ICT in Education

I’ve rather neglected this blog for some time now. Well I’m back now and determined to keep it going this time. Only time will tell if I succeed…

So, what have I been doing since the last post?

• Went to the Naace conference in Torquay in March
• centralised VLE training for primary schools
• individual primary school training on VLEs
• secondary school training on VLEs
• Cars Maths in Motion competition again (with Dr Challoner’s Grammar through to the national final next week! )

As you can see I have been doing a lot of VLE training! There’s plenty more to come over the next year as we continue this, hopefully delivering training to all our schools in that time.

Yesterday I went to Microsoft in Reading for an RM’s LA Partnership Day. It was useful as I haven’t been to one of these for a couple of years (due to RM always announcing the dates with too little notice, though they are finally learning…) We had a chance to hear about changes and improvements to the rm.com website, see the new i-nfer plan assessment package (though we weren’t really the right audience, this should be assessment and primary strategy consultants who are shown this), learn more about the new RM WindowBox. Then in the afternoon there were breakout sessions where I chose to hear about CC4 and Kaleidos (I was hoping to see content rather than just the Learning Platform itself – ho hum). Plus at lunchtime there was an exhibition where I got to see the new 8.9″ screen version of the Asus EeePC ( RM Asus miniBook) and the HP miniNote PC. Hopefully I’ll be getting both of these on a trial in the near future.

So there we have it, a potted catch-up of the last 7 months.

Tags: Asus Eee PC, blog, Cars Maths in Motion, Jaguar Cars Maths in Motion Challenge, Naace, RM Asus miniBook, VLE

This afternoon was the third and final session of Moodle training for the schools that jumped into the VLE fray this term. In the session we covered RSS feeds and adding some of the activities available in Moodle – Assignment, Choice, Forum, Slideshow and a Quiz.

After the training session we had our second workshop, with three people attending this. We covered various things including forum problems, ‘jazzing up’ the appearance of Moodle (Themes etc) and wikis.

It’s become clear that we need to produce a bunch of Adobe Captivate movies. Ian Usher has done a few already. Time has been the problem though. I also think that some written documentation beyond the downloadable Moodle book, especially as this was based on an older version of Moodle. It looks like we’ll be busy over the summer…

Tags: Adobe Captivate, assignment, choice, forum, Ian Usher, Moodle, quiz, RSS, training, VLE, wiki, workshop

If you’ve been reading this blog you will know about the School Improvement Service Review and the threat to advisers and consultants jobs in Buckinghamshire, including mine.

The new structure was announced at the end of April and was finally confirmed last week. I, along with the rest of the ICT Curriculum Support Team, are among the fortunate ones and still have jobs. In some ways it is a celebration, albeit a muted one as a few colleagues are losing their jobs. Exactly what is happening to them is unclear – there will be efforts to find alternative posts in Buckinghamshire but inevitably a few are likely to be made redundant. Some have already ‘jumped ship’ and taken jobs elsewhere, so it is possible that for those who remain there won’t be redundancy because of this.

Times may well be changing for the ICT Curriculum Support Team. We have Ian Usher joining us as part of this restructuring and we will soon be discussing the work we will be doing from next term. I think there’s going to be an even greater focus on VLE/ Moodle training and support as well as other new initiatives – videoconferencing and e-portfolios. We shall soon see…

Tags: Buckinghamshire, Ian Usher, Job, Moodle, School Improvement Service, training, VLE

This afternoon we had the second session of Moodle/VLE training for schools starting it this term. As usual it was led by Ian Usher and supported by Pat Trowbridge and me.

The session focused on getting some content onto their VLEs. Seven teachers from the three schools were shown various things including how to create a course, add text and pictures to sections and upload and link documents.

It really does make a difference the number of schools and teachers taking part. In previous terms we’ve had many more attending these sessions and there has been a buzz and interaction between them. There is not so much of this with only three schools, and this may also account (in part) for why most turned up without a definite idea about what they wanted to create a course on. In previous sessions teachers have come along to the same session with a range of ideas and some have sparked off what others are doing.

There’s one more session to go with this group, in the first week after half term. I’m already looking ahead to the autumn term and have more schools signed up to the training we’ll be holding then than we have now. We do have over 100 schools still to train though…

Tags: Ian Usher, Moodle, Pat Trowbridge, training, VLE, VLEs

The first of the summer term’s training sessions for the current group of schools starting out on the VLE journey took place this afternoon. It was a select group of 3 schools (6 teachers in total) so with Ian Usher, Pat Trowbridge and me all there it was a good ‘teacher:pupil’ ratio!

