K12 Online

The K12 Online Conference is now into Day 9 and there have been floods and floods of great presentations .. enough food for thought for a long time to come I feel sure.

One of the presentations that caught my eye and ear was by Wendy Drexler St. Petersburg, Florida, USA (Blog: http://www.teachweb2.blogspot.com) who was talking about 'Teaching Web 2.0' .

Now it had never occurred to me that I would want to teach such a thing and I was interested in her take on it. The wiki site she has set up could prove to be really useful for those who want to get started or see the point of using powerful Web 2.0 applications in their teaching.

I was particularly interested in the SWOT analysis of the use of the applications and this aimed at a personal analysis of the opportunity costs in developing expertise in their various uses.

If nothing else (and I feel there certainly is much else) the list on the wiki of Web 2.0 apps that people have used within an educational context is worth a long, long look.

Off by Heart ...

Poetry has always been a big thing in my life ... from reading it to writing it to ( best of all) reading it to children. It is for this reason I am totally delighted to discover the BBC's new idea 'Off By Heart'

Here is the idea: The BBC wants primary school pupils to engage with learning and reciting poetry. Every primary school in the UK can enter a child aged 7 - 11 to compete for the title of UK Poetry Recital Champion, and the chance to represent their school and region in what will be a fantastic BBC competition, shown on BBC TV in spring 2009.

If you are a teacher in the UK you just go to the website link above and register and then take it from there.

Here is the poem list
1. Alligator by Grace Nichols
2. The Way Through The Woods by Rudyard Kipling
3. The Pig by Roald Dahl
4. Daffodils by William Wordsworth
5. The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear
6. Leisure by WH Davies
7. Talking Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah
8. Matilda by Hilaire Belloc
9. The Tyger by William Blake
10. A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
11. The Listeners by Walter de la Mare
12. The Walrus and The Carpenter by Lewis Carroll
13. The King's Breakfast by AA Milne
14. Macavity: The Mystery Cat by TS Eliot
15. The Lake Isle Of Innisfree by WB Yeats

Here is my go at 'The Owl and the Pussycat'

MFL in the Isle of Wight

25/26 October saw the third MFL Conference on the Isle of Wight hosted by Joe Dale and his very, very organised wife, Heather. Experts and those that simply wanted to know gathered to work and enjoy two days of looking at how ICT can support and enhance the teaching of MFL in all schools. The range of expertise on show was evident in the excitement as people moved from presentation to presentation but for me the essence of it all was in the asides and the help freely offered on the finer points of 'How did you do that?'

The 'Show and Tell' on Saturday evening opened up even more short, sharp ideas and personal teaching experiences and I feel that the ethos of the event was well met here.

Talking to Paul Harrington in between times got us both to thinking about names and labels and the fact that we didn't like them and that often they were a barrier to people actually doing things. So we decided that the real answer to the question 'What does it do?' or 'What do you do?' is 'Stuff' ... 'We do stuff' or 'It does stuff'. As long as you don't define stuff you are not restricted to any name or code or preconception. Stuff is what it is and it is what we do. And we do it on and with anything that seems to be appropriate at the time or is within reach (in all of the possible aspects of this)

These were the speakers (who did stuff):

