Memories of Christmas 2011
Baubles on the tree, marmite chocolate, midge in wrapping paper, veg Xmas pie,
Baubles on the tree, marmite chocolate, midge in wrapping paper, veg Xmas pie,
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Sometimes it's best to see yourself through the eyes of others. I have to admit that, as a teacher, I used to hate being observed. Which was strange because I could always be very critical of my own teaching and my own performance as viewed with hindsight by myself. Having someone else view my teaching was, however, more intimidating. I think the point was that when someone else was observing me, I no longer felt in control of the situation. The lesson and its setting was often artificially contrived either to show off the best or to avoid the worst of my teaching. Even just having someone else in the room would have an effect upon the pupil behaviour. I think, though, the bottom line was that I rarely felt that the observer was there in a supportive role; they were usually there to catch me out or there to support their subject agenda. I daresay that no everyone feels the same about being observed. There are certainly positive benefits to be gained from having someone observe your teaching. An independent eye may often pick up things you may not notice yourself, they may notice things you did not even feel were an issue. Even if the independent observer does notice the same things you have noticed yourself, having someone else notice them tends to give them more weight or significance. Having someone else notice things makes them more difficult to ignore or push to one side, as you might be tempted to do yourself. Of course, any observer is there, hopefully, not just to notice the negative things but also to report to you on the positive aspects of your teaching. Positive things which, again, you yourself may not have noticed or thought worthy of note. Yet positive aspects are ones that you can contribute to the school and maybe help influence the teaching of colleagues. Despite all the possible benefits of observation, it is still usually the case that the teacher does not feel in charge of the event. Could this be changed by the teacher inviting a colleague to observe a lesson? How many of us have done that? In such an arrangement, wouldn't the teacher be in a better position and the observer, having accepted the invitation, be in a supportive role rather than merely carrying out a duty? If the teacher not only invited a colleague to observe a lesson but also invited the observer to comment upon particular aspects of their teaching, wouldn't this be a more professional and beneficial use of lesson observation? In a traditional observation arrangement, the observer observes a teacher and at a later time feeds back to that teacher. Couldn't we utilise technology in some way to enable the observer to feedback to the teacher in real time and perhaps suggest changes to try while a lesson is in progress? Sure, we would not want to disrupt the lesson more than necessary but what I have in mind is some form of audio feedback perhaps via an earpiece or maybe text feedback to a teacher's laptop. Similar, I guess to being a TV presenter? While on the subject of a TV presenter, many of us do not like being in front of a video camera and we would certainly not regard ourselves as presenters. Nevertheless, videoing a session, instead of or in addition to physical observation, can also have great benefit in affecting teaching performance. A simple video camera stood in the corner of a room or maybe even in the hands of pupils, can provide a fascinating insight into one's teaching even without any added commentary or feedback. It can also be used to provide ongoing records of improvement or changes for the teacher and maybe even provide some evidence of the effectiveness, or otherwise, of such changes. For me, the key in all of this is that the teacher should be in charge of all of it. It is used as part of their reflective practice and ongoing development more than as an intrusion imposed upon them.Image via Wikipedia
If your school or organisation has invested in Microsoft Office, especially the 2010 suite, the chances are you are not making full use of the programs. I would go further and say that there is probably one program that you have hardly looked at or used in class. You may be surprised to learn that I am not talking about either MS Access or Publisher. The program I am talking about is called OneNote. OneNote is, essentially, a note taking program. As such, it is perfectly placed for the education sector and is potentially an important tool for learners. Thus, it would be a great shame, having invested time and money in the Microsoft Office Suite, for this program to be overlooked. Using OneNote, each student can create a 'notebook' into which they can add sections and pages. On each page, the learner can write their notes. These notes can consist of; Typed notesJust a test post from my iPod touch p, please ignore.