We didn’t cover as much today compared to the first session last term. This was down to late arrivals. We have clarified the start time for the next session though so hopefully we’ll catch up on the bits missed out today.

All of the schools are now running an updated version of Moodle (1.6.5+) to what was in place before Easter. We’ve not gone for the latest version (1.8+) or even it’s 1.7.x predecessor – it’s always best to hang fire and use what we know works and move to newer versions when they are established and bugs have been ironed out. Not only this, Moodle updates so often that it’d be too time consuming, costly and disruptive to keep upgrading to the latest version. We have added in some additional activity modules though – Book, Feedback, iPodcast, Project, Image Slideshow and Webquest. It’ll be interesting to see how schools take to these. I’ve also got to learn what they all are too (I didn’t know about these until they appeared in the upgrade)!

After the training session we had the first of our twilight workshop sessions. Four schools came to this (6 teachers in total) and it was a productive time, answering individual queries and sharing some with the whole group (e.g. how to clear out data from a course in preparation for next year). We were aware of some of the issues prior to the session as we have set up a forum on the BucksGfL website with a thread for each session where teachers can post these to. Not that we could check the forum for a chunk of the day though – Atomwide were upgrading the BucksGfL Moodle (which was still running on 1.5) as well as transferring it to another server. Fortunately Ian called them and they promptly ensured the move and upgrade was completed during the afternoon. We did get a couple of schools turn up that hadn’t posted though. This wasn’t really a problem but we need to encourage schools to post in the forum thread in the future in case we need to prepare anything prior to the sessions and also because we’ve said if there aren’t any posts the session won’t run. It’d be a shame for teachers to turn up and find we have gone!

Tags: Atomwide, BucksGfL, forum, Ian Usher, modules, Moodle, Pat Trowbridge, podcast, training, upgrade, VLE, webquest, workshop

Today was the start of the third group of Wycombe and Chiltern & South Bucks primary schools along the path to having their own VLE. The session was an introduction to the whole concept and how Moodle is being used in other Buckinghamshire schools. The sessions this term will be held at The Downley School, who will be one of the schools on VLE journey.

Ian Usher led the session and demonstrated what schools like Buckinghamshire Primary and Winslow have been doing as well as looking at the important but not-so-exciting DfES and Becta documents.

I was rather disappointed at the number of schools who actually turned up. We knew that there were less schools coming to the VLE training this term (due to various reasons including some schools having new networks installed, changes in staff and the usual summer madness of reports, sports days, school productions and reports). However, out of the seven schools who were invited, only three actually attended (and that includes Downley who were the hosts). We were contacted by two schools a couple of days before the session to say they couldn’t make it (they will be trained next term instead). Two schools simply didn’t turn up, so they will have to be contacted to find out what is happening with them.

We will now offer some places to a few of the schools who have already got a Moodle VLE but haven’t had ‘formal’ training (some secondaries who Ian started off through work in school) and a primary or two who only sent one (instead of two) teachers on the initial training.

Another development in support that we are starting this term is a series of Moodle workshops for those schools who have already had the initial training and require continuing support. We will have two of these this term which we will run directly after the training sessions at Downley. We will be using a forum on the BucksGfL website with a thread for each session where teachers can post with issues that they would like help and support on. This will give us an idea before the meeting what we will be tackling (much better than being surprised on the day) and if there are common issues we can possibly create Adobe Captivate movies or other resources to support schools. Of course, if no suggestions are posted then we won’t run the sessions!

Tags: Adobe Captivate, Becta, BucksGfL, DfES, Ian Usher, Moodle, primary, training, VLE, workshop

Today was the third and final half-day training session for the current cohort of primary schools who are venturing forth into using a VLE (Moodle) with their children.

The focus of today’s session was on creating three different activities – a choice, a forum and a quiz. It doesn’t sound a lot to cover in two-and-a-half hours but the time seemed to whiz by. We did manage to cover more with the afternoon group though, which was probably down to them getting less distracted than the morning group.

I must say I am impressed at how well many of the teachers have taken to what we’ve covered in the last three sessions. Although a few need some direction still to get their VLE going, most have some ideas of what they want to do and I’m sure it won’t be long before they’ve got some of their own content to use alongside the content that other schools have shared with them. It’s also great to see the Infant schools getting into this. I had my doubts on how they would get on with Moodle and the relevance of a VLE to young children. Their enthusiasm and ideas is making me think twice – maybe VLEs can be of some use to Infant children after all.

