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.

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 !

JKR speaks at Harvard

I have to confess to not being a Harry Potter fan. It isn't that I don't think that the stories would be good it is just that, on the whole, I don't actually read much fiction, and, if I were to start I am not sure I would begin there.

However, I picked up from my one of my feeds (Open Education) that J K Rowling had delivered the Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.

The video of her speech can be found here.

The writer of Open Education clearly makes a plea for people in such a powerful position to remember that it is the students' day and that they are there to enhance it and make sure that it is totally memorable for them and for their assembled family members. This is what was said:

Delivering a memorable graduation speech is one of education’s most difficult challenges. Somehow the orator must deliver some words of inspiration that add to the festiveness of the occasion all the while recognizing that the ceremony is about the graduates and not the speaker.

All too often, the presenter instead interferes with the ceremony, serving as a distraction to all present. Under the worst of conditions, the graduation speaker manages to actually subtract from a day devoted to the achievements of those who have completed their college studies. In fact, the tales of such negative moments are legendary.

On the other hand, a properly created and delivered speech serves as the perfect supplement for the special day. Similar to a burst of bright sunshine, a well crafted speech adds a scintillating glow to the events taking place.

Delivering such a memorable talk at Harvard University just might be the most challenging of all. Like the World Series, the speaker is on an especially distinctive stage with a multitude of observers examining every word.

For me the speech was a masterpiece beginning with disarming the audience and then opening a discussion on how failure has the potential to set people free from constraints. She argued that rock bottom could be seen as a firm foundation and that it could be built upon. She went on to talk of empathy and commented that ... well, no ... please read for yourself ... here it is far better in her words.

I was reminded, towards the end of her speech, as she said:

... written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

... of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that suggests, if you want to extrapolate the idea, that every time we look at something, or think of something, or do something we affect it. We change it.

So let's look closely at how young people learn ... so we can better understand it and help to change it ... for their futures.

iTunes U

Wonderful to pick up from a number of blogs (John Connell, Martin Weller) on the move by the Open University, UCL and Trinity College, Dublin into iTunes U as reported by the BBC yesterday. The iTunes U has been available in USA for some time now so it is really good to see that it is beginning to be rolled out here. This is a sure sign that education is beginning to start from where the learners are and not always from where the institutions might wish to be. Long may it progress.

"Our students will be able to revisit materials presented to them in lectures, so they can learn anywhere and anytime," says Professor Peter Mobbs at University College London (UCL).

Neural pathways or grey matter ?

Sitting at breakfast, as you do, Kay and I got to talking about someone we knew who had written a book but neither of us could 'get to' the name. Our usual ploy at this point is to start at the beginning of the alphabet and work through saying the letters out loud and hoping for interventions that would reveal what we are thinking about. Several times through proved unsuccessful but then, out of the blue sky came to answer... just like that ... as if doors had been opened by the power of the brain to open them. This was interesting in itself but the next bit got me really thinking. The person we were searching for had a co-author and before I could ask Kay had said the name. It was as if her brain had its own personal tag cloud that finding one of the tags led to all the associated tags.

Now I appreciate that if I was a brain specialist or even a psychologist or had studied psychology or something I would have been aware of this and would not have been surprised ... but I was ... and I got to thinking and banging on about how we revere 'knowing' above understanding.

Trawling, mentally, through the TV programmes to substantiate my point I found that there were a large number of them, at a variety of levels that venerate 'knowing' ... Mastermind, The Weakest link, University Challenge, Question of Sport etc .

We then got to arguing about the change in focus in schools from 'knowing' to 'applying' ... and I was reminded of the discussion on a forum recently about a content .V. skill based curriculum and the idea of what the 'skills' would be proved to be a stopping point.

Heavy for breakfast ... a bit like an intellectual fry-up ... but the continuation was along the lines of - in society are the people at the top there because at some moment or other in their lives they spent doing the 'knowing' bit before they got to the 'applying' bit or were they just fortunate in not having to put any effort into knowing ... they just 'know'.

My son's girlfriend is sitting her university exams at the moment ... she says it is all about knowing.

So should there be lots more effort put into knowing just so that we know in case we need to?

Now, is this progressive or retrogressive thinking - am I ahead of the next wave of developments or so far behind that it isn't worth the thought?

Rant over ... hope you get the idea !