Julie Adoch, HoD in MFL, Heathfield Foundation Technology College and her pupils
Sharon Balch - French teacher, Swanmore Middle School
Nathalie Bonneau, LCF (UK) Ltd
Drew Buddie - ICT coordinator, Royal Masonic School for Girls and eTwinning ambassador
Joe Dale, leader of French, Nodehill Middle School, SSAT languages lead practitioner and eTwinning ambassador
Doug Dickinson - Independent ICT consultant
Chris Fuller - Spanish teacher, Edgehill College and SSAT languages lead practitioner
Andrew Goff, ConnectED
Jenny Gowin, Heinemann
Lesley Haggar-Vaughan, Shireland CLC manager
Kathleen Holton - HoD in MFL, Argoed High School
Nick Mair - HoD in MFL, Dulwich College
Carole Nicoll – The Language Factory and winner of the CILT European Award for Languages 2003
Mark Pentleton - Director and Creator of the Radio Lingua Network and winner of the CILT European Award for Languages 2007
Jo Rhys-Jones - Primary Language Consultant for Hampshire, AST in MFL and eTwinning ambassador
Lisa Stevens - Spanish Teacher, Whitehouse Common Primary School and runner up of eTwinning award 2007,
Adam Sutcliffe - MFL teacher, The Gordon Schools and Glow Champion
John Warwick - Deputy Head, St Luke's School and eTwinning ambassador
Lesley Welsh – AST in MFL, English Martyrs School and Sixth Form College and SSAT languages lead practitioner coordinator
Kathy Wicksteed - Subject Lead for languages for DCSF/ALL subject specific support for the new secondary curriculum
Steve Whittle, Sanako, Deputy Head and MFL teacher, Hayes School

Keep your eye on Joe's blog for the conference report.

Rossett Hall Hotel ... chapeau to the teachers of Welsh

What a fantastic evening I had with a group of dedicated teachers of Welsh last week at their residential 'teach-in' at Rossett Hall Hotel near Wrexham. The group ate well, sang well and partied well at the award ceremony and were spot on and bright eyed the next day for a 'Textease Workshop'.

Terrific enthusiasm and some really insightful work as these primary specialists got to grips with the implications on multi-modality and its potential to allow them to teach Welsh.

My thanks to my colleague Danielle and the very powerful 'Wrexham' team (Enfys,Buddug and Dwynwen) for their terrific support and confidence in my ability to get bits of it right !

Sats for 14-year-olds scrapped !

An announcement by Ed Balls earlier today that tests for 14 year olds are to be scrapped but the tests taken at the end of primary school by 11 year olds, and used for league tables, will remain.

Here was the chance to make a real difference to the way schools operated and now it has potentially gone.

Head teachers' leader Mick Brookes welcomed the removal of tests at 14, but said that not stopping tests at 11 was "an opportunity missed to extract some dignity from the tests and marking debacle seen earlier this year".

So near yet so, so far !!

... and what is worse we are looking to the USA and their 'report card' system to further de-personalise information being reported back to parents.

K12 Online Conference 2008

Its Pre Conference week on K12 and I find setting the scene is my good friend Stephen Heppell who is talking about, “It Simply Isn’t the 20th Century Any More Is It?: So Why Would We Teach as Though It Was?”

Stephen says of his presentation:

We are in the throes of a financial crisis unparalleled on our lifetimes, and at the same time in front running 21st century schools around the world learning is seeing a transformation that seemed unthinkable in the dark days of 20th century factory schools.

As we move to a new tomorrow built on mutuality, collegiality, communication, community and ingenuity can we learn anything from the colossally expensive financial collapse of Wall Street, the City of London and many of the world’s financial centres.

In three sections, and in a conversational, intimate style, Stephen examines the certainties that stare us in the face from past learning projects that clearly mapped a new world of 21st century learning; he reflects on the impact on technology on the world around us, including the financial world, and ponders on what this means for education, for learning, and for the necessary pace of change as we experience the death of education and the dawn of learning.

This is a presentation not to be missed by this, one of the most influential educationalists of the moment.



PS

The K12 Conference has grown into being one of the most watched/listened to educational conferences on the planet. It is an amazing organisation which attracts the very best of speakers and thinkers to assist in plotting the pathways forward in 21C education. This is what they say for themselves:

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2008 conference theme is “Amplifying Possibilities”. This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 13, 2008. The following two weeks, October 20-24 and October 27-31, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” and a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations.

This is truly an event not to be missed.

Asking the questions ... and answering some

My post of a couple of weeks ago about 'Million Futures' which is part of the creative ideas that are coming out of the BCH (Beyond Current Horizons) project, attracted a good deal of interest from a wide audience of friends and colleagues who have used it variously for their own personal interest and for professional purposes.

