teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

I’m delighted to have found a UK version of the extraordinarily popular and useful (but originally US-centric) Did You Know? 2.0 presentation. It’s on YouTube here and I’ve posted a bit more about it over at edte.ch… :p

Although for various reasons I’m unfortunately not going to be able to participate with my students, I must give a quick plug to a digital storytelling project Chris Craft has set up for the new academic year. Entitled Life ’round here, it encourages students to reflect on life in their current environs. There’s already 9 schools signed up to the project from all over the world – so if you can, get involved! :D

I was going to include this as part of my Fortnightly Links, but it’s too big an issue to deal with in such a cursory way. Wesley Fryer stirred things up a bit recently in a post entitled A call for a textbook purchasing moratorium. As suggested by the title, Wes thinks that it’s time for schools to stop buying textbooks. Is this a good idea? Here’s my thoughts… :)

Here’s the reasons Wes puts forward in his post:

1. Textbooks are expensive (“up to $100 each”)
2. “The era of the digital curriculum has dawned.”
3. A textbook moratorium guides schools towards 1:1 laptop initiatives.
4. Textbooks do not allow students to create content.
5. Stopping buying textbooks does not mean the end of libraries/research facilities – “we need to give students in our schools MORE access to MORE diverse texts, to encourage as much READING as we can.”
6. Free curriculum materials are available.
7. 99% of schools in the USA are “wired”.
8. Other things which are hampering progress (“seat time”, “bell schedules”) are tied into the textbook-buying/using culture.
9. Purchasing textbooks is not “fiscally responsible”.

I can only give my (UK-based) point of view on this. That means I can’t comment on concepts that are alien to me such as “seat time” and textbooks costing up to the equivalent of £50 each. I can, however, comment on the rest. Just for the record and before I air my opinions, Stephen Downes is for the idea of a moratorium (“wasteful and expensive and isn’t preparing children for the future”) whereas Vicki Davis is against it (“a digital only classroom at this time is as untenable as a paper-only classroom”). Karyn Romeis talks about her great love of books but, I think, confuses novel-reading with textbooks somewhat. The two are chalk and cheese: you won’t catch me with a copy of a GCSE textbook before I nod off to sleep at night! ;) (she does however, make some valid points about the textbook issue being a 1st-world problem)

Never being one to shirk controversy, let’s stir things up a little further and compare the textbook situation to gun laws in the USA and UK. In America, as far as I understand it, to own a handgun is legal. In the UK it is not. More people die in the USA from shootings than they do in the UK. This leads to broadly two camps of opinion:

• Guns are made for one purpose which is to shoot bullets. As bullets kill people it is likely that there will be an increase in fatal shootings if more people own firearms.
• Inanimate objects do not cause people to do things. “Guns don’t kill people; people do.”

Analogously, then, there are two broad camps when it comes to textbooks:

• Textbooks are made for a dominant method of instruction. If they are purchased it is more likely that they will be used for that purpose.
• The use of textbooks depends upon the teacher – i.e. upon the underlying pedagogy.

Wes Fryer seems to subscribe to the first of these views – that textbooks somehow cause methods of instruction. Aristotle would laugh at him: it makes no sense to say that inanimate objects can cause animate things (such as humans) to act in a particular way. I would lean towards the latter view, but reject both Wes and Aristotle’s conclusions. That is to say that textbooks can be used in a variety of creative and useful ways; nevertheless they do have a symbolic nature which can psychologically influence teachers.

I use textbooks. I tried not to when I first started teaching, but I just burned myself out. It’s the difference between the following. Yes skills are more important than content, but the former can’t be taught in abstraction. And, as a teacher, I can’t be expected to create the amount of content I need for 23 periods of 50 minutes per week. It’s the difference between:

Going back to the points listed earlier that Wes made, I think a few are fallacious. First of all, it is simply not true to assume that paper-based textbooks mean that students don’t create content. It depends upon the pedagogy which informs the ecology or habitat in which the textbooks are used. It’s fair enough to say that if textbooks are being used to prop-up a transmission model of education, but not if they’re being used selectively, intelligently and in conjunction with other resources.

Second, textbooks – if they are as pernicious as Wes considers them to be – are merely a symptom of the underlying problem in education. They are not a cause of it. To lump textbook purchasing with other problems with education is not clear-headed and not helpful when trying to change education for the 21st-century.

