18 highlights from the 140 Conference

Yesterday I attended the 140 Character Conference in London, where I met up with Bill Gibbon, Neil Adam and Bill Lord.

From left to right: Neil Adam, Bill Lord, Bill Gibbon, Terry Freedman

Here are 18 highlights, any one of which could be the start of a rich conversation. I think if you take the volume and variety of the presentations overall, you would have to conclude that any schooling which does not address matters such as etiquette in, and use of, Twitter and other social media is not really a fully rounded education at all. Anyway, here are my ‘takeaways’.

I love the idea of Buy A Credit. Donate £1 and you get to have your name listed on the credits of a film. The money goes towards financing said film. What an ingenious idea. @buyacredit.

In the eracism slot, Kyra Gaunt told us that racism gives us the opportunity to be courageous.

Apparently, one fifth of businesses in the UK are on Twitter.

Several people, such as Stephen Fry and the lady from SB Buzz reminded us that Twitter is a relationship channel, not a sales channel.

Alex Bellinger told the story of a high street florist which engages its customers with Twitter. The plasma screen in its shop, displaying Twitter conversations, attracts curiosity, and then converts. This would probably be a good tactic to adopt in a school setting, both as a way of engaging other teachers and, on open days, parents.

I liked hearing from Dean Landsman and Dean Meyers that an augmented reality system tried out in New York provided the information that, in a particular direction, the nearest tube was 3,000 miles away. This is almost science fiction: think of the great creative writing you would see if you used this anecdote as a starting point.

In the musicians’ slot, Manny Norte started a sentence with the words, “M and M comes from an age…”  That was only 5 years ago! He went on to say that if M and M were starting out now, he would almost certainly use Twitter to engage with fans, as part of the marketing strategy.

I have to say that, in the ‘brands’ session, talk of ‘humanising the brand’ all sounded very cynical to me. Why not just be upfront and admit that Twitter is part of the marketing mix and be done with it?

JP Rangaswami, chief scientist at BT, asked why we couldn’t subscribe to a car park’s Twitter feed. Brilliant idea: you’d know which car parks are full in advance. After all, Tower Bridge has a Twitter feed and sends out alerts when the bridge is about to go up.

Josie Fraser gave an excellent talk about retweets, followed by some fake stats. I didn’t realise: RTs are a rarity apparently.

If you’re a consultant, maybe you miss the buzz and gossip of the office? Federico Grosso suggested that Twitter is actually a gigantic water cooler. Nice idea! Does that mean, then, that home-working is now not only technically possible, but feasible from a ‘human’ point of view too? A question for business studies students perhaps?

Some of the more ‘switched-on’ police forces, both here and abroad, have used Twitter to find missing persons and murder witnesses. Chief Inspector Mark Payne explained how using Twitter as a two-way information stream allowed the police to be deployed in the most efficient way during demonstrations, and to keep the public informed of what they were doing, and why. Question for citizenship students: is this a step towards policing with people rather than the policing of people?

The education session was interesting. James Clay stated the obvious (which is often necessary) when he said that “We need to get educational leaders to understand the value of social media.”

I was impressed by Ruth Barnett, of Sky, who emphasised the need for integrity when quoting from sources like the ‘Twitterverse’. For example, when covering the recent troubles in Iran, Sky apparently did its best to ensure that the tweeters it obtained information from were people who had already been reporting on it before it became the hot topic.

I also thought what she said about the challenges of networking with China was very interesting: they use a different character set and different networks. I’d also add that they probably have a profoundly different world view. All cultures differ, of course, which is what makes all this so interesting and, ultimately, rewarding.

Vikki Chowney made the point that, at the G20 conference, live blogging was difficult because of the volume of data being thrown at the audience. Twitter became, in effect, a tool for live blogging. That’s exactly what goes on at many conferences these days, of course.

She said that Twitter closed the gap between politics and people.

Finally, the author Thembisa Mshaka listed the differences between celebrity and stardom; for instance, a star has a tireless work ethic. She said, in a way reminiscent of Malcolm McLaren’s talk at the Handheld Learning Conference, that mediocrity becomes the order of the day because it is so easy to get away with.

 

An end to paid writing?

Paid writers

Does the existence and widespread availability of the web mean the end of professional, ie paid, writers? Stephen Downes thinks so. He asserts:

"It's a funny thing, how often I read articles that say, in one breath, that internet technology is one of those that "changes everything" and in the next breath talks about how people will still be paid for writing. You know, if everybody's doing it, people aren't going to be paid for it any more. Take reading - it used to be, kings and lords hired scribes not merely to write but to read their correspondence. And of course the average person would depend on a monk or a priest to read the Bible for them, much less any more mundane communication. Try getting yourself hired as a reader today! And imagine the laughter you would face if you boldly asserted that you would no longer share your reading unless people paid you money!"

I believe he is wrong, both about reading and writing.

Reading

  • Over 5 million people in Britain can't read or write today (see this video although, as one of the commenters says, the teacher in the video uses 'laying' when he should have used 'lying', which is rather unfortunate given the subject matter, but still). Presumably many of them have to have people read stuff to them, and possibly even pay for that service.
  • We do have paid readers, and we call them 'actors', 'poets' and 'news readers'. As Geoff Martin says in a comment on Downes' blog, "… even today we get professional readers - take the narrators of audio books, or the people who read the news."
  • When I have managed teams, I have often asked a member of the team to read a report to me and then let me have a summary of it and suggested actions. It's not that I can't read myself, but that it was a better use of resources to ask someone else to read it for me, thereby in effect paying them to read for me.
  • As a person who has some understanding of business and publishing in particular, but who is not a legal expert, I never sign a contract without having an expert read it over for me and then give me their opinion. As a member of the UK's Society of Authors and Federation of Small Business I pay subscriptions, partly in order to avail myself of this service.

