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From http://milesberry.net/?p=409

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

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From http://milesberry.net/?p=399

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

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

A more customer-friendly interface with existing services

More say in navigating through services

More direct say in how money is spent

Users as co-designers and co-producers of a service

Self-organization: the public good emerging from within society

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From http://milesberry.net/?p=393

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

From http://milesberry.net/?p=387

After exploring the artistic side of teaching, I suppose it’s only fair to redress the balance and look at teaching from a scientific perspective. A post form ‘the frustrated teacher’ a few months back explored this distinction and came down strongly in favour of seeing teaching as an art: I love the idea of ‘Double the pay, and see who shows up!’
Coming at teaching from the other perspective does make some sense though, and I think that the move to evidence based practice in medicine and social policy might yet be followed by a greater respect for research evidence in teaching too. There was a wonderful CalTech commencement talk by the great Richard Feynman on cargo cult science, a term he coined to refer to research which looks like science but lacks the scrupulous integrity essential to the scientific method - he cites educational research as an example here. Well, I don’t know that this is necessarily the case, but just because it’s difficult to conduct educational research scientifically doesn’t mean that regard for scientific method and basing practice on evidence isn’t of value.
It’s perhaps worth teasing out a few aspects of the scientific method and exploring how they relate to educational research and teaching.

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From http://milesberry.net/?p=382

A good meeting today up in London as part of the advisory group for the opensourceschools project that alphaplus consultancy are running for Becta. Given we had people with us from a couple of the teams that had failed to win the contract for this project, I was not alone in wondering whether it was any accident that the Institute of Arbitrators were hosting the event (Is this the right room for an argument?…), but in fact the gathering was a very amicable one, as most such occasions are: open source folk are a friendly bunch.

We started off discussing the ‘selling points’ of open source - a few creative tensions emerged here:

• Open source is about low cost and reliability;
• It’s about being able to adapt things to fit particular purposes and see how code work;
• It’s about the social construction of a knowledge artefact.

Well, I guess all the above, but where should the emphasis lie in informing those not so familiar with the concept?

Some interesting tensions in thinking about low hanging fruit too: portable apps, webserver appliances or the infrastructure stuff - I suspect Windows and Office will be with us a while yet.

The wonderful Josie Fraser led a good workshop on community building, getting us to explore some of the dimensions along which communities place themselves, and thinking where we would see ourselves. It seems to me that what matters is a sense of purpose here - the open source projects which have been most successful in capturing a community around them (Moodle, Elgg, Wordpress etc) have a good sense of how the community can contribute to the project - through features, forums, documentation, bug reports and the like, as well as hacking mods, themes, plugins and the rest; part of this is down to leadership I know, but as with open source in general, things get done because they need doing. I think the same is probably true of the more vibrant communities around the net - TES Forums, Edugeek and, I think, the informal Personal Learning Networks that seem to be flourishing on Twitter; much in common here with the traditional notion of a community of practice.

A good lunch round the corner, chating about SIF, learning platorms and open source killer apps - ie where the best in breed is open source - not such a long list as one would hope, but it has to include Moodle, Elgg, Wordpress, Apache, Bind and Firefox. I wonder what else?

The afternoon started with conversations about who the target audience for the project website would be, and what sort of thing they might want from it - our focus here was very much on the needs of those in schools  - SLT, teachers, technicians etc. Given the make-up of the group, or the terms of the project specification, it was perhaps not surprising that we didn’t really get to grips with how schools could contribute to open source development, either of content or code:

“Ask not what open source can do for you, but what you can do for open source”

The sense of empowerment that comes with suggesting features, writing documentation, spotting bugs or contributing fixes is a unique ’selling’ point here.

As a group we spent a while being perhaps a bit too critical of the site’s present beta release - watch that space, but a few more case studies to come, I think, perhaps repurposing creative commons content from elsewhere. Looking forward, I hope there’ll be a few more face to face gatherings, perhaps along the unconference/teachmeet model - “How do you use open source” would be a good starting point for gaterhing the case studies.

From http://milesberry.net/?p=376

Just back from a lovely long weekend in Wales, including a day's training on the WJEC GCE ICT Specification that I'm teaching to a few of the Senior School's Lower Sixth this year. It's not a bad specification - the theory side is actually quite meaty, and gives a decent enough overview of information systems. There's a nice mix of things to the practical coursework too - DTP, mailmerge, websites or presentations, a spreadsheet, and even a little programming (if you include VB macros), even if these do have to be in the context of a business or organization rather than something of more immediate or academic relevance, which actually would be far more useful for most of my students.