There’s still a lot to do with these schools yet. Ian Usher did mention metacourses and how the use of these would save them having to enrol pupils time and again into each new course. We didn’t expect them to fully take this in and I’m sure we’ll have to tackle this again with many of the schools once they’ve developed several courses. There are other activities that haven’t been touched on – assignment, chat, database, wiki to name but a few. To some extent we’ve only just touched the surface of what Moodle can do and we’ve just given them enough to get started.

As the schools will need continued support, the plan is to arrange for after-school workshop sessions each term for teachers to come along to (unfortunately there just isn’t enough funding to continue to pay them for supply cover for half day sessions). The agenda for these meetings will be set by them in the Moodle Users’ Support Area on the BucksGfL website. We can then come prepared to the meetings and, where necessary, create some Adobe Captivate movies on how to do some of these things (not that I have Adobe Captivate yet, it can’t be ordered until the new financial year).

One other thing we need to convince the schools to do is to post their problems in the forums in the Moodle Users’ Support Area and to subscribe to them. I suspect that many don’t use forums elsewhere and are yet to discover the benefits of using them rather than an email to an individual. Once they can see that using the forums will open up their query to a larger group of people, that an answer is likely to come more quickly and that they’ll see others posting queries that they also have and can see them being answered, I think we’ll be well away. We’ll then have a community of Moodle users who are helping and supporting each other. Now that will be good stuff.

Tags: Adobe Captivate, assignment, BucksGfL, chat, choice, database, forum, Ian Usher, metacourses, Moodle, quiz, VLE, VLEs, wiki

Today was the second training session for the current group of primary schools who have joined Buckinghamshire’s growing ranks of schools with a Moodle VLE. The first session was a couple of weeks ago – details here.

The words in the title refer to some of the (short) names that some of these primaries are giving their Moodle VLEs. Spindle. Woodle. Boodle. Busy Bee. One school had called their Canoodle to start with but for obvious reasons have changed it and it’s now called The Cherries. Other names taken by schools that have been trained previously include Doodle and Hoodlums. I look forward to hearing other variations in the coming months!

Today’s session, led by Ian Usher and supported by Pat Trowbridge and me, focused on getting some content into Moodle from other websites. RSS feeds were looked at and all added the feed from CBBC Newsround. A few schools found other RSS feeds of interest including one on funny poems. Many in the room, including Pat, seemed new to RSS feeds and it was a bit of a revelation for them that, instead of going to a bunch of websites to get information you could have all of this information delivered to Moodle. I’ve been using RSS feeds for over 2 years now, having been first introduced to them through the Old Age Playstationers gaming forum that I am a member of and currently an admin (we use them there for forum posts and I use RSS Bandit to collect these). Creating a course was also covered and then adding a link to a website. The schools I spoke to could all see the benefit of this – it provides pupils with a bunch of links to explore rather than just wandering off onto the Internet. Most of the links will open in a frame in Moodle, thus allowing pupils to easily return to the course the are on. One or two websites were problematic, such as those that open a new browser window with no address bar to copy the link from and one that had some frame-busting javascript. With a bit of fiddling we found the addresses and had these open in a new window from Moodle.

Many of the schools seem quite switched on with this. They don’t seem fazed by all of this, which is good. It means there can hopefully be more focus on the curriculum use of Moodle rather than the technical side of setting up a course.

The final session for these schools is in just under 3 weeks time where we will look at the activities that can be set up in Moodle.

Ian, Pat and I now need to look at the ongoing support for these schools and the ones that have already had this initial training. We will do this through after-school drop-in sessions (we need to co-ordinate our diaries and sort out some dates first) and by creating some demonstration videos using Adobe Captivate and Wink.

Assuming we’ve all got a job in a few months time after the School Improvement Service Review, we’ve got a busy time ahead of us for some time to come…

Tags: Adobe Captivate, Buckinghamshire, Ian Usher, Job, Moodle, Old Age Playstationers, Pat Trowbridge, RSS, School Improvement Service, VLE, Wink

A sunny start to the day was followed by a downpour on the way to the Riviera Centre. With a sopping umbrella and drenched trousers I sat down ready for the first session.

Are VLEs up to the Job of 21st Century Learning?
The lead presentation was from Professor Steven Molyneaux, Director of The Learning Lab.