Writing

Similar arguments apply to writing, where too we find the themes of necessity, convenience and expertise, and an economic argument.

  • The people who can't read or write need someone to write letters and fill out forms on their behalf. They may not always pay for the service, or pay directly, but the need for such a service is there.
  • It's true that anyone can write about anything. However, if you want something to be written by someone who actually knows what they're talking about, you may well want to find an expert in that field and pay them.
  • If you want something to be written well, again, you may need to pay someone. There are loads of people who think they can write, but who are actually pretty bad at it. Don't believe me, or think that's my ego talking? Have a look at Angela Hoy's collection of 'worst book proposals' .

    I have an interesting example to share from my own experience. A couple of years ago someone commissioned me to write an educational ICT strategy for a Local Authority. One day, I was in a meeting with him, and was astonished at the ease with which he could reel off figures -- accurately -- without reference to any notes. When I told him that afterwards, this is the conversation which ensued:

    Client: Well, everyone has different strengths. For example, I couldn't do what you've done, and write an ICT strategy.

    Me: Of course you could. All I did was write down what we both know about.

    Client: No, I'd sit there staring at the blank sheet of paper, not knowing where to begin.

    What was going on there was what is known in economics circles as the Law of Absolute Advantage. I was (perceived to be) better at writing than the client, and he was better at remembering figures than I was, so it made perfect sense for him to concentrate on the numbers while I focused on the writing.
  • But what if he had been better than me at both skills? That's where another 'law' of economics comes in, the Law of Comparative Advantage. In a nutshell, although the client may have been better at both skills than me, if he was comparatively better at the number skills than the writing skills, it would still have made sense for him to pay me to do the writing.

For all these reasons, I don't think that people whose earnings derive from writing need worry too much about paid writing opportunities disappearing any time soon.

Is the teaching and assessment of text messaging an example of falling standards in education?

The Daily Telegraph today reports on the fact that a forthcoming GCSE examination (for the benefit of non-Brits, the GCSE, or General Certificate of Secondary Education, is taken at 16) includes questions on text messaging. The paper writes:

"In a move described by education campaigners as the "ultimate in dumbing down", pupils will be asked to write an essay on the etiquette and grammar of texting."

I've learnt that you can never take anything the media says about education at face value, so I decided to look up the new qualification for myself. I have to say that, before I did so, my reaction to the news was, well, reactionary. It seemed pretty pointless, at the very least.

Having thought it about it some more, and looked at the new qualification, I have come to the conclusion that the AQA GCSE English Language GCSE (Spoken Language) looks like a fairly interesting qualification.

The section on text messaging is brief, and is under the heading 'multi-modal talk'. The 'blurb' reads:

"This topic deals with new technologies that alter the demarcation between traditional areas of spoken and written language – MSN, text speak, etc. It opens up the ambiguity of imprecise language and, what seems like limited subject material, can actually prove a fertile ground for further analysis."

I think that sounds like a fine set of aims. We live in a modern world; who writes letters any more? Actually probably everyone at some point, especially when applying for jobs. Do young people know that text-talk is not always appropriate? Anything that can help them understand such niceties is to be welcomed.

Shifting gears slightly, there are also positive things to be said for being able to communicate an idea in 140 characters or fewer. Being able to do so is quite an art. In fact, I would suggest that one really good form of assessment (in any subject) would be to ask students to summarise the main points of the lesson in the equivalent of a single tweet.

Brevity often leads to creativity. See, for example, these examples of award-winning fiction in 140 characters. Have a look, too, at this competition for start-up stories in 140 characters. True, it's sponsored by the National Venture Capital Association, so it's not altogether a disinterested party, but it's an interesting idea. If I were an employer, I would specify that job applicants send me their CV (resumé) accompanied by a letter of application comprising no more than 140 characters; it would certainly cut down on the reading, if nothing else.

Going back to the qualification, there is always a danger of taking something out of context. I had a look at the draft assessment paper they've knocked up, and it's not bad. For example, one of the things which caught my eye was this exercise:

"The web host of a creative writing web site approaches you to submit some writing for it. This month’s theme is “Work”. You have complete freedom in your choice of form, but are asked not to make what you submit longer than 1000 words. In this case, ‘work’ could refer to paid employment, work experience, training for work or voluntary work. Write your piece for the web site."

Writing for the web is, in many respects, different from writing for print, especially as far as story titles are concerned. Given that many job entrants will need to write for online consumption, it would be a good idea to address it in an English qualification.

I'm not an English specialist, and I'm not a marketer for the AQA, but this qualification seems to me to be definitely worth further investigation.

I may have more to say on such matters after I've attended the 140 Characters Conference in London tomorrow (17 November 2009).

Reduce, re-use, recycle: 3 steps towards the paperless office

I wonder what 'visionary' came up with the concept of the paperless office? This is an idea that could have been born only in the days before personal computer technology was ubiquitous, at a time when it was peripheral to our everyday lives.

Paperless office?Quite apart from our natural tendency to prefer something tangible to something which, in a physical sense, seems not to exist at all, we are just not designed to do lots of reading on a screen. Eye strain and other computer-related ailments are all too easily acquired when people try to achieve what is, when all said and done, impossible.

Reading on a screen is a different experience to reading on  paper. That's why several studies have shown that people skim text on screens more than they do text in print,and why a whole industry has grown up advising people how to write specifically for the web. (A good summary may be found here: http://www.paperhat.net/articles/how_do_people_read_on_screen/.) It will be interesting to see whether the same reading limitations will hold true, in the long run, for ebook readers, even the ones whose screens purport to emulate paper.

