Twittering Classes

On Friday I decided to take a flyer and do a lesson on Twitter with my year 9 group. This was a bit of a last minute decision. We had been doing some work to prepare them for Functional Skills, a SOW based round the World Cup and Fantasy football, using spreadsheets and databases. This had gone well but was starting to lose momentum now that England had been knocked out and the competition was drawing to a close. Additionally I had gradually become aware that lots of my students were using Twitter ( partly as a result of the use of Twitter as an unofficial 'back channel' in my lessons ). This had come as a surprise to me ( that they were using Twitter, not that teenagers are occasionally off task in lessons ) as conventional wisdom is that teenagers are not interested in Twitter- Teens don't blog or twitter from where I found this graph:-

However a quick show of hands at the start of the lesson confirmed that over half the class had a Twitter account. Was the research wrong or just out of date? The number of items in the news about Twitter has greatly increased over the last year. Or were my students not typical? Twitter had featured a few times in our lessons over the last year so maybe this had raised the profile. We used this video as part of the Impact of Social Media lessons:-




We had also looked at the use of Hashtags, #uksnow after the school was closed due to snow and #getmehome after several students were stranded abroad due to the ash cloud.


Having only decided the night before to do the lesson on Twitter I had a rather late night pulling together resources. Fortunately I had plenty of articles and tools bookmarked so started to trawl through my Diigo account. I always like to have a video playing while the students are coming in and logging on and this one fitted the bill:-




Here's what I came up with, needs tidying up a bit:-


https://sites.google.com/site/sblictyear9/home/twitter


I also did a shout out to my PLN to say Hi and where they were from to highlight the use of hashtags and to show how Twitter can connect you across the world and was really pleased at how many people kindly responded:-

Students were surprised by the number of people round the world speaking to them.


My main objective of the lesson ( the first of 2 ) was to ensure that students understood how to use Twitter safely. My concern was that many may be using it as an MSN or Facebook substitute as it was not blocked in school and may not understand the risks of having a public account. I got the students who were already using Twitter to explain what it was and how they were using it. It was interesting that they described it in terms of IM not mentioning the 140 character limit or RT, DM etc A couple could explain the use of hashtags so we started by looking at the hashtag I had set up and students with accounts posted tweets using it ( I wanted to make sure that those who did not have an account did not feel pressured to create one ). We had the obligatory:-

as well as the slightly stranger:-

Overall, however, the students were somewhat tongue-tied - as one said to me later 'it's no fun now you are letting us'. Remember this lesson was about Twitter itself, not using it as a classroom tool to aid another topic. We moved on to the use of different twitter tools as a way of explaining more features of Twitter. I put Twitter Followers on the whiteboard with my Twitter account to show a visual representation of followers. They were impressed by this and wanted to know how to get lots more followers, this being an aim in itself, like collecting cigarette cards when I was kid. Next we looked at TwitterSheep which creates a word cloud from your followers bios. This is mine:-

No prizes for guessing the sort of people in my PLN. When my students tried this app most were coming up with more or less blank pages. Hardly anyone had filled in their bios. I explained the process I go through when deciding to follow someone back. First I look at their bios to see if they are a teacher or in education, then I look at what they are posting to see whether it is stuff I am interested in. If they have not filled in their bios I am very unlikely to follow back. I also explained how I use Twitter partly to find new ideas for lessons. Wordle, Edmodo, Diigo and Solvr which we have used in lessons this year have all come from suggestions from my PLN as have many other resources, articles and ideas. 


With students starting to fill in bios I thought it was time to reinforce the e-safety aspect and got them to google themselves. Despite having done this exercise in the past they were still shocked that google could find them, particularly if they had a Twitter account. I showed them the search results of googling my name to reinforce just how much Google can find ( in my case I deliberately cultivated a positive online presence ). I also went through some case studies of people coming unstuck as a result of unwise posts to Twitter. Many students decided to protect their tweets and as Twitter, unlike Facebook, is not blocked at my school I was able to help them do this by showing them how to use the settings. The message did not get through to all students however. Despite posting:-

and:-

this student concluded:-

So still some work to be done.


We then moved onto different aspects of Twitter use and impact which will form the majority of the next lesson ( my last with the group ). The final outcome will be a Prezi presentation on what they have learnt.


