BYOD and 1:1 are not the same
Ryan Bretag nails some thoughts I’ve had recently on Bring Your Own Device as an IT provision in schools. It’s nice to have, and common sense in this day and age to allow learners to use their own devices in your classrooms and on your networks. But it’s no replacement or real alternative to running a 1:1 environment.
Source: ryanbretag.com
Desmos For All
I was most impressed with the Desmos Graphing Calculator last year. It’s a powerful and user friendly graphical calculator.
It’s just been re-written from the ground up in HTLM5 which means it will work perfectly on an iPad or other tablet. It’s genuinely impressive and exciting to see what magic coders are starting to weave with HTML5.
Head over to https://www.abettercalculator.com/c on any device to try it out for yourself.
Source: hackeducation.com
Oh No Mr Gove!
And just like that, world order is restored. I felt a little uncomfortable praising Mr Gove for his radical move to remove the ICT Programme of Study.
But all is back in balance now.
As MSN reports:
“The Education Secretary has called for longer school days and suggested that teachers should also be happy with longer terms.
Michael Gove said “we’re all in favour” of extending the school day and potentially also cutting short the summer holidays.
Asked about how this would impact on teachers, he told ITV’s Daybreak programme: “If you love your job then there is, I think, absolutely nothing to complain about in making sure you have more of a chance to do it well.”
Really Mr Gove?
Let’s take a look at my last week in teaching:
- Saturday (Xmas Hols) - 3 hours (mainly planning lessons)
- Sunday (Xmas Hols) - 5 hours (mainly whole school data analysis to make sure we’re on track to do well in the league tables)
- Monday (07.30-22.00) - 14 hours (teaching, meetings, planning, supervising break, research)
- Tuesday (07.30-18.00) - 10.5 hours (teaching, leading) + (19.00-22.30) 3.5 hours (learning & sharing)
- Wednesday (07.30-21.00) - 13 hours (teaching, marking, supervising lunch, meeting, leading, reflecting on your policy decisions)
- Thursday (07.30-20.00) - 12.5 hours (teaching, planning, supervising lunch, analysing data, meeting, parents evening)
- Friday (07.30-15.00) - 7.5 hours (teaching, more data, more meetings, more duties)
That’s 69 hours.
And that’s an average week.
Where appropriate I’ve removed 30 mins for eating dinner at home. I’ve not had a lunch break, nor a ‘break of reasonable length’ during the day. We work these hours, for 5-8 weeks at a time, and then we collapse, speak to our loved ones and sleep for about half of our holidays, before spending the second half preparing work for the next term.
If you want people like me to run your schools, to innovate new ICT curricula and share them across the country, to make sure my school does well in it’s league tables and receives another Outstanding in it’s next, no-notice, Ofsted inspection, oh yes - and to teach, what exactly should I stop doing?
And all this whilst paying me less? I don’t think so. According to the NUT’s pension calculator, if your proposed changes go through, and if I were to make it to 60 years old, doing my bit to fill the upcoming Headteacher shortage, and then decided to retire at that age. I would be £750,000 worse off. Three quarters of a million pounds worse off.
This does not compute.
I do love my job. But I couldn’t do any more of it. If you asked me to, I’d leave the classroom immediately, and that would be a shame.
Source: MSN
Bravo Mr Gove #schoolstech #ictcurric
Unless you’ve been living under a rock today I’m assuming you’ll have seen some excitable headlines followed by a more detailed speech about the future of technology in education in the UK and in particular the future of the subject of ICT.
In a nutshell Mr Gove has scrapped the ICT curriculum, whilst keeping ICT in the curriculum. Confused? Don’t be. We can now effectively teach whatever we want. There will be a consultation, and there will hopefully be new ‘Computer Science’ qualifications in the pipeline. Mr Gove has listened to the calls of industry and responded with startling ruthlessness.
I’m delighted that my school is in a great position to make the most of these changes (in fact we won’t have many changes). We acted on the NextGen report when it came out last year and have a Y10 group working on the OCR Computing GCSE that I suspect Gove was alluding to in his speech. (Some of our other decisions back then with regards to Creative iMedia & MOS might not prove so long serving).
I never thought I’d say the words, but bravo Mr Gove!
The ICT programme of study was dull and out of date in places, and there is a lot of poor ICT teaching across the country. There is also a wealth of incredible teaching by teachers who have ignored / bent / destroyed the current program of study to their needs. Gove’s decision today means they are free to do so without worry of Ofsted and co castigating them for doing so. There is of course a danger that specific ICT lessons will dwindle in number further with this move. Integrating the skills across the curriculum is key, but we still need specialist teachers delivering these skills with panache if we are to really generate the next generation of talented, creative, coders.
The move to include more Computing / Programming / Computer Science has been much debated of late. It needs to be optional at KS4 but I’m in full support of this. Well qualified & skilled teachers to deliver this will be an issue.
It’s an exciting time to be involved in ICT. It’ll be interesting to see if we really do make it through the next few years without being told what to teach. And it will be interesting to see what qualifications become available at KS4 for us to work towards (and in turn what skills they focus us upon). This is a great chance to continue some of the great work that has gone on with #ictcurric and other endeavours to start putting together a set of core skills and competencies for Digital Literacy & ICT.
