Another very interesting and productive day yesterday here in Finland. I visited another school, this time a lower secondary. I spoke with a number of teachers and students, observed a maths class and looked in detail about how this school uses ICT to enhance teaching and learning. A much more measured approach here – evolving practice and capacity-building amongst staff. Many strong views about the usefulness of ICT and the LA approach. This area is going for ‘Smart boards’ in a big way, with five waiting installation in school. I used to really like these but I’ve modified my opinions a little. Whilst they can enhance the classroom experience for the pupils, they can also result in a very teacher-centred approach in secondary schools unless lessons are planned very carefully and the students get a chance to use the whiteboards for multi-media presentations. I like being able to save anything you do on the whiteboard – what I don’t like is the printing off and copying of this saved work for students which could be e-mailed or posted in a VLE common area.

Plenty of ICT used to enhance language teaching here as well.

I spent the late afternoon and evening meeting some of the researchers at the University of Helsinki Centre for Networked learning and knowledge Building. They are heavily involved in investigating the use of ICT in teaching and learning and also in many pan-European projects and research. Here is the link to their publications page…

http://www.helsinki.fi/science/networkedlearning/eng/publications.html

I would recommend a look at some of their work. It makes for very interesting reading. Amongst other things, I wanted to discuss their work on learning objects and the cross-curricular possibilities these templates might have for use within GLOW. We had a fantastic discussion about the whole area of technologies in teaching and continued it over dinner in a great Finnish seafood restaurant.  Fantastic food to eat and much food for thought besides. I am extremely grateful to Liisa Ilomaki, Minna Lakkala, and Sami Paavola for taking the time out of their busy schedules to meet with me, and to Liisa in particular for her help in arranging my schedule of visits here in Finland.

Today was characterised by a thoughtful and cautious approach to ICT in school as well as the application of scientific and critical academic principles to research into the many issues involved in this area of our work. Leaning much more towards the evolutionary rather than revolutionary viewpoint, and different to my own view of this debate up to now anyway.

One thing today really hit home with me today and that was the importance of classroom-based methodologically sound and peer-reviewed research to inform and influence the long-term planning of our education policies and processes. I just hope that the work I am currently undertaking can live up to these high expectations.

I had a great day today, you know the sort of day I mean. One where all the thoughts and debates you’ve had about the way you’d like to work are vindicated by seeing someone else actually putting this into practice.  I visited an upper secondary school in Sipoo, a town to the west of Helsinki yesterday morning.  The school, and in particular the teacher who hosted my visit have driven forward the use of ICT across the curriculum in a way that has transformed the pedagogy in the classrooms. Juha, the Biology / Geography teacher is justifiably proud of his  modern new school and classroom which has been designed around and to facilitate teaching and learning. A computer at every desk, all networked and linked to the teacher. Desks arranged in clusters of four, facing each other to facilitate collaboration, ceiling-mounted data-projectors (are you listening, SLC ?) big screen, and a document / text-book projection system…

Juha has developed the use of Moodle as the platform the school uses to deliver its course content and administration. Individual courses are within the school site containing all the work for each course, delivered in a variety of ways including lectures, discussions, student presentations and both independent and collaborative work. Juha uses the terms  ’blended learning’ and ‘meld’ to describe this pedagogical approach. I found this definition later when thinking about what I’d seen that day…

Blended Learning is learning that is facilitated by the effective combination of different modes of delivery, models of teaching and styles of learning, and founded on transparent communication amongst all parties involved with a course.(Heinze, A. and C. Procter (2004).

All the students were very clear on what was required of them for success. They had guidelines for methods from their teacher and deadlines for submission of work. Mind-mapping software allows the students to think out key concepts following introductory teaching on a subject area , and wikis are created (linked to a glossary created by the student explaining important new words) for more in-depth coverage including student - designed questions on the subject matter. The students can see and comment on each others work using this system, and Juha can see everyone’s activities from his computer, even changing URL’s and messaging to bring pupils back on task where necessary! A record of activity for each student is created, including work done outside of lessons. The teacher can move around the class helping individual students or getting involved in small group discussions where appropriate. All this leads to ‘deep’ rather than ’superficial’  learning of subject material and is reflected in the assessment regime Juha has developed which allocates half of the marks for the summative element, and the other half for the process involved in the learning (evidence gathered from each student’s moodle work record). I saw similar uses of this approach in language teaching, including the use of wikis and some impressive new language lab software on which the teachers were being trained (this school offers English, Swedish, French, German, and is introducing Spanish next year !). Open-source software like Moodle  and its use here has interesting comparisons to be made with the future use of GLOW Learn.