This was an interesting and at times challenging keynote. At least that’s what I think. My colleague Ian Usher seems to disagree though!

Some of the things Steven said:

• Predicting The Future – the point is not to predict the future but to prepare for it and to shape it. I guess so.
• The pace of change is accelerating. There will be more change in the next 20 years than in the last 100 years. Unless we all blow ourselves up, of course. Or get bogged down in government red tape.
• Web content doubles approximately every 30 days.
• Internet usage is increasing at the rate of about 200 new users per minute – 105 million users a year.
• Web 2.0 is about The Social Web – “Web 2.0 is much more about a change in people and society than technology.”

I’m not sure where these figures come from – I’ll have to assume they are correct for now.

Some questions Steven raised:

• Education – are we automating or innovating? Steven says we are still automating (an existing process).
  To some extent I agree with this. Some ICT work could be done just as well away from the computer.
• VLEs re-publish existing content in electronic format. We don’t innovate with web 2.0 e.g. forums, blogs, wikis etc.
  I partially agree with this. Some content on VLEs could simply be printed and given to pupils in paper format. However, some schools are being innovative and are using forums, blogs and wikis. More work needs to be done in this area to ensure all schools using VLEs make the most of them by using these tools.
  
• VLEs first designed in 1994 – for adults by adults. We need to redefine what a VLE is for today’s learners. I need to ponder some more on this one. True, VLEs don’t look like My Space or Flickr and are more formal-looking environments. However, would making a VLE that looked like My Space or Flickr encourage pupils to use it or to turn them away from it? One of the attractions of My Space is that it doesn’t look like ‘school stuff’. If ‘school stuff’ started looking like this, would pupils be put off it because it would no longer be ‘cool’.

Certainly something for me to think about – is the Moodle VLE we use really suitable? Or maybe a better question is whether it is the most suitable design for a VLE in the long term as undoubtedly it is suitable for its purpose at the moment.

Becta Vision for Learning Platforms
This themed session was from Robin Ball, Manager Learning Services and Andy Tyerman, Assistant Director Content, Becta.

An uninspiring session (for me at least). After some quotes from the Gilbert Review it seemed to me to be typical Becta waffle and I didn’t really hear anything new. I did switch off during the session so may have missed something useful, although I doubt it. In my opinion the Learning Platform Services Framework is a 20th century solution for 21st century schools.

The only interesting thing to come out of this session was a video on “Web 2.0 in 5 minutes”:

Web 2.0 Technologies in the Classroom
This themed session was from Steve Beard, School Improvement Consultant (ICT), Shropshire County Council.

The session was billed as “demonstrating practical uses of Web 2.0 technologies in Shropshire Schools.”

Some information:

• The Shropshire ICT Team has a blog, now others in the LA have started blogs.
• A teacher is using a blog and pupils are commenting on it.
• Lots of pupils’ blogs were shown (but were unreadable from the back of the room).
• Blogs hosted by eThink.
• Blah blah blah about blogs – yes, let’s move on.
• Flickr used to show pupils’ work.
• Google Docs & Spreadsheets and del.icio.us were also used and some podcasting was done.

This was an uninspiring presentation, not helped by the fact that the presenter ‘winged it’. I hoped to be shown a web 2.0 technology that I hadn’t seen. Sadly nothing new was shown and little practical use of web 2.0 technologies was discussed.

Conference Exhibition
In the afternoon the exhibition from Naace sponsors and ICT companies took place. I finally got my hands on a copy of Podium, podcasting software from Softease. I had seen this at BETT and it looked very interesting and easy to use for primary pupils. Now I can have a play with it myself. Following this I had a useful conversation, along with Mike Woods, with Atomwide who provide broadband, email, web hosting and Moodle to Buckinghamshire schools. It looks like we’ll be getting a podcasting server for schools to use, which will be great if Podium is as good as I hope it is. and I collected a Lumens DC160 Digital Visualiser on loan from Matrix Display.

Tags: Atomwide, Becta, exhibition, Gilbert Review, Ian Usher, Learning Platform Services Framework, Moodle, Naace, naace2007, podcasting, Podium, Softease, Steven Molyneaux, The Learning Lab, visualiser, VLE, Web 2.0

After a 4 1/2 hour journey I arrived in rainy Torquay (“The English Riviera” or, as some locals more appropriately call it, “The English River Area”), venue for the second year running of the Naace Conference. Having enjoyed last year’s conference I have been looking forward to this one. So will it live up to expectations…?