A particularly exciting thought crossed my mind when reading the full transcript of the speech. As the programme of study goes, so do the assessment levels and criteria. There will be nothing to say what a Level 5 in ICT is. So how about we scrap levels? What does achieving a Level 5 in ICT really mean? And who understands it? I’d suggest that half the students in KS3 don’t know, no teacher outside of the subject would know, and very few parents would know. Could we put together a simple list of core skills and competencies and measure learner’s progression in each of these. Something akin to APP lite, maybe with a Mozilla Badge system to award and recognise mastery and application of these skills? I suspect that National Curriculum levels will be phased out across the board over coming years, so this could be a great opportunity to put together something far more meaningful. I’d be much happier with my Maths teaching hat on if I could look at my learners records and see who has a Silver Award in Spreadsheets, or a Bronze Award in Scratch Programming, it would be far more meaningful to me and make planning the integration of ICT skills into that subject far easier.
So. Bravo Mr Gove. I may disagree with you a lot of the time, but you’ve been bold today and deserve respect for it. Join in the conversation that has been started today using the hashtag #schoolstech and at the website http://schoolstech.org.uk/. And welcome to the brave new world, when the National Curriculum review finally kicks into action don’t be surprised to see other subjects head in a similar direction.
FizzBuzz CodeYear Fun #schoolstech
With todays announcement from Mr Gove it seems a good point to reflect on my first steps on a year long coding journey. I spent my Tuesday evening completing the first week of lessons on the brilliant CodeYear. It took me about an hour and a half and was a great little introduction to Javascript. First week covers defining variables, basic arithmetic, and moves on to if/then/else/while statements.
It’s an interesting learning model, there are hints at each stage and I didn’t find myself stuck on too many occasions. If you teach ICT or Maths then I’d thoroughly recommend you take a look at it. It was quite a challenge and I’ll be interested to see how far students could get without a teacher to help them. If they do get stuck, some good Googling skills would help them find a way forward pretty quickly. It’s not a replacement for a skilled teacher thought, but that’s a conversation for another post!
The final bonus challenge is to write a FizzBuzz program that writes out a set of consecutive numbers, but replaces multiples of 3 with “Fizz” and multiple of 5 with “Buzz” and of course, multiples of both with “FizzBuzz”. It’s a great little challenge that the Maths teacher in me loved!
I’ve been encouraging staff and students at school to join me on this journey so it’ll be interesting to see how many are up for the challenge.
Here’s my final FizzBuzz code in case you’re interested or stuck:
// Ask user how far we should Fizz Buzz for
var Total = prompt("How far shall we fizz buzz?");
// for the numbers 1 through to Total,
for (i=1; i<=Total; i++) {
// if the number is divisible by 3, write "Fizz"
if ( i % 3 === 0 ) {
// unless the number is also divisible by 5, then write "FizzBuzz"
if ( i % 5 === 0 ) {
console.log("FizzBuzz");
}
else
console.log("Fizz");
}
// if the number is divisible by 5, write "Buzz"
else if (i % 5 === 0 ){
console.log("Buzz");
}
// otherwise, write just the number
else {
console.log(i);
}
}
Has anyone written this in a neater, purer way? I’d love to see it if you have.
EDIT:
I have to include this, a solution in a tweet by Martyn Colliver:
20% Time in School - Leaving them to it…
Stretford High School has five core values, one of these is creativity, one is independence and one is drive. I have been trying to instill these core skills into my Year 8 Maths class this year by giving them an hour a week to do whatever they choose.
Motivation:
I was inspired at the SSAT National Conference in 2010 by Dan Pink’s talk about drive, in particular his discussions of non-commissioned time, or 20% time as it is known as at Google. To see exactly what I’m talking about it’s well worth 10mins of your time to watch this:
Or you could even read his excellent book which is on special offer at Amazon at the moment: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
A number of companies including Google and Atlassian are actively setting aside time for their workers to work on projects of their own choosing. Google News & GMail amongst other products came out of this time. We had a fantastically productive staff training day last term where departments were given the time to go off and work on anything they chose. Hopefully we’ll collate some more of the output from that day on the Creative Stretford Blog.
In The Classroom:
Time to think, create and follow a whim are not something that we’d often associate with school classrooms, particularly in secondary schools. Kevin McLaughlin has been encouraging his primary students to work on projects of their own choosing. Discussions on that article revolved around timetables, curriculums and secondary schools and how hard this would be to make this work in a secondary school. Which sounds like a challenge!
I’m fortunate to teach an able and enthusiastic Year 8 class (12-13yrs) who are always game for trying something new. We have four hours of timetabled Maths each week, and with this class that’s more than enough time to cover the work that is required. So in September I told them that they would have one of the four hours each week to do anything that they choose. This caused a little confusion at first, I think a few thought I had gone a little mad (or lazy!). Choosing something to do in their 20% time was a real challenge for some at first. We agreed a few ground rules, that although they could do anything, there should be some mathematical or logical bent to it, and that they would share their learning with the rest of the class. We agreed that students should be able to spend this time doing extra work on the Maths we’d been doing if they felt they needed the time for that purpose.