Image via Wikipedia
talking to your computer may sound like a strange thing to do, though many of us at times may have resorted to swearing at the devices every now and again. What I am talking about however is speech recognition. This involves getting the computer to recognise human speech and turn it into text on the screen or commands for the computer to perform. You may have seen adverts for NaturallySpeaking on the TV or in the press and, like me, being intrigued. I will admit that I first tried speech recognition many years ago and found it to be, how shall I say, quite a pain. Back in those days the software and hardware were both quite crude and unreliable and, quite frankly, speech recognition simply did not work. I've been tempted however to give speech recognition another go. I have always felt that there would be a place for speech recognition not just in business but also in education, particularly special education. So I wanted to see if the advances in hardware and software has helped to make speech recognition much more usable nowadays. Let's start by saying that you still need patience, and a lot of patience, to set up speech recognition on your computer. Setting up NaturallySpeaking on my desktop computer took the best part of a whole day. This is because the software is always in the large takes a long time to simply install. Once you have installed it is a need to do some training, by which I mean, train your computer. Thankfully, however, there is no need to change your computer and the extent of a few years ago, NaturallySpeaking has a large vocabulary of words it already recognises. This is a vast improvement over my experiences of a few years ago, though you still have to train it to recognise your accent and pronounciation.This is made a little easier in that it seems to be able to scan your documents and emails to learn common phrases you use. So far, apart from the time spent installing the program, the biggest hurdle seems to be that over just a short time, the microphone, or the software, loses sensitivity. This means that, after an initially promising start, the software starts making mistakes or is constantly prompting you to 'say that again'. I don't know why this seems to happen but it really is a bit of a pain.Image via Wikipedia
You'd think that working with children and young people, helping them learn, grow and develop would be one of the best and most rewarding of jobs. Yet often it isn't. Just ask any teacher about the stress, the long hours, the pressures of working in a school and you'll begin to wonder if there isn't someting wrong with our education system. Dig a little deeper, though, and you'll uncover more of the story. Teachers will tell you that it isn't working with the pupils that's the problem; it's all the extra bits! By which they usually mean the paper work, the long hours spent in school and at home on preparation or marking. This has long been the case in education but has it got any worse over the years and what role does technology play in this? I believe that technology is both an aid and a culprit when we look into teacher stress. Let me give you an example, take lesson planning; lesson planning takes time, it takes time to identify the aims, objectives and outcomes of a lesson, to identify and plan the use of resources, to set evaluation and success criteria, to identify differentiation etc.. Using a computer may make it easier to draw up lesson plans in a common format or template, printing a lesson plan may well be easier than writing it out by hand but does this mean it takes less time to create a lesson plan? Not really, it is the thinking and the planning that goes into a good lesson plan that takes time rather than the writing, so typing and printing saves only a small amount of time compared to writing by hand. So why, then, do we expect teachers to write more detailed lesson plans? By using computers, we are often asking teachers to spend longer doing lesson plans than they used to. Ironic isn't it? Some people, and I am not one of them, believe that the purpose of ICT in schools is to make admin tasks quicker and easier for teachers so that they can devote more time to teaching and learning. This may sound good but what is happening is that teachers are being asked to do more and more admin tasks that take them away from teaching and learning. Few teachers come into the profession, if it can still be called a profession, to do paper work. Teachers are not office workers and should not be regarded as such. The professional teacher is concerned with pupil learning, getting the best out of their pupils. Professional teachers welcome technology into the classroom where it has a clear benefit for learning and that, I feel, should be the focus of using technology in schools. I'm sure that if we focused our efforts in using technology in support of learning rather than emphasising its role in school administration, we could once again see a happy workforce of teachers and also see learners benefiting from working with happy school staff.I don't think anyone could deny that ICT or Educational Technology is a very versatile tool for schools.