I spoke with many of the students and staff who were very much in favour of this way of working. The atmosphere permeating the school was relaxed  (no uniforms for either students or staff, and first names used by all) and the ethos was one of empowering students with responsibility for their own learning and treating them as young adults. The interaction between students and staff was informal and positive in both the social areas and classrooms. I  came away with the impression that I had seen the type of education I would have wanted my children to have had. Clearly the school and the teaching had been designed with the student absolutely at the centre of everything. Students were even able to take courses independently via the school Moodle site, and the school was almost paperless, with the system taking care of all administration (Juha could even SMS his students’ mobiles to remind them of an impending deadline - a whole class in less than a minute). The small photocopier was tucked away in a corner room, hardly used!.

I had a meeting later at the National Board of Education to give me a national perspective on the use of ICT. I will probably write more about this later, but the feel I got was of the significance of government backing and funding for good-quality training for teachers to meet the challenge of teaching their digitally-native pupils.

Getting back to my hotel later, I relaxed in the sauna thinking what a good place it was to reflect on the day’s observations. Looking out from this rooftop hot-room over the sights of Helsinki, it crossed my mind that I should be putting down my thoughts and that the Finns should probably have come up with some way of getting computer access into the sauna. But then I thought better of it - why would they do that? No need you see, because  the whole culture here is built on an approach that like the teaching and learning in Juha’s classroom is also ‘blended’. A time and a place for everything. Finland is a country with an outward looking populace (language education as well as technology is an important part of this) taking the best from the past and mixing it up with the promise of the future. Real joined up attitudes indeed…

I have the evening to acclimatize before starting my programme of visits tomorrow so I thought I’d take the chance to do a little bit of exploring. Its a very strange feeling, being here, alone, in a strange city, and it suddenly struck me as I looked at bus and train timetables whilst finding out how to get to the schools I’m visiting, that this is all a little scary. It’s a long time since I did something like this on my own, so I thought perhaps I should get some practice in. Off I went, guide book in hand, bought a ticket from the machine and jumped on a tram. It’s supposed to be a great way of seeing Helsinki….and it was. The guide book tells you how you can save 25 Euros by doing the 3T tram circular route rather than the official bus tour, as this tram passes all the sights and landmarks. And the book was correct. I had a great hour or so scooting around the city taking in all the tourist sights. The Finns are really friendly, a couple of them taking the time to point out things of interest as the tram trundled around the city. Its a beautiful one as well, very clean with loads of open spaces, wide streets, and hardly any high-rise buildings. You can see the sky all of the time.

Having developed the mother of all colds over the weekend, I got off the tram by a pharmacy to get some medicine, and then I spotted it - McDonalds ! in fact there are shedloads of them here, and I just couldn’t resist I’m afraid. One meal-deal later and I’m back on the tourist trail, and just to prove I’m not a total philistine, here is a photo of the national Museum…

In the morning, I’m off to visit an upper secondary school in Sipoo, a town about 30 KM to the east of Helsinki that specialises in using ICT to enhance teaching and learning in all of the subject curricula. It will be really interesting to see how they managed to get to this stage, and compare this to the situation in Scottish secondary schools.

I’m on my way at last - and sitting writing this post in Schipol aiport, Amsterdam. Got a change of flight here, long enough to get bored but not long enough for a wee spin around the town. Lots of things flying around, screaming kids, and stressed-out adults. So very much like school then.

Got a three hour flight to Helsinki and I’m absolutely shattered after a 5 oclock start from Glasgow.

Still, I did get upgraded !

 I did a lesson with my S3 Biology class on Thursday which didn’t go to plan. So as is usual for me, I sat down later (well, this morning actually) to try and put my thoughts about this in some kind of order. And when I started to do this the realisation that it actually went quite well hit home.

