Lookybook

My trawls today directed me towards Angela Maier's Blog and her report of a web site Lookybook. This site appears to have been around for a while now and I missed it first time round!!

This is what the site says about itself:

Picture books are for looking at. Lookybook allows you to look at picture books in their entirety—from cover to cover, at your own pace. We know that nothing will replace the magic of reading a book with your child at bedtime, but we aim to replace the overwhelming and frustrating process of finding the right books for parents and their kids.

Our mission is to create a comfortable place where a curious and devoted audience can search, view, talk about, and buy from a diverse and rapidly expanding collection of picture books. We intend to create the greatest opportunity for authors, illustrators and publishers to reach interested consumers and dramatically extend the life of their books.

Lookybook currently features over 300 titles and is growing daily.

On the site you can look at the book, embed it in a blog or web page or go to a shop and buy it.

I think this is a brilliant idea.

Some common sense ... perhaps

So, it transpires, that there are more Sats papers missing and now there is a big search on to try to find out where they are and just how many.

The question still needs to be answered about the viability of continuing with a system that few will now have any confidence in.

Perhaps this company ETS, with all of its inadequacies, have done my cause a favour. Just maybe we will now see some more radical rethinking. Today, previous Education Secretary Estelle Morris says in a BBC News item:

Ed Balls should not resign over the Sats problems - but he should use them as an opportunity to overhaul the testing system.

Hope he listens ...

Rockford's Rock Opera - The Registrar commeth !!

Have a look and listen to my first attempt at a 'bubble comment' here.


If you are a Rockford's Rock Opera fan (If not I just can't imagine why not ... go on try it)then here's something that you have been waiting for ... the free video – I am the Registrar .

Fresh out of the exciting Sweetapple stable courtesy of Elaine and Matthew, this new video track will knock your socks off.

To get it to play full screen I downloaded the video with Real Payer 11 and then just opened it in Real Player ... looks awesome projected on the side of next door's house.



Also from them ...

PERFECT FOR LONG HOLIDAY JOURNEYS

We know Rockford's Rock Opera is perfect for entertaining the WHOLE FAMILY on long holiday journeys – on mp3 players or on CD.
Two and half hours of amazing entertainment you'll ALL enjoy again and again. So go on, get the CDs or download the story now!

NEW FREE TEACHERS' MATERIALS

We've completely revamped our education section with loads more lesson plans plus free downloadable characters and scenes - perfect for creating stories of your own.
Over the next month we'll be adding more and more to this section so please check back regularly.

Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of rum ... 16 men on a dead man's chest ... are you a Pirate ?

Are you a pirate? Things have to change ... watch the video and decide where you stand. But as an educator do you stand somewhere different? Is it a case of don't do as I do; do as I say? Or do you just not say? Are we educating our young people to think and act from knowledge or ignorance?

Watch the video (Thanks to the Whiteboard Blog and the original post of Lauren O'Grady for the 'heads up' on this)



PS Breaking News from the BBC 24 July 2008

PPS Now news of Textbook piracy and its implications ... here .

Podcasting in Surrey (without a fringe)

Sometimes people just make my day.

Yesterday I had wakened early (before 5.00) and had begun my drive down the M1 towards Surrey. My route was to take me on to the M25 and then around to J10 and off to Cobham. I gave myself 3 hours to do it ... it was not enough. I arrived on the M25parkway at just before 7.00 and then stopped and started my way around anti-clockwise ... even had time to count the number of jets I could see in the sky over Heathrow (7). I arrived at the 4S Training Centre in Cobham at 8.33 ... rushed in ... and was greeted by smiles and a really warm welcome. Just down the corridor, in the room we were to work in I met Tim Barette ... more smiles, warm handshake, and 'What can I get you to drink?' and 'Is there anything I can do to help?' and ' Will this be okay for you?' and 'Is there anything else you need?'

Sometimes people just make your day ... thanks Tim !!

Then the teachers came and we podcasted. We used Podium from Softease and it was easy to use and didn't get in the way of what we were trying to do and we recorded sounds and made podcasts and had fun and could see why we might want to do this with children in classrooms.

