Anyway, in this particular episode the boss of the school (not the headteacher) decreed that the deputy headteacher she had just appointed would observe lessons, with no warning to staff or discussion with them. Leaving aside the fact that in any normal school that sort of thing would probably cause a few ‘issues’, it probably wouldn’t even achieve anything of much value anyway. In my opinion, observations of ICT lessons in particular should follow the following principles and practice, in addition to generic ones that would apply to any subject.

Is the use of ICT good?

Going back to Waterloo Road, if you ever have the chance to watch it take a look at the interactive whiteboards. They invariably show a screenful of text which nobody would be able to read from the third row backwards (yes, the kids are sat in rows). That sort of display is pointless, because it achieves nothing useful. Therefore it’s a bad use of ICT.

Does the teacher have good enough ICT skills?

If the teacher is using ICT, or expecting the kids to use it, then her skills ought be up to scratch. I think saying “The kids know more about it than I do” is a cop-out. If you don’t have the skills you need to use ICT properly, then acquire them.

There may be a wider issue: does the school as a whole make adequate provision for training teachers and for their professional development? If teachers are told ‘you must use ICT in every lesson’ (a dreadful, anti-educational and anti-intellectual injunction in my opinion), then there is a moral obligation to provide them with the skills and the confidence with which they can do so.

Does the use of ICT achieve more than could be achieved otherwise?

A useful guideline here, I think, is to ask whether the use of ICT does one of the following:

Support: the technology helps you do what you were doing already, but more efficiently.

Extend: the technology is helping you do something different, but you could actually achieve the same without using technology.

Transform: You’re doing or teaching something different – and you could not really do so without using ICT.

You can read more about this approach to impact on the Edfutures website.

Are the pupils using the ICT well?

Not just in a technical sense, but are they displaying good practice?

Are the pupils self-aware in their use of ICT?

In other words, do they know why they are using it? Have they made, or would they be able to make, an active choice to use it (or not to use it)?

Is the curriculum good enough?

I haven’t said anything about the curriculum or scheme of work yet, but this is crucial. If the context and activities are poor, or not open-ended enough to allow for development, that will be reflected in individual lessons, probably in the form of being boring.

Before we can go any further, is this an educational issue? I believe it is, or could be, for the following reasons:

How 'OK' are tip jars on websites? What do your students think? Photo by George Kelly http://www.flickr.com/photos/allaboutgeorge/

• If tip jars work, then why shouldn’t schools which have a lot of free content for teachers in other schools to use have a tip jar? It could help to defray the costs of running the website, if nothing else.
• Is a tip jar a form of begging? This is an issue that might be discussed with kids. I am in two minds about this. Part of me thinks it is, and that I’d rather either sell a product or service than hold my virtual hand out hoping someone will drop some money into it. On the other hand, if people feel moved to express their gratitude for the pleasure of reading my stuff, then why not provide them with the means of doing so?
• Is there a transparency issue? If you are earning a lot of money from a tip jar, and perhaps from other sources as well, should you disclose that fact? Some people seem to get very exercised by it. Personally, I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business – unless you’re doing the equivalent of sitting in the street with a hat in front of you, while your Bentley is parked around the corner. But what might youngsters feel about the ethics of making money in this way, and of the imperative (or lack of imperative) to publicly disclose your income from it? You might like to read Audrey Watters’ On tip jars and transparency in this context.

I have considered, from time to time, installing a tip jar on the ICT in Education website, but have resisted the temptation so far for three reasons:

• Like I said, I’m not sure about the ‘begging’ issue.
• I’m not too interested in coffee. What I would really like a tip jar to achieve is the funding of a swimming pool in my garden. I think I’d need an awful lot of tips for that to happen. I'd also need a bigger garden!
• I suppose I have a deep-seated fear not that I’d make too much money, but that I’d make too little. Imagine how it would feel to have accumulated, after six months, just enough money for the fare to your nearest Starbucks, but not enough to buy anything once you arrived!

I’d be interested to hear of anyone else’s thoughts on these issues.

But now, as Brian S. Hall puts it, the numbers are clear: mobile is taking over the world. But why at this particular time? Why now?