Third, textbooks provide coherent and rigorously-checked resources relevant to the courses followed in schools. Digital curricula and resources, can be a mixed blessing: they can lead to a much less-cohesive approach where content is covered but skills not learned. I’ll admit that I’m currently doing some work for Folens publishers (digital resources, however). But not all skills that are needed in the 21st century, after all, involve looking at glowing screen… :p

The trouble is, however, that it’s a vicious circle. In order for the situation to obtain where textbooks are no longer needed, investment has to be made on an administrative/leadership level in terms of purchasing and strategy. However, the stimulus for this can’t come without pressure from teachers. But how can teachers know anything different from what they’re used to unless they’re aware and have used the alternatives? Perhaps that is where Wes’ rallying cry comes in… :D

It was my intention to get back in the swing this week, ready for the start of the academic year, of doing my Weekly Roundups. Those who can remember back before Ben (my 7 month-old) was born will remember these were fairly popular; they were a good way for busy people to catch up with things I deemed important in the edublogosphere. It’s also a motivating factor to make sure I read every edublog to which I subscribe… :)

Well… what with re-writing my Ed.D. thesis proposal, transferring the historyshareforum to a new web host, setting up edte.ch, preparing for my new classes and actually having a holiday, my plan’s gone a bit awry. So I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with a list of links with some brief comments. Sorry. Must do better. :p

So, in order of when I read them (oldest first):

• Weblogg-ed: On Wikipedia Discussions – Will Richardson discusses the value of the conversation behind the production of documents. Interesting to read that there were 10,000 words of discussion to produce a 9,500-word Wikipedia article on Ireland! :o
• Weblogg-ed: The Future of Teaching – Will reflects on his visit to the Institute for the Future – love the quotation he includes by one of the participants: There are 1,300 teacher preparation programs that are preparing teachers for schools that none of us think should exist. Amen, brother! (or sister)
• OECD: The OECD Schooling Scenarios in Brief – presents three scenarios for education up to 2020. Scenario 1 is the Status Quo, Scenario 2 is Re-Schooling, and Scenario 3 is De-Schooling. Would like to think we’re working towards 3, but can’t help but think a variant of 1 is going to obtain… :( (via George Siemens)

• Christopher D. Sessums: Who are we really failing? – Chris looks at the problem of what to do with ‘gifted’ students in mainstream education. To be honest, I’m sick and tired of tokenistic efforts such as taking them out for random lessons/days and giving them ‘problems to solve’. How artificial and boring…

• SpeedOfCreativity.org: Relying on Technologies and Attitudes Toward Creativity – Wes Fryer reflects on the recent Skype outage and includes an ever-useful image in his post I’d almost forgotten about: the (almost) bell curve of technology adoption.
• Life Rocks! 2.0: Complete Guide to Using Google Apps – 1 – I can’t remember how I came across this, but it’s timely as I’ve set up Google Apps for Education on my domain (start.mrbelshaw.co.uk)

• Borderland: Redrawing the Shape of Learning – It’s great having a namesake (Doug Noon) who’s such a luminary; I bask in his reflected glory ;) This post deals with Doug’s reflections on a book he’s recently been reading entitled Complexity and Education. If you’re looking for metaphors to understand your school, I recommend the classic Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan.
• Christopher D. Sessums: Fix It, Close It, or Move: One Englishman’s Perspective on How to Improve Schools – Chris reflects on some reasons why the UK education system is perceived by some as better than the US system. I can’t help but be reminded by some lyrics from a Kings of Convenience song: Things seem so much better when / They’re not a part of the close surroundings…
• Borderland: Emergence – another great post by Doug exploring some of the complexity theory he’s been attempting to apply to his classroom recently. This one deals with authority, ‘classroom management’ and creativity.

• Connectivism.ca: Network, Ecologies, Curatorial Teaching – George Siemens uses a lot of metaphors and similies to explain the current state of networked education and how it has given rise to edubloggers talking of ‘ecologies’, ‘habitats’ and the like.
• The Fischbowl: Creating Personal Learning Networks: Part 1 – Karl Fisch ponders how staff and students at his school can create personal learning networks. I, for one, welcome our Twitter overlords. ;)
• Artichoke: Making a Brilliant General: Halo Effects in the BES School Leadership Research – I don’t understand a lot of what she writes (not sure if that’s my stupidity or her somewhat hifalutin style of writing) but I love this quotation: Good leaders are often said to have a handful of important qualities: clear vision, effective communication skills, self-confidence, personal charm and more. Most people would agree these are elements of good leadership. But defining them is a different matter altogether, since several of these qualities, tend to be in the eye of the beholder – which is affected by company performance.(i.e. whether or not people think you have certain qualities depends on what other people are doing around you…)

• Blog of Proximal Development: Creating Learning Experiences – Konrad Glogowski reflects a growing maturity in the edublogosphere, focusing not on the proliferation of online tools, but on the actual learning experiences and pedagogy behind them.
• Cool Cat Teacher: The Most Common Struggles When Introducing Wikis in the Classroom – The indefatigable Vicki Davis reflects on her experiences introducing wikis to classes and lessons that can be learned. You might also want to try Wikipatterns for some ideas.
• Dangerously Irrelevant: It’s the first day of school (again!) – a tongue-in-cheek, but nevertheless somewhat sad post by Scott McLeod. He wheels out his Beginning of the Year tick-box list of desired things. Shame he only manages to tick the one next to Lots of shiny new equipment. It’s an experience a lot of us will share over the next couple of weeks, methinks… :(