We took poems as a theme and the teachers read and developed lots of ideas and added backing tracks and 'stings' to their productions. We spoke of building a podcast as a 'design and build' exercise in D & T and commented that preparing the resources ( sound files mainly) was a pre-podcast job.

The scripting tool in the software excited interest and its potential was not lost on a group of primary teachers who could see the cross-curricula application of both the scripting and the podcasting.

The 'witches' from Shakespeare's Macbeth, concluded proceedings.

It was no big deal. Not once did any of the teachers ask how to do something. They listened, watched and then experimented ... brilliant !! I do hope that they enjoyed it as much as I did.

The podcasts they made can be listened to here (Remember it was a first try and was supposed to be fun)

A Sat too far ...

I have always had a high regard for Ken Boston, the head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, but it appears that someone has fed him the wrong information. How can he say categorically that ... the current position is that in Key Stage 2the marking is now 100% complete ... when it so obviously isn't? Newspapers and media agencies up and down England are find this out and today the BBC report yet again on the failure to get the thing sorted.

This all indicates a mess but what worries me even more is the reaction of head teachers up and down the country who have used it as a rallying cry for something I don't understand.

The children have put their heart and soul into this. That's what hurts. I've had to speak to the children this morning to tell them nothing has come back. said one headteacher in the BBC report.

Sats are not fit for purpose and educationalists have been saying this for long enough now for someone, surely, to listen. This latest problem is just that - a problem. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that we should have stopped testing children in this way some time ago and simply haven't.

The fact that heads, teachers, parents and the media have used it as a rallying cry for something or other is strange. None of this is going to materially damage children, teachers, schools or education as we know it ( pity in some ways really, it could have initiated a period of great change). The educational effect will be an absolute minimum and systems that have been developed just to satisfy the beast of Sats have, at best, had there time and effort misplaces and at worst could be accused of missing the point of education itself.

As I have said before, several times, time to stop this. Let's not get sidetracked by a company that has failed to deliver on its contract ( to collect, mark and return) let's concentrate on the real issue. Sats must go !

So where do we go from here?

There are many people contributing to the idea of the necessity to change the game and think what education should really be like in the 21st Century for 21st century learners. With the onset of Web 2.0 has come Learning 2.0 with a, sort of, implication that the next step might be something to do with advances in technology.

I am not so sure. I think social demography has a really important part to play in educating the next generation (and those that come after). We have, for a long period of time now relied on the institutional definition of education and have allowed schooling to be the function of it. This has lead to an over-reliance on the curriculum and its measures which has, in my opinion, led learning into a dark place.

There is need to change.

Charles Leadbeater has written, under the title of 'What Next? 21 Ideas for 21st Century Learning' produced for the Innovation Unit on the future of learning in England, about such things.

The thrust of his argument seems to be about personal responsibility in a group dynamic to make education authentic for learners. This is an all-inclusive view.

One of the 21 for me is the idea of 'third spaces'. Places in space and time between home and school that provide the personal bridge to make it all work. For some this 'space' will be in sport, for others art and music; some will need to be there alone and others in groups that will dynamically change. Technology could provide that space - but should it, will it ?

The report is more than worth a read for those who see and follow the need to change.

So how might schools survive?

Yesterday Will Richardson interviewed Clay Shirky author of 'Here Comes Everybody'. You can catch the UStream of the interview here:



and



One of the clear questions for me that Will asks is about the geographical nature of education and how technology has changed all of that and at the same time speeded up the process. On top of this Clay talks about organising without organisation ... students taking control of their learning, maybe as a subset of institutionalised learning. He goes on to say that he feels that schools as physical environments in which students from a locality study simply has to change.

Clay spends some time on the idea that we use much of our time learning time collaborating with questions and answers in a variety of groups and yet our assessment systems are based on individual abilities in contrived situations.

Clay comments that we want children/students to be able to figure out which tools they need to use in which situation. And these tools are changing tools. Much of what we want schools to do for out children can't be measured in our current ways.