Timing is everything! Photo by Alan Cleaver http://www.flickr.com/photos/alancleaver/Time and timing rarely features in discussions of about introducing new technology or innovations into education, but their importance has been recognised throughout the ages. And not just in education, of course. The history of business is full of people who were ahead of their time, ie they came too early to make a fortune in their chosen field, and those who changed too late to buck a changing trend. Wherever you look, timing plays a crucial role. Three examples will suffice:

Brutus, in Julius Caesar, tells his friend and co-conspirator Cassius that:

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

When the time is not right, it’s a very jarring experience. Everything turns to worms. If you’ve experienced that you will be able to empathise with Hamlet to an extent when he bemoans the fact that:

The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!

And finally, of course, there is that most famous of declarations from Ecclesiastes:

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

So, back to mobile technology. What is different now compared with ten or so years ago? In no particular order:

Apps

I don’t think we can overestimate the importance of apps. Back in 2002 I wanted to introduce a mobile reporting system into the Local Education Authority in which I worked. To do so, I had to spec out the requirements, and buy a programmer’s time. Because he also had other projects to work on, it took a year for us to have an almost-complete working program. These days, there is probably an app for that  -- and probably free as well.

Cloud computing

We had wireless technology a decade ago, but it was much slower and less ubiquitous than it is today. In order for my mobile reporting system to be useful, you had to be able to log into the Authority’s network remotely, which wasn’t necessarily easy. These days, you could synchronise your data with cloud services. I mean, just to take one example, everything seems to have an option to sync with Dropbox these days, or Evernote. You may not wish to use these services for sensitive data, but my point is that it’s easy: the idea is already ‘out there’.

Society

And that, I think, is of huge importance. Mobile technology is indeed everywhere, but perhaps even more importantly, the idea of mobile technology is everywhere. Nobody thinks twice about checking stuff on their phone, or downloading an ebook while on the bus.

One of the important consequences of this is that it’s easier to make the case for a mobile solution, assuming you have to even make a case at all. Back in 2002 I had to attend meetings in order to convince people that the mobile reporting system would save them time, and even effort as we had built-in reporting sentences, school names and other data. It would also make people more efficient and reduce the need to carry documents around with them. I think these days people are more used to the idea that using a mobile device can save time and effort rather than create more work, but back then it was all relatively new.

The corporate world

You’ll find mobile technology in other areas of the economy too. Many companies are experimenting with Bring Your Own Device. Virtually every time someone delivers a parcel to your door they ask you sign for it using a stylus on an electronic device. You can even find out how long you will have to wait for your bus by using an app or texting a phone number with the number of your bus stop. Again, this is all part of a ‘mobile backdrop’ I think.

Tablets

Yes, we even had tablet computers back then. But they were really laptops in disguise, ie heavy. I liked them, but I think if anything was a bit ahead of its time the tablet computer of ten years ago was. These days, it’s easy to ‘go mobile’ because the technology is so cheap, and remarkably light.

21st century skills

I think the whole idea of 21st century skills is hype to a large extent. Nevertheless, there is clearly much more a sense that young people should be more in control of what they do or learn, and where, when and how they are they able to do so.

For all these reasons, I think the time is now right for mobile technology in general, and Bring Your Own Device in particular, to find its way into schools. The fact that it is not yet ubiquitous is, in my opinion, a mere quirk of history – a matter of timing you might say.

His recent Sound advice for 'broadcasters'blog post How to make better voiceovers for your Videos on TeachTweet is comprehensive to say the least. It discusses various kinds of microphone, with some good tips on how to use them effectively. It’s not too technical either. I mean, even I can understand the instruction “Get close!”.

The article includes advice on hardware and software, with a generous sprinkling of links to other resources. As Leon says in the article,

Although this is advice specifically for making voiceovers for TeachTweet videos, some of the sound techniques and equipment can be used to capture better quality film sound generally.

Well worth a read and worth bookmarking too!

Go on: experiment! Photo from James Vaughn http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/Elaine went and brought up this device she bought in an emporium which specialises in products of the stuff-that-looks-pretty-useless-but-which-might-come-in-handy-one-day variety. When you press the end of it these prongs come out, so in theory you can use it to pick things up. It’s a bit like the gizmo that park attendants and street cleaners use. Unfortunately, it didn’t have grip.

However, after trying a variety of screwdrivers, pliers, even scissors, we finally managed to retrieve the offending item by using an artists’ paintbrush to lever it into a certain position and then a fork to twist it round so that we could actually grab hold of it.

All in all it was a good bit of problem-solving with which to start the day. I’d highly recommend it.

But the main point of all this persiflage is really to say that our preconceived ideas of what would work proved to be completely misguided. In the end, it was a couple of ‘wrong’ tools that did the trick. Well, that and some pretty good lateral and logical thinking on our part.