• Teach42: How Effective Are Filters? Ask Australia – Steve Dembo mocks the thinking behind an $84 million porn filter that was bypassed by a 16 year-old within 30 minutes. So they updated it. And it was bypassed within 40 minutes. When will administrators learn that it’s the underlying issues (digital literacy, bullying, online safety, etc.) that matter most?
• Teaching In The Digital Age: Supporting beginning teachers – Louise Starkey reminds us of the important of early professional development and networking for new teachers. She’s set up a Ning social network to support them at newteacher.ning.com. If you know of any beginning teachers, you might want to direct them to the site!

A note: If you’ve got comments about the content of the blog posts, please add them to the original author’s post. If, however, their about my opinions regarding the posts, add them below! :)

A final note: One of the advantages of using Google Reader (as I do) for your RSS feed reading is that you can star and share items. This means that you can easily revisit those you star and – more importantly – those that you share automatically create what’s sometimes known as a link blog. This link blog in turn has both a static presence and an RSS feed – you can see the latest posts which I’ve shared to the bottom-right of this site, or visit my Google Reader linkblog.

Those posts that I think are extraordinarily important and might be of interest to me a few months down the line I bookmark using del.icio.us. Again, a link to my account (as well as those in my ‘network’) is provided at the bottom-right of this site. As I add bookmarks for everything here – personal and professional – you might want to look just at those I tag with education or edtech, for example. :D

Tom Barrett, an English primary school teacher, has a useful workflow diagram (put together using the excellent Gliffy) mapping out how tools such as diigo and Google Notebook could be used in a pedagogically-sound, scaffolded way. A direct link to the diagram can be found here. The problem I’ve got – and I suspect many are in the same position – is that a) Firefox isn’t installed (and isn’t likely to be installed) on our school network, and b) students aren’t allowed to install toolbars for Internet Explorer… :(

It’s important that we teach skills as well as content to students – that much is obvious. The trouble is, we as educators need to have those skills to begin with! I’m always looking for ways to improve my mindmapping skills, so Lifehacker’s guide to mindmapping comes as a welcome boost just before the new academic year begins! :D

Lifehack.org recommends students use a wiki to organise their studies, citing 6 main benefits: legibility, durability, searching, links, collaboration, and affordability. The trouble is, they’re recommending this for university students. We need to be helping students use these tools to organise their learning in schools now! (preferably within 1:1 laptop initiatives, of course…) Interestingly, they cite Tiddlywiki as being especially easy-to-use and lightweight, which is what I use at teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk/wiki :)

This academic year I’m setting up an educational technology consultancy business. Called edte.ch, it will focus on using free and easily available hardware and software to provide pedagogically-sound 21st-century learning solutions for teachers and learners. I’ll specifically be promoting Open Source products and I’ll be building and putting into practice the work I’m doing on digital literacy for my Ed.D.

I’ll be remaining in my full-time teaching position at least for the next academic year with the intention to keep at least one foot in the classroom even when and if the business takes off. I don’t want to be in the position where I’m suggesting things I haven’t at least experimented with myself.

The next academic year will be spent blogging about developments on educational technology – edte.ch’s taking over from edtechroundup.com – working on case studies with schools, and attending (and possibly presenting at) conferences and shows like BETT.

Although I had the option of moving everyone (c.170 people) who had subscribed to the RSS feed from edtechroundup.com to edte.ch automatically, I want it to be a positive choice – for them to opt-in. If you’d like to subscribe to the new RSS feed, I have added the links for your convenience below. The ‘feed of all my feeds’ has been updated to add edte.ch and remove edtechroundup.com:

edte.ch

Feed of Doug Belshaw’s feeds

There is an option to subscribe to updates via email on the edte.ch website. I’d be interested in any feedback or thoughts readers of this blog (c.700 subscribers) have! I’ll be working in the Midlands predominantly if you’re interested in getting me into your school… :D

There are good uses of technology and there are bad uses of technology. Integrating GPS into school uniforms falls into the latter category, as far as I’m concerned. First of all there’s the matter of that old-fashioned idea of trusting your offspring, then there’s the fact that mobile phone penetration amongst teenagers is at almost 100%! Why, oh why, oh why? :s

Many thanks to Justin Medved for the heads-up on Animoto. Created by TV and film producers, it allows you to specify images and music, then it creates an automatic slideshow – with great results. Check out the one Justin created about his school’s new library. This could be amazingly useful for grabbing students’ interest when presenting/introducing new topics! :D