Will asks Clay if students are just simply going to move out and do their own thing and as I have often said he makes the point that it is already beginning to happen.

Clay redefines the concept of 'digital divide' - he feels that it is not about access but about the socio/political imperative to use the technology to do things which you have not done before. This is a 'peer'/home/institution view idea and not to do with what kit/band width etc that is available.

Interestingly, on the day Apple launched its 3G iphone, Clay doesn't see that the phone is an ' ideal educational tool'. I think he might be missing something here ! Will seems to see that the phone might be a really useful tool but there are problems of 'bad behaviour' with the devices. My view here is that the publicity of the bad behaviour might be the thing that fuels it.

Unfortunately, for me, when asked the question about institutional change, he 'rights off' the early years saying that education there is not likely to change ... I do hope he is wrong ! There is reinforcement here for the idea that we need a system to evaluate collaborative work because it is this that will be really important.

When asked what would happen if there was no institutional education Clay feels that groups would organise themselves to provide it. If this would be the case it would be interesting to see whether it would be on a pre-existing model or if something new would arise ... Phoenix perhaps.

I may well have given my spin to what was said in the interview so it would be better to listen and see what you think.

To Sat or not to Sat ... no question ...

There is no question here for me. Get rid of them and plough the money back into teaching and learning. Particularly learning. John Connell's post of yesterday and my response to it is all part of this agenda. We need to move on from this obsession with measuring what our learners do to supporting their interests and enthusiasms and, as professionals, channel their time and efforts . We are no longer 'training' pupils for jobs but should be providing them with the stepping stones towards a creative, adaptive adult life. And this does not demand to know what Sat level you are ... or for that matter what level you are in anything. Learning and understanding is surely not based on a level of anything.

Today the BBC report that Sats results expected to fall I am totally amazed that such an arbitrary scale can be deemed to rise and fall anyway. But this BBC comment is based on an organisational juggle. Am I bovvered? Not a bit.

It is all okay though because the MPs are going to 'grill' the exam chiefs. What an incredible smoke-screen. Have you heard the one about 'wood' and 'trees'?

There is a problem with the amount of money being spent on 'weighing' our children but this really is not a big issue. But the fact that it diverts attention away from looking forward to the challenges of 'learning 2.0' is a problem.

We must be planning to move the focus of education from pedagogy - in a blended way -towards andragogy and heutagogy. The ownership of the learning must be invested in the learners and it is their active participation in their own learning that education should seek. Selling them the idea that tests show what they can do and what they will be able to do is just not fair ... we need to move on.

John says that, at the moment he 'doesn't buy it', but he does comment that, the context within which education systems need to work is changed. He continues ... The key sets of stakeholders, the world over – governments, parents, business, the teaching profession, universities – remain obdurately tied to industrial-age education ... when we don't live in one any more. A read of The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman will indicate why a change of perspective is important.

Things I ought to have said

Friends, acquaintances, colleagues and some enemies are often telling me to get real. I feel passionately that the direction of education has taken a turn for the worse and that the socio-political invective that drives what happens is not good. In fact I feel that it is inherently bad. Bad for institutions but most of all bad for a generation growing up to things that we cannot yet imagine. Their jobs for life have not yet been conceived and their patterns of life have not been identified. We perpetuate what we perpetuate, with eyes down and a belief in the present and the past. But with a look at the future through past eyes.

John Connell in his blog today has expressed what I feel much more succinctly than I can and I yearn for the coming to pass Learning 2.0 so that we can step beyond it. Change by steady drip does not work ... we have been there and know that the 'old guard' keeps the status intact.

I do hope that this time next year we won't be revisiting this but will, in fact, have moved on.

The Wordle version of 'Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008-14'

Brilliant idea from Ian Usher ... using Wordle as a way of 'understanding' the new Technology Strategy ... thanks Ian.

Enables you to pick out the key words ... am a bit worried about the prominence of the word 'will'.

SATs - time to call it a day !