It was a GLOW lesson. Usual routine; pupils arrive, log onto GLOW, and find a news item from me on their pupil page with lesson learning objectives attached. After we had gone through these together, they all opened up their class GLOW group page, located the folder with the day’s work (detailing how to achieve the learning objectives) and started to watch a video which set the tone for the lesson -people dressed as Orang-U-Tangs protesting about the destruction of habitats due to over-production of Palm oil. Suitably amused, and engaged, they followed a link to a virtual botanical garden tour and started to complete a web-quest which comprised a series of questions about the different uses of plants and plant materials. They had to travel around the virtual tropical garden, locate plants which revealed information, and decide on the correct use of that particular plant to man. They each joined GLOW meet and imported their word docs containing the questions and their answers. They were soon checking out each others whiteboards and helping each other and the usual classroom banter continued on the instant messaging section of ‘meet’.

I moved around the room helping pupils where necessary. They had two other tasks to complete as well as the web quest ( watching another video about endangered plants and commenting about this on the discussion board). They all got really engrossed in this first task, and I have to admit, so did I, being kept busy answering questions and prodding a few in the right direction. The kids were pushing each other on as well. When I did do a time-check, I had to move them onto the next tasks and we didn’t all get the chance to post on discussions. I was a little concerned that we might not have achieved all our lesson objectives but the plenary questioning at the end revealed that the pupils had applied the knowledge gained from the first task and had started to think about the consequences of destroying plant habitats in terms of losing potential medicines and foods for the future. They all saved their whiteboard work and we will re-visit this task again and complete it next time we use GLOW.

I am finding more and more  that using GLOW is helping my pupils to develop abstract and critical thinking skills and this has been evident in their credit level assessment scores. Their social skills are also developing well evidenced by the increasing level of peer-to-peer instruction and assistance that is now taking place.

Although I was worried a little that the lesson had lost its way, the actual situation was that the pupils had taken control of the learning and teaching and used it to their advantage. All of my lesson objectives had been met (important when pushing through a standard grade course) and the pupils had applied their Biology to the real world. When considered in the light of ACfE, they certainly were successful learners and effective contributors, communicating in different ways, settings and in partnership. They took the initiative, solved problems and applied critical thinking well. As confident individuals they managed their own pace of learning and helped each other and as responsible citizens they developed informed views of  the environmental and ethical issues involved in managing or destroying the rainforests after evaluating the evidence presented. And as someone else who was observing in class that day pointed out, they were totally engaged and concentrating for the whole 55 minutes of the lesson.

So maybe things didn’t go as wrong as I thought  after all. Or maybe my judgement as to the success or failure of a lesson is less important than the views of the pupils. Having given them a clear set of learning intentions, a road-map for achievement and the tools to use, should I begin to trust them more to put it all together and finish the job in hand, asking me for assistance if necessary? Surely this is what ACfE is all about?

I’ve written before about how using GLOW changes my role in the classroom. Reflecting on this particular lesson has emphasised, to me anyway, how significant this change in role might actually be for my pupils and how important and powerful the reflective process is to my understanding of teaching and learning…

I came across this video earlier today and just had to laugh - it reminded me so much of my grandson. The way he’s going, he will soon be teaching me how to do stuff on my pc !

Great !

But seriously, these are the kids we teach at the moment and will teach in the future. So at home with technology they take it for granted. I’m constantly amazed at the things I can do with my computers. I just hope I never lose the buzz and sense of excitement I get from learning how to do new stuff like Animoto, for example. And what a challenge to keep the digital natives sitting in front of us in the classroom everyday engaged and motivated by our use of technology in teaching and learning. Its a tough gig keeping up wih the natives. But fun !

I recently came across an award-winning  blog post from Karl Fisch which poses the following question…

‘Is it okay to be a technologically illiterate teacher ?’   Fisch is clearly of the opinion that it is not. He goes on to make this rather bold statement..

“If a teacher today is not technologically literate - and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more - it’s equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn’t know how to read and write”.

I think that this is a debate that is going to rear its head more and more often over the coming months in Scotland as GLOW is rolled out in LA’s and schools across the country. Is there really such a sharp digital divide through our profession ? and perhaps more importantly, is this divide also apparent in the intentions and aspirations of Scottish teachers with regard to ICT use within subjects and schools?