Moving deftly into the field of teaching ICT, we are in a pretty good position in England really -- actually, I’d say the whole of the UK, albeit for different reasons. The Computer Programme of Study, even if published in its present form, will be minimalist, which allows for adding content you think is fit. There is no government-sponsored agency telling us what an ideal lesson should look like, or how many minutes each part of the lessons should take. Even Ofsted doesn’t really mind what you do as long as the kids have learnt something by the end of the lesson. (OK, there is a bit more to it then that, but we are certainly in a much more laissez-faire position than we were, say, five years ago, in my opinion.)

So why not experiment? There is rarely, if ever, a single best way of teaching something, or even a single best order of teaching a set of topics.

How about this as an example? In the video below, the background scenery changes according to where you are. If you wanted to use this as an example of programming, there are a number of ways you could do so. You could show the video and then try to get the pupils to deconstruct it. Or you could get the pupils to plan out on paper what they think is going on. Or you could plunge straight in and ask them to try to recreate the sequence using animation in Scratch. You could even get them to simulate the whole thing in a spreadsheet like Excel.

You may well disagree with all of these approaches and have a preferred one of your own. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that:

• you experiment with different approaches to keep the subject fresh, and yourself and your pupils refreshed
• you try different things with different classes…
• … and/or encourage your colleagues, if you work in a team, to try out different things
• you elicit feedback from the pupils about what went well in their opinion
• you evaluate the different approaches by the time-honoured method of testing the pupils on the topic
• you keep notes on your experimentations

Is it morally OK to experiment like this? I mean, what if the kids learn nothing from a particular approach?

My view is as follows:

• Unless someone can point to an objectively-verified best way of teaching a particular topic, which works in all situations and with all pupils, I think it’s incumbent on teachers to try out different methods.
• If it becomes clear that the experiment resulted in no learning (a highly unlikely scenario, but possible I suppose), then recognise it and then make up for lost time. You’d know within a lesson or two whether or not it seemed to be working, so it’s not like you’d waste a half-term on it or something.
• When I was teaching, and in the fortunate position of being Head of ICT, one of my aims was to try and make my bit of the school a learning community. It’s a good thing to aim for, and made much easier if the vision of the Headteacher is that the school itself be a learning community.

The corollary is that without experimenting you could find yourself in the unfortunate position of teaching the same thing in the same way using the same resources in ten years’ time as you are now. I can’t imagine, especially with a subject like ours, that that would be very useful.

Here are the links:

Unintended consequences of new technology

How intelligent systems can be fooled

The horror of unintended consequences? Picture from James Vaughn http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/I think there are serious points to be discussed with a class or even colleagues. I’ve been watching a series first aired in the 1970s called ‘I, Claudius’. One of the things that struck me in one of the episodes was how ‘printing’ was done in those (ie Roman) days: a room full of copy writers whose job it was, literally, to copy out a manuscript. This system prevailed until relatively recent times: Anthony Trollope’s first job involved copy writing for the Post Office.

Apart from the obvious point that that kind of job became obsolete first with the advent of the printing press and then with the advent of the photocopier, I wonder how far it was a selling point for an organisation like a publisher to have lots of copy writers.

The other cartoon, about fooling intelligent systems, brings to mind the futility of trying to create an e-safe environment for pupils, especially in a mobile, 3 or 4G-enabled world, through automated filtering systems alone. It can’t be done: you have to have a different, or at least a wider approach, involving discussion, Responsible Use Policies, getting the parents on board, and so on. In my opinion, relying on automated systems alone may enable you to tick a box, but really it is giving you a false sense of security.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the cartoons!

For more information on this, read the following:

• Education in brief: Kingsdale School verdict (scroll down to ‘Criticism not welcome’
• Read Bob’s offending (and, apparently to some, offensive) comments, as well as those by Neil Hopkin. Both talks show excellent insight: Why I was banned from speaking at the Building Futures Event

I take my hat off to Bob (and Neil) for telling it how it is, and to Bob in particular I offer this tribute, a poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, called ‘Talk’. You may care to bear in mind that this poem was originally written in the context of living in the Soviet Union.

You’re a brave man they tell me.
                                            I’m not.
Courage has never been my quality.
Only I thought it disproportionate
so to degrade myself as others did.
No foundations trembled. My voice
no more than laughed at pompous falsity;
I did no more than write, never denounced,
I left out nothing I had thought about,
defended who deserved it, put a brand
on the untalented, the ersatz writers
(doing what anyhow had to be done).
And now they press to tell me that I’m brave.
How sharply our children will be ashamed
taking at last their vengeance for these horrors
remembering how in so strange a time
common integrity could look like courage.