On Sunday last I flippantly commented about 'not being bovvered' about the delay in the reporting of the KS2 and KS3 SATs results this year. Today I am commenting on the reported mistakes in the marking.

By the BBC's reported account it has failed to meet up to the standards set and many children/students/schools/parents are going to be supplied with the wrong results. Even if the results are correct, if some are wrong, who will believe the others. People will be prepared to believe the good but not the bad ... over inflation is just as much a problem here as under inflation.

Surely time to call it a day ... it does no good, it doesn't work, it costs lots of money, it diverts attention from real teaching to just focusing on testing and it upsets very many people.

Let's stop it once and for all ...

Copyright ... time to re-evaluate

Copyright laws/rules were set for printed materials and have evolved or have been morphed to include electronic sources since music and photo and video became available. The laws and rules do not seem to fit today's publishing methodology and need a complete rethink. Copyright is too complex for mortals and creative commons has helped but ...

My feeds (apophenia :: making connections where none previously existed )today took me towards a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. This is well worth keeping as a reference guide to common sense and careful thought on the subject.

Is the study of such things soon to be part of the new e-curriculum we have yet to write ?

Large Hadron Collider activation ... not yet !!

Re my previous post on this topic I notice this morning that the clock which was counting down and had reached about 1 day has now been reset to 31 days ... I wonder why?

Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008-14

On 3rd July at the ICT in Education Conference in Birmingham Jim Knight - you can read exactly what he said here - ( on behalf of the DCSF, DIUS and Becta ) announced Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008-14.

This update has the potential to ensure ensure that requirements of today's learners are met. The Government says technology in learning is no longer optional.

This document came out of a Becta stable and is promoted by the Government of the UK but as far as I can see it only applies to England, as Scotland - their early Years Strategy here - has its own and Northern Ireland's is up for review as the EmPowering Schools Strategy was dated to 2008. The Welsh Assembly produced their document Transforming Schools with ICT:The Report to the Welsh Assembly Government of the Schools ICT Strategy Working Group back in April.

I feel sure someone will tell me quickly if I am wrong about this as I am just not sure how this works as the UK Government and Becta who both have responsibilities across all of the countries that from the UK. (Haven't they?)This is, of course, a concern to those of us who work across a number of countries.

On the whole the revised strategy is just that - revised - to meet the changes that have happened since the last version. And it leaves openings for continued revision, though I must say, I am mildly perturbed by the 2008 - 2014 tag. 6 years ... it is a brave person who will predict that far ahead in ICT never mind anything else (see my last post concerning the search for the Higgs boson).

For me one of the highlights is the section on Priorities in managing the change: equity, quality and efficiency. The five priorities listed here:
• Learner entitlement
• Family and informal learning
• Professional tools for teaching
• Mobilising leadership
• Fit-for-purpose sustainable technology.

... address some of the key 'back-at-the-ranch' questions. Of particular interest to me is that of 'personal ownership' and integration and I feel that item 87 will present many challenges and opportunities:

87. This means that increasingly leaders will need to ensure effective
management of a ‘mixed economy’ of publicly funded and personally owned
technologies, and ensure that no learner or family is disadvantaged due to
lack of access to technology. This raises significant issues, including those
relating to licensing and liabilities, data protection, and health and safety.
Becta and its partners will provide advice and guidance on each of these
areas. Industry partners including internet service providers, hardware
and educational service providers, will be fully involved.

To conclude - this strategy has been conceived and developed over time by people who have a group, vast working knowledge of the current state of the ICT game. But, it is institutional and organisational. Clay Shirky has much to say on such things in his book 'Here Comes Everybody'.

Somehere below the Swiss/French border ...

... there lies the most powerful machine thing in the world ... the Large Hadron Collider ...



Okay, so you have no idea what this is but billions of your pounds or dollars or euros have gone into building it and this is what it is:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.

