Digital Aliens

Preparing for an INSET in an Infant school, I re-visited the statutory requirements for ICT in each subject and was struck once again at the lack of ICT required in the KS1 curriculum. Only Maths English and Science have a requirement to use ICT and this is firmly entrenched in the Microsoft Office mode. Drafting and Editing, Spreadsheets and Graphs fed by data loggers and sensors.

Even when one looks at the opportunities for ICT use there is very little else there.
I have just spent some time using Photo Story 3 with a class of Reception children in Warrington. The object was to produce a .wmv movie about The Rainbow Fish. Using artwork and simply letting the pupils recount their version of the story was a revelation. The class teacher was amazed at the way usually reluctant pupils were bursting to put their words to the pictures. Such was the engagement with the task, notably from boys, she is looking forward to using the forthcoming trip to Chester Zoo as an opportunity to gather digital photos as a prelude to creating a narrated movie to show the rest of the school.

I have come to the following conclusion…

It is not about what we have to do by law…that is a bare minimum planted in the exhausted soil of traditional teaching methodology.

It is about what we have to do to ensure our pupils learn in an exciting, relevant environment where they practice the skills and acquire the knowledge they will need to function effectively in the 21st Century, a creative learning methodology planted in the fertile soil of children’s minds.

Speaking to a group of ICT Subject Leaders this week about creativity with ICT in the classroom, I tried to be contentious by suggesting that the QCA Scheme is no longer where ICT is at. I was pleasantly suprised when they all groaned and say “Yes!”

They went on to agree with me that we only teach most of QCA to satisfy the cubicle dwellers at the DfES who look at ICT through corporate glasses (Myopic Prescription) and see ICT as Systems Analysis. No dissent!

The logic as they agreed it was as follows

• ICT at 16 is about GCSE Systems Analysis
• Therefore to teach a spiral curriculum we must teach elements of Systems Analysis at Year1 onwards.
• This is what teaching ICT is all about

Wrong!

What every one of them passionately believed was that for them ICT is about using ICT to learn, to investigate, to create and to present- to communicate information and ideas -both ways.

Instead we teach Databases to Infants, we teach spreadsheets to 9 year olds and we avoid teaching e-mail in case it gets used!!!

The school we were in has a dual MAC /PC suite with NO interactive whiteboard but uses Synchroneyes software to share information. The pupils produce music, video and high quality information presented in high class format. In fact I was able to listen to the music they had created to play as part of their assembly.

They use ICT to communicate.

I know we need to communicate information using spreadsheets in business but do we need to bore the pants off the kids in Y4, Y5, Y6, Y7, Y8, Y9, Y10 and Y11, doing spreadsheets.

One of the most pointless tasks I have ever seen is Y10 pupils entering Data into an access database with the instruction

“Remember I want at least 100 sample entries in your database” (each with 9 fields!!!)

Hells teeth!  Electronic Colouring-in,  or what?

I hope we look soon at what we are doing because some schools are breaking away but most are still striving to conform to QCA and are doing it so badly/drearily,  that I fear it is worse than doing no ICT at all.

Those who are embracing podcasting wikis and blogs, digital storytelling and the exciting stuff are doing what we are supposed to do as teacher- engaging, exciting, enthusing, enpowering their pupils.

Mmmmm

For the past couple of months I have been involved with a group of schools clustered as part of a North West EAZ. We are working on creating Radio broadcasts via the internet. We are working with the EAZ, the local FMRadio station and a specialist drama practitioner. The idea is that we are working with children as young as 8yrs old to produce audio packets that can then be posted on the net for all to access. Although aimed at G&T pupils the exciting thing is that teachers who do not consider themselves technical are thrilled when they see how easy it is to produce mp3audio. Of course the real trick is to get good content in the first place and this is where the art of teaching comes in. Forget the technology for an instant and admire the variety of ideas. From a “soap opera” to capturing the oral history of the first pupils of a school which opened during WW2, the ideas are fantastic, and the teachers are enthusing and motivating the pupils to write.

The technolgy allows the pupils to have a much wider audience, which in turn adds a greater purpose to what they are doing. (Purpose and Audience again!!!)

We have been using Audacity software (Free with a lame mp3 encoder for mp3 output) with relatively low cost microphones (£7) to record the pupils efforts but I have just taken possession of a Samson USB Condenser microphone with a spider cradle and stand. The difference in quality is amazing even on my laptop, and it even improves the recording quality on our macbooks. I can’t wait to try it out in schools.

Anyway watch this space.

This morning I was working in a school recently rated as “outstanding” by OfSTED. I was fortunate to be sitting near where the Headteacher was running an early morning Y6 booster class. Far from being the “grind” I have seen elsewhere, it was a relaxed session more akin to a tutorial at higher levels of education. I happen to know the pupils involved as I have been working with them for the past seven weeks and I was not suprised to hear them interacting with the Headteacher on such a mature level.