I have a few minor niggles, around the particular hoops we're expected to jump through; for example:

• The DTP has to include lots of 'features', which whilst I guess they're listed to demonstrate that students know how to do them, will result in, I fear, confused, cluttered documents, which make it tricky for even the most artistic students to demonstrate a real grasp of graphic design - eg, they have to include bold, italic and underlined text, they have to include WordArt (the CamelCase is there in the specification; not sure how this works out if you're using Scribus or Indesign) - I worry that this is inculcating bad habits.
• The mailmerge thing has to include macros; they recommend 'insert the date' and 'insert signature', but to my mind these belong in the form letter, not as macros?
• Whilst we're allowed to do a website rather than yet another powerpoint presentation, the specification asks for 'transistion effects' as a mandatory feature -  as well as animations, sound and video - again this is all too likely to result in a feature rich but design poor site or presentation. Not something which the CSS Zen Garden or Presentation Zen would approve of, I suspect - again it sends a message that form matters more than substance, and that even form doesn't matter much when there are bangs and whistles available.
• The spreadsheet is tied closely to the theme of 'business modelling', which I fear I may struggle to make that exciting, which is sad when there's so much else that we could do in Excel - statistical analysis of meanigful datasets would be my preference, but we could have fun with simulations and linear programming too.
• Next year's database module pretty much expects Access and VB, although they don't say so, when, of course, it would be far more relevant to do something web based.

It shouldn't surprise me in a course run by the exam board, but what bothered me most about today was the emphasis on ticking boxes - almost teaching to the test - the sense of putting together a portfolio of work that meets a rather arbitary set of assessment criteria, some of which have precious little to do with how information technology is used professionally. Wouldn't it be lovely to come up with a specification that catches something of the joy of solving difficult technical problems, or that really allows scope for creativity and good graphic design. Perhaps GCE isn't the place for problem based learning or creativity, but these students have chosen to study ICT, they have interest and enthusiasm, and surely imagination and tenacity in the face of problems are going to stand them in better stead than being able to customize bullet points or add sound to a presentation?

Another rather troubling aspect is that, in line with other GCEs, all the course work now has to be done in school under teacher supervision, without any collaboration. I see the point, but again, what happens to independent learning, getting carried away with the flow that makes coding or design fun, or indeed being able to work as part of a team?

All this at the end of a weekend when I've followed tweets from digitalmaverick bemoaning the way ICT is heading towards training in Office skills with the use of Web 2.0 sidelined as an extracurricular activity, msars reporting a lack of confidence amongst 1st Year undergrads in using Excel to do interesting things like manipulate big data sets, and mrstucke is not allowed access to a a google sheet from school. Is it possible that the system isn't working in the best interests of our students?

From http://milesberry.net/?p=358

Interesting post from Luis Villa over on the rather wonderful Freedom to Tinker concerning cloud computing, and how it may not be all that the forecasts predict. Luis helpfully distinguishes at least four different sorts of cloud here - hosted applications, big data sets (a nice library analogy here), collaborative creation and hosted computing power or storage.

Luis starts though with a link to Richard Stallman's interview with the Guardian (that I missed entirely), and some of the comment it generated. One of Stallman's concerns is the lock-in that outsourcing technology provision will produce, potentially worse than the lock-in associated with proprietary code.

With his commitment to free computing, RMS's concern is a predictable one, but the warning is worth hearing, with not only students making increasing use of web 2 applications, but schools outsourcing much of their information infrastructure, either as managed services as per BSF or to google via google apps for education, which now, significantly, can provide security and 'compliance' tools at a generous discount.

In an ideal world I think we'd love to host all these services ourselves, and the e-safety and data security arguments are strong. However, when google (or even, in threory at least, a BSF provider) can provide these more reliably, with better functionality and for less money, it's jolly difficult to take a stand and say that in-house solutions are best. The waters get murkier still when one allows for the fact that students are now routinely trusting their data and creativity to the cloud. That said, hosting things in-house, with open source wherever possible, probably results in a deeper understanding of the tech, and the chance to really tailor the solution to the school in a way otherwise impossible; these are things wholly compatible with educational aims.

It's in Luis' third cloud type, "services that make creation of new data technically or economically feasible" that the most significant benefits of externally hosted services are obtained, and these are, of course, manifold. By encouraging collaboration outside the institution's boundaries, the opportunities for students to engage in activities that are most meaningful to them and, crucially, to learn from and alongside those with shared or complimenrary interests, talents or enthusiasms are far, far greater than even within the largest school: something just as relevant for teachers and school leaders as for our learners.

I don't think it any accident that some significant parts of this collaborative use of the cloud is built on open source software: mediawiki, wordpress, elgg, lamp - and whilst schools don't get admin priviledges they can impact the development of these tools. It's my hope that as young people get a taste for the collaborative and creative side of computing, they will come to see that open source development is a clear expression of the same ethos, as it was for Stallman at the start of the GNU project; perhaps he's worrying unnecesarily.

(posted at http://milesberry.net/?p=346)

An interesting conversation on Ferl’s splendid VLE discussion list over the last couple of days sparked off by Leon Cych’s observation that institutions generally exhibit a lack of awarenes of the ad hoc and informal networked learning that’s taking place.