Yet every so often I visit a school which prides itself on having a virtually paperless environment. I find that hard to believe, but more importantly, as it's such a difficult goal to attain, why not be pragmatic and adopt the green lobby's mantra of 'reduce, re-use, recycle' as their motto?

Here in the Freedman household we strive to abide by these principles. We reduce our use of paper by only printing out stuff when it's absolutely necessary, and then using both sides of the paper when we do.

We re-use the paper by using the blank side, when there is one, for things like shopping lists and telephone messages. We have attempted to re-use paper by putting it back in the printer's paper tray.
The trouble with this though is that at least fifty percent of the time it screws the paper up, which results not only in wasted time but in even more paper being used. But worse still is the embarrassment of turning up at a meeting with a sensible breakdown of costs on one side of a sheet of paper, and some political blogger's rant on the other. It hasn't actually happened to me yet, but give it time.

More often than not, I forget or don't realise that there is used paper in the printer. I set it to print a 30 page report while I go off and pummell a cat (everybody needs a hobby), only to return to a completely useless stack of paper, and the need to use even more.

We're especially good at the recycling bit. We shred a lot of our paper in order to safeguard ourselves against identity theft. The shreddings find their way either into the cats' litter tray, or to our compost heap. The rest goes into a recycling box which is collected once a week.

Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and one must always be alert to the possibility of unintended consequences. Like the time I set out recycling sacks in the computer suites in order to encourage the pupils to put discarded print-outs in them rather than the waste paper baskets. The volume of printing increased dramatically overnight, which I could only summise was due to the fact that the pupils thought it no longer mattered since they would recycle unwanted results. I was right: as soon as I removed the bags, from the pupils' sight at least, printing returned to its normal level.

I'd be interested in hearing your views on all this. Do you strive towards being completely paperless, for instance? What do you do?

Online predation and cyberbullying

This was originally published as a news item in July 2006, but I think the principles still apply.

Well, the US House of Representatives has ratified the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), which was originally passed in May, and which bans access by minors to any website which involves creating a profile.

In other words, the Act is so broadly crafted as to, in effect, ban almost any useful website, blog, or collaborative  learning and social web spaces from schools. So how's that as a way of dealing with online predator issues?

There's no point in rehearsing all the arguments here, but one thing I would say is that we in the UK need to watch developments closely. It has long been the case that what America does today, the UK does tomorrow. "Tomorrow" used to be around 20 years' time, but these days the time lag is much shorter. Moreover, it used to be the case that this process happened naturally. Unfortunately, the "special relationship" now seems to entail us constantly looking at what the Americans are doing in education in order to see if we could adopt it here.

I don't wish to come across as xenophobic against the USA -- I have friends, family and colleagues there, and I travel there at every available opportunity -- but I do think we need to be somewhat more discriminating than we sometimes are in adopting American ideas. I am concerned that some bright spark in the DfES, fresh out of university (Oxbridge, of course), with no clue as to how the real world works, will decide that banning everything that might attract perverts is a great idea.

In fact, this head-burying approach could, if anything, lead to more and worse cases of online predation, if it leads schools into a false sense of security and makes them pay even less attention to these issues than they do now. Specifically, I am referring to the responsibility of children themselves, and parents. I am constantly amazed that, despite everything you hear, every so often another teenaged girl goes missing after meeting a man 3 times her age whom she met on the internet.

In the long term, the only real defence against online predation in my opinion is to make it compulsory for schools to address online safety issues in the following ways:

  • Teach students how to be safe online, but not as part of technology lessons, but as part of the general citizenship or student welfare curriculum.
  • Appoint child safety officers and make online safety issues their responsibility, rather than the responsibility of the Technology Co-ordinator.
  • Issue guidance to parents: after all, if your child locks himself in their room for 8 hours every day, shouldn't you be wondering what they're doing? And how come the computer is in their room anyway, as opposed to the family lounge?
  • Make classes available to parents on how to deal with these issues, both in terms of what they say and do, and understanding the technology, their ineptitude in which is usually offered by way of an excuse for allowing their kids to completely fool them. I'm sorry, but I don't go for all this digital natives and immigrants stuff when it comes to this: I don't know anything about the internal combustion engine, but I know it's pretty dangerous to wander about on the road, so I've learnt to handle myself safely when I need to get from one side of the road to the other.


Actually, the same goes for teachers: if you're not a technology co-ordinator, that does not mean you are not responsible for observing what the students coin your class are up to.

(You would not believe the number of times I have to say to school administrators, "That is a child protection issue, not an educational technology issue.")

In fact, there is probably a case for arguing that, had the US House of Representatives had more confidence in schools' parents' and students' ability and willingness to address online safety issues in practical ways, perhaps they would not have felt the need to pass this legislation.

Further information.

On this subject, the Department for Education & Skills in England has just issued guidance about cyberbullying. You can find that here:

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/bullying/

It also includes a couple of videos. The "don't suffer in silence" video is quite powerful in its own way, but both it and the other one, which is basically a poem, needs to form part of a controlled discussion activity to be truly effective.

Recent research in the UK suggests that over 20% of children have experienced cyberbullying. Now, this is interesting:

"Phone calls, text messaging and emailing were the most common forms of cyber bullying both inside and outside of school, while chat-room bullying was the least common. The prevalence of cyber bullying was greater outside school than in school."

If that is also true in the USA, then DOPA is doubly dangerous because it will make people think these issues have been dealt with when they have been hardly touched. A bit like arresting the wrong person for a series of murders, leaving everyone in the area with a false sense of security because the actual murderer is still on the loose.