I have been tasked with developing the use of 6 iMac Education Laptops that the school has purchased with the intention of developing creativity. Easier said than done in a school that is alive with creative energy. The displays are vivid and alive and the pupils energy shines through their work.

What has helped is the technology. It took 5 minutes (and I am not exaggerating) to show the kids how to actually record a podcast using Garageband. The next bit was the hardest and it fell to the class teacher to develop the scripts beyond what we had outlined in the session. In a nutshell the class had to take six pictures of their school showing it in its best light and develop a script to accompany it, the audience being prospective parents viewing the school website.
She did this with aplomb during the OfSTED visit, and the inspector was suitably impressed, as what the children were doing was actually “Persuasive Writing” as proscribed by the National Curriculum, but with a real sense of Purpose and Audience

By lunchtime today the children had recorded their podcasts and had put them into webpages ready for the school to upload them onto their website.

The hardest part? Convincing the pupils that downloading MP3 files to run in their podcast was not legal unless it was “royalty free”! Fortunately we were able to make use of www.incompetech.com

This is a great little site full of nuggets to use with kids.

What was cool was the six scattered groups of pupils lurking in “quiet” spaces trying to get their work done and getting very annoyed if ambient noise interfered with their recording. Independent Learning anyone! The only role I ended up having was purely technical – fixing things when people pressed the button “to see what it did”.

Have fun – we did!

Interesting isn’t it? Schools and LEA’s are effectively banning pupil access to e-mail because they can’t control it. You hear the same arguments in work environments. People allegedly spend work time talking to their friends instead of sitting in their pods/workspace slavishly doing whatever it is they are supposed to do. Funny how you never hear people saying e-mail is a bad thing because people expect immediate replies, or that it impinges on peoples home life because, as one of my colleagues put it “I check my mail at night in case something has happened that might blindside me in the morning”.

What that meant, was brought home over Christmas. As I mentioned in an earlier post, our team was re-equipped with Blackberry Pearl devices immediately prior to the office closing for Christmas. Those members of the team who were in the office were able to set up their devices and configure them to receive e-mail. That night at the Office Christmas party/meal everyone’s Blackberry went off at the same time with a plethora of ringtones. It was the boss wishing everyone well for the holiday! We received the mail simultaneously. However no-one switched off their devices, because as one team member said, “I don’t need to reply, I just need to know that I don’t need to reply.” It was as if there is a need to be constantly in touch.

Well Santa has been and gone and left a wealth of techno gadgets behind. My boss has equipped the team with Blackberry 8100 Pearls, and I am now the proud owner of a Navman Satnav system, while my youngest son must have been good because Santa Left him the Phone he wanted. I have got to grips with my Satnav, despite pleas from my eldest to “read the manual Dad!” I found it intuitive and I actually get it to do what it says on the box. My son however has discovered the downside of G3 and Microsoft. After taking a video on his phone he wanted to edit it on the computer… however it only works in Quicktime. Despite lateral thinking in using iTunes to convert it to Mpeg4 he is still struggling to edit it using MovieMaker. I bet he will sort it somehow.

The increase in techno toys led to a weird conversation between Santa and the pupils of a client School using Video Conferencing. One of the children asked Santa how many elves he had working in the workshop making PSP’s! Santa had to admit that he had to “buy in” some of the more technical toys, and when you think of it Santa would be hard pressed to make some of the gadgets on children’s lists out of traditional materials, as portrayed in film and book.

Even more thought provoking was the parent on the radio who said that her daughter added the catalogue numbers from the “Argos” catalogue (other similar outlets are available!) to her letter to Santa. Kids are so techno savvy

Anyway, belated seasons greetings from Red Leader and all the team

What for me remains a constant in the learning process, is that for significant engagement to take place
The learner must see that there is a clear purpose for what is being learnt and that having an audience for whatever you are doing makes it much more significant.

As a teacher I have tried as much as possible to give a sense of purpose and audience to what is being learnt. Writing, wherever possible has had an audience – even if it was only stories to be read to class mates. One of the best projects one of my classes ever did was a book of poetry entitled “Flat Caps and Iron Dinosaurs” which put the children’s view of life in 1930′s Britain. The Iron Dinosaurs were the idle cranes in the docks. All the pupils in the class wrote enthusiastically, and with a real sense of purpose. Why? Because I had told them I would sent their work to my old Tutor who was a published poet in his own right, and whose work they liked having read to them. Matt Simpson was the audience and he became the purpose as well I suppose. What was special was that Matt wrote back to them saying how he had enjoyed their work and hoped they would send him more work. The class responded by writing reams of poetry. Matt was their audience, but they discovered that other people in the school wanted to read their work. There was a purpose for writing- people wanted to hear and read their work. As a result they realised writing had a purpose.
Similarly I set up a newspaper week based around my classroom but with my kids out as roving reporters. Our purpose was to produce a news sheet by the Friday Lunchtime, which would go home with every child, and be at the back of the parish church for Sunday Worship (our audience). We had every computer in the school (6 machines) for the week, and I remember the lead story “The Great Turf Robbery” – we had had a part of the school grounds laid with turf and someone had come and stole it, the night after it was laid. The kids loved the idea of writing for an audience and wanted to run one every week, the parents and parishioners loved it as well. Only the fact that other teachers wanted their machines back stopped us from doing it more than once a term or so.