Tanya Byron goes world wide

I have been watching my Google Alerts over the last week since the Byron Review surfaced and have noticed that the ripples have spread wider and wider. Blogs obviously have their uses in disseminating information quickly and easily.

Today I picked up on a comment from Canada on 'globeadmail' with the heading... A British lesson that Canadians would do well to study

It highlights a quote from the Review that people are taking to heart ... 'Kids don't need protection, we need guidance.' The Government today bring out new proposals to attempt to ban sex offenders from using social networking sites by releasing their email addresses to the sites concerned. There must be something in the data protection act that prevents email addresses from being passed around from pillar to post ! And, anyway, what is to prevent anyone from just getting another and another and another email?

The issue here is another instance of social networking and the internet and websites in general all being 'mucked' in together under a 'fear' banner.

OpenEducation .net also picked up on the Review...
... this is a site dedicated to tracking the changes occurring in education today. In an era where it is possible to photoshop images, facebook people, and access an endless stream of knowledge by googling, the Internet Age offers both great promise and enormous challenges for educators. At OpenEducation.net, readers will be exposed to both an objective and subjective look at the many issues facing the profession today.

There is obviously an urgent need to educate now in a positive way. If we wait for projects and proposals and systems to be put into place it will take too long. A common-sense approach at a localised level would make sense here. The juggernaut of institutionalisation is not the only means to create change.

Cold, wet, snow ...

If you have nothing to do and its cold and snowing outside take a look at this site.

I know it has adverts etc and to use the full range of the games you pay. But ... you can play for free online and the 'Typer Shark' game will do wonders for your little wonders as they get fractious over Easter.

And there are more games to try all of which have that edge that makes them exciting and, dare I say it, educational.

Go on try ... you know you want to ...

And while you are doing these things take a look at the new games on the BBC Bitesize website. The Questionaut game is very reminiscent of Samorost. With regard to the Questionaut game ... in the past children did an activity and then were 'rewarded'... in this game the reward seems to come first. I found myself wanting to have some control over the questions ... but I am not sure why I did !


PS ... (Remember that you do try these things at your own risk !)

PPS ... Have 'played' Questionaut all the way through once now and am impressed with the quality of the decision making and the logicality of it all ... it is too good to be wasted on KS2 revision questions ... they almost(!!)spoil the whole thing.

Web 2.0 Technologies for Learning at Key Stages 3 & 4

Yesterday I spent my time in a policy workshop at the Learning Science Research Centre of Nottingham University discussing eSafety issues as part of a project on Web 2.0 Technologies for Learning at Key Stages 3 and 4.

The workshop was called not to establish a consensus about eSafety in the use of Web 2.0 technology but was to investigate differences of opinion on the subject through a process of structured debate:

The aim of the Delphi workshop is to get behind the rhetoric and assess how the benefits of learning through Web2.0 can be achieved while protecting children from the dangers of communicating online.

The Policy Delphi method is a structured group process to survey and
collect the opinions of experts on a complex problem. Rather than
striving for an early consensus, the emphasis is on identifying
differing opinions through a process of structured debate.

What was really interesting was the shared opinion that there was a fundemental education process which needed to be developed to support the work. It was heartening to listen to colleagues treading similar pathways towards similar goals, which, though difficult, they felt were worth making the journey for.

This was the first stage of the process.It ...

...will be followed by a second round, at a later date, using the same or different experts, to rate and extend the findings, define the positions, and explore whether
or not a consensus can be reached.

More details will certainly be published about this at a later date.

Brain Box

My wife has always been a 'puzzles person', from word searches (and I suspect earlier join-the-dots) through crozzles and crosswords followed by sudoku and even every IQ test thing that she sees in newspapers, magazines and on the back of packages ... she is a puzzle player, a 'Countdown' viewer and switches, when the time is ripe, to the quiz channels on television. Her mind is honed so sharply to these things that it cuts the air with the speed of response... and I've forgotten to mention University Challenge (me too).

She sits later in the evening with her Nintendo DS open and trains her brain ... finishing with the question ' So how old do you think I am today?' For a women who did her teacher training in the early 70s, the answer '26' leaves me a happy man!
Tessa Watson (of GLOW fame and a strange car) has started doing dsome work with children using the DS and a summary of this can be found on her blog.

Just now, in the evening, the warm up might easily be general knowledge with ( hold your breath) the black clad witch of the quiz, this followed by pitting wits against the best brains in Britain on 'Egg Heads' and now ... the BBC has launched us into Brain Box Challenge.