I was at our LA head teacher’s conference today, and there was a significant part of the day devoted to GLOW. Many of the assembled throng were keen to see how it could be taken forward in their schools, bt there were issues raised about access to computers or lack of hardware. Now, GLOW can be used in lessons as a focus for activity, stimulating group work , demonstrating pupils’ work, video-conferencing without necessarily getting each pupil logged onto their own machine. Creative subversion comes into play here, with the teacher using the available tools to enhance teaching and learning. Using the available resources. Because we don’t live in an ideal world and we have to work with what we’ve got sometimes rather than what we might want. To quote from the Rolling Stones…

“You can’t always get what you want…but if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need”.

Now I think the problem some people at the conference today had was that they could not get past the perception of GLOW as an ICT/Computer issue. It has to be viewed as just another set of teaching and learning tools available for teachers to use, and to help them deliver A Curriculun for Excellence. And sometimes the form our use of GLOW takes might not be what the original designers and developers envisaged or what LA managers might want but the important thing is that it works in the particular teacher’s classroom at any particular moment in time for the benefit of the pupils. I think the work of my SLC colleague Caroline Gibson with her use of GLOW with her primary class is a fantastic example of this creativity (check her Blog - link on the blog-roll to the right). And I’ve met many others who are doing great work all over the country.

The literature review for my research on embedding ICT into secondary school subjects has thrown up some interesting stuff about this resistance to change. Amongst this was a paper by Cuban who used the phrase ‘dominant cultural norms’ to describe the ethos in some subject departments which impacted negatively on attempts to introduce ICT  and acted to neutralise development. This of course has a major impact on student teachers and probationers who need to see ICT in action enhancing the classroom experience for the pupils in these subjects. Fisch has some suggestions for dealing with this, as well as other issues surrounding the use, or lack of it, of ICT in our schools. Here is the link to his post..

http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-it-okay-to-be-technologically.html

I wrote about this myself in TESS last year, and that article can be found on this blog…

http://mimanifesto.wordpress.com/2008/02/24/the-challenge-of-change/

I don’t think I would want to go completely down the Fisch route, (although he makes some good points about a professional responsibilty to regularly update our skills) but I do think we are in a battle for hearts and minds on this. There is no going back with GLOW and it will change the face of Scottish education. The lights are on and they are not going to be extinguished. The political will to deliver has been demonstrated and Scotland is unique in having its own schools intranet. How do we build on this?

Those of us who have been involved in the roll out of GLOW need no persuasion. Our SLC headteachers have now seen the kit in action. What we have to do is engage them in the process of winning the hearts and minds of our colleagues. This partnership-leadership will be crucial for individual school roll-outs. The influence and support of our Headteachers could advance the progress of GLOW in schools significantly. Lets hope we’ve made some progress in further cementing this alliance today.

I’ve just found this post on Neil Winton’s blog about a GLOW training event he attended last year. One sentence jumps out at me..

“I sat in the room watching the demo and realised that there is no going back — that Scotland’s education system is committed to a radical shake-up in the way it develops and delivers learning”.

I think this is tremendously prophetic, and will say  no more, other than to post the link…

http://nwinton.wordpress.com/2007/06/14/glow-learn/

Its been an interesting couple of days here in Stirling at the ‘Making Connections and Sharing Success’ GLOW conference. Loads of really keen people wanting to take GLOW forward in their authority and schools across the country from the Western Isles down to Dumfries and Galloway. Some great ideas kicking around the tables, many of which I’m keen to get into school and try out. Its really good to see people making progress with GLOW and adapting its tools to suit their own particular needs. And such lovely people as well. I guess this is the ‘creative subversion’ professor Debra Myhill advocates. She defines this in the following way…
  ”teachers should neither passively comply with government initiatives, nor should they point blank refuse to implement them. Instead they should adapt them creatively”.  

You know it makes sense !