Do follow Bob and Neil on Twitter.

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.

You might be inclined to dismiss that as hogwash, but given King’s phenomenal success as a writer I’d suggest that would be unwise.

The quote is cited in an article in the current issue of Writer's Digest. In an article entitled ‘Go Organic’, Steven James advises against devices such as outlining a story before you start writing, because by drawing up an outline you inadvertently blind yourself to other possibilities. He suggests instead just allowing the story to develop as it wants to, and then do the editing later.

A different kind of lesson planning! Photo by David Swart http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmswart/I was ruminating on how far this kind of advice might be applied to teaching ICT or computing lessons. Obviously, you have to have some idea of what you’re going to teach, and unlike story writing it’s not too helpful for a particular class for you to be wise after the event of an unsuccessful lesson.

But on the other hand, the sort of lessons and lesson sequencing advocated by the old Key Stage 3 ICT Strategy, and by plenty of schools even now, are surely guaranteed to kill the subject stone dead? I’m thinking of this sort of thing:

Intro: 3 minutes. Tell the pupils x, y, z.

Q & A: 4 minutes. Find out what the pupils already know by…

…

Plenary: Last 6 minutes of lesson. Inform pupils…

It is interesting to read the recent CfBT report entitled To the next level: improving secondary school teaching to outstanding, by Peter Daw and Carol Robinson. The authors make two useful observations about lessons.

First, there is a shared understanding of what constitutes an effective lesson in the particular institution, generally related to Ofsted’s criteria for good and outstanding lessons.

Second, effective teaching is customised within subjects and understood within a longer time-frame. As they put it:

The ‘unit’ of self-evaluation moves beyond the individual lesson to a sequence of lessons or to a section of a scheme of work. Individual lessons then sometimes diverge more from the usual structure as they become
part of a longer-term evaluation framework. There is thus less pressure for each lesson to be an ‘all-singing,
all-dancing’ display of the teacher’s talents.

How does any of this relate specifically to the teaching of ICT or computing? These subjects are inherently exciting, and quite often there are interesting implications of new developments. Teachers should feel able to ditch the planned lesson, or allow it to develop ‘organically’ in response to what is currently going on in the world.

Here is a great example. When I opened my newspaper this morning, I read that someone has used 3D printing to make a gun which actually works. Now, I’m not a criminal, so I may be overlooking something here, but I think if I wanted to bump someone off I’d print my own gun rather than try to buy one – because I’d be the only person who knew.

If I were teaching now, I’d have dumped my planned lesson, and discussed this instead. It would be a really good vehicle for exploring the tension between creating hardware, software and algorithms which produce a given, intended result in themselves, and the wider implications in terms of ethics and unintended consequences. If you’re in the mind set, or your school forces you to adopt the mind set,  whereby you have to say “Ah, 3D printing is covered in the second week of next term”, you lose the moment, and the momentum.

I doubt that you could have a completely fluid approach to lessons, but I certainly believe that with subjects like ICT or computing, which are replete with possibilities, a less rigid approach would not come amiss.

What do you think?

I have had this document for around 30 years, and unfortunately have no idea who produced it. If anybody knows, please let me know so I can clear permission to use it and give proper accreditation.

"We're doomed!" (With apologies to Edvard Munch)Here’s his story: Writing Prompt: Technology and Appliances in Revolt

Other newspaper headline generators you might like to have your pupils try out are:

Newspaper headline

AddLetters

Your good news

And the one Kevin mentions, the Newspaper Clipping Generator.

Each has its own style so it would be worth getting the kids to try all of them out and compare the results.

I think newspaper headline generators are a good means of using some very simple, ready-made ICT, to get the kids’ creative juices flowing.

An interesting side issue is how the web – or, more accurately, search engine optimisation (SEO) – has changed the nature of headlines. Newspaper headlines, ie in print, can be witty, in a way which is not easy to achieve if SEO is your prime goal. For example, a headline in the UK’s Daily Telegraph some years ago read:

“49% of people (that’s nearly half) don’t understand statistics”

An article with that sort of headline might not be picked up by people specifically looking for articles about statistics on the web. Indeed, this article will probably not be picked up by anyone looking for articles on ICT, because there is nothing about ICT in the headline, ie title.

So the issue is: does creativity have to be sacrificed on the altar of web traffic generation?