This, in my opinion, slick programme hosted by Clive Anderson is well worth talking to children about. It is a:

...challenging brain boggling quiz in which contestants battle it out to win money from the ‘Brain Bank’ by proving themselves in a sequence of brain games which test their memory, language, visual, numerical and spatial skills.

... and the accompanying web site (not just because it is free) is the sort of site that you could strongly want to identify with if you were a teacher committed to developing home/school links.

There are three interesting sections on the site: The science behind learning when you play the games, a link to the BBC2 area where you can catch up with programmes you have missed on BBCi, but most importantly ... the games themselves.

The games come in six categories: visual, spacial, language, dual task, coding and memory ... together with a warm up area to get you ready. The warm up is at three levels and the games come in at ten different levels of difficulty building one on one. At the end of it all you get a 'Brainbox quotient', and an explanation of what it all means.


Can't wait to get started (and pass it on to your class/friend/family). Just click here.

The 2008 Education Show

It was a bright Thursday at the Education Show in Birmingham and the place was full of bright , excited people all urgent to find out what is new. I could not get over the variety ( pun !!) of wheeeled (the extra 'e' was for emphasis) vehicles that were being towed around the stands by rushing teachers endeavouring to catch the 'freebies' and the 'less than costies' from a vast variety of stands. It always amazes me at this show the variety of people and companies and products and services and ... and ... and that go together to support our institutionalised education system. And it never ceases to surprise me that it is the 'hands-on' stands that get the most attention. If you want photocopiable anything then you can find it. If you want badges and stickers and boxes and crayons and pens and ... and... and ... you will find it, all being sold to you with the enthusiasm that goes with passion.

It is gratifying to know that the vast cross-section of people attending were all doing this out of an urge to find the best for this and the coming generations of our young people.



I did a 'gig'(in a very futuristic open 'tabernacle') about the '21C idea of teaching and learning' which can be found here. Just work your way from the bottom to the top of the blog and all will be made clear.

Safeguarding children in a digital world

The Becta Conference held earlier this week in Birmingham brought to the fore some of the key concerns and the subsequent calls for action to protect young people growing up in a digital world. There was concern about digital awareness in a population driven by technology aired by a number of speakers. Jenny Simpson, Safeguarding Development Officer, Leicestershire CYPS, gave valuable tips on developing a Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCB) strategy taken from her own experience and she made clear points saying that:

'... in developing a co-ordinated response, it was important to recognise:
e-safety comes within the context of Every Child Matters
e-safety is part of the wider work of the LSCB
e-safety is not a technological issue
the importance of education, training and information

For me the key point here is the fact that this is not a technological issue. The safety of people in a digital world should not and must not depend on the producers of the technology. We do not hold television manufacturers responsible for the programmes we and our children watch. And you can't hold the BBC responsible for programmes watched by minors after the watershed.

It is down to education ... in our schools it is a PSHE issue and in our homes it is about knowledge and responsibility. Penny Patterson, ICT Inspector, London Grid for Learning (LGfL), London Borough of Havering made a very valuable point when she commented: children and young people should be encouraged to take responsibility for their own e-safety and those of their peers, and be given the skills so that they are better able to make the process ‘self policing’...

I totally agree here that it is up to everyone to invest time and effort into teaching and learning the necessary skills and techniques that living in a digital age necessitates. After all, we are all familiar with 'road safety' issues and this education has formed a part of the curriculum in schools for decades. Time to move forward. Road saftey is still important as is drug awareness, sex education and 'not going with strangers'. The e-safety agenda is another in the line of responsibilities we have towards our young people. To help them we may need some help ourselves.

Stephen Carrick-Davies, Chief Executive of Childnet International, spoke of the pressures on parents and their plight in trying to keep their children safe on the internet, when many are intimidated by their own lack of knowledge. He commented: Some parents feel intimidated by the internet and unable to help their children because of their own lack of internet knowledge. We need to continue to inform and develop adult confidence and competence so that our young people can feel supported not only at school but at home as well.
This is not an issue which will go away and so all of us must engage in it - collective responsibility must be the theme.

The Transparent Canoe

I have just had a virtual discussion with Tricia about the use of the phrase 'The technology should be transparent' and she pointed me in this direction.

The transparent canoe is a wonderful vehicle, it can't be seen yet it is a reliable form of transport.

