Articles

Can an ICT curriculum be boring?

2012-02-02T09:06:12Z

Oscar Wilde said that art reflects the viewer rather than the artist. Does the same not apply to curricula? Surely what matters is not the curriculum itself, but the activities you construct to bring that curriculum to life, and the teaching methods you use, and how far you bring your students into the process?

Two changes to the ICT in Education website

2012-02-02T00:15:55Z

I’ve made two changes to the ICT in Education website, and if you have feedback about them, please let me know.

First, I’ve created a home page that is more or less static. The idea of it is that if someone fins this website for the first time, the home page says a bit about the purpose of the site and contains a few handy links to different parts of the site. I say “more or less static” because although most of the text on the page doesn’t change, I’ve inserted a snippet of code which provides links to the three most recent articles published here.

I know this page is a bit “texty”, but I’ve just put it up really quickly to try it out. I’m interested to know what you think of the idea in principle. If you think it’s an OK thing to have, do you think I should put some pictures on it to make it more attractive?

Second, I’ve put in a TweetMeme button. Unfortunately, because of the way Squarespace works, the button appears in the article summaries as well as in the articles themselves, rather than only the latter. The result is that at first glance it looks as though none of my posts have been tweeted at all. In fact, if you were to click on the button in an article summary, it would reference only the general page you’re on. You have to be in the article itself for the button to tweet the exact URL of the article. I’m not sure I like this button, but thought I’d give it a whirl for a few days. Again, your feedback would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

A Teen's View of "Their Space" and Internet Safety

2012-02-01T12:00:58Z

In 2007, the British think tank, Demos, published its report entitled “Their Space”. According to the authors,

This report is the result of nine months of work that focused specifically on understanding how children and young people use new technologies.

The review below was written soon after its publication, by Sarah Hillier, who was at that time a teenager. I’ve just re-read her article, and I think its observations and incisiveness – not to mention the beauty of her writing – have stood the test of time. The article which follows has only been modified slightly from the original. I hope you enjoy it.

In this article, Sarah Hillier reviews Their Space from a teenager's perspective. Are teenagers always as naive as adults tend to portray them? Sarah discusses, amongst other things, the importance of taking a pragmatic approach as against constant risk assessment.

I have always been sceptical of adults trying to understand and evaluate teenage behaviour, so it was perhaps with a biased mind that I read the “Their Space” report on teenage use of technology. Indeed through most of my first reading of it my thoughts consisted mainly of “Well isn’t that obvious?” in regards to most of what was being said about today’s teens and technology. That isn’t a dig at the people who did the study – it is, at least in my mind, a compliment that they have managed to analyse the most difficult and hormonal human resources on the planet so effectively. I didn’t agree with all of it because, naturally, perspective on the issues of technology (and in particular focusing on views of internet safety) varies from person to person, but on the whole I thought it was a pretty good attempt at understanding teens and technology today. I had two somewhat minor uncertainties about what was being said; otherwise I thought that what they were saying was well-founded and true in my experiences.

I won’t say that it was an interesting read for me though: it is like asking a religious person to read a book about why they should believe in God – I already knew and appreciated what they were telling me and so was not particularly interested by it. But for the adults who want to understand the relationship between teenagers and technology, I’m sure it would make an interesting read.

My first impression was that the writers did not stress how small a group of “digital pioneers” there are. They are not a very large community and are not always viewed in such a respected light as they are painted in Their Space– most teens nowadays that I know, although relying on these “pioneers” for help getting into and improving their efficiency on Facebook and Myspace sites and for removing proxy detection from school and home computer systems so they can access forbidden sites, are still on the whole referring to them as “computer nerds/geeks”. Sad, but true I’m afraid. Teens hate it when adults put us into social groups, yet we are usually the most guilty of doing this (for example chavs, skets, emos, Goths and plastics are some of the terms used to define social groups by teenagers).

My second thought, probably the thing that hit me the most, was that, yes, teenagers are not as apathetic to life as the media would have you believe, but when it comes to internet safety most teens are not the scrupulously safe kids quoted in the article. How many teenagers do I know that check out the strangers who add them on MSN or Myspace? Lots. How many of my friends and acquaintances ignore the results of looking up the complete strangers on Myspace or Facebook and add them regardless? I would say about 9.9 out of 10 out of the many people I have asked. I know most of my friends get a kick out of having a huge number of friends or contacts, and at least if they don’t think this way now, they used to. Indeed, I know lots of them get bored when they have received no comments, and so click on random people and add them without a second thought. This is particularly true of younger teens, not older teens.