Today we have technology that lets us put digital images alongside our writing as well as the spoken voice and music with a minimum of fuss. What makes it powerful is that we can reach a far wider audience and provide a much more powerful purpose as a result. Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, whatever we use – the audience for our work and the purpose for what we do are still the biggest motivational factors.

Working at the “bleeding edge of Technological change in schools means that you are swept along at a pace which eventually becomes “normal”. A part of my work is with schools hoping to achieve the ICT Mark. I was asked to go in and look at where a particular school were in relation to the ICT MarkStandard. What I didn’t realise was how fast the goalposts are moving (and me with them). This is a school who felt they had a handle on things. Most of what they have in place is commendable. Some of their ideas are brilliantly simple and help to ensure that ICT is well taught as a subject and is used as a powerful cross curricular tool. Where they were struggling is in keeping pace with innovation, especially in what is loosely termed “Creativity”. So fast is this area emerging and developing that the school is working hard at standing still. This is not a criticism as it is a good school. It has made a positive move towards using digital video by introducing Digital Blue cameras, but when I mentioned digital storytelling, sound recording, school radio, podcasts et al. there was a stunned silence. Not for long! The Subject Leader immediately saw the potential of letting Reception loose with cameras and microphones and will have her class creating Photo Story 3 Projects before the end of the week. What was scary was that this stuff was so relatively new. It has only mushroomed in the past 12 months.

Five years ago very few people were aware of the potential of Digital Filming/editing in schools. I was wondering then how schools could exploit the new technology when it cost so much. 3 years ago film making still required an expensive camera software and a whopping 80gb hard drive. Our team have just taken delivery of a 1Tb external drive that cost the same as our 80gb drive did 2 years ago. The cost and technological developments mean that it is now within the grasp of anyone with a reasonable computer to create high quality digital images, (I have just bought a digital camera for under £11 in my local supermarket).

What is scary is that the school will get digital storytelling and video in place and then will have to address the issue of podcasts and mobile technologies. Handhelds are falling in price to the point that they will replace paper organisers in high schools very shortly, they will then make their way into primary schools (I know of a couple of innovative Headteachers who are already looking at this as a transition project for their Y6 pupils).

When I think back to “Fulfilling the Potential” 2003 and the teachers who scoffed at the notion of schools having an interactive whiteboard in every room, a wry smile crosses my face. Yet I still need to remind myself that this has happened within three years. What was aspirational three years ago is now “must have” infrastructure.

I remember as a young(ish) teacher seeing a network room in the local high school and imagining what I could do with that in my classroom, thinking “will it ever happen”? At the time I was trying to convince my Headteacher that a floppy disc for every pupil was a good investment, and being told the cost of £150 was too much for 350 pupils! These were 5 1/4″ for our 6 reconditioned BBC’s.

A lot has happened in 17 years!

As Senior Educational Consultant working for an Education Company in the North-West of England, I visit many schools in a week and deliver support and training across the whole ICT spectrum as well as support for whole school issues. In the course of a training session I referred to Prensky’s “Digital Natives – Digital Immigrants” concept, explaining the accent that we digital immigrants carry in to the land of our children, to which a member of staff replied “I must be a Digital Alien”. It appealed to my Liverpudlian sense of humour, especially as the member of staff was receptive to new ideas and enthusiastic about the changes that ICT are bringing to the classroom and beyond.

I was lucky enough to meet with Will Richardson a few weeks ago and we were discussing Wikis Blogs and Podcasts (what else!). Afterwards, I spoke to my technical advisors (my sons aged 17 and 12). “Wikis are sound,” (the Liverpool interpretation not the OFSTED one) was the verdict. My wife despaired as the conversation lapsed into jargon. As the only woman I know who understands the Offside law and the LBW law in their entirety, I knew we were into the language of the native, and the teenage sub-dialect at that, and I could see my wife was rapidly becoming alienated by the conversation.

Initially, I thought the whole concept of the Digital Alien was funny but it has a deadly serious implication.

Thinking about it, my job, and that of the team I lead, has a large element of working with people who have been alienated from the whole digital revolution because jargon has prevented them from engaging with what are amazing ways of learning and teaching. I suppose we are like those universal translators from Star Wars.

Anyway I hope that explains the title of the Blog!

Bye for Now