The technology we use in our lives and in our opportunities to teach should be just like this ... available but not intrusive ... it should allow us to work/play/function efficiently.

Oh for a transparent education system!

(Thanks to Pete Yeomans for the original viewpoint)

A breath of fresh air ...

I have had the most wonderful two days working with my PGCE students at Leicester University School of Education. They are wild, sceptical, enthusiastic, scathing, interested, bemused, excited and imaginative (amongst their many other characteristics). Being with them reminds me about why I care about these things. A group of young(ish) people not afraid to take risks and not afraid to fail. I just feel so optimistic about their steps forward and am excited that they will go into schools armed with the 'necessary' but not constrained by it.

We spent time talking about creativity and ' Excellence and Enjoyment'. They listened/watched Sir Ken Robinson's presentation at the TED conference in Monterey and, what is wonderful ... they 'got' it.

They experimented with software and websites and could see that creativity didn't sit separate from the curriculum but was an essential part of it. And they saw the connection between home and school and that learning was everywhere.

Wonderful !

How to get it so, so wrong !!

I was alerted this morning by my friend Steve Taylor to a BBC report from England's Children's Minister Kevin Brennan where he says '...electronic toys, music players and phones often appear in schools as the new term begins. Children often bring the fascinating gadgets they were bought as Christmas presents into class, but these can cause disruption and hamper learning. Teachers can and will confiscate such items if they see them being used in lessons.'

The idea that some of the powerful tools that children now have access to at home are essentially disruptive and hamper learning almost says it all. It is no wonder that our young people feel that they 'dumb down' to go to school and that many of them feel that the tools that they have at their disposal do not actually meet their needs.

As part of the report the General secretary of teaching union the NASUWT Chris Keates said: "Every year some youngsters arrive back at school with MP3 players, mobile phones and electronic games. This can be a real headache for teachers when they are trying to get everyone settled down to start learning. Teachers would be grateful if pupils just brought a pen."

So as we move further and further into a technological age one of the 'influences' on educational policy sees the major tool for learning as a pen.

The report goes on '... Some schools have a "no gadget" policy where all non-educational equipment is banned ' . So who says what and what isn't educational then ? And who defines 'gadget'?

You can read Ewan's take on the report here.

I feel so cross about the whole thing. We need a 21st Century education for our young people !!

PS ( just as an aside)
I have been alerted to the fact that the Minister for English Education who wants the gadgets kept out of English schools is in fact the MP for Cardiff ... isn't that in Wales?

PPS

A Presentation at the BETT Conference and Exhibition, January 9th by Mike Sharples continues the debate.

Confident, capable and creative: supporting boys' achievements

I listened with alarm this morning to the BBC's report: Toy weapons 'help boys to learn' and so immediately went to read the report: Confident, capable and creative: supporting boys' achievements the comments came from.

Searching for the term 'weapons' in the 26 page document came up with one hit on page 16.The BBC seem to have managed to put their own spin on the report ( only they will be able to tell us why). The report itself is, in its way, sensible though does, probably because of its title and focus, appear to be making a large issue of something I feel sure that most early years practitioners are very well aware.

In reading it though, other worries spring forward. Why 'Confident, capable and creative: supporting boys' achievements ? What about the parallel document ( yet to be written ?) Confident, capable and creative: supporting girls' achievements ? And where is the world evidence for the ideas in the text? Not that I am in any way an expert but many of the references appear to be very 'home grown' - with the notable Massachusetts Department of Education exception - and a interesting inclusion of Paley's work of twenty years ago as 'further reading' rather than her more modern (2004) 'A Child's Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play'

My biggest fear from all of this is that there will be some people who will read the headline and not the report.

God Save The Queen

It is superb to hear/watch/read today from the BBC that the Queen has opened her own channel on YouTube. At last an institution that isn't afraid to embrace the medium.
I wonder how LAs,BroadBand Consortia and schools will deal with the fact that some fabulous historical footage will now be available to all except those in our educational institutions on account of the fact that YouTube is resolutely blocked.

I am not arguing here for wholesale access as that will undoubtedly cause immense problems ... but it does pose a number of interesting problems for network managers and the people who make the rules about what our young learners are or are not able to access in our educational establishments.

Teachers will not forever want to spend their time extracting the videos from their primary source so what will they do? I can hear the classroom conversation now, ' There is some terrific stuff available for you on YouTube ... just go home and watch it!'