I haven't yet read the report in its entirety, but from what I've seen it is worth looking at and discussing with colleagues.

See here for the full report:

http://www.antibullyingalliance.org/documents/CyberbullyingreportFINAL230106_000.pdf

and here for the summary:

http://www.antibullyingalliance.org/documents/Cyberbriefing.pdf


Oh, Sir, You are too kind

Reading through people's blogs, especially those of educators, one thing that strikes me is what a nice bunch we are. Even David Warlick's rant is, essentially, nice. Jeff Utecht's recent blog about fear is, essentially, kind. Everything they say and everything others say about barriers to implementing the use of educational technology across the school  is correct, but I also believe that part of the problem is our willingness to make allowances.

It is usually at this point that people who know me call me a grumpy old man, but in my mind I am an angry young man! Surely there are some things which we must regard as simply unacceptable? Period?

Here is a personal example of what I find unacceptable. One of my relatives asked me last Sunday if I could create a Word document for her so that she could type a list of dates. She has been teaching, I believe, for over 20 years, and is in a senior position in her school. Why has she been allowed to get away with such a basic lack of knowledge for so long?

In this particular instance it doesn't have any direct effect on the children she teaches, or the staff she manages. Or does it? I am a firm believer in what has been called the "hidden curriculum", in which what you teach and what the kids learn may be rather different. What are her children and staff learning from her behaviour? I would say the following:

1. Technology is relatively unimportant, otherwise she would have learnt how to use it to some extent (I even had to show her how to get from column one in the table to column two, and how to save her work).

2. That it's OK to let people know that your are technologically illiterate.

3. That, from the point of view of one's employer, it is OK to be technologically illiterate.

4. That if you appear helpless enough someone will help you.

I think that although that list is based on just one personal incident, we can extrapolate from it and reasonably conclude that it probably applies more generally. So here is my "wish" list for education, which I think we should adopt as a baseline set of standards.

Before I give my list, I should like to say this. The first step in establishing a standard is to state what that standard is, and/or what it is not. Just because you may not know how to go about achieving it is certainly no reason not to state it. For example, in my classes I always had expectations in terms of acceptable behaviour. It would sometimes take me three months to achieve them, desoite teaching them every single day, but that's besides the point.

Here is my list:

1. All educators must achieve a basic level of technological capability.

2. People who do not meet the criterion of #1 should be embarrassed, not proud, to say so in public.

3. We should finally drop the myth of digital natives and digital immigrants. As I said in my blog, in the context of issuing guidance to parents about e-safety:

"I'm sorry, but I don't go for all this digital natives and immigrants stuff when it comes to this: I don't know anything about the internal combustion engine, but I know it's pretty dangerous to wander about on the road, so I've learnt to handle myself safely when I need to get from one side of the road to the other."

The phrase may have been useful to start with, but it's been over-used for a long time now. In any case, after immigrants have been in a country for a while, they become natives. We've had personal computers for 30 years, and I was using computers in my teaching back in 1975. How long does it take for someone to wake up to the fact that technology is part of life, not an add-on?

4. Headteachers and Principals who have staff who are technologically-illiterate should be held to account.

5. School inspectors who are technologically illiterate should be encouraged to find alternative employment.

6. Schools, Universities and Teacher training courses who turn out students who are technologically illiterate should have their right to a licence and/or funding questioned.

7. We should stop being so nice. After all, we've got our qualifications and jobs, and we don't have the moral right to sit placidly on the sidelines whilst some educators are potentially jeopardising the chances of our youngsters.

What makes a good teacher as far as technology is concerned?

Path in a forestI'm interested in exploring this question,  which I have phrased very carefully. I think whether you're a teacher of information and communications technology, or someone who teaches with educational technology, there are some common denominators of what makes the teaching good. These are all my ideas and conjectures; I have stated them as though they are facts purely in order to avoid clumsy circumlocutions.

The first requirement is a willingness to experiment and take chances. You never really know whether something is going to work until you try it. A piece of software may be great when used by an individual, but not scale up very well when used with a class.

For example, I came across a program a few years ago which made commenting on a student's work very easy: it was possible to give comprehensive feedback in only 5 minutes by clicking various buttons. But that would mean 150 minutes for a class of 30 students, and a day's work for four or five classes.

Clearly, it was the sort of 'solution' you may wish to use with one or two special case students, but not with whole classes. But you wouldn't know that until you had sat down with the software and spent time using it and thinking about it.

Not everything is within the individual teacher's control. I am thinking in particular of my next requirement: the opportunity to experiment. Too many schools, in England and Wales at any rate, are so frightened of being named and shamed for not having achieved the requisite number of A*-C passes at GCSE that it takes a very brave, stupid or fortunate teacher to feel that they have the time and the support to be able to try things out, especially given the amount of stuff that has to be covered in the curriculum. I admire all those who do, and the colleagues who enable them to do so.

A third requirement is for intellectual honesty. I think one of the most difficult things to do is to admit to oneself, let alone one's colleagues, that as far as achieving X is concerned, the last 3 weeks have been less successful than one would have liked. But there are a few counters to this way of looking at things:

Firstly, adopt the scientific view: an experiment is only a failure if it yields no results at all, ie you find out nothing from it. If you get negative results, you've learnt something which will be useful to both yourself and your colleagues.

