teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

Despite it being my half-term, I’ve just got back from a two-day conference. It was pretty much the only way I could go: the combined cost of the conference, hotel and rail fare meant that my school wouldn’t have also been able to shell out for supply cover. I had a great time – here’s what I got up to… :p

Day 1

Session 1: Dan Sutch – Innovations

Dan, one of the learning researchers at Futurelab, spoke on innovation. He discussed how both the top-down and end-user approaches don’t really cut it and how they need to be used together. Although various definitions of ‘innovation’ were flying around, he thought of it as:

The successful exploitation of ideas generated at the intersection of invention and insight, which leads to the creation of social or economic value.

He talked of the contexts for innovation and that instead of being put into groups we need to be forming interest and skills-based networks. I was pleased that he mentioned NextGenTeachers as an example of this. :)

My notes on this session can be found via Google Docs here.

Session 2: Donald Clark – NEW theories and OLD practice

I was warned before Donald’s presentation that he was a ‘love him or hate him’-type figure. I’ve just discovered his blog here. He has a very engaging presentational style which unfortunately I can’t reproduce here. He did provoke some discussion, especially around the kind of inevitability of using ideas and tools without the pedagogy to back them up. He attacked VAK learning styles, the graph which shows that you remember 10% of what you’re told, etc. and talked of classrooms being like ‘boxes’ in which we put students.

My notes on this session can be found via Google Docs here.

Workshop Session: John Morgan – Enquiring Minds: enquiring schools?

John discussed the Enquiring Minds project he has been involved with in his role with Futurelab. Details of the (ongoing) project can be found here. I found this session to be very poorly presented and executed, unfortunately and I lost concentration. It reminded me of being back in the classroom as a pupil 10 years ago during a lesson by a bad teacher, unfortunately. I didn’t make any notes that couldn’t be found on the Futurelab website.

Session 3: Trevor Baylis – Why Invent?

Trevor used this session to promote his ideas about Intellectual Property and tell the story of his life as an inventor. My notes can be found here – bereft, of course, of his wit and personality. :)

Evening

Instead of going to the evening dinner and entertainment I met up with Dan Lyndon, commenter on this blog, Advanced Skills Teacher and webmaster of both comptonhistory.com and blackhistory4schools.com. He’s a great guy, an inspirational teacher and it was good to catch up with him. :D

Day 2

Session 1: Lizbeth Goodman – Inventive play: technology-enhanced learning and gaming tools that enable community engagement and communication

Lizbeth is from SMARTlab, the Digital Media Institute at the University of East London. SMARTlab work with physically and cognitively disabled people, as well as abused women, etc. – those who can be on the margins of the society. They aim to allow them to express themselves through dance, use of technology, and such.

She gave an engaging (although occasionally scatty) multimedia-rich presentation to which my notes can’t really do justice… :(

Session 2: Dan Sutch – Summary and overview of workshop sessions

Dan gave some feedback from text messages and comments made during the conference so far and asked questions, encouraging us to reflect in time for Tim Rudd’s session in the afternoon. Brief notes here.

Workshop Session: Mark Pearce – Alternative futures – a practical guide to using visual scenario planning techniques in education

By far the best session of the conference, a hands-on approach to planning for the future given its unknowability and uncertainty. We were given the task of pitching on behalf of a specific company to control education in London in 2015: my group were Innocent, another was Virgin, and the final one Google. We had to take into account our company’s interests and priorities when coming up with what education would look like and when presenting. To assist us, theWorkshop have developed something called the Scenario Visualization Tool which can help flesh-out and demonstrate what you are thinking.

At the end of the session we reflected whether the insights we had gained had helped our practice and worldview. Guess what? It had. What a great session! My notes are here, not that they’ll be much good due to the hands-on nature of the session. :D

Session 3: Tim Rudd – All change for innovation

Tim’s was a manifesto session – an open-floor question and answer and discussion time to try and think about how to deal with barriers and resistances to innovation. The questions which drove this were:

• What are we trying to achieve/bring about through innovation
• Are we doing innovation for innovation’s sake?
• How to we convince others – institutional logic – existing cultures – folk pedagogies?
• Do we need a wider debate on the purpose of education?