ED BALLS LAUNCHES PLAN FOR CHILDREN

The continuation of yesterday's post ...this taken from the press release today:

• a root and branch review of the primary level curriculum to help smooth the transition from early years, free up space in the school day for more time on the three Rs and time for a foreign language. The review will consider how best to ensure a smooth transition from play-based learning in the early years into school, particularly for summer born children. Sir Jim Rose will lead the review;

• building on the £144m already allocated to fund the Every Child A Reader and Every Child Counts programmes, £25m will be allocated to fund the Every Child A Writer scheme to offer intensive one-to-one coaching in areas of writing that children find hard to master;

• that children should be taught according to their “stage not age”, including expanding the “testing when ready” assessment method nationally. Whilst national testing will remain, this could lead to an end to the key stage tests in 2009 but only if the pilot sites have proven to work and the system has been rigorously evaluated;

It is this bit that worries me most of all : free up space in the school day for more time on the three Rs

... and in Scotland:

Teachers defend Standard Grades

It looks as if major changes are also afoot ... I thought Curriculum for Excellence had only just come of age.

Clusty ... a cluster search engine

Thanks to Ian Lynch for this one...

Clusty is a whole new way to search the web.

Clusty queries several top search engines, combines the results, and generates an ordered list based on comparative ranking. This "metasearch" approach helps raise the best results to the top and push search engine spam to the bottom.

But what really makes Clusty unique is what happens after you search. Instead of delivering millions of search results in one long list, our search engine groups similar results together into clusters. Clusters help you see your search results by topic so you can zero in on exactly what you’re looking for or discover unexpected relationships between items. When was the last time you went to the third or fourth page of the search results? Rather than scrolling through page after page, the clusters help you find results you may have missed or that were buried deep in the ranked list.

I tried it out on 'Ancient Egypt' and this is what I got:



The 'clusters' down the left of the page certainly focussed things quickly.

Well worth a try, I think, particularly if your school or your LA are worried about or blocking Google.

Podcasting Y3 ... French

I've had a terrific day !! This afternoon I worked with a couple of absolutely incredibly, stupendous teachers and 26 Y3 children. We podcasted (with Podium)

The children had never heard their voices before and were so excited to listen to each other and to get me to listen to what they had said. There was no false modesty here. They came straight in with 'the news', 'Radio school', 'Why I like football'. These were seven and eight year olds ... no fears ... taking risks.

The key to it all was what had happened long before I came on the scene and had my ego trip. They all knew how to log on, open software, save in different formats to their space etc ... and the kit worked ... all of it ... all of the time.

We ended up singing a first episode for the class French podcast ... the numbers.Just paste this url into iTunes or listen straight away to the first of many (I hope) podcasts ...

So exciting. so good, so real and 'in your face' ..... children having fun doing what comes natural with teachers prepared to let it happen and reap later rewards.

Wonderful !

Social Networking Conference

So I got lost in the one-way system of Tamworth and pulled into the kerb to ask the way to the Palace Venue ... 'You're there love.' was the response as the lady pointed to a low building. And so I was !

I have now stood and performed on the same stage as 'The Bay City Rollers' ... but not at the same time!

As for the Conference itself, I came away with a personal task to revisit my views on the security/e-safety agenda. For me it seemed to fill the Conference for, apart from the thirty minutes of 'lightning talks' where six of us gave a brief overview of software/products etc, the thrust of the morning was based on 'opportunities and risks' with the stress on risks and responsibilities.

Now, if the people at the Conference represent a cross section of those who need to think about these things then it is clear to me that there are things I should think about too.

But it worries me that I heard cyber-bullying over and over. I know it is important that we are all aware of what goes on and I know that I have a responsibility to educate about it, BUT I also have a responsibility to be optimistic and excited about what I (and young people) can do now that I couldn't do before.

Those who know me will be aware that in life I am a risk taker. I weigh things up and work out if the risk is worth it and will it affect others before I 'jump' ... but, the chances are, I will jump.

I want our young people to be exciting and confident risk takers and, to a great extent, I think they are. Is it us who are holding them back for our safety and security. In preparation for the Conference I spoke to some young people about what they did and what they felt and was challenged by one lad who simply said 'We're not stupid you know.' .... I wonder ... are we?