 
If you want to read my full reflections, go to this link

 http://mimanifesto.wordpress.com/stirling-glow-event-the-full-monty/

I’ve been very busy this week arranging the schedule for my study visit to Finland next month. Whilst doing the literature review for a research paper on ICT, I came accross some interesting work by researchers at the University of Helsinki on the use of ICT within subjects

http://www.helsinki.fi/science/networkedlearning/eng/index.html

I made cotact with one of the researchers who has been kind enough to give me some contacts in the Helsinki and surrounding area. From these I have managed to arrange visits to three schools, meetings with education administrators and a government official, as well as time at the University meeting with researchers and lecturers involved in teacher training. A packed schedule and a busy three days !

The Finns have been so welcoming and so accomodating, eager to welcome me into their schools and very willing to discuss their experiences of using ICT in school classrooms.

I am really looking forward to this visit, but having hosted a group of Finnish teachers at my school discussing blogging and podcasting in lessons, I know that the pronounciation of some of their names and words is rather challenging, to say the least. As I have never had a flair for languages (apart from having to learn Spanish when I taught in Tenerife) I am rather pleased that all Finnish teachers and most of their secondary school pupils are proficient in English. It made me think a little about why it is that so many of our european neighbours place such importance on being able to speak English, where as we here in Scotland don’t attach the same importance to being multi-lingual?

I am really looking forward to my visit, particularly  meeting Finnish teachers and students, and taking time out to reflect upon my current classroom practice in the light of observing my hosts at work. It’s going to be an interesting few days. I’m told by friends that Helsinki is a great city so of course, I’m also looking forward to sampling the local culture - i wonder how it will compare to Glasgow !!! I have also been checking out Finnish sauna etiquette as  apparently sauna is a big social thing there..

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/1-27-2006-87491.asp

although I think I might need to go on a crash diet before doing the sauna thing !

…and of coure, I’ll be blogging from Helsinki whilst I’m there. Watch this space…..

What are blogs for and why do some of us keep them ? This is something I’ve often thought about. Particularly for those of us in education there appears to be a fashion for changing the name to ‘learning logs’. Apparently, this is to distinguish them from mere ordinary blogs and perhaps give them more kudos as records of professional reflection. Don Ledingham wrote in TESS last year having started this re-naming trend, that he felt that this helped him to focus more sharply on his professional practice, whereas John Connell prefers to keep it loose with a plain old blog filled with musings, sometimes off-topic (that topic being education). Others have argued that blogs tend to promote the writer’s ‘ego’. Interesting that one. It got me thinking, with my psychology teacher hat on, about what ‘ego’ actually means. Freud coined the term to describe the ‘reality principle’ trying to reconcile the unconscious desires of the ‘id’ or pleasure principle with the ’superego’ or conscience in all of us. So therefore, ‘ego’ could be said to be the part of you striving for the middle ground between what you really want to do and what you know you should really be doing. And isn’t educational practice rather like this? finding the middle ground or compromise between what you really want to do and what you know you should…

My blog is based on my musings. Some may stray or wander from the educational path charted by people such as Don and Laurie O’Donnell (another convert to learning logs) but I make no apologies for this. I like the freedom to comment and think aloud on whatever grabs me at the time of writing. This may make for uncomfortable and challenging reading. And if some think this is all about ego, then going by Freud’s original meaning perhaps it is. My search for my own metaphysical middle ground…

Some fierce debate going on over on the TESS opinion forum about the merits or not of our current inspection regime.

http://www.tes.co.uk/section/staffroom/thread.aspx?story_id=2600782&path=/scotland/scotland+-+opinion/&threadPage=1

It raises the whole issue of quality assurance in schools. Many subscribe to the business approach where rigourous inspection of processes drives up the quality of the end product. Others make the point that education cannot be viewed as a business running on principles of profit or loss. For me its a no-brainer. Our product is the education we offer (the teaching and learning are the processes which deliver this) and our customers are the pupils and their families. There has to be robust quality assurance examining  these processes to help us in schools ensure they are fit for purpose. A big part of this must be annual appraisals for teaching staff. CPD must be reviewed with the needs of the individual matched to those of the department, school and authority . Without this, much CPD becomes, at best irrelevant. ICT is a case in point. With the current push by HMIE on using ICT within subject teaching you would think much CPD would be devoted to raising teacher’s computer skills at least up to the level demanded in the SFR. But no, it often does just not happen. Quality assurance inspections can help here.