No notes from this session as I was involved in the debate! :p

Thoughts and take-aways

I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to be surrounded by people from different areas of education who are nevertheless working towards the same thing. I met people from industry, from Becta, from universities, from charities, from schools, from all over the world. I made real-world connections with people I’d never have had the chance to make otherwise (I must make sure I follow those up). I also met some people like Leon Cych that I’ve only ever met virtually.

One last point: I’ve never seen so many people using Macbooks in one place. And if they weren’t using Macs they were using super-slim Sony VAIOs. And if they weren’t using either of those, they were using tablets. It just goes to show that those in the know appreciate both form and function. I’m not being flippant here – I really do think the interface with educational technology is very important and something for institutions to consider. :)

(Futurelab has a blog called FLUX for their latest thoughts/ideas)

I’m up at 5am this morning to go to Futurelab’s Why Don’t You…? conference in London. I haven’t had a chance to post properly this half-term yet as I’ve been up in Durham working on my thesis proposal. Here’s what’s caught my eye recently…

Jeff Utecht has a clarity of thinking when it comes to school-based educational technology which is really refreshing. In Tech Plan Part 2 – School Wide Systems he includes the following helpful diagram:

He then goes on to discuss some scenarios for different groups within the school. It’s certainly worth a read for anyone involved in piecing together a coherent school policy on educational technology. :)

I like the way that Mark Wagner puts things. In a post on Infinite Thinking Machine (more on that particular blog in a moment!) entitled Create a Permeable Classroom – Part 1: Google Docs Presentations he shows how Google Presentations can be used by teachers to encourage students to work collaboratively both at home and at school. He also links to some useful examples.

In the last week or so, four blog posts sat up in my RSS reader together as being connected in some way:

• Digital Signposts – Rethinking information handling
• Practical Theory – Connection and Disconnection in the Digital Age
• Paul Stamatiou – A Vision of Students Today
• Moving at the Speed of Creativity – A Vision of Students Today

This deserves a whole blog post in its own right – which I haven’t got time for at the moment – but reading these should give you a sense of how the world is changing and how teaching and education isn’t really moving fast enough. We all know that, but at the same time Chris Lehmann at Practical Theory sounds a warning bell against leaving behind values and feeling. Well said, Chris.

And finally… that comment over at Infinite Thinking Machine. Well, it was the end of a long half-term so I probably should have double-checked my tone before I pressed Submit. Fair enough. On the other hand, I think I’ve got a point. On the one hand I’m sick to death of people being amazed that people who are young can be extremely talented. But on the other I’m fairly tired of the assumption that bringing young people into what is essentially an adult arena (the edublogosphere) is a good idea.

I mentioned in the comments that I believe people are ‘using’ Arthus to prove an invalid point. That point, I believe, is an extreme view of the message to which I alluded two paragraphs above. The reason that it’s an extreme version of it is that it’s being pedelled by those who aren’t in the classroom and whose job it is to go round stirring up the education system. Whilst I think we need change agents within education, I certainly don’t think we need propaganda. Arthus is an intelligent, fluent, hyper-literate exception, as Steve Hargadon pointed out in his post. This boy’s going to end up being another Stephen Downes. No-one would like a world populated by sarcastic and blunt Doug Belshaw’s, and I certainly don’t want a world full of mardy Downeses… ;)

As discussed earlier this week, at 8pm tonight a group of us from the UK will be meeting via Skype and Google Presentations to discuss plans for a EdTechTalk-style UK show. This will definitely be podcast and may be webcast (i.e. streamed live over the Internet).

As I post this, it’s 7pm GMT. You can find the agenda below (click on the screenshot) if you’re interested in joining us. Just add doug_belshaw to your Skype contacts! :D

In the UK the school year runs from the start of September until two-thirds of the way through the following July. There’s no particular reason to follow this pattern these days – in fact my mother-in-law’s local authority (she’s also a teacher) have standardised their terms.

The original school year revolved around allowing children in the 19th/early 20th century enough time to help with things like the harvest, but as a headteacher from Leeds who has also mixed things up a bit stated, “there isn’t a lot of harvesting done [here] these days.” She thought, “why does the school year start in September, anyway? It seemed wrong. No, it seemed ridiculous – the way that the end of assessment was followed by dead time.”