If I were to ask you to list all the ways in which technology is used in your school, you'd come up with a list as long as your arm. Perhaps, I should rephrase that to read 'the ways in which technology could be used in your school' because I think it's almost certain that few of us use the technology to its full capability. Among the uses that you might mention, could be; Writing reports,Image via Wikipedia
A couple of primary schools I've visited recently have both taken the decision to remove their ICT suites. This seems like a good idea, as you may know, I am not a great fan of the ICT suite (see this post). In the case of these two schools, though, the removal of the suites was not part of a planned process, they were removed out of necessity and in some haste; either because the school found itself short of classrooms or 'natural' damage (flood) meant the suite could no longer be used. In both cases, and I'm sure in many others, the school had to look to alternatives to deliver its ICT provision. In both these cases (as, I'm sure, in others), the school opted for a banks of laptops and netbooks. Interestingly, both schools have procured two banks of laptops and netbooks with portable charging trolleys to replace one ICT suite. This has had the immediate benefit that two classes can make use of technology at the same time instead on just the one at a time that could use the old suite. However, it has been the netbooks that have caused problems. I am not certain but I very strongly suspect that the schools purchased the netbooks because they appeared to be a cheaper version of the laptops. Big Mistake! I have nothing against netbooks but I do firmly believe that they are not laptop replacements. To use netbooks effectively requires careful planning and changes to the ways in which ICT is used. Superficially, a netbook looks like a slimmed down laptop but it is not. Currently, a netbook has less memory and storage than a laptop, it has less power (and lower battery consumption) and lacks an optical (CD or DVD) drive. It relies far more than a laptop upon a wireless connection to access resources and services on a network (LAN or Internet), hence the term 'net'book. If you wish to make effective use of netbooks, then you need first to ensure your wireless infrastructure is suitable for the job. I accept that a netbook is more easily portable than a laptop and that its smaller size and lower weight may make it more suitable for younger learners. However, it would be quite wrong to see a netbook as being a laptop for younger pupils. A netbook is an item of educational technology in its own right and can be suitable for learners of any age or stage of education, it is probably better to regard it as a more portable and, certainly, a more 'personal' device. So what can we learn from the experiences seen in these two schools? First of all, replacing an ICT suite (or any major change in ICT provision) needs to be carefully planned and prepared, Secondly, netbooks are not straightforward replacements for desktop or laptop devices Thirdly, netbooks are not suitable only for infant or younger learners Fourthly, adopting and using netbooks requires a full rethink and planning in how ICT is used in a school and Fifthly, if you want to use netbooks or laptops, first ensure your wireless provision is adequate Let me also add another question; should the school be continuing to provide this kit or should it be enabling the pupils to provide and use their own kit?I had a laugh yesterday, I shouldn't have done because the guy was quite serious but ...
What caused me to laugh was a post on a forum about ICT in schools and why some teachers weren't using it. The comment was made that sometimes technology doesn't do what it is supposed to do and this led to some teachers not using it. It was that bit about technology not doing what it is supposed to do, that made me laugh. I know what he means, I know exactly what he means but it does make it sound like the technology is being a naughty child. It does raise questions about peoples' understanding and their relationship with technology. The technology does what it does; that may not be what you want it to do or what you expect it to do but it is, unless it is broken, what you are telling it to do! I recall my early days in school, then if a teacher was faced with someone who didn't do what they were supposed to do, the teacher had two options; they could stand them in the corner and ignore them, or they could give detention after school and make them do it properly. In the case of technology, it seems in some classes, the same two options still apply!Image via Wikipedia There is a lot of talk and discussion regarding e-safety, and rightly so. It is, however, an area that is more complex than you might imagine. There are many sides to the debate and your approach to it would, I guess, vary according to your role or position within education. To my mind, e-safety is about three things in particular;
1. protecting the user 2. protecting data 3. protecting the system Protecting the user. I think many of us would say that this would be the most important of the 3 items on the list, especially where the user is a child. To my mind, though, e-safety is not just about protecting the child; e-safety is about safe and effective use by all users. While I can accept that technical methods, such as monitoring and filtering, may have a role to play in this, I am not convinced that the right approach is to rely upon technological devices to ensure safety. It does seem to me that e-safety for the user lies more in understanding the issues involved and adopting practices to avoid or prevent such issues. It is primarily an education issue rather than a technical one. We always have to remember that each user does not have access to technology in school but also in the home and in the workplace after school; safe practice taught in school can be carried across into home, work and mobile environments. The danger is that in school we could rely too heav