As a plenary I got students to tweet something they had learnt about Twitter that they didn't know at the start of the lesson:-

However:-

I'll leave the last word to one of my students:-

ICT Alive and Kicking

Thursday was hot and sunny and getting towards the end of the half term holiday. And yet I spent it voluntarily in a windowless room with several ( until then ) virtual strangers talking about work. And stranger still I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it one of the most productive days I've had for a long time. 


The event was #DADSOW3 ( Developing a Dynamic SOW for KS3 ), something we had been talking about on Twitter via #ictcurric for a while. The basic idea is for a group of like-minded ICT teachers to get together to pool ideas and work on a relevant and engaging KS3 curriculum which could turn the tide on the 'training kids to push the right button on Microsoft applications' style of ICT delivery. The end result will be a bank of ICT projects for us to use which will be freely available for anyone else to use and adapt for their own needs under a creative commons licence.


The day was organised and chaired by Nick Jackson ( @largerama ) and was also attended by James Greenwood ( @jpgreenwood ), Pete Astbury ( @astburyp ) and Sarah Evans ( @jennah100 ). Several more people contributed via the Piratepad we used to document the proceedings:-


http://piratepad.net/dadsow3

What was evident from the day was that we faced a range of different challenges but we were all working in the same vein to overcome these issues and revitalise ICT as a discrete subject.


There was general agreement to use APP as a framework to ensure that the projects were covering the full breadth of the curriculum. I have also found APP to be useful to evidence how the use of web 2.0 tools ties into the standard ICT curriculum. 


What was particularly enjoyable about the day was the way that we could bounce ideas around and build on work that each of us had done individually. As an example I have been working on a Digital Literacy project ( which I've previously blogged about:-


https://sites.google.com/site/sblictyear9/home/digital-literacy/the-project


This had worked well but there were some issues:-

1. The theme of the project was Swine Flu which was in the news at the time I wrote the project but was out of date now
2. Even when Swine Flu was in the news some students questioned the relevance of researching the topic.
3. While the research element had gone well the end product - a google website documenting their research - needed more structure or purpose.

James Greenwood had been working on a similar project based around the dumping of digital waste in Ghana and other developing nations under the guise of 'donating' old electronic equipment. This video gave a powerful introduction to the topic:-

James's project had involved students researching the topic and creating awareness campaigns using ICT applications and tools. Combining the two projects together gave us this initial mindmap:-

I think this project has so much potential to shoot off in different directions and I'm really excited to be working on it. There is the environmental and social impact, a wealth of research opportunities, including plenty of scope for looking at the bias and reliability of information, analysing information and presenting it to different audiences. There are also opportunities to look at hardware components and possibly even database tasks such as a database of components and the potential environmental hazards the materials pose.  

Sarah and Pete worked together on an online publishing unit which quickly developed into a web campaigning unit:-

  
Nick ambitiously took on two projects, one on games programming:-

and a year 7 starter unit based on a Dream Holidays unit I put together earlier this year. Nick has some great ideas for improving it and developing it and I'm looking forward to seeing the results.


On a technical note I found myself in a room full of Moodlers. I've not had any experience of using Moodle and need to get up to speed quickly so that I can contribute to the site we are putting together. However I've decided to also create Google site versions of the projects we are developing. I am moving to a new school in September which is in the process of implementing the Frog VLE and I will be able to embed the Google site resources into this. It may also make the resources more accessible for those who either do not have Moodle skills or who are tied to using a specific VLE. 


I've also decided to break up my existing Google sites into individual projects rather than the whole year group sites that I have at the moment. This will allow a greater flexibility in mixing and matching projects and will fit better into a VLE structure where I can have assignments and discussion boards for each topic.


So my head is buzzing with ideas and I can't wait to get stuck into developing the plans that we put together on Thursday. Maybe reports of the death of ICT as a discrete subject were a little premature. 

Better Days

I've written two very negative posts this weekend. End of marking exhaustion maybe or the realisation that time is slipping away in my current role and I'm running out steam to keep battling against things I want to change. Whatever, if I don't write something more positive soon I'll have to rename this blog Grumpy Old Teacher. Time for some optimism and a review of things that have been going well.