The Norwegians actually legislate for this type of thing. ICT has recently been made the fifth competence in their curriculum and teachers must be able to deliver ICT regularly within their subjects.

Do we need to go down this road in Scotland ? Would it drag some of our colleagues kicking and screaming into the 21st century ? maybe. We need to do something about the minority who refuse year on year to update their skills. If its not addressed within schools, then external measures become the only way.

A few things have happened recently which have focused my attention on the subject of leadership in schools. What exactly do we expect from our management teams ? and what support do we give them in terms of training and skills assessment ? Not enough, I think. I don’t see much of a problem with head teachers and senior deputes, but with many junior members of SMT who are very poorly equipped with the skills necessary to do their jobs. Promoted on the premise of being a good subject principal teacher, they flounder like fishes out of water drowning in a sea of administration and unable to take an overview of their remits. This is the problem. We promote on the basis of being a good subject PT, not on the basis of management potential. School leadership is, at the moment, in my view far too fixed on this administration, on organising and managing the establishment, and not on strengthening teaching and learning. Junior members of our school SMT spend their time trying to manage the structures and processes surrounding teaching, rather than the teaching itself. If this is what education authorities want, then why employ teachers as managers? Good business administrators would do the job much more efficiently. Many deputes,  in my opinion ( offered as an experienced  trained manager from a blue-chip multi-national company training programme) can be  ill-prepared and over-promoted. Worse still, some attempt to disguise this by being aggressive intimidating bullies prepared to blame teachers at the drop of a hat in order to disguise their own inadequacies. That’s bad, really bad because in this day and age, classroom teachers need to be able to count on their managers ( both faculty heads and junior DHT’s) to back them up and support them. All too often this support is all too conspicuous by its absence. No wonder teachers are leaving the profession in droves.This thread from the TES opinion forum really speaks volumes for the state of teacher morale in some schools…

http://www.tes.co.uk/section/staffroom/thread.aspx?story_id=2602297&path=/Opinion/

…and this post on ‘OldAndrew’ s blog

http://oldandrew.edublogs.org/2008/03/28/reloaded-the-cast-of-culprits-part-3-the-school-leaders/

Standards-based reform of the type we are going through in Scottish schools at the moment and increasingly, discipline issues and poor behaviour from the ‘could’nt give a t*ss brigade, needs true leadership. Not the over-promoted ‘Buggins- turn’ type SMT (at least at junior level) that are often appointed (if the media is to be believed). And its not always their fault, poor lambs. An element of nepotism often adds to this stagnant mix as well.

What can we do ? well, proper training and mentoring for a start. The SQH perhaps would benefit from more academic rigour and an injection of MBA-style business placements. The people-managing elements of this course also need to be re-evaluated. And why not search our schools for the vast reserve of experience that at present lies untapped. Education leadership schemes in England take this into account and bypass the Scottish promotion ladder route in imaginative and inspiring ways. More and more late entrants to the profession are bringing with them a whole plethora of management skills. What a criminal waste of resources it is not to use these. My own project management experience and that of a couple of my colleagues lies dormant, and I know its the same in many schools across the country. As a psychology teacher, I would also like to see psychometric testing for all  candidate SMT members. It might at least screen out the bullies, power-crazy, disorganised and egocentric individuals who have the potential to give education management a bad name and who one reads about , particularly on the TES staffroom forum all too often.

These changes might result in more teachers feeling supported and valued, rather than disbelieved and assumed to be in the wrong when challenged by any pupil who feels like having a go. It is here that real leadership can make a defference. HMIE define leadership as “having a clear vision of direction and the ability to give people the self confidence to believe they can make a difference and be recognised for this”. Its just a shame that a cursory glance at some teacher’s chatroom forums shows that these leadership qualities might be thin on the ground in some of our schools.

A wee hint to them….. have a look at this video. It may, just may give a little focus and direction.

watch?v=9WJk1jBM15I&feature=related

There is a really good debate going on over on Ewan McIntosh’s blog at the moment…

http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2008/04/watch-out-beadl.html?cid=109321996#comment-109321996

No comments here, check the link and join the discussion.