Leon certainly has a point. His blog post earlier today about the way mobile technology and ubiquitous networking is making it possible for individual’s to connect, create and collaborate in ways previously impossible, when applied to schools, suggests that things are indeed different now - yes, we’ve always had informal learning alongside the formal, with informal learning not always encouraged institutionally in the secondary phase, but the range of resources and the extent of the network available to the former are now orders of magnitude greater than ever before. As he says:

It’s all personalised, they have complete ownership of their devices and connectivity and they sure know how to use it!

Roger Broadie’s take is a bit different, drawing a comparison between web2 (I think understood principally in social networking terms) in schools and the enterprse, with the institution there to provide the “guided attention” that compliments the personalisation implicit in an informal appraoch, with the VLE having a role in focussing attention and stimulating the sort of use that teachers are looking for.

I think even in Leon’s more radical take, there will for a while yet, remain a role for the VLE and the school/college/university. Wonderful as informal learning, personal learning networks and the resources of the web are, let us not lose sight of the fact that educational institutions and their staff are part of the learner’s learning network, and for many the most important part. Thus the institutionally provided learning space (virtual or real), will continue to be important for the learner.

So what role is there for schools etc in a radically personalised, networked future?

• The Open Content initiatives that we’ve seen from MIT, the Open Univiersity and iTunes U is one possibility, with institutions making their courses, their lessons available digitally to any interested - scary stuff for those of us in the business of running schools if providing courses is all we do.
• Another interesting possibility from the HE model is that of the institution as the awarding or examining body - providing some sort of certification and assurance of a minimum standard, if not in terms of students learning (which I guess the exam boards do for us) then perhaps in terms of teaching.
• Another role, as my own pupils recognise, is as a place where the social networking takes place - I’m not certain, but I think the social networking, collaboration and creativity that’s at the heart of learning 2.0 are skills that are aquired or learnt, even if they’re not always taught, in schools - we bring young people together, we give them (or perhaps forece on them) shared experiences and challenges, intellectually, culturally, physically and they learn to work and learn together, as well as all the content stuff. If one takes out this (enforced) social dimension of education and just leave personal choice and voice, I doubt whether we’d see quite so much learning taking place.
• Finally, but also firstly, there is the sage on the stage and guide on the side stuff that we teachers do, and yes, I think this is a both/and situation. Coaches, mentors, tutors, whatever, the knowledge, wisdom, intuition and care that a teacher brings to their students are things which it will be difficult to replace by informal networks.

In tech terms, whilst I’m all in favour of students using the right tools for the tasks they want to do, from both sides of the wire, and would certainly see some value in a PLE as a way of pulling these together, I think there remain roles for the VLE as the place where the institution and its staff provide the content, the accreditation, the core of the learning network, the shared activities and the 1:1 nurture/challenge.

It's nice to see opensourceschools.org.uk up and running. This is an information portal for schools, developed by alphaplus consultancy "on behalf of Becta" - some readers may remember the mild furor that surrounded a firm with relatively little open source experience, coming from outside the open source community, winning the contract to promote open source software in schools. It could be argued that alphaplus's lack of significant prior involvement in open source gives them a degree of objectivity which may well count in their favour. It's interesting comparing Becta's commercial approach here with the more community based approach favoured by JISC, which happily sponsors open source development and funds the excellent OSS-Watch, but this is a start, and it's great to see Becta doing more, at last, to promote open source as a viable alternative to commercial software, after quite a period when there's been a perception of bias against open source, perhaps particularly in regard to the learning platform rollout.

It's early days for alphaplus's site, but it's a fairly polished effort already, making good use of Drupal (which we use ourselves for the school website) for content management. There's an interesting write-up of the extensive use of Moodle being made by our neighbours Perins, where all Year 7s (including a few of my former pupils) are issued with laptops: laptop+VLE being greater than the sum of the parts. In fact, there's already quite a collection of interesting case studies of schools using open source software to a greater or lesser degree, and the tagging system that Drupal provides makes it easy enough to track down those that seem most relevant. There are also a few interesting articles: Getting started with open source software is a good place to start, with a five low risk, high gain ways to use open source: fix a problem or meet a need, do something cool with desktop applications, set up a thin client cafe (this is a really nice idea in terms of the informal and independent learning possibilities it would open up), use open source software on servers (how I got started two schools ago), and install web applications.

There's not much activity in the forums as yet, but here's hoping the site will grow into an important resource for UK schools and local authorities interested in exploring open source.

I have a piece in today's Times Educational Supplement exploring the use that teachers and school leaders could make of personal information management tools like calendars, contacts and to-do lists:

Apart from your markbook, what other tools do you use daily or weekly to stay organised and on top of things? I bet many of the things we need as teachers are pretty much the same as those for people working with clients and projects outside of education. The computerised Personal Information Management (PIM) tools they use as a matter of routine can make our lives easier too.

[See TES site for more...]