Secondly, take a cost-benefit approach. Basically, even if the experiment looks like having been a waste of time, if the benefits outweigh the costs, than it hasn't been. This is all a bit subjective, of course, but let's consider an example. Suppose the use of a website or application has added nothing to the knowledge of 29 of the students in your class, meaning that you wasted a few hours preparing the lessons based on it, and those 29 pupils have wasted the one or two lessons they spent on it. But at the same time, one student, who was thinking of quitting the course, and who has already mentally opted out, is suddenly fired up by the experience and really starts to 'get it'. It's arguable that the net gain has outweighed the net cost.

Thirdly -- and this leads on nicely from the point just made -- it may be that your success criteria need to be changed. In the example of 29 students gaining nothing in terms of learning anything new, if I was the teacher I would ask them to analyse why they gained nothing, and how the resource (or my use and teaching of it) could have been improved.

Also, academic achievement has to be balanced by other kinds of development. If the website or program added nothing to their knowledge or technical skill set, but facilitated critical thinking or collaborative working -- even though they may not have been the intended outcomes -- then I would suggest the whole thing has been very worthwhile.

A fourth requirement for good teaching is a love of the technology. That does not necessarily mean being a geek, but having a love of what the technology can enable you to do. For example, I love my digital camera. It's not good enough for professional photography, but it's good enough for me. I can slip it in my pocket or briefcase, and I use it to take shots which are either interesting in themselves, and which I could therefore use as stimulus material, or to illustrate articles.

Also, call me 'sad' and perhaps needing to get out more, but unlike a lot of people I do not find spreadsheets boring. On the contrary, I think a well-constructed spreadsheet is a thing of beauty, to be marvelled at! (I'm being serious: when I have more time I will explain myself in this regard!)

A fifth requirement is a willingness to not know everything. I think that when it comes to technology, there is every chance that at least one student, and probably all of them, will know more about at least one aspect of it than you do. That's why I have no hesitation in asking teenagers I know how you do certain things in Facebook or Blog TV. They know things I don't. I also know things they don't. What's so threatening about exchanging knowledge and ideas as equals?

Does this mean that I go along with the old chestnut about teachers being a 'guide on the side' rather than a 'sage on the stage'? No, because I think that is a false analogy or an abrogation of responsibility. I see no point in spending an inordinate amount of time encouraging kids to discover something that you could have told them in 5 seconds, so the guide on the side thing is not appropriate in all circumstances anyway.

I don't have a catchy phrase to express this idea, but the way I see it, the class is like a group of walkers going on a guided ramble. You have the leader, who knows the terrain and knows what to look out for and to point out. But at the same time each person on the walk is making sense of it all in their own individual way, and discovering other delights that the leader has not pointed out. That sounds to me more like the guide at the front than the guide on the side. I told you it wasn't very catchy.

There are other factors which make for good teaching. My fifth one is the opportunity to have excellent professional development. Note that I use the word 'development', not training. I am not sure how, in most cases, spending a day being bombarded by bullet points, which they then give you in a pack anyway, can be as useful as having an opportunity to explore and discuss ideas of your own choosing in depth. In fact, as far as feedback is concerned, the most successful training I ever provided consisted of doing absolutely nothing except provide a room, some software, and myself and a technician, to enable a group of teachers to develop their area of the school's website.

My final factor is an amalgam of what good teaching is all about anyway: a love of one's subject, a love of exploring new avenues with other people, a love of being with young people and helping them along the path, a fanatical insistence that each person achieves their own personal best, and a willingness and ability to employ a whole range of techniques, such as questioning, facilitating group work and giving meaningful and useful feedback.

I'd be interested to hear your views about what makes a good technology teacher.


There are other articles related to this theme in which you may be interested:
Oh, Sir, You are too kind
Training your co-workers in the use of new technology by Lisa Parisi
Jane Bozarth's article, New Skills for Learning Professionals
The Learning Circuit's Big Question, New Skills for Learning Professionals
Be sure to look in the comments on that site for other blog posts on this theme.

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Meeting in real life

I love the web and all that, but there's nothing like meeting up in the physical world. Derek Wenmoth and Ali Hughes of Core-Ed are here in the UK, and last night they, Richard Millwood (of Core-Ed UK), Elaine and I went out for a meal.

Good food, fine conversation, plus catching up -- all good stuff. As, indeed, was being able to actually sit down and have a proper conversation -- the last time Richard and I met was back in January when we bumped into each other in Piccaddilly Circus!

It was good to meet Derek and Ali too, and like Derek I'm looking forward to meeting up again.
The picture shows, from left to right, Elaine, Richard, Ali, me and Derek. 

Meeting in Essex, UK

Do-it-yourself technical support

Only last night I was waxing lyrical to Derek Wenmoth about the joys of being self-employed. I forgot to mention one of the downsides, though: having to do your own technical support.

For some reason, a few days ago Outlook started goiung wrong. Actually, it didn't so much start going wrong, as start to not start! And this is a known problem! How do I know it's a known problem? Because there is actually tons of stuff on the internet about it.

Well, I tried everything I came across, except looking to see if there is an upgrade. I managed to gain access for long enough to set it to 'Offline', so that it wouldn't try receiving emails, and to get my email settings. After much fiddling, I am now set up with Windows Mail which also has a bit of flakiness when it comes to creating signatures, but the important thing is that (touch wood), I now have a functioning email program.

Why not use 'the cloud' you say? No thanks. Having heard about thousands of emails being trashed, and not quite trusting free services to always be there, I much prefer having an installed program, with the emails stored locally. Silly, I know, but then losing a ton of emails would be even sillier. I think I'll stick with an old-fashioned solution for now.

But back to the tech support part. I think this week I have wasted around 6 hours or more trying to get this all sorted out.It means that the work I'd planned on doing today will have to be over the weekend. I like time-shifting, but not when it's forced on me in this way: I had other plans for the weekend.
So, much as it's customary to moan about technical support, at least when I was employed I could request that someone fix a problem while I visited a school or something. I can do a lot of this kind of stuff, but it's not a great use of my time when I have other (work) commitments.