The government and local authorities seem to be worried about unauthorised absences; this isn’t the place to discuss whether it’s boring teaching caused by endless testing is a major factor. Instead, I’m more concerned about authorised absences – how far students fall behind when their parents take them out of school for a family holiday for at least two weeks every year. In a sense one can’t blame them: it’s so much cheaper during term-time. Perhaps the answer is staggered, yet standardised, holidays? :s

Anyone who’s listened to EdTechTalk, or indeed pretty much any of the shows on the Worldbridges network, will know of the high-quality webcasting and podcasting that goes on there. However, those of us in the UK who listen to the show have to stay up past midnight if we want to listen live… :(

EdTechTalk UK has been mooted in the past, but hasn’t gained any traction due to the issue of time. It takes time to learn how to webcast, time to pull like-minded people together, and ultimately it takes time to record the shows. Last week I proposed via Twitter that a bunch of UK-based people get together to organise an EdTechTalk-style show. It won’t come under the Worldbridges umbrella, but I am very grateful to both Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow for their quick and detailed and thoughtful responses to my questions. :)

What’s involved in being a co-host?

• Using Skype to join in discussions about weekly/monthly goings-on in the edublogosphere
• Contributing to a conversation that will last between 30 minutes to 1 hour
• Joining in with planning/maintenance activities (e.g. brainstorming, wiki editing, uploading and linking to MP3 files, etc.)

I’m interested! What should I do?

I’ve already been contacted by David Noble, Kristian Still, John Johnston, and a few others (sorry if I’ve forgotten you!) If you think you may want to take part, express your interest in the comments section below and then join us at 8pm GMT on Sunday 28th October 2007 (remember the clocks go back on Saturday night!) :D

doug_belshaw

As regular readers of this blog will know, I became a bit of an Apple fanboy last year after buying a Macbook. It’s wonderfully convenient (and dare I say it, sexy) with Mac OS X 10.4 being a joy to use. I really want to buy the upcoming version 10.5 (codenamed ‘Leopard’) when it comes out on October 26th, but I’m having difficulty justifying it as a necessary expenditure to my lovely wife.

That’s where YOU come in. Quite a while ago, if you remember, I decided to stop showing adverts on this site. However, if you’re buying OS X 10.5, consider buying it from Amazon by using the links below. This will mean I earn a percentage and will be one step closer to owning a Leopard of my own… :p

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard at Amazon.com

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard at Amazon.co.uk

Oh, and if you don’t know why Leopard’s going to be so great, just have a look for yourself via a guided tour:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Click here for the full-length, high-resolution version from the Apple website. :D

After watching Clarence Fisher’s presentation for the K12 Online Conference entitled Classroom 2.0 or You Live Where? I realised the importance of context. What really hit home with Clarence’s presentation is the impact he’s having on a small community and how much thinking and planning goes into his practice.

I’m a long way from being even nearly as effective as Monsieur Fisher, but I thought it might be an interesting exercise for people to see exactly where I’m coming from and an average day in my life. Or, to put it another way, to try and see my (teaching) life in an average day…

Things referred to:

• Lumie Bodyclock
• Nokia N95
• Dr. Kawashima’s More Brain Training
• iPod / iTrip
• EdTechTalk
• Google Reader
• Twitter
• teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk
• edte.ch
• learning.mrbelshaw.co.uk (and /blogs)
• gcsehistory.wikispaces.com
• Google Apps for Education

Tagged:

I’d like to see the following people do something similar to this. These are people whose blogs I read a lot and something along these lines would be great for context!

• Karyn Romeis (because I want to see how she gets time to do anything apart from blog and comment on other people’s)
• Dan Meyer (because he’ll almost certainly respond)
• Stephen Downes (because I want to see what he does all day…)
• Stephanie Sandifer (because I want to see if she can really be that dynamic in real life)
• Doug Noon (because I want to see some Alaskan scenery!)

Before I begin, I don’t consider myself to be an especially ‘highly effective teacher’, nor do I think there’s any such thing as a perfect teacher. In fact, there’s so many variables to becoming even a ‘good’ teacher that the job of initial teacher trainer must be a very difficult one. What follows, however, are my musings on what I believe every highly effective teacher must wrestle with at some time or other.