First a sentence that, when I was a student teacher and an NQT, I never thought I'd write. This year I have really enjoyed teaching my year 9 groups. I remember being reduced to tears by one year 9 group when I was an NQT and I dreaded every lesson with them. The timetable negotiations always revolve around each teacher trying to reduce the number of hours spent teaching year 9 to an absolute minimum. Student disengagement and behaviour issues have been at the root of this reluctance to teach this year group. ICT is an optional subject at my school and particularly once the options forms have gone in the students tend to have the attitude that they don't have to do any work as it doesn't matter anymore. Last year, which was my first year as the KS3 co-ordinator, we tried introducing OCR Nationals as a way of focusing students and giving them a purpose to the ICT lessons. This failed, partly due to being introduced half way through the year ( no decision being made until we had a new HoD ) and partly due to not having any core curriculum time in KS4 so most students would be unable to complete the course.

During this time I began to think more deeply about what I wanted to achieve with the KS3 curriculum and became convinced that cutting KS3 to yr7 and yr8 was counter to my instincts about what ICT could offer re higher order thinking skills and equipping students with digital literacy skills that would support learning across the curriculum. As a result I have spent this year rewriting the year 9 SOW to make it more engaging and relevant. We started the year looking at the impact of Social Media on society, including introducing Edmodo, Etherpad, Delicious and Google Docs. This took the curriculum completely away from the Microsoft Office dominated lessons and succeeded in drawing in some of the less engaged students. It also lead to plenty of discussions with individual students and evidence of students actually thinking about the issues. Key comment from one girl was 'miss I didn't know I was good at ICT until this year'. Result!

The Digital Literacy project that I've blogged about previously also went went well and really engaged the students. It also had some great spin-offs. When a colleague who ran the library left, some of my students set up a wiki to collect farewell messages for her. Other students have set up their own google sites for themselves and their families, including a Lady GaGa fan site that seems to be getting a lot of hits.

We are just finishing a Scratch game programming project which have proved very popular and again seems to be lighting some fires rather than just filling buckets. One thing that has come out it was the opportunity to model how to learn new skills. I used to be a programmer so am aware of programming principals but did not always know how to achieve something in Scratch. I therefore sat with students and went through figuring it out with them. Hopefully what I have shown them that it is not as important to know how to do everything as it is to have strategies to work it out. Mind you, in answer to a review question about what have you learnt about programming games I did get the response 'so far we have learnt to leave game-making to the professionals'.

I now look forward to my year 9 lessons and will really miss the students when I leave. Here's the SOW we have been working through:-

https://sites.google.com/site/sblictyear9/

Another thing I've been really pleased about this year is the progress with staff e-learning CPD. Several colleagues have started to write their own google sites, many are using Google Docs, Wordle and Wallwisher and one colleague has started her own blog. With gain time kicking in soon I hope to build on this and prepare colleagues for the introduction of netbooks in September.

And finally I've secured myself a new job as HoD ICT in a school in Bristol. I'm very excited about this and can hardly wait to start again with a new challenge. I have also started discussing ICT curriculum development with like minded teachers across the country via Twitter and the #ictcurric hashtag and website. See - my optimism levels are returning - maybe I can keep the Web 2.0 Optimist blog title a little longer.

It's your job

My brain is slowly kicking back into life after weeks spent marking coursework. This enforced, unpaid slavery to the exam boards has left me resentful and rebellious. It has also caused me to question my role as a teacher. These thought processes have been fed, as usual, by my twitter PLN. At the risk of sounding like an e-stalker Steve Wheeler has once again put in words what I'm struggling to express. In his post A Digital Heretic he uses the metaphor that I find myself using all the time - the little boy in the emperor's new clothes story. Time after time I find myself spluttering at the blatantly obvious stupidity or mind numbing lack of understanding. Maybe it's coming into education in my 40s after a career in banking ( I know - hang my head in shame ) but I am repeatedly gob smacked at how things are done in schools. The disorganisation, the chaos and the lack of planning and forward thinking leave me stunned. Wouldn't last five minutes in industry is another of my ( annoying ) catchphrases. Not keeping my gob shut is no doubt going to cost me dear in the career progression stakes.


And yet, and yet. Before this starts to sound like a slagging off teaching post I have to add that this job makes me think more than any other job ever has and despite the workload gives me more job satisfaction than I ever thought possible. Daily I'm challenged about not only what I do but also why and how I do it. 