Never mind: things could always be much worse. I mean, I could have ended up with no email access at all.

Hmm. Having looked at my burgeoning in-box, I'm not so sure that's an entirely terrible idea….

Blogging Honesty

The Federal Trade Commission Ruling

According to an article I read recently (http://daneblogger.com/bloggers-disclose-reviews/), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has revised its guidelines, and has determined that bloggers who review products, receive payment for it, and then fail to make a disclosure about it, face a fine of up to $11,000.

Sticking points

There are a few sticking points here, specifically:
1. How will they enforce it on overseas bloggers?
2. What's the position of someone who reviews products on their blog, on behalf of a magazine or website? Every time I've reviewed a product for a magazine or website, I've been allowed to keep it, except for hardware. That hasn't influenced my review, and it's just normal for that to happen anyway. Do they count such software and books as 'gifts'?
3. As above, but when it's on your own behalf. Whenever I review software, or a website that is subscription-based and fee-paying, I usually insist on having access to the real thing. I cannot in all honesty review the free, trial version, and then on that basis recommend the paid-for version. For all I know, once the 30 day free trial period is over, everything goes haywire. By the same token, it would be unfair on the company for me to dissuade readers from buying it on the basis of my experience with a trial version.
If you don't think this is the right way of looking at it, and that trial versions are OK to review, consider this: would you think it acceptable for me to recommend, or not recommend, a book on the basis of having read a few pages on Amazon by clicking the 'look inside the book' link?
4. Do the same rules apply to journalists?
5. If you write a blog about films or theatre, are you supposed to declare that you were given a press pass to see the production? It should be obvious to anyone with common sense that that is probably what you've done, especially if you write several reviews a week.

Is the FTC ruling a good thing?

Notwithstanding those questions, I think it's a good thing for the FTC to insist on bloggers (and other writers) being  'clean' in this respect because I for one am pretty sick and tired of constantly having to declare that I am not on someone's payroll. It's very tedious, when writing a positive review of a product, to have to say, "By the way, I'm not being paid to say this."
I have to say, on the whole I try to resist the temptation to write something like that because I know I'm honest and have integrity, and if someone else doubts it, I think that's their problem. (I'd be interested to hear what you think of that way of looking at things.)
I think there is actually nothing wrong in paid to write a review, as long as it is agreed that the fact of payment, and the content of the review, have no relation with each other. As that is impossible to prove, I think it better to avoid that situation altogether, unless there is a disconnect between you and the article under review. For example, if a magazine, or a website specialising in product reviews, pays you to write reviews regardless of what the product is, or what you say about it, that's fine. At least, that seems fine to me. It's probably not fine from the FTC's point of view.

Recommendations

If you're a blogger, how can you act in a way that is not only above board, but seen to be so? I would recommend the following:
If you are asked to publicise an event in return for a free ticket to attend, that places you in a very difficult position, potentially. Try saying this:
Send me the details of your conference. If it is (a) about the subject I write about and (b) looks like it will be of interest to, and benefit, my readers, I will probably give it a plug on my blog. If you then choose to send me a free ticket, that's up to you, but I will plug it, or not, regardless of your intentions in that regard.
The important point here, in fact, is that it's the 'seller' who creates the potential problem, albeit inadvertently.
How should you respond if you receive emails from companies or their PR agents asking you to publish details of their latest offering? They may even offer to write an article for you, including case studies.
I suggest the following. Firstly, check whether their product or service is something you would actually wish to publicise. Use this rubric, or something like it:
1. Is it to do with, or involve, the subject I write about?
2. If 'yes', is it likely to be of interest to my readers and RSS or newsletter subscribers?
3. If 'yes', is it OK, ie above board, and useful (ie not a solution seeking a problem)?
Assuming those criteria are met successfully, why not tell the company that it has three options:
1. They can send you the product for you to review. The review may be good or bad, as your obligation, in my opinion, is to your readers, not to the company. It's a risk they take.
2. If they don't like the sound of that, inform them that they can place an advertisement. Tell them that it will be clearly signposted as an ad, and that they have to agree that their ad will meet the Advertising Standards Code in the country in which the blog is published (disclaimer: everything in this article, including this, is my understanding of the situation, but I'm not a lawyer so don't take my word for it!).
3. Alternatively, suggest that they write an article or case study, which will be clearly labelled as a sponsored article (ie advertorial), and for which they will pay you.
In the case of book reviews, if you know the author, declare that to be the case, especially if you end up recommending the book. In the UK, the ICT (educational technology) scene is tight-knit enough for it to be reasonably likely that you will know, or at least have had dealings with, an author of, or contributor to, a book. I think it's sensible to make that clear if it happens to be the case. (See, for example, my review of Information & Communication Technology: Inside the Black Box http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/article_1292.php.)
I don't know about the legal aspects of these suggestions, but they just seem to me to be eminently sensible. I think it's a great shame that, by implication of the FTC's ruling, some bloggers have been ill-advised enough to receive payment to write positive things about a product without declaring their (conflict of) interest.
What do you think of such matters?

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Coming soon on this website

preview

I've got a ton of great new content coming up on this website over the next week. Each morning there is a checklist sort of article planned, and every afternoon there is a focus on a Web 2.0 project submitted for inclusion in the second edition of the Web 2.0 projects book I'm compiling. (Incidentally, please see this article for an important update about that.)

