mathematics across the curriculum;
Economic awareness across the curriculum;
ICT across the curriculum;
The Initial Teaching Alphabet;
Project work (of the worst, unstructured, kind);
Inclusion -- not because it is "bad" in itself, but because of its unfortunate interpretation as "integration", which itself became a dogma that was often blind to individual circumstances (Martin Littler touched on this, and I will be posting the podcast of his talk in the near future);
and, more recently, the first incarnations of the Literacy and Numeracy Strategies.
Each of these, in its time, was deemed to be "right", and in some cases I really believe that some children's education was damaged in the process. So to assert, as Ewan seems to, that Web 2.0 approaches are absolutely right is a complete denial of educational history. There is, of course, the possibility that Ewan is, and will be seen to be, correct: I certainly hope so, as I share his enthusiasm. But I think we need to exercise a degree of wariness, and although Dave Warlick is right when he states that we won't really know if the approach has been successful until today's schoolchildren are adults, there is something about that which makes all the educational experimenting we do (not just us, but Governments too) a bit of a moral issue.
One more thing (I hope Ewan doesn't think I'm picking on him!). Ewan thinks that change can happen instantly, and that it doesn't, or needn't, take time. My own view is that change is effected in layers, or stages. You can bring instant change, then further changes within a few days, then a few weeks, and then a few months. Sometimes it actually takes years to change a culture.
I'd have said all this at the time, but I had to rush off to a presentation.
Now, I don't want to give the impression that I violently disagreed with everything Ewan said (just most of it!). I, along with others on this pocast, very much enjoyed his presentation, the audio of which I will publish later. A couple of people mentioned his concept of the "digital holidaymaker" (someone who dips their toe in the digital water every so often)
Anyway, listen to all the discussions in this podcast, I think you will find them very interesting.
The people who appear on the podcast, in order of appearance, are:
Terry Freedman, Independent, England
David Warlick, Independent, USA
Ewan McIntosh, Learning & Teaching Scotland, Scotland
Jonathan Sly, Essex, England
Brian Podmore, Suffolk, England
Stever Bolton, Essex, England
Gareth Davies, Cambridgeshire, England
Sandra Crapper, Independent, London, England
Lynne Heavens, Lewisham, England
Ian Usher, Buckinghamshire, England
Gemma Holmes, 2Simple, England
Dave Smith, Havering, England
Anthony Evans, Redbridge, England
Gary Jelks, Redbridge, England
Annette Carlon, Redbridge, England
The music featured is by George Wood, and is podsafe. The intor and the outro is from "High Five". The bit after my intro is from "Nice'n'Sleazy". You can download these and other tracks from here.
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