In my last post I discussed my concerns about how ICT as a discrete subject is developing. In response Nick Jackson sent me a link to his blog. I need to think further about this post but one phrase that jumped out at me immediately was 'a living contradiction'. I am a firm believer in using ICT to innovate, engage and support higher order thinking skills. And yet as soon as I get a KS4 class in front of me I forget all my principals and instincts and turn into a grade processing factory. And I'm very good at it. I consistently get significant value added scores with the vast majority of my students exceeding their TMGs. I can also console myself with the fact that my online resources allow personalised learning with students working independently at their own pace and achieving to their full potential. I pride myself on the fact that no student leaves my course without a qualification - whatever it takes. Trouble is I can't get the following quote from Peter Druker out of my head 


There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.


How much are my students actually learning as I process them through the coursework? Have I inspired them or got them to think or helped them to acquire transferable skills? This is not to belittle their achievement or the importance of the qualifications they gain. Just shouldn't there be more to education than this? And why do I leave my principals at the door as soon as the students leave KS3?


And so to the video which gives rise to this post:-





I came across the video a few months ago and it's left me in a quandary ever since. I've considered using it as a starter for CPD sessions but think it may scare and /or put the backs up of less ICT confident teachers.  But what about me? I can be smug in that I use the internet, I've got a Facebook account ( at least for the time being ) and I use Twitter on a daily basis. I'm not scared of technology. But am I preparing my students for the world they are going to live in? Because that's my job.

RIP ICT?

I've been mulling over this post for a few weeks now but coursework marking hell  prevented me from getting my thoughts into any sort of order. I believe ICT as a subject is at a crossroads. On the one hand there are brilliant opportunities to use ICT  to support higher order thinking skills across the curriculum and provide students with the digital literacy skills needed to function effectively in the digital age. On the other there is the pressure to 'process' students through the coursework mill to prop up school league tables. This second option is proving even more invasive with the introduction of ICT Functional Skills as a requirement for passing any Diploma. 


Steve Wheeler's 'Stop Calling it ICT' post challenges both the name and the purpose of ICT lessons. Is the name appropriate with it's focus on technology rather than learning. Do we need ICT as a discrete subject or should it be embedded across the curriculum? 


James Greenwood's article on Assessing Pupil Progress in ICT also gave me food for thought. I have been rewriting the KS3 SOWs this year to incorporate the new APP levels with it's three strands:-

• AF1 planning, developing and evaluating
• AF2 handling data, sequencing instructions and modelling
• AF3 finding, using and communicating information

APP has proved to be a good framework for developing a curriculum which is not dominated by teaching students which buttons to press in various Microsoft  Office Applications. Like James I have been moving towards projects which incorporate various learning objectives and higher order thinking skills rather than the 'now we will do spreadsheets' mentality which seemed to underpin the old National Strategy lessons. 

So for instance year 7 are currently working on a project about dream holidays. This involves the following activities:-

• Creating a questionnaire using Google forms. 
• Analysing the data collected using google forms and Microsoft Excel 
• Comparing spreadsheet applications 
• Planning a holiday route using Google maps 
• Use internet research to find out how much a holiday would cost 
• Using a spreadsheet application to produce a model to calculate the cost of a holiday and answer 'what if' questions. 
• Using a desktop publishing application to publicise the holiday package 

Yes this incorporates the AF2 data handling elements but also covers the AF1 concepts of planning out the project at the start and evaluating the outcome and the AF3 themes of finding and using information.

This approach stills needs more work as my starting point was introducing the use of spreadsheets followed by how can I incorporate other ideas and thinking skills. I need to turn this process round to a more Challenge Based Learning model:-

But can this approach work in a discrete ICT lesson? Surely it needs a bigger focus and more curriculum time to be successful. I recently visited Brunel Academy in Bristol which has has 80% of the year 7 and year 8 curriculum devoted to project based learning. Maybe the end point of the way my curriculum ideas are heading is agreeing that ICT as a discrete subject is dead. Alternatively this could be a takeover of the entire curriculum by technology enabled learning. Time will tell.

The other strand in this post is the increasing pull in the opposite direction, back to a Microsoft Application training model of ICT lessons that I'd hoped had been consigned to the past. ICT departments have long been under pressure to be a cash cow for results. Courses such as GNVQs and now OCR Nationals which are based on 100% coursework and which can turn out 4 GCSEs per student have propped up many schools in results league tables. This pressure has led to many schools compressing the ICT KS3 curriculum into yr7 and yr8 with the coursework production line firing up in yr9. The prevailing attitude in my school appears to be that any student can be given sufficient support to achieve an ICT qualification. These courses do however have a range of options enabling teachers to put together an engaging curriculum.