I have also been working on the next issue of Computers in Classrooms. This will feature a report on the recent Handheld Learning Conference, a guest article by Neil Howie on Adobe's Creative Suite 4, an article about why you need an elevator speech, and several reviews, including the following books:

  • The making of a digital world
  • The Well-Fed Writer
  • Totally Wired
  • Wikified Schools

What I also intend doing is putting up a page on this website where people can buy the books I review, from Amazon. (Please bear in mind that by purchasing a book in this manner, you will be helping to keep a whole family out of the debtors' prison. Mind you, I have not exactly given a resounding recommendation to one of the books listed above, so perhaps I should defer my desert island retirement plans for now.)

There may be more (hopefully, will be more), but I'd rather under-promise and over-deliver than the converse of that!

I am pleased that there has been quite a lot of interest in this new website, and as you may have noticed I am working like crazy to get new content up here. In fact, at the moment I am posting at the rate of at least two articles a day. I'm always interested in hearing from potential contributors to the newsletter and website, and guest-bloggers and reciprocating that on other people's blogs. If that is of interest to you, then please get in touch, using one of the myriad options on the Contact Us page.

Enough of this persiflage! There's another (hopefully useful) article coming in around 6.5 hours' time, containing a whole load of ideas for an ICT Co-ordinators' (sometimes known as Technology Co-ordinators) day. Yes, it's true: they do not have to consist of a load of boring people reading out their PowerPoint slides!

Do subscribe to the RSS feed if you don't want to miss it! In fact, why not subscribe even if you do want to miss it? After all, you don't have to read it, and there'll be another one at 16:30 anyway, and you won't want to miss that!

Life without the internet?

I just happened to come across this video, which I think is wonderful. I remember life before the internet, and I am not sure how I got anything done! (Mind you, I also don't know how I get anything done now, because of the distractions of the internet!)

I think this would be a great video to use as a starter for discussion on the importance of internet, and encourage students to respond with a video or podcast or even (shudder) an essay!

Would love to hear what you think of it.

No comment

Well, Freedman, it has come to my attention that you've been rather lax in responding to comments. What do you have to say for yourself? And stop fidgeting, boy! mortarboard.png
Er, it wasn't my fault, Sir.
It "wasn't my fault, Sir"? Then whose fault was it? The little green men from Mars?
No, Sir. It was the program, Sir.
Program? What program? Do try and make some sense, lad. You sound like a gibbering idiot.
I thought it was set to send me an email when someone commented, Sir.
In other words, you hadn't set it properly.
No, Sir. I mean, yes, Sir. I mean, I did, but it undid itself.
Undid itself, boy? Have you taken leave of your senses? Don't answer that, Freedman. Have you corrected it now?
Yes.
Yes, what?
Yes, Sir, Sir.
Good. And when might you be responding to the aforementioned comments? Some time in the next decade one hopes?
Today, Sir.
Good. And when you've done it, I want you to show me proof. Bring me the internet first thing in the morning.
Er, but...
No, on second thoughts, print it out, and leave it for me at the staffroom.
But, but, Sir, erm --
Are you quite alright, boy? Do get a grip. Now, to help you remember such basic etiquette in future, take 500 lines.
Take them where, Sir?
Are you trying to be impudent, boy? Make that 1,000 lines. At the staffroom tomorrow morning, 8:30 sharp. "I will monitor comments on my website every day, and respond in a timely manner."
Yes, Sir.
And Freedman?
Yes, Sir?
No copying and pasting.

A text editor with a difference

I love the idea of being 'punished' for having writer's block. After all, this is a condition that simply does not exist. I mean, be honest: if you really have so-called writer's block, all you need to do is write about that. Hardly a difficult task.

Writer's Block? There's a technological solution!Writing against the clock for fear of losing anything you have managed to write would, I should think, be another effective antidote: nothing like a mild panic to get the mind into gear!

If all else fails, you could always stand up, take a deep breath, and talk about the first random topic you come to in a dictionary or encyclopaedia and see where that gets you. (Locked up would be a distinct possibility if you tried that in public, so don't!)

I've just written this using the online version of Write Or Die at http://writeordie.drwicked.com. There's a desktop version too, for $10. So what does the application do? Apparently, the desktop version won't let you save anything until you've reached your target word count. There's even a setting for making it delete what you have already written if you're not quick enough off the mark.

A great idea; a great, darkly humorous, use of technology. There are myriad possible applications in a school setting. Discipline problems? What discipline problems? The kids are too busy trying to beat the clock.

Here's a badge I 'earned' while trying out the online version of the program for this article:

And here is a video about the product:

 

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Building up slowly: more changes to this website

Walk past any building site, and what will you see? More than likely, people lolling around drinking tea. Yet as you walk by every day you notice something strange: slowly, inexorably, the building is taking shape. Here is some scaffolding where only yesterday was an empty space; there a wall, where only yesterday there was scaffolding.

Thus it is with this website. From your point of view, no doubt, I am lolling around drinking tea. Yet look more closely, and you will notice changes here and there. Small, incremental changes, but not insignificant ones I hope.

Last week I listened to the reminder from Doug Woods that blue/yellow was almost as bad a colour combination as red/green. So out went the yellow background and most of the blue text, apart from the hyperlinks.

IMG_0751

As another aspect of making the site accessible to all, I've been experimenting with Talkr, which converts text to speech automatically. Unfortunately, it would seem that if you have article summaries, Talkr converts the summary and not the main article. So, out went the summaries despite the fact that I quite liked the idea of presenting several headlines and abstracts on the front page of the website: what a glorious choice the visitor had!

Sadly, ditching the summaries had the unintended consequence of making the early (summarised) articles unamenable to conversion to speech. I hope you will agree that this is a small sacrifice for the greater, and longer term, good.