On a vist to the BCH site today my eye was caught by PowerLeague. This is what the site says about it:

Tough questions about the future of education
What will education be for in 20 years' time? And what does this mean for how it should be delivered? This special edition of Power League is designed to find out how you feel about the future of education. It's completely free and anonymous, and your opinions could contribute to government education policy.

It is very well worth having a good read of what interested people are saying ... also worth having your say ... and... if you wish, develop and use your own leagues.

Keeping up

I miss Ewan's blogging in the widest sense now that he has moved on to 4iP but today I read with pleasure his take on Stephen Heppell's Phone Blog post 'relative progress'.

As I ponder on my connections with people about the concepts and ideas behind 'Shift Happens' I get the sense that the moving walkway annalogy is close to the truth. It would be an intereting thing to begin to try to classify some of the views I hear using this as a guide.

As Ewan comments, Stephen certainly has the 'eye'.

The rest of the World ( well ... a bit of it) moves on

Two news items brought to me by my colleague Tricia today following my blog post about laptops in Venezuela.

Firstly one from Italy where an experiment is taking place in one school in Turin to replace all of their books with computers ... for a year. The mini laptops, which run Windows software, weigh less than a kilogram, can be dropped from a height of one-and-a-half metres and are waterproof. Instead of spending the equivalent of $700 (£400) a year on books, the laptops, built by the Italian company Olidata, cost less than $400 (£228).

And secondly news from Ghana that all children between the ages of 5 and 12 in public schools are to be provided with a personal computer. Speaking at the 14th annual Teachers Awards ceremony in Sunyani yesterday, President Kufuor announced that the first batch of 10,000 units of what he described as “Magic Computers for Children” would soon arrive in the country in fulfilment of the government’s promise.

Shift happens ...

PS

Brian Smith has an interesting take on 'one laptop per child'

Nintendo DS - the research comes in ...

It seems that in Scotland the trials to test out the impact of the use of computer games on learning are bringing in positive results.

The Consolarium research on 'games based learning' is being widely reported.

This is what part of the report said:

Our results have shown that a small, cleverly designed handheld game can significantly enhance learner performance in mental maths as well as having a positive impact on other aspects of classroom life.

So, I hope, games loaded onto one of the many ultra-portable notebooks will soon have their regular place in schools and homes as personal educational tools.

The Story of Maths

BBC programme trailers don't often grab my attention ... but the one for this programme did!

BBC Four are broadcasting a series of programmes called The Story of Maths ... The series begins on 6th Oct at 21.00 ... or, of course, when you want on iPlayer. Could well be worth a watch.

This is what they say about it:

Four-part series about the history of mathematics, presented by Oxford professor Marcus du Sautoy.

After showing how fundamental mathematics is to our lives, du Sautoy explores the mathematics of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece.

In Egypt, he uncovers use of a decimal system based on ten fingers of the hand, while in former Mesopotamia he discovers that the way we tell the time today is based on the Babylonian Base 60 number system.



In Greece, he looks at the contributions of some of the giants of mathematics including Plato, Euclid, Archimedes and Pythagoras, who is credited with beginning the transformation of mathematics from a tool for counting into the analytical subject we know today.

Venezuela '1to1' ... getting there

Announced at the end of September:

The Venezuelan government has signed an agreement with Portugal that will bring 1million low-cost notebooks, which are based on the Intel Classmate PC design, to the South American country. In July, Portugal signed an agreement with Intel to bring 500,000 Classmate PCs to that country, and now the Portuguese OEM manufacturing those laptops will supply these Intel Atom-based laptops to Venezuela.

So the Venezuelan Government has seen a way to get/keep its young people somewhere near the front as the world goes even flatter. I wonder, with all money being spent on BSF and the Primary Capital Programme whether some such initiative should have been included for all of our children/students.

Perhaps it has been considered and I missed it.