After a bit of time getting used to the concept the ideas started to flow. A group of boys decided they wanted to learn how to solve a Rubik’s Cube. A group of girls wanted to do some art, so I pointed them in the direction of MC Escher and left them to it. Another group wanted to look investigate how optical illusions worked, another group started to build their own Sudoku from scratch. I arranged for us to have access to computers for the hour a week and quite a few groups have started to build games in Scratch and Kodu.
As a teacher I’ve found at times that it’s a little hard to let old habits lie:
- I’ve had to bite my lip and stop myself putting too many ideas into students heads, I’m keen for this learning to come from them not me;
- I’ve had to avoid getting hung up on outputs, although we have started to blog a good deal of our work and I hope to develop this further this year;
- I’ve had to sit back and enjoy the slightly chaotic looking classroom, creative learning looks messy!
The whole group has really enjoyed this time so far, they really appreciate the freedom that it offers. There’s been some fantastic work, and some fantastic Maths and logic skills being developed. I’m particularly proud of Adeel, he has taught himself how to solve a Rubik’s Cube, taught some of his peers and then worked with them to produce their own how-to videos and finally created their own blog to share them on! Many of the others have done some great work, I’ll encourage them to share them in more detail on the blog.
We’re going to continue with this for the next term and see where it leads us. I might start making a few suggestions of areas of interest that students might follow, I’ve already suggested that Code Year would be a fantastic use of the time, and I’ll be completing that myself so I hope some of them take up the idea and we can take that learning journey together. Please keep an eye on our class blog to see our progress.
There is time in timetables for work like this, it just takes a little eeking out and a little confidence to make it available. What’s more interesting is how this could be scaled up? Could a secondary school timetable work giving students an hour a day to work on whatever they wanted to? What would we cut? How would we staff it?
#BETT2012 In Lists
For the first time in about four years I won’t be visiting BETT this year in London. For the un-initiated BETT is an enormous educational technology trade show / conference held at Olympia in London each January.
Things I’ll miss:
- Bumping into other educators I know from Twitter etc.
- Attending some of the fringe events e.g. Teachmeets.
- Seeing some of our existing partners who we currently source products from.
- Seeing the personal friends who I stay with when visiting.
Things I won’t miss:
- Being harassed at every turn by a salesman.
- Walking round and round and round and round.
- Queuing to put my coat in.
- Searching for some phone/wifi signal.
- Buying over priced snacks.
- Seeing the latest 3D screen / projector / TV.
- Seeing the latest amazing developments in the world of Interactive Whiteboards.
- Seeing the latest and greatest VLE.
- Seeing the latest….. oh you get the idea!
- Sleeping on a sofa-bed to save money for school (although see point 4 in the positives).
- A bag full of useless freebies - seriously I got some 64Mb USB sticks last year - who knew they even made them so small still?!?
Things I’ll do instead:
- Keep up on anything valuable I’ve missed via Twitter hastags and people’s blogs.
- Ask companies to come and see me personally at school if we think we want to work with them.
- Teach my Year 11s on the run up to their exams.
- Save school a chunk of money.
- Look to visit some schools that are leading on areas that we are planning to develop.
In this day and age, unless you have a bunch of projects on the go and products to buy then it’s hard to justify attending BETT. I’m speaking from the viewpoint of a teacher / school leaders / IT coordinator here, I know if you’re working in the industry it’s useful to have everyone under one roof. But as educators, in this day and age, you should be able to see and hear all about the latest and greatest tools for learning online as and when they appear on the market. And you should be able to hear this from real teachers who are really using the products with real children - that beats sales patter any day of the year!
Will you be attending BETT? What do you hope to get out of the show?
Learn To Code
Code Academy have set up Code Year. A lesson a week that over the course of the year will teach you how to code.
Slate suggest each lesson will run to about 5 hours. Which is a hefty commitment. But I’ve signed up and will be encouraging learners at school to do the same. With our big push on Computing and the future ICT curriculum changes on the horizon, it’s about time I can walk the talk!
Source: Slate
Secondly, never make any comment about your work, about your employer, about teaching issues in general.
Jim Docherty, assistant secretary of the SSTA, getting it all wrong.
Please don’t listen to him. Speak your mind, share your ideas. And like I always tell my pupils, think before you post. Common sense not scare-mongering.
Which reminds me I have a policy to write for staff to include this. Does anyone have any good exemplars? I’d like to keep it simple as we did with our Learner’s AUP.
Source: BBC
A Gift
“It was a gift to us,” she said. “And for him to be so confident and unafraid of death and to share it with other people was so touching.”
Ben Breedlove’s Mum. Ben passed away shortly after making these videos.
Is this classed as educational? Why are we still discussing filtering YouTube? An amazing resource.
Assistant Headteacher from Manchester, UK. This is a space for my thoughts on education, technology and more. Has for now taken over from my old blog at www.mrstucke.com