Now you might be saying to yourself, this is all very well but teenagers have social groups and this girl’s experiences probably only refer to her experiences with her own circle of mates. Well, I am one of the “drifters” of society and can go from group to group pretty easily. I have to say that my findings are pretty consistent between the social groups I know – they are pretty much are all the same when it comes to internet safety: it can go rot as long as I can chat to my mates. This is evident in the number of students who work tirelessly to find instant messaging URLs that work at school. It doesn’t matter that by doing this we can put ourselves at risk of having our school internet privileges taken from us as well as exposing ourselves to potential dangers that are always associated with online chat.

When hearing about incidents of teenagers being put in danger or being taken advantage of by adults posing as kids on the internet, most of my friends do not really feel much sympathy for the children involved. We don’t take much notice of these risks because incidents like this happen so infrequently – it is easier to take the view that it would never happen to one of us than to constantly make risk assessments of everything we do. There is a much greater risk of being hurt by a stranger when walking down the street or out shopping. One of my school friends (aged 15) when I asked what she thought about the dangers of talking to strangers said “Well, that’s just tough isn’t it – if you’re stupid enough to talk to a weirdo on the internet what do you expect?”. This was just before she logged onto Myspace and accepted three new friends, all of whom she had never met before in her life.

We also tend to ignore the risk of viruses. Ironically, about a year ago when I told another of my friends (aged 17) that my dad does not let me have MSN at home he said I should just disable the firewall. He did this to his PC a few years ago. Four months ago he had to spend a fortnight solidly trying to remove the 427 (I’m not exaggerating) viruses that had accumulated on his PC. Not all of my friends have such ironic stories but they almost all take the same view – to not have a link to interactive chat or blogs is to have an almost stunted social life and to be too overprotective of safety on the internet is to be irrational and generally a very boring person.

Socialising is a very important part of teenage life and although the majority of teens would rather go out and meet up, we almost all rely on Instant Messaging to keep our friendships strong and to keep us going. Whilst being constantly surrounded by information where points of view and convention are constantly changing, it is nice to know that one thing can be depended on: friendship. If I had to choose between being able to talk to my friends freely and easily whenever I need or having complete internet safety I would choose to put myself at risk every time. I think most teens would agree with me.

At the time of writing, Sarah Hillier was a teenager living in the UK.

The BETT Show from a Canadian’s perspective: an interview with Vincent Jansen

2012-01-31T23:50:47Z

Vincent Jansen comes over to BETT every few years.

Why? In this short interview he talks about what he’s seen at BETT and why it’s important.

BETT 2012 Round-up

2012-01-31T12:00:51Z

I thought it might be interesting to collate some of the blog posts that have been written about BETT 2012, before it recedes into a distant memory. First, though, here’s a Wordle of the trends that people who responded to my BETT survey spotted. I haven’t edited the text, so there are some superfluous words, like “see”. Nevertheless, you can see the preponderance of “the cloud”, as you might expect. There are some surprising inclusions and omissions, I think, but I’ll leave them for you to discover for yourself!

Seems there are lots of people with their head in the clouds...

I have started processing the survey results, but won’t finalise them before the weekend. If you’d like to contribute your views on what the trends were at BETT, or share your thoughts about what were really good products or services there, please complete the incredibly short survey about BETT 2012 that I’ve set up. This will be available until 10pm GMT on Friday.

OK, here are the blog posts:

Simon Haughton: BETT 2012

Tom Hesmondhalgh: 5 Things I learnt from BETT 2012

Sophie Bessemer: BETT 2012 - highlights and what to watch

Doug Woods: BETT 2012 First Impressions

And, of course, my own articles, which you can find by scrolling through the BETT 2012 tag on this website. Another article you may find interesting is Education Technology And ICT At BETT: Big Changes For 2013.

And remember to look at that survey please!

3D and haptics in education

2012-01-31T09:29:22Z

Unless you’ve been walking around with a bucket over your head for the past year or three, you must have noticed that 3D is definitely the “in” thing. It’s almost de rigueur for new movies to be in 3D, and there is even at least one smartphone which has a 3D display. But what about educational applications?

Before thinking about that, consider also that 3D isn’t confined to seeing. There is a growing range of 3D printers too, which produce three dimensional objects. They are used mainly for rapid prototyping at the moment, but universities are researching the possibility of churning out 3D hip replacements – see 3D Printing for more about such applications and other developments. But again, what about the educational possibilities?