After settling into the hotel (The Livermead House) and having a very pleasant meal, it was off to the Riviera Centre for the initial keynote speeches of the conference.

ICT Challenges and Expectations
This was the opening address from Jim Knight, Minister of State for Schools and 14 – 19 Learners. The session was a videoconference, as Jim was clearly too busy to leave London and travel to Torquay to be with us in person.

In the speech he commented on the postcode lottery of education and that, for example, there were 25 percentage points between 5 A* – C GCSEs in Bristol & Buckinghamshire (Buckinghamshire being the higher, of course – let’s hope that the county council remember this fact during the School Improvement Service Review!)

He stated that it is “…essential we use technology in schools because it makes a difference not because we can” and went on to talk about personalised learning. He spoke about technology reaching out to parents (but what about those who can’t afford the technology?) and commented that VLEs save teachers time – half an hour a day (but how exactly? How was this measured?) He also went on to say that an ICT diploma (one of the first five diplomas) would be available from next September and that Universal home access was being looked at – this was announced at BETT.

Then came the questions and Jim’s answers:

• How will teachers be supported in costs of home Broadband? Basically none! A tax break would have been nice, especially when there’s bound to be some support for the less well off for universal home access.
  
• KS3 on-screen tests? Says not abandoned! Tell that to some schools who have already deleted the test!!
• Message to LAs about reduction of ICT support? Basically down to SIPs!
• ICT funding and schools not spending it? Guidance from Becta issued for schools to follow.

In all I felt the speech was uninspiring and the answers to questions and his delivery gave me the impression that Jim Knight isn’t fully clued up in what’s going on now or in the future in education!

IT Culture is Changing Children’s Brains
This was the first keynote from Dr Martin Westwell, Deputy Director, Institute for the Future of the Mind, Oxford University.

This was a very interesting presentation, if a little high-brow at times. Basically Martin said that today’s pupils think and learn in a different way to those in the past due to IT and the multimedia world they live in.

There was just too much talked about to note it all down and record it here. However, here’s a few things I picked up from it:

• A study of 48 undergraduates. Two groups, A & B. One group played the standard violent version of Doom (with weapons) whilst the other group played a non-violent version (without weapons). $100 at stake for each group to be the best. Afterwards in a game of Prisoner’s Dilemma those playing the violent game were 7 times more likely to exploit than those that played the non-violent game.
• Compare Medal of Honor to Tetris – games which demand high capacity for attention, develop attentional capacity (!)
• Brain Gym – no scientific basis that this makes any difference! VAK was also rubbished.
• A talking story for Year 2 children with “Read to me” and “Let me play” modes. Those who chose “Let me play” mode had worse recall of story.
• Deep brain stimulation – can control Parkinson’s Disease (a video of this was shown and it works!)

An excellent keynote and just what was needed after Jim Knight.

Making Space for Learning – Creating Physical and Virtual Environments in Schools of the Future
This was the evening keynote from Steve Moss, Strategic Director – ICT. Steve talked about BSF and the money for this:

£45,000,000,000 over 15 years
£4,500,000,000 for ICT

He talked about how the integration of physical & virtual spaces makes a 21st century learning environment and Learning Platforms were mentioned several times.

An interesting thought – in the future could a student be ‘present’ in school without attending? Could logging onto the Learning Platform from home and doing work count? A change in the law would be needed, not to mention a change in attitude. How would this work for some children when their parent(s) are at work during the day?

Steve felt that many VLEs today are not actually VLEs but VTEs – Virtual Teaching Environments – as they just replicate electronically what is already done in class (worksheets etc). To some extent I agree although schools who use forums, wikis, blogs etc are moving beyond this and are beginning to change the ‘T’ back into an ‘L’.

Wolverhampton’s ‘Virtual Workspace‘ VLE was shown. Basically Steve showed forum discussions – a student-mentor discussion and then a pupil-pupil discussion with their comments on a student’s poem. This is already happening in Bucks schools on Moodle.

Lots of nice pictures of innovative environments in schools were shown. The key message to me was that virtual spaces e.g. learning platforms should be considered as well as physical spaces.

Apart from the ministerial address it was a good start to the Naace Conference 2007.

Tags: Becta, Brain Gym, brains, broadband, BSF, conference, ICT funding, Jim Knight, KS2 on-screen tests, Learning Platform, Livermead House, Martin Westwell, Medal of Honor, Moodle, Naace, naace2007, Prisoners Dilemma, Tetris, Torquay, VAK, VLE