And maybe have a look at this video (thanks to Andrea Reid for this one…)

watch?v=_M_336pDWoM

Another busy week. Its amazing just how quickly time flies by. Its only three weeks since I had my knee operation but already I’m right back into the swing of things, and as ever, there’s always so much to do in school. We had two more really good lessons using GLOW in biology. The S3 class are really working the system like consummate pro’s. They have been working on GLOW now since January and have completed one of their standard grade modules using GLOW for one third of the teaching time. Well into their revision, many of them are using their GLOW group tools to help them at home. we had another good lesson using ‘meet’ and its great to see some real collaboration taking place as pupils flit between each others whiteboards to see how their classmates are doing the work set,  commenting and messaging each other. Now that they are used to working with this particular element of GLOW I want to extend their horizons a little by bringing in some external participants to work with them. Perhaps some biologists from the Teacher Training Institutions ? Interestingly, formative assessment results from these pupils using GLOW during this part of their course has shown attainment gains well above those noted in previous modules undertaken. Its going to be interesting evaluating their attainment against similar classes who have not used GLOW for the same work….

My small group of parents are also getting to grips with GLOW. I am showing them how to use it with their youngsters as a way of helping them with their Biology work at home. The parents have been really amazed at the different resorces I have made available in a special GLOW group set up just for them. I am hoping that they will continue to use it at home and that it will encourage them to take a real interest in their children’s progress. The aim of the project is to use computer assisted learning to increase the amount of parental involvement in school work. The pupils selected were identified as needing additional support to raise their attainment. We felt that if we could involve parents/carers in this, then the effects might be both more long-lasting and cross-curricular, as the working together at home might spread to other subjects. Its early days, but initial feedback is encouraging.

I’ve also been busy working on the arrangements for my study visit to Finland next month (big thanks to LTS for the dosh for this !). I’m looking forward to meeting the pupils and teachers in the Helsinki schools who are also using ICT within their subject lessons, as well as the university academics researching this area of teaching and learning. I’m also planning to meet the school district administrators looking after ICT, as well as some student teachers in training.

I have a meeting this week with someone from Glasgow University (my old ‘alma mater’) who has spent some years researching the use of computers in education for both learning and peer- asessment and I’ve been invited to a couple of conferences (one local and one national) next month to share good practice on using GLOW in teaching and learning. It would also be good to get some more collaboration between staff and authorities on the go -some irons in the fire there as well.

 There are tremendous opportunities at the moment for teachers to really influence educational practice and innovation. Busy times indeed. And exciting !

The recent lesson I taught from home using GLOW meet really got me thinking. Of course, the pupils enjoyed the ‘novelty’ factor and were engaged throughout the 50 minutes or so, but on a more serious note, I feel I achieved just as much if not more in that lesson than I would if I had taught it in person. This might sound a little crazy, but the focus on the learning objectives, the detailed planning involved in delivering the content into GLOW for the pupils, and the ability for pupils to share work via their whiteboards in GLOW meet and for me to be able to check their learning progress the same way, as well as privately messaging those few who were struggling all added up to result in an amazingly good lesson. AiFL and peer assessment, and the collaborative and independent aims of ACfE all addressed and more to the point effective in the way they were meant to be - improving the teaching and learning. Differentiation was a dream - more able kids tackled extra and more challenging work I had set for them allowing me to concentrate my input in an extremely targeted fashion towards the pupils who needed help, as well as interacting with the more able students on their advanced work programme.

 This lesson really allowed me to sharpen up my   planning to involve all the elements I feel are important, particularly peer-assessment and collaboration, and proper differentiation of content to take into account the individual learning differences and abilities of the pupils in the class.

Budget constraints during the next session will force us all in schools to be ‘extremely efficient’ with timetabling, as my own Head Teacher phrased it recently. Perhaps its time for an e-learning programme in South Lanarkshire. This might allow more students to take courses by combining with others in different schools. I’m thinking here of Advanced Higher in particular. My own subjects of Biology and Psychology could benefit from this approach. Advanced Higher Biology could be taught this way, with practical work carefully scheduled at certain times. Tutorials could be easily arranged using GLOW Meet, often on an individual basis and ‘out of hours’ as necessary to allow real flexibility to suit the different schools and students involved and maximum efficiency of a teacher’s timetabled commitment. Of course the students would need to be trained to use GLOW but for today’s ‘digital natives’ this has so far not been a problem. I think the more mature S6 pupils would really take to this approach and the interactive elements within the platform ( both audio and video communication in real-time) facilitate a very personal as well as collaborative learning experience for the students involved.