There has been some research into the possibilities of using 3D display systems in schools. See, for example, How to use 3D in the classroom effectively. I have also come across research which concludes that pupils who are taught about real world objects in a 3D environment gain a more accurate knowledge and understanding of those objects than pupils taught using the traditional 2D approach (ie photographs, diagrams or videos).

Perhaps there are some other, less obvious, areas where 3D viewing or 3D printing could be effective. Take Economics, for example, a subject I know a bit about and used to teach. Many of the graphs presented to students represent snapshots in time, but should really have a third axis: time. What if you could actually print out a 3D facsimile of the three-dimensional graph? Or what if you could use 3D viewing software to explore a 3D image of a graph, in much the same way that you can, say, explore a landmark. (Try this out for yourself: download and install Google Earth, which is free, and then look at http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/ to find images to view in Google Earth. You can then examine the object from all different angles by changing the compass setting, and zoom in and out.)

Another interesting development is haptics, which is to do with touch. I recently visited the HapTEL lab in Guys Hospital, London. There, under the auspices of Professor Margaret Cox, dental students are learning to practice their skills using a computer set-up that gives them feedback on whether they’re drilling in the right place and at the right pressure. Moreover, it’s a huge cost-saver: a real tooth costs £16, and once damaged can’t be re-used. Virtual teeth, on the other hand, can be used over and over again, saving the dental school at least £16,000 per term.

For more on the HapTEL project – which has, by the way, won an ICT Award in the “Innovation in ICT” category, see my article ICT gets all touchy-feely.

Again, is there scope for a haptics application which enables you feel particular things? There’s the obvious, of course, such experiencing what it’s like to be in an earthquake, but what about less obvious applications? What does an economic recession feel like, for instance, or the growth cycle of a plant? Is there even any merit in these kind of ideas?

Before becoming too carried away it’s as well to remember the technology effect, which is to say that it almost goes without saying that any new technology is likely to get the pupils more excited and, therefore, more engaged. Engaged pupils tend to learn more, and retain more, than non-engaged ones, and the more engaged they are, the better the outcome. I experienced something of this sort of effect myself, when the demonstration of exploring 3D on a SMARTBoard 885 interactive whiteboard had me gripped.

There is also the experimenter effect, which is that people, in this case teachers, tend to get the results they are expecting. In other words, a teacher who is enthusiastic about using a particular technology is almost bound to see good results from it. This ties in with something that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere: the teacher effect. Everyone knows from their own experience or from anecdotal evidence that the teacher makes all the difference, but it’s more than that. There was some research carried out over thirty years ago into using technology in the teaching of economics. It was found that some teachers really flew with the new technology of the day, whilst others did little or nothing with it that was new or particularly interesting. In other words, what made the difference was not so much the technology on its own, but the technology in the hands of the “right” teacher.

Oh, and what was that new technology? The overhead projector!

It seems to me, though, that the challenge there is to go beyond the initial “wow” factor and find genuinely appropriate educational uses for these new technologies. When it comes to education, the key question to be asked is “so what?”. That is, what is so special or important about this particular technology? I don’t think it’s enough to say that it will motivate the pupils. As I said in an article about 15 years ago, so would a pair of Reeboks! You have to go beyond that I think, and ask:

What can we do better or easier with this technology?

And, even more crucially:

What can we do with this technology that we otherwise could not do at all?

If you’d like to explore the possibilities of 3D printing without breaking the school bank, have a look at Shapeways. You can create and upload your own designs to be printed, or use the ready-made ones available. The cost is quite low, although obviously if you were to order class sets of objects the outlay would escalate rapidly. I see this being useful for particular activities in school. For example, a Young Enterprise company might want to order a couple of different prototypes of its idea in order to obtain feedback from focus groups before going full-steam ahead. Perhaps a school could even make some money by selling personalised cufflinks (say) at a small profit.

Or how about this for putting ICT on the school map? I have long believed there are grounds for raising the game as far as marketing the image of ICT is concerned, which you can see from my suggestions in The Case for Print-On-Demand. Why not purchase, for each member of your team, a fully-functional QR Code steel tag which can be put on a key ring? This costs $65.80, which comes out as just over £42 or just under €49. The QR code could take you to a URL which had links to all the ICT policy documents, scheme of work, resources and anything else deemed to be useful. Is that too profligate in these straitened times, or a worthwhile (one-off) investment?

Some schools have already started experimenting with different aspects of 3D, and some of the people involved have been kind enough to relate their experiences in this newsletter. I hope you find their articles interesting.