We are all aware that our youngest children now do not play out any more. They get ferried from pillar to post because of the dangers that lurk in our minds ( and, I will concede out THERE). They wear goggles to play conkers, they don't climb trees, they are 'watched' by adults everywhere they go. Our young people need adult free space in their lives so that they can lead them. We just need to get the education right.

I have posted this video before but make no excuse for posting it again. Just listen please.



But I will go back and revisit what I think.

'I'm comin out'

I've got to confess ... I'm a 'feeds' junky. Just can't help it ...every time I click on that little yellow star and my 'feeds' open I get this adrenalin rush of excitement that just knocks me out. Each and every time there is a note, a link, an idea that transports me to worlds I dream about. Sometimes I get reinforcement of ideas postulated, sometimes it is something that moves my thinking on, sometimes it is an information source which takes me to an information source which ... you get the idea.

Today ... as any other day... I worked my way through the feeds ... in descending order ... Alan November, Allanah Appleby, Booruch, Clusterblog, DfES (sad isn't it), DJD on Ning, etc onwards and downwards until I cane to edu.blogs.com and there I paused as my eye was caught by this, it was the creative writing reference that caught me:

KimP’s Blog » Samorost
Kim thinks about what she'll do with the game for creative writing.
KimP’s Blog » Samorost - Day 1
Kim shows how her initial walkthrough went.
KimP’s Blog » Writing with Samorost
Some great examples of creative writing having used Samorost as the stimulus
KimP’s Blog » Thinking about Samorost
Using Edward De Bono's six thinking hats to understand how we could exploit games in writing and speaking
KimP’s Blog » Wondering Why????
Why are there so many gains from creative writing when games are used as the stimulus?

And I wondered why Ewan would have all these links there and what was 'Samorost' anyway? So I typed 'Samorost'into Google and was lost to the world for the next hour or so as I explored.I can't tell you how taken I am with this and I am so excited that a new discovery like this can excite me... just proves that it is possible to teach and old dog etc etc .



I then went back to the posts on KimP's blog to see what had taken Ewan and read about what had taken Kim. The interest she had created with her young students in her school, Belmore South Primary, in Sydney, was exemplary. It just needs reading and running with. Just can't help wondering what else I have missed as this work was done last June.

I am going to delve into Samorost 2 now, not that I have finished with V1 yet. It is just that, like a child approaching the swimming pool, I want to get in there before everyone else uses up all of the water.

The rest of my feeds can wait ... or can they ?... who knows what new excitements lurk in the depths of 'ICT Inspirations' or 'The International Schools Island'...

Teacher TV ... Mobile Phones - Mobile Minds

Technology has a way of nudging forward whether you want it to or not. Teachers TV (thanks for the link Tricia) takes 'a look at the world of young people with mobile phones, and the impact on schools and education.Owning a mobile is becoming an indispensable element of young people's lives, for both teenagers and increasingly primary age children, all around the world. Are mobile phones a force for good, or an example of technology gone awry? Is it sensible to ban their use in schools or should this device be given a place in lessons and learning?'
Watch the video here.

Just what can you uncover in one week?

Just one week ago today I was at the Naace All Members' Autumn Conference and there, in discussion with colleagues, picked up on the vast amount of things that people are consumed with.

This week my inbox has been dominated ... and I do mean dominated ... by the inappropriate use of an email forum by a group of urgent people discussing the nature of e-portfolios. I do wish that they had got themselves sorted out early enough to talk in a private forum about the topic or at least managed to digest it. As a subscriber to two of the groups I kept getting a double dose of the information ... interesting though it was I do feel that they could have carried on privately. But ... if they had done this would I have missed out on some important details ? A real cleft stick !

I spent two days this week in Cornwall working with some delightful young people podcasting using the Podium Software in French and Spanish. The software proved no barrier to these intelligent youngsters but the impressive thing was the way that the various groups cooperated together and produced the podcasts without 'batting any eyelids'. The school, Helston Community College should be heartily proud of their young people. Their podcast can be found by pasting http://www.podiumpodcasting.com/~182812/
ManyGroups051007130013/rss.xml into your favourite listening tool. This was a first shot for these teenagers and the software wasn't the barrier ... in fact there were no barriers ... they now need to repeat and progress.

Arriving home and checking my feeds I discovered , yet again, that Ewan and Kent were ahead of me.