So come on then….opinions please. And for any SLC types lurking on this weblog - maybe its time to trial this e-learning approach using GLOW. Perhaps a way to put a brave face and different spin on budget cuts in education, or perhaps a 21st century approach to education efficiency and resource maximisation…

Sitting here away from my classroom with my (very) sore and swollen leg propped up on pillows, I’ve been reflecting on much of my classroom practice, as well as feeling rather sorry for myself. Its not nice to be told that you need a knee replacement at the grand old age of 43. It got me thinking about change which is necessary, and change for the sake of change. Much of what we have to do in education it seems to me, is change for the sake of change. New initiatives come and go and we are expected to change our classroom practice to fit in with the new fashion. Most of these changes come without any form of quantitative evidence to back them up. The exceptions to this are few and far between. For me, AiFL was one of those exceptions. It came as the result of some focused classroom research which yielded clear evidence of a change, improvement in attainment as a result of changes made to the teaching. This is good classroom research to my mind, and it has stuck with me at the back of my mind throughout my teaching career to date.

I have now got to the point where I am doing educational research, and my starting point has been to examine the so-called innovations in education and more importantly, the quantitative evidence which backs up he research. And guess what; I struggle to find any, apart from AiFL. Curriculum for excellence is a set of very laudable aims,  and the evidence to support it is there but its qualitative. We will not see the quantitative figures, the raising in attainment, for many years. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe in ACfE wholeheartedly. I think the four capacities are just the way we need to be teaching our kids. They have to have skills and the ability to use them in a 21st century Scotland. Education must be holistic or it is just a process of imparting specialist knowledge in isolated chunks. And maybe that’s why it may be harder to evaluate ACfE in terms of raising attainment. Perhaps wider measures will be needed, such as socio-economic indicators like employment rates, NEET figures year on year, and so on.

My reading over the past year or so has been focused on raising attainment through the use of ICT in the classroom. I’m actually staggered by the amount of money that’s been spent in the UK over the past 10 years on ICT without any measurement of its impact on attainment. Surely this funding should be tied to quantifiable measures of success ? The introduction of GLOW into Scottish schools is a case in point. Why, oh why has its roll-out not been accompanied by targets for raising attainment ? why have HMIe not included their thoughts and intentions on GLOW in their latest ICT report? Why is it being left to LA’s an schools to introduce GLOW without any cohesive authority-wide targets for usage related to attainment ? I feel we may have missed the boat which could have changed the face of Scottish education for the better. Don Ledingham, the East Lothian education supremo, writing in his blog refers to the old saying ‘evolution not revolution’ and how it might need to be reversed. I wholeheartedly agree. Its time for a digital revolution in our schools which no-one must be allowed to shy away from. All the old excuses must be brushed aside by training. All of our teachers sign up to the GTCS SFR every year when renewing their registration, and these standards are quite clear on ICT skills. Its a good starting point as these standards are enough to enable anyone to use GLOW effectively in the classroom with some CPD-tweaking. The problem here is clearly a lack of will, or dare I say it, a lack of professionalism on the part of many teachers who are burying their heads in the sand.

I want to address the lack of quantitative research on the effect of ICT on attainment. Those of us who use ICT know the benefits to teaching and learning. We know it improves results. Now is the time to show this. I have been unable to find any research papers making this link. They all concentrate on opinions and perceptions. If you know any, please let me know. I am going to measure the effect of using ICT as a structured planned part of teaching a subject on attainment using a secondary school year group and statistical analysis of their attainment before and after the project. Hopefully this will be published later this year as we have already commenced work. And hopefully it will give a clearer picture of the benefits (or not) of using ICT in our classrooms regularly and in a planned fashion as a part of each secondary school course. So often we dip into these initiatives like ICT for a while then go back to our previous ways- a ‘digital’ holiday if you like. I think its about time we put the holiday photos away and use research to help us start the revolution and become a ‘digital nation’. Full time.