There is also a very useful article in this newsletter by Inition, a company which lives and breathes 3D in all its forms. It very kindly gave me a guided tour of their workshop, which was fascinating in its range and complexity.

Amongst other things, Inition does work using Augmented Reality, which apparently the Barbican is exploring for use in plays. Augmented Reality glasses are being developed, for use in head-mounted displays to put the wearer in an immersive environment. Obvious applications include games, defence and warfare, but there are potential medical applications too, such as in helping the rehabilitation of stroke victims.

If any of your students show an interest in this line of work, then maths and physics are key skills, but not the only ones. For instance, one person we spoke to is a human interaction specialists, which sounds like a training in psychology would not go amiss. Programming skills are an obvious recommendation, but as Augmented Reality, 3D and haptics all have application in, and can “join up”, several disciplines, no doubt a whole range of skills and qualifications can be useful in this fledgling industry.

Do read the Inition article, The 3D Landscape, for some facts and terminology relating to some of the concepts discussed here.

This article was first published in Computers in Classrooms, the free e-newsletter for people with a professional interest in educational ICT.

Blogs by Plymouth Students

2012-01-30T12:06:13Z

I’m always looking for new blogs to read. It’s always good to have fresh talent, with a fresh viewpoint, otherwise it can all start to become a bit self-referential and echo chamberish. So I was delighted when Pete Yeomans recently drew my my attention to a website that collates the blogs written by students on the University of Plymouth’s B.Ed course.

I’ve already referred to a great post by Megan Douglas, on her experience of Twitter. Another student, Kelly Holborow, let me know about her blog, which looks interesting. Kelly’s first post was about a wooden school in Uganda. Replete with photographs, the article provides interesting insights into a different approach to education to the one we’re used to. Some of the practices are bound to raise some eyebrows, but then, as Kelly says, the pupils feel “just pleased to be in school as many don't get the opportunity”. The post is largely descriptive, but any thoughts I may have had about Kelly’s not being challenging enough were dismissed by her second post, entitled Support, communication and motivation. This is definitely worth a read if, like me, you sometimes wonder how all of us adults managed to survive into adulthood at all!

I’m looking forward to reading more posts by Megan, Kelly, and other Plymouth students in the coming days and weeks.

Education Technology and ICT article round-up

2012-01-27T19:08:08Z

Here are a few good reads you may have missed in the last week or so, including an invitation to enter an article for a blog carnival, the deadline for which is this Sunday!

Another Ed Tech Blog Carnival

Have you ever heard of blog carnivals? In case the answer is “No”, here is a quick explanation. Unlike “real” carnivals, where you have to go somewhere and take part in some sort of revelry and celebration, blog carnivals are much easier because all you have to do is sit at home or in a café somewhere and write a blog post on a particular theme. You submit that to a certain person by a certain date. The links to all those blog articles are then collated into a single blog post, and that is the carnival. Blog carnivals are a great way of not only showcasing your own blog to a potentially new readership, but for you to find out about other blogs you didn’t know about before.

Interactive whiteboard guru and general all-round nice chap Danny Nicholson has decided to run another ed tech blog carnival this year. He ran an inaugural ed tech carnival last year, and that was pretty successful. It featured 15 links to articles, many of which were written by bloggers I hadn’t come across before. So far so good, but here is the bad news: if you’d like to submit an article link for this new blog carnival, you have to get it to Danny by noon GMT on Sunday 29th January 2012. Check out the Whiteboard Blog for more details, and instructions.

Digital Learning Day

Believe it or not, February 1st has been designated as Digital Learning Day in the USA. A strange name, because for me every day is a digital learning day, but it sounds like an interesting way of bringing together some good ideas and practice. I learnt about this through the ever-interesting blog, Kevin’s Meandering Mind. He has written a blog post entitled Digital Learning Day: The Tech We Use, which itself demonstrates the tech we use. Worth reading.

The power of Twitter

I enjoyed the post entitled Why Twitter? by Megan Douglas, who is a student reading for a teaching degree at the University of Plymouth. In her post, Megan describes her transition from celebrity “stalker” to serious tweeting, and the benefits of using Twitter. It’s a good introduction to Twitter, and is also an interesting example of someone who has two Twitter identities, personal and professional. The post isn’t exhaustive – for instance it doesn’t mention lists – but is enough.

I thought the video included in the post was good. That in itself is strange, because I don’t usually like videos in which people just hold up cards with text on them (for my reasons, please see Did You Know We Appear To Have Lost All Critical Faculties?). However, Megan had the good sense to smile a lot in the video and have some upbeat music as accompaniment, as opposed to the usual practice of adopting a demeanour which suggests one has just attended a funeral, with dirge-like music to match. It worked well for me also because I was able to watch it on my phone in a cafe with the sound turned off!