Of course, this now meant that having five articles per page required, in Ray Tolley's words, "having to endlessly scroll further down the page in case there is a different topic further down." Therefore I took a leaf out of his book and reduced the number of articles to just one per page -- but still with the last six headlines just over to the left of the main area.

Like any consultant, part of the purpose of my website is to make it easy for people to find out what I do and why I'm qualified to do it, in the hope that they will offer me some gainful employment. So up went the CV (resumé) in a web-friendly form, on the page titled Assignments Undertaken.

Lastly, I added a section called 'Social Profile' which gives my addresses on Twitter, Linked-In, and elsewhere. Rather cleverly, Squarespace allowed me to make that visible only on the 'Contact Us' page. (If you're impressed enough to want to create your own Squarespace website,  you might consider clicking on the 'Powered by Squarespace' icon on the right-hand side of this page. That links to an affiliate scheme which will place untold riches into my coffers. Well, a couple of quid I think, but every little helps, to coin a phrase!)

Back to the website, and I must thank everyone who has been kind enough to provide feedback on the new site. I've done so in private emails, but I think a public acknowledgement of people's kindness would not go amiss. If you have any feedback, you can get in touch with me in all sorts of ways, as shown on the Contact Us page.

Do keep visiting! It took five years to build up the wealth of content on the original website, so please be patient! I'm doing a fair amount of posting at the moment, but you know what they say: Rome wasn't built in a day. And you can always help by suggesting an article that you would like to write.

If you like the site, please do tell others about it, comment on the articles and write about them. Visitor stats are looking pretty good at the moment, but I'm a Type A person and I need results yesterday!

But for now, I think it's time I had another cup of tea....

Does using the internet affect the brain?

Does using the internet affect the brain, and if so, how?

This is a subject for debate amongst scientists. On the one hand you have people like Baroness Greenfield saying that using the internet and related technologies leads to children having shorter attention spans and no imagination. On the other hand some people say it enhances certain kinds of mental activity.

An article in the Telegraph recently reported on a study which found that searching the internet can delay the onset of dementia in older people.

It seems to me that one of the key issues is not whether children are on the internet, but what they do there. I should have thought that if they are thinking about framing their search properly, and then evaluating the list of results, they are exercising the discriminatory and analytical parts of their brain in just the same way as if they were searching for information in the 'traditional' way.

It just does not seem logical to me that the medium itself should make any difference, unless it's being suggested that radiation from the screens is affecting their brains.

But it's something educationalists need to keep an eye on. If Baroness Greenfield is right, it would be irresponsible to promote the (over-)use of the internet in schools. And if the opposite is true, it would be irresponsible not to.

'Digital literacy' is a red herring

There was an article in my newspapaer recently which reported that Professor Alan Smithers told a conference that the new Diploma would not be acceptable as an entry qualification to university. Nothing remarkable in that, you might say, except that unless I happened to enter a parallel universe I was at the same conference, and had a completely different impression of what was said.

The conference, organised by the Westminster Education Forum, was concerned with 14-19 education, specifically Diplomas and Apprenticeships. Eight people gave a talk about the Diploma, and all of these, with the exception of Professor Smithers, were extremely positive. One even said, in contradiction to the impression given by the newspaper report, that 85% of UK Higher Education Institutes are accepting the Diploma as an entry qualification (other things being equal, as is always the case anyway).

So was Professor Smithers unduly negative? Well actually, no. All he said was that before schools recommend that their students take the Diploma, they should make sure that it would be acceptable as an entry into their chosen career or higher education path, as he feared that 'A' levels, being derived directly from university entrance examinations, would be more likely to be acceptable.

What this indicates to me is that to some extent the current emphasis on teaching students to be digitally literate misses the point. We need to teach them to be media literate, and to have good research skills.

We also need to teach them that even 'factual' reports are subject to bias brought about by what the reporter actually sees and hears, and how they interpret and internalise that information. And if the report is for, or funded by, a third party, there is that party's bias to throw into the mix as well.

As is often the case, there is nothing new in any of this. There is a Sufi saying which says:

When a pickpocket sees a Holy Man, he sees only his pockets.

There is also the ages old story of the blind men trying to determine what an elephant is. And there is the famous optical illusion in which a picture shows either a witch or a beautiful woman, depending on how you look at it. (At the end of this post I've included a video update of this, with a nice twist at the end.)

Just as cyber-bullying and e-safety are actually subsets of a bigger picture, so is digital literacy. Given that many adults, including teachers, take it for granted that young people are born digitally literate there is a real danger that we will take younsters' word for it when they tell us they know all about internet literacy. It seems to me that, to do the best job we can, we need to get back to basics and even go so far as to leave anything digital out of the picture entirely until students understand these principles in a general sense first.

 

Website progress report

I'm not putting too much content here just yet because I'm still having some issues with DNS matters, which hopefully will be resolved today. However, I've made a couple of changes which should make finding stuff even easier:

 

1. I've added an Article Index page to the top of the screen. This lists all the articles in reverse chronological order.

 

2. I've added a page in the right-hand menu called 'Find articles by tags'.

3. The list of articles on the left-hand side of the page has been reduced to 6, and the list of tags has been removed, making the monthly archive visible on most screens.

We're getting there...

If you're British, you may remember the British Rail advertisement from the 1980s, strapline: we're getting there. I don't think they ever lived it down.

Anyway, if you're reading this, it means you arrived, which is good! Because I had web forwarding in place, my attempt to have the 'ictineducation.org' name point here failed. But a kind technician at Easyspace is sorting it out for me.

We will soon be cooking with gas!