Into the mix now comes Functional Skills. At my school ICT is an optional subject at KS4. Suddenly from being in a sleepy back water ICT has been thrust into the limelight. 90% of the students now take a Diploma and all of them have to pass ICT Functional Skills in order to gain their Diploma. Late in the day the school is realising that this qualification needs to have significant time on the timetable following disastrous results for cohort after cohort given at most 20 hours ( GLH 45 hours ) study time. Some students are now taking the exam for the 4th time and are in real danger of failing their Diploma.

As a result the department is now under pressure to spend the whole of year 9 preparing students to take Functional Skills. To do this we would have to strip out all the digital literacy and thinking skills elements of the current SOW together with the game programming in Scratch and go back to Excel, Access and Publisher training. Pressure with year 11 has also seen a return to teaching spreadsheets as databases as a way of getting the students through. Fortunately as KS3 co-ordinator I have not been involved in Functional skills this year and I am moving to a new school in September which has not embraced Diplomas. However if this is the new vision for ICT then the sooner discrete ICT is put out of it's misery and consigned to the history books the better.

Netbook CPD Project

I've mentioned in a couple of post the netbooks CPD project I'm working on. The school is introducing netbooks to all Year 7 and year 12 students in September ( plus year 10 if funds allow ). The aim of the project is to focus on the pedagogical approach to the introduction of the netbooks rather than the usual pattern for the introduction of technology which seems to be focusing solely on the technology itself. It is also looking at the CPD requirements of staff to ensure that they are able to effectively use the technology in the classroom to support learning.


We have been fortunate to secure some funding from Vital, a DCSF backed Open University organisation which aims to support school in making the best use of ICT. This funding will enable us to organise workshops and time off timetable to work on a strategy for the implementation, including a CPD program to run in the summer term to enable staff to embed e-learning into the curriculum.


We have been making some progress re e-learning prior to the start of this project. Each member of the teaching staff has one hour a fortnight e-learning training and the use of web 2.0 technologies in the classroom is increasing. What the implementation of the netbooks will enable is the opportunity to transform the way e-learning is used across the curriculum.


This Edutopia post identifies 4 stages of adoption of technological advances:-

• Dabbling.
• Doing old things in old ways.
• Doing old things in new ways.
• Doing new things in new ways

At a BECTA 21st Century Teaching conference on Wednesday they had a similar  model of levels of transformation:-

Without time to plan and effective CPD we will not get beyond the Dabbling / Exchange stage.

Just before sitting down to write this post I came across this post on going 1:1 in schools by Kim Cofino:-

http://kimcofino.com/blog/2010/03/06/going-11-top-5-insights-from-asb-unplugged/

Lots to think about here. Particularly liked some of the student quotes:-

• 1:1 is an advantage b/c: “Teachers don’t need to be a source of raw information anymore & they can finally actually teach”
• “It’s always possible to get distracted – the tech office can try to block things for a little while, but we always find a way. In the real world, there are always distractions, having a laptop teaches you how to be productive in that environment”
• Students are not ready to go paperless, yet. They like the tactile experience and no boot-up time of working with paper and pencil when relevant.

Given the concerns re the robustness of netbooks and attrition rates I also liked this idea:-

• Students really take responsibility for their laptop through the Eggcellent Project: Each student is given a drained egg to take care of for two weeks, along with a special case. If anything happens to the egg, they have to go to the tech office to sign an insurance form.

Lots of sound advice as well about engaging all stakeholders and the importance of Project Based Learning. As part of the research for the project I visited Bristol Brunel Academy last week. They have netbooks for all year 7 and year 8 and 80% of the curriculum is project based learning. We have a Personal Development Curriculum which is a cross curricular model but not nearly as extensive.

So next steps. We have a workshop on Tuesday with representatives from most curriculum areas to complete a SWOT analysis and plan a way forward. I need to compile a survey of all staff ( using a google form ). This will be an attitudinal survey as well as a skills audit to gauge what CPD training will be required. We also need to brainstorm ideas that can be incorporated across the curriculum. This wiki by Suzie Vesper could be a good starting point.

The key message that we need to get across is that this is not about focusing on the gadgets. At the moment, if a teacher books an ICT suite the lesson is dominated by the technology and the whole lesson revolves around the kit. With 1:1 netbooks technology becomes another tool to be used to aid learning.