David Mitchell talks about Quadblogging and February 29

2012-01-26T14:00:22Z

I had the pleasure of finally meeting up with David Mitchell, aka @deputymitchell. David is the brains behind Quadblogging, in which schools form groups of four in order to – well, I’ll let David explain it in his own words. In this video he talks about how the project originated, and how to get involved if you’d like to join in.

David MitchellHe also discusses a brilliant idea for the last day of February this year, which is, of course, a leap year. Could be good news for all of you whose birthday is on February 29th!

Stop press: David has won an award at the Learning Without Frontiers conference in the Innovator in Primary & Pre-School Learning category.

Over to David...

3D at Oakington Manor Primary School

2012-01-26T07:30:42Z

By Ophelia Vanderpuye

In 2006 following a visit to China by the school’s headteacher and ICT Advanced Skills Teacher, discussions took place about the possibility of building a new ICT suite as the then suite had become too small for the growing children. In the years that followed plans and visits to new build schools to give inspiration for the design of the new building In 2009, we took a bold leap into the unknown as our discussion with our architect and ICT suppliers started to show a design that was totally different to anything we had seen in the schools we visited.

Oakington Manor has had a long history of innovative use of ICT and this new build was an opportunity for us to ‘think outside of the box’, and build something that was functional, spacious and flexible. We strongly believed that there was still a place for dedicated ICT suites as it helps to focus the use of discreet ICT, which could sometimes get lost in the integrated approach.

One example of 3D in action at Oakington ManorOur decision to go 3D came after looking at a variety of resources and possible equipment that would enable us to inspire and take the children to another level in their use of ICT and its resources. Through Research Machines, we invited a company called Amazing Interactives to come and demonstrate to us how 3D could bring learning alive for our children. At this time we all still a little sceptical as it was very difficult to visualise how the whole ‘3D thing’ would work in a classroom setting.

On the day of the demonstration six of us sat and waited whilst the equipment was set up. When the show started, Oh my goodness, we were screaming and laughing and shouting “Whoa’! How did they do that?” The demonstration of the human body with various organs right in front of our eyes, very close up was absolutely amazing! We could almost touch them. They also had the ‘eeerrr factor’.

That’s it, we were all sold on the idea. The decision was made and we purchased the 3.2m x 3.0 3D screen, projectors and 3D film kit. Since the building was completed and opened in September 2009 we have been using 3D resources to support science looking at the solar system, healthy eating, functions of the organs, maths, Tudors, and more recently phonics and spelling. The experience we have had with using 3D resources has been fantastic as it brings alive the topics in a way that other ICT resources does not.

The creativity of the children in years 5 and 6 (10 and 11 year olds) in the last year has shot through the roof because of the film work we have been doing. Don’t get me wrong, our school has been making films with children for many, many years but now they have the prospect of creating films in 3D, the ideas they have been coming up with have been absolutely weird and wonderful! Our first 3D film was made early in 2010 to test out setting up the equipment and to see just how filming would work.

Setting up the equipment has to be precise and requires two of us to set it up. This is primarily because we are still new to the set up and we need more practise at setting up the two cameras. The Sony camera equipment has a sync unit which enables both cameras to be switched on at the same time. It is all very technical…but fun. The learning curve for the ICT team has also shot through the roof.

We held our very first film festival week in July 2011and due to its success, we will be running another in July 2012. In preparation for this, each year group has been given a genre of film to make to be screened at the festival. Making a film in 3D has been offered to year 6, who are due to be making a documentary. We are at the planning stage of the process and expect it to take a number of weeks before the ideas are polished, scripts written and filming started. The children are being taken through the whole film making process which covers the basic skills such as camera use, looking at camera angles, deciding who will do what etc, etc. There are a number of considerations we found we had to make when filming in 3D and the first was how we moved across the camera to give the ‘coming at you’ effect, use of the clapper board at the start of the film- as it aids the editing process. All in all we are quite excited about making these films for our film festival week. It is a long process but very creative and the children involved love to be involved.

Ophelia Vanderpuye is the school's ICT Co-ordinator and Advanced Skills Teacher for ICT. Follow the school on Twitter, and visit the school’s website. Also, read A Visit to Oakington Manor Primary School for an insight into how inspiring Ophelia’s work with the school is.

This article was first published in Computers in Classrooms, the free e-newsletter for those with a professional interest in educational ICT.