Now what is significant about telling you about it now (before it could be too late and you get swallowed up into an absolutely tiny or rather massive black hole) is that according to the countdown timer on the LHC Countdown website there are about 2 days and 7 hours .... rather depending on when you are reading this ... before they switch it on with a vengeance to go searching for the illusive and exclusively reclusive Higgs Boson, better known as the 'God particle'.

After this allocated period of time scientists (and I hope the rest of us) will be able to see the universe born again and again and again about 30 million times a second.

That should keep them busy for a bit !

“We are now on the endgame,” said Lyn Evans, of Cern, who has been in charge of the Large Hadron Collider. ... just not too sure that the definition of 'end game' is one I am confident about.

Its worth having a read of the countdown page and if you have any paranoias then it will certainly manage to feed them.

Hope I can add a PS to this post in about 3 days time ... I do hope these physicists know what they are doing.



Of course this could just be another web hoax ... couldn't it?

What fun ...

Go on ... just try it !!

Imagination Cubed !

Thanks to my friend Allanah in New Zealand for this one.

SATs results delayed ( Who cares?)

I was driving home from Essex last evening and tuned in to the BBC radio 4 PM slot to pick up the headlines. Top report of the day was that the SATs results for 1 Million pupils would be delayed by one week !!

I had to pull over into a layby as I was laughing so much at the report and the response from the Department. Just WHO CARES ... the Department and the BBC made me feel that a national catastrophy was at hand and that we must all come out fighting (or digging for victory or something). They didn't manage to tie it in with the 'global credit crunch' but I did get the idea that if they could have they would have.

Not withstanding the amazing cost of the five-year contract to ETS and the 'softer' costs to schools, parent, teachers and children and the fact that we are the only country that perpetuates this 'test it, test it, test it' regime are 'WE BOVVERED'?

Well I fancy NO, is the real answer. If the results are delayed a week or a month - so what. What are the real implications of the calamity? For the children absolutely nothing, nil, zilch ... and it is them we do it all for, isn't it?

Okay, I concede that some children/students may have been built up for their results coming in (possibly based on a reward system !).

The Department seems to be bothered about the damage it has done to the credibility of the exam system. The company has ' learned lessons'. What have the rest of us learned ... and are we BOVVERED !!

Podcasting in Wickford, Essex

4th July found me making the drive round the M25 (it was totally clear!!) to Essex to support my colleague Philippa for two sessions of podcasting with Softease's Podium.

We had two splendid sessions made the more inspiring by 'frontman' Alan Drew, Curriculum Development Advisor, ICT, for Essex County Council who had put real time and effort into his opener about the nature of podcasting. This presentation really set the scene for the 'hands on session' to follow and also showed how Essex are using their 'e-folio' portal to support and enhance teaching and learning. Alan explained that the materials he had used and much, much more on podcasting was available through the portal and cemented, for the teachers, the importance of building up their familiarity with it.

Now its up to the Lead Teachers and ASTs who attended to run with the ideas ... they know why they should, they know how they can and they have the means to move podcasting forward in their schools.

Failed again ...

Its been that sort of week really on and off. Some real highs - meeting people with passion and enthusiasm for what they are doing and how it affects young people. And some real lows - not running enough and listening to people who want to move forward but are constrained by the institutionalisation of their current positions.

And ... this blog failed to make the shortlist in the Computer Weekly Public Sector IT Blog awards. Ewan made it and so did Ian (Usher) ... oh well perhaps next time ... :-)

I wonder who will come out on top ?

I wait with bated breath ...

On 3rd July at the Improving Today, Excelling Tomorrow conference being staged in Birmingham by ICT for Education magazine , Jim Knight will let us all know what the Government is thinking of next with regard to its ICT Strategy for education.

I am told, via Merlin John's blog that the presentation will: ... focus on "driving up standards in the use of ICT, learning lessons from past mistakes and identifying excellent practice to help schools further embed technology into the way they work".

Excited ... you bet ... can't wait to see whether we are going to open up and move on or .....

PS

2nd July ... can't find any mention of what was said if anything ...sorry ... if you find anything please let me know

PPS

3 rd July ... Still can't find any find out what Jim said ...