1. Consistency

This is a big one, which is why I’ve put it first. To know where they are with you and their studies, students must know the framework. That means you have to be consistent. Certain things mean detentions, this is the way we set things out, these are the things I will allow you to do, etc. Some of this is set by school policies which you merely enforce, some varies teacher to teacher. Teachers new to the profession or to a job in a new school need to sit down and think about the framework within which their students will work. It’s very important to see things from the students point of view.

2. Treat students as individuals

I don’t know whose great idea it was for class sizes of around 30 to be the norm in western education, but it doesn’t exactly encourage close teacher-student relationships. This is a great shame as it’s only with effective relationships that true learning takes place. Try to find out as much as possible about your students. Knowing what they like and dislike, motivates them and demotivates them helps you use metaphor and simile in your teaching – always powerful tools. It also helps them take you more seriously as someone who is to be respected not just for your position of authority… :D

3. Make your physical classroom environment as learning-oriented as possible

Having your tables/desks in rows works in some subjects; in many it doesn’t. To me, it smacks of the ‘teacher at the front who knows everything mentality’. Try having your desks in islands to encourage peer learning and experiment with where you put your teacher’s desk. Do you really need a ‘front’ to your classroom? Are the things on your walls interesting and colourful? Is your classroom well-lit? Are resources easy to get at? All these things matter to students.

4. Assess often, but for a purpose

Students like to know how they’re doing, especially on exam-related courses. Try doing some Assessment for Learning-related activities so that the testing contributes towards learning rather than just being numbers on a page. Use different kinds of assessments – creative tasks mixed up with essays and ICT-based activities. Variety is the spice of life! :p

5. Get feedback on your ‘performances’

Performance management classroom observations only tell us so much about the way we teach. A far better barometer is to either see or hear yourself teach (via video camera or audio recorder). Another way would be to get some student feedback, although with the latter they tend to be far too polite! The advantage of video is that you can notice not only the effect your voice has on students but your body language as well. Remember, around 60% of communication is non-verbal, around 20% is tone of voice, and only 10% is what is said. That’s probably why you can remember a lot of how your teachers from school looked and sounded when they taught, but not what they actually said…

6. Connect with other teachers for informal professional development and sharing

I remember one person a couple of years ago remarking to me that teaching in the 21st century is less like McGyver and more like the A-Team. In other words, it’s about operating as a team even though at any given time you may be working as an individual. The fact that you’re reading this means that you’ve put at least one step inside the edublogosphere – a worldwide informal network of educators. Get involved, don’t just be a wallflower! A great place to start, even after the fact, is the annual K12 Online Conference.

7. Appeal to every facet of the learner

Although I think that Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences has some flaws, it’s still a very useful guide for educators as to how to hit every base with their students. Using (targetted, relevant) music for ‘accelerated learning’, role-play, word-play, group work, and so on is really just good teaching. But it’s good to be reminded of that every so often. :)

What do you think are the habits of highly effective teachers?

As I’ve been researching for my Ed.D. this afternoon I came across this small article in the Telegraph. Unbelievably, the Tories are planning to class mobile phones as ‘potentially offensive weapons’ and encourage teachers to confiscate them. I believe we should be using the technology students have already got to help them learn. Check out Tony Vincent’s excellent learninginhand.com to see what can be done… :D

I don’t want to get into semantics in this post, I don’t want to make it too long and I don’t want to go off on a rant about ‘global warming’.* I’d just like to discuss the graphic below from Harold Jarche’s blog (who in turn got it from Dave Pollard) and ask a couple of questions and make a few points:

1. It’s all very well having planned communities, but who’s going to do the planning?
2. I’m sceptical about the word ‘natural’. I agree that something needs to be done about western education systems, but unschooling as ‘natural’ is a subjective and context-dependent term.
3. Dave Pollard writes, “The education system is loathed by its inmates, and serves as little more than an expensive incarceration for excess, untrained, and not-yet-obedient labour.” A little extreme, n’est pas?
4. I absolutely agree that there is a hegemonic power nexus which can control the way we think and act. But to ‘unschool’ children does not mean they will become entrepeneurs. Nor do we want/need them all to be!
5. Doesn’t ‘planned communities’ sound a bit 70s? Surely ‘nodes on an online learning network’ is where it’s at? :p

*apart from point out that in 1340s England had balmy, Mediterranean-type summers, in the 1970s people were predicting another ice age, and that Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth contains at least 9 factual errors…