Nov

23

What are your kids learning whilst you're not looking?

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Terry Freedman and I are presenting for the BCS at the BETT show next January, with the above title. We’re going to be exploring some of the ways that young people are using technology outside of school for informal learning, such as social networking, digital photography and video, games and perhaps even blogging, drawing some comparisons with more formal learning inside school and looking at some of the implications of the former for the latter. It’s a huge area, and I know our allotted 45 minute will hardly let us scratch the surface (a problem we’ve encountered in our BETT presentations before…), but it’s fascinating reading some of the existing research in the field, and we’re looking forward to selecting a few illuminating case studies.

Anyhow, as well as the literature review and case studies, we’d like to collect a little quantitative data of our own, and so have assembled a Google-Form based survey, which we’re hoping teachers (and parents) might find 10-15 minutes for pupils to complete online. The survey’s at http://edtechuk.net/ .

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Nov

14

Learners and Technology: 7-11

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Terry Freedman and I are busy using google docs and skype to plot our presentation for the BCS at BETT on ‘What are they learning whilst you’re not looking’. I’m really enjoying using this as an excuse to read up on some of the academic research into the, for me, fascinating field of young people’s informal learning and use of technology away from school. My most recent find being a paper produced for Becta in March with the above title by Sue Cranmer, John Potter and Neil Selwyn.

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Nov

14

Dynamic Geometry Software

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I have a piece in today’s TES Magazine about using dynamic geometry software for exploring symmetry on an interactive whiteboard:

The lesson starts with a little mental arithmetic, but soon turns into interactive geometry using a computer, projector and input device. It works well on an interactive whiteboard. But you could just use a wireless mouse, which is easier to manage because it can be passed round the class without the need for pupils to come to up to the board.

You’ll also need some dynamic geometry software. The commercial leaders are Geometer’s Sketchpad and Cabri, both of which run on Mac and Windows; GeoGebra and Kig are good open source alternatives. GeoGebra will run happily inside a learning platform as well as on a desktop.

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Nov

8

Real time reporting

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It was a great privilege to be invited to join the head teachers of Islington’s Education Action Zone for their sixth-monthly gathering. Despite the differences between their contexts and my own, my presentation on ‘personal learning journeys’ was very well received, even if I didn’t get through half my slides because of the interesting conversations the first half had provoked. Sandra Crapper, who’s The Zone’s ICT Consultant, followed on, giving a brilliant, concise briefing on the national picture.

One area that came up in both her and my sessions was the promise held by real-time, online reporting, as maintained secondaries are expected to have in place by 2010, with primaries a couple of years later. The opportunities which virtual learning environments present for giving parents access to their children’s learning in real time are hugely exciting ones, but I’m not absolutely certain that this has all been thought through with enough care.
It’s fair, I think, to say that what the government have in mind is actually not that exciting. I was re-reading Leadbeater’s splendid Personalisation through Participation (2004) in advance of my presentation, and it struck me that of his five stage plan:

  1. A more customer-friendly interface with existing services
  2. More say in navigating through services
  3. More direct say in how money is spent
  4. Users as co-designers and co-producers of a service
  5. Self-organization: the public good emerging from within society

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Nov

8

Be Very Afraid

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A while ago now, but I did enjoy my visit in Half Term to BAFTA for Stephen Heppell’s ‘Be Very Afraid 5’, a celebration of outstanding use of ICT from schools around the country, set out much like a trade fair, but with the stalls manned by each school’s students, who’d happily engage the great and good of UK EdTech (and one or two issued invitations in error, such as yours truly…), in conversation about their projects and all they’d learnt through them. As well as bumping into folk like Terry Freedman (qv his post on the same event), a personal highlight was approaching BAFTA’s burly security guard with the words, “Be very afraid”!
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