The Kent ClusterBlog is always a source of new and exciting information and this time has come up with a very interesting web 2.0 app called Jing Project well worth having a look at for image capture and computer screen capture.

I have not had chance to try another suggestion found there but feel that Poly might well excite some mathematicians.

I did notice that my globe trotting friend Ewan was on the other side of the world enjoying himself in New Zealand at the ULearn07 Conference
where I feel sure, judging by his blog, he opened eyes and ears and had his opened too. I noticed that he chose to highlight the excellent work done by Stephen Heppell in terms of emphasising the correlation between creativity and ingenuity. On the 'Be Very Afraid' blog there is reference to a superb piece of 'creative ingenuity' that far outstrips anything a closed school curriculum could possibly imagine. Just watch the Ravensbourne College initiative... and this is now two years old ... where will the thinking be at this end of 2007? It is well worth listening and looking at this year's ideas.

After Shanghai, New Zealand was certainly a place to be!

Come back Ivan ... all is forgiven !

I have had an interesting weekend of educational banter that has caused me to go back, in the end, to my educational roots. I have never, and I believe, will never be an institutionalist and so have never believed that schools were good places for education. Their strength used to be that they were populated by dedicated, inspirational people who were urgent to make a difference to and for the young people who crossed their paths on a year by year basis. If only I felt that was the case today. It is not to say that I don't believe in the dedication of the people it is just that the pathway has changed and somehow the route has got lost amongst the trees.

So I went back and reread, just to revitalise, the works of my mentor Ivan Illich and I am pleased to say that my ideals are still alive and well.

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question. Ivan Illich Deschooling Society (1973: 9)

In the coming age of Web 2.0 technology this escalated to nature of the ownership of education and the vexed question of 'push' or 'pull' with regard to real learning.

I think that teaching is potentially overrated and it stupefies creativity in sport, work and life ........... the truly greats are and were individuals defining their own truths in their own way and our education systems appear to do nothing at all but institutionalise and take of all of the exciting peaks and troughs in peoples' learning pathways and make them into plateaus. It is not just about being good ........ it is about developing the 'goodness' ............ teaching can play a part but education is different. We should not be taking so much of the lead as educators we should be opening doors and drawing maps ..... the ownership and control needs to shift to the learners and it is up to us to ensure that as it does they, each and everyone, is in a state to take on the power that this ownership endows. I see this approach as one towards personalisation. Not the institutional idea of personalisation : Personalisation in education, though, means pupils get what they need; not what they want. It is not the pupil’s decision, but someone else’s. You can read about the institutional inconsistencies here but ..... mine (and I hope Ivan would have agreed with me!)

To see where all this might be going in the modern idiom read Ewan McIntosh's blog post about the MET Schools.

Google Sky

There is a relatively new version of Google Earth about and it has an exciting new feature or two. Google Sky allows you to view the sky over any location in the world and discover the fascinations of astronomy. There are some really cool educational aspects to this particularly in the understanding of the passage of the moon across the sky. Google Sky is an add on to the original. You need to download the latest version and then you get an extra button on the button bar which is amazing. Just go and see.

Hidden away in the new version of Google Earth there is also a flight simulator.á Once you've started it all up, then all you have to do is hit Ctrl+Alt+A (if you're running OS X it's Command+Option+A; some people have reported that Ctrl+A or Ctrl+Windows+A work when the standard Ctrl+Alt+A does not). You must be in Earth mode (i.e. not Sky mode) for this to work .

Aintree or Sefton Beach

Teachers local to Aintree gathered for an informative teacher day and in the bright sunlight glinting on the main Grandstand at the famous Aintree Racecourse they learned many things.

I took the opportunity having travelled north to go to the beach to see the Anthony Gormley sculptures 'Another Place' ... see the presentation below. The sun shone and the beach had just been cleaned and people were enjoying the early September sun. As the tide came in the sculptures slowly submerged .... cause for thought ...

Should we worry about WIFI ?

An interesting article that was reported in the TES Magazine on 31st August that could give SMTs the information that they need should they be challenged by parents et al re the wireless networks in their schools. But, even after reading the research it seems that the jury is still out and that if a definitive answer is needed then the scientific community don't seem to be the people to turn to. So what to do ?(following the awful Panorama programme) ... I suspect some will keep their heads down and some will look up !

The article is worth a read though ... just to keep up to date.

ictopus is here !

The tentacles of ictopus are now extending freely into the world after its launch at midnight on August 31st.


Ictopus (ICT online primary user support) is a free support service for primary education which was launched on 1st September 2007. Each week registered members of the service will have access to a six page printable magazine (Sharing Good Practice) and a set of activity suggestions (lessons2go). There will also be a regular newsletter and a variety of other resources and projects. All the resources will be available from the web archive and members can also opt to receive alerts offering a one-click download service for each item.

Ictopus builds on the highly successful Becta Direct2U service and also the legacy of MAPE (Micros and Primary Education).

Register now to be a part of this exciting new venture. Registration is free.

Please join us now – be part of ictopus.

The Might of Rome

If you are looking for a really dramatic start to your project on Ancient Rome then look no further. You can now 'virtually' visit Rome in AD320, at the height of its power, and take a good look around some of the most famous places thanks to a new site from the University of Virginia.

Teachers doing science

A really exciting two teacher days with groups in Leicester.

The first session being held at Leicester University for a whole cluster development group of teachers and TAs all coming together away from their schools to gain inspiration and to focus on developing ideas for innovative science - ICT was only part of it - there was a lovely session of sherbert making and how you get it to fizz and if you could use that to make fizzy chocolate !!

The second session in a local primary school, again with teachers and TAs, to look at the use of their new interactive whiteboards with a focus on how the technology can support and enhance science teaching ( and all the spin offs for the many, many other things)



For each of the sessions a specific blog was created to support access to web sites to make things easy during the sessions but with the addition that these could also be used by the schools at any later date.The first being a general set of science sites and the second being tailored to a specific context of term one. The implication here was that schools could easily build their own blogs to support specific projects or subjects and could use these to share with other teachers or could be used by the children to continue work out of school.The blogs were not public and comments were moderated before publication.


This was an entirely new idea to all on both days and leads me to believe that sessions just to develop it will be needed.... all said how useful it was to have quick and simple access to sites which had been preliminarily reviewed. Of course, the usual saftey messages were given out and this gave some food for thought. The message was, however, that the positives should win and the negatives should be a part of an online education process for all users, teahcer, TAs, pupils and parents alike.

One Laptop Per Child Project

Well not quite $100, in fact closer to $200, but still a breakthrough in a technology to make connectivity more universally available worldwide.



"From BBC New at bbc.co.uk/click_online"

'The engineers who designed the energy efficient laptop have thrown out a whole host of conventional ideas in order to produce a computer that will be useful in nations where electricity is in short supply.'

But is technological advance such as this the real answer to education in a world debilitated by drought and famine and ravaged by war and violence? Will it help or could the energy being pored into such projects harvest better fruit being channeled into solving more basic needs? Do projects such as this make us feel better because we are giving what we already have?

Mars 27th August

An email today alerts me to the fact that on 27th August Mars will be as large as the moon (above at about 12.30 am), next time this occurs will be in 60,000 years time, although it will be nearly as close many times before that.

That means that no-one alive today will ever have such a good chance of seeing the 'Red Planet' again in their lifetimes.

Now my check on this ( and my memory) reminds me of a similar message in 2003 and 2005.

So this is a good example of the 'authenticity' of information arriving in your mailbox or found on the Net ... we should be showing these things to our children/students and pointing out that they should check and double check for authentic information before they believe what they read.

What is the most important question education leaders should be asking?

Alan November's blog, post the 2007 Building Learning Communities Conference, asks a key question, 'What is the most important question education leaders should be asking?'
and it is well worth having a close look at some of the answers/comments.

It is heartening to read about 'empowerment' and 'student voice'... there is little about content here rather it is, as Sue puts it, about '... the transfer of ownership of the learning to the students' I do hope the BSF project gets this right.

Literacy Builder

On the NGfL CYMRU is a rather interesting new resource called 'Literacy Builder' . Very well worth taking a look at to see if it 'rows your boat as well as floats it'.

Map of Future Forces Affecting Education

I am again indepted to Ewan McIntosh for this cartography from KnowledgeWorks ( don't know where he finds these nuggets from or how he has the time ?)
It would be interesting to translate it from the 'americanisms' to a the various UK education set ups and see how it supports ( or not) the economic developments in such projects as 'GLOW' or 'BSF'.

Watch what you do with your hands

Picked up from my feeds today, and reproduced here, from Simon Mills is this interesting article from the USA about hand gestures in teaching contexts.
Well worth the read.