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'

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.

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'

We are 16 going on 17 ...

Following up on the ENGLISH Governments announcements to almost everyone the BBC today reported on the fact that students starting their secondary education this week will be required to continue their compulsory education until they are 17.

In New Zealand the leaving age is 16 and if you have good reason it can be 15. Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have not changed.

In Denmark education is compulsory for children from the 1 August of the calendar year in which the child attains the age of 7 years until the 31 July after the child has received regular education for a period of nine years. Compulsory education ends, however, at the latest on 31 July of the year of the child's seventeenth birthday...

In Norway children are required to attend school for 10 years commencing the calendar year they reach the age of 6.

Wikipedia has a section on this which appears to suggest that 15 is the earliest and 18 is the latest ... so I guess, as usual England sits in the middle.

Surely the important thing is not how long students are in compulsory ( though why it has to be compulsory I am not sure) educationbut how relevant to them and their.

In February of this year Greg Whitby wrote about 'Relevancy or retention?' with regard to students in New South Wales, Australia. This post is well worth a read in this connection.

I just wonder what the students starting school this week think (or what their parents think) of this. And ... it does occur to me that 2013 could be two elections away !

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.

A safer Internet - young people asked !

On 12th February a group of young people from all over Europe met in Brussels to give their views on how institutions should act to make the use of social networks safer for them.

The 'Safer Internet Day' was part of a global drive to promote a safer Internet for all users, especially young people. In 2008, the European Commission focuses particularly on the experiences and involvement of young people.
In celebration of Safer Internet Day 2008, the European Commission organises a Youth Forum on Safer Internet in Brussels where youth (14-17 year olds) from Austria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Netherlands, Sweden .

One of the outcomes of the forum is: 'Based on these discussions the youth will identify the 10 most important online safety tips for their age group.' I wonder if they will follow adult trends or will the young have something really innovative to offer?

The BBC's report was written by Ammani,12, from West Yorkshire who was one of a group of children from across Europe invited by the European Commission to a conference to talk about children and online safety.

I find myself slightly worried the article and wonder about ( as one always would in these cases) validity of the group format and what can be read into their comments.
'We all believe that mobile and internet dangers are serious' was one of the comments and accepting that the forum was about safety there is no mention of excitement, stimulation, joy of connected communities etc. I suppose a forum drawn together to talk about safety will have this focus but when will we see the european Commission draw together a group to talk about the tremendous advantages to be gained from social (and other) networking.

Earlier this week Becta held a conference on a similar theme: Safeguarding children in a digital world. The presentations are now available and looking at the programme I have high hopes of some creative thinking from such a connected group.

Becta have produced a guidance document : Safeguarding children in a digital world: Developing an LSCB e-safety strategy

Did you know ...

There is to be a New Inquiry into the National Curriculum.

The Children, Schools and Families Committee is to undertake an inquiry into the National Curriculum. Written submissions are invited for the inquiry.

The inquiry will consider:
*the principle of whether there should be a National Curriculum
*how the fitness-for-purpose of the National Curriculum might be improved
*the management of the National Curriculum and its articulation with other policies and strategies with which schools must work.

Submissions should arrive no later than noon on Monday 17 March 2008.

This is a chance to have a say in what will happen ... if teachers and parents do not take this opportunity then 'they' will not be in a strong position to argue that no-one asked !

Gadgets and Gizmos

I wrote last week about the idea of teaching children/students how to get the best out of their gadgets and gizmos rather than banning their use.

Trawling my feeds today to try to keep up I came across this on Danny Nicholson's 'Whiteboard Blog':

Students today can’t prepare bark to calculate their problems. They depend on their slates which are more expensive. What will they do when their slate is dropped and it breaks? They will be unable to write!”
Teachers Conference, 1703

Students today depend upon paper too much. They don’t know how to write on slate without chalk dust all over themselves. They can’t clean a slate properly. What will they do when they run out of paper?”
Principal’s Association, 1815

Students today depend too much upon ink. They don’t know how to use a pen knife to sharpen a pencil. Pen and ink will never replace the pencil.”
National Association of Teachers, 1907

Students today depend upon store-bought ink. They don’t know how to make their own. When they run out of ink they will be unable to write words of ciphers until their next trip to the settlement. This is a sad commentary on modern education.”
The Rural American Teacher, 1929

Students today depend upon these expensive fountain pens. They can no longer write with a straight pen and nib (not to mention sharpening their own quills). We parents must not allow them to wallow in such luxury to the detriment of learning how to cope in the real business world, which is not so extravagant.”
PTA Gazette, 1941

Ball point pens will be the ruin of education in our country. Students use these devices and then throw them away. The American virtues of thrift and frugality are being discarded. Business and banks will never allow such expensive luxuries.”
Federal Teacher, 1950

For proper attributation, these quotes are apparently from David Thornburg’s book Edutrends 2010: Restructuring, Technology and the Future of Education (1992).

Anyone want to write one for the 'gap years' and 2007 please ?

The Byron Review

The Byron Review is an independent report into the risks posed by inappropriate web and game-based content for children and young people. It supported by the UK's Department for Children, Schools and Families. It is being headed up by Dr Tanya Byron and will finally report in March 2008. The responses on her Bebo site make interesting reading.

The review, commissioned by The Prime Minister will look into the risks to children from exposure to potentially harmful or inappropriate material on the Internet and in video games. I do hope that the trawl for information for the review will be a wide so that we get to know, on a world scale, what is happening rather than, as is usual, on a very anglo-centric one.

For me one of the main issues developing from early reports concerning the Review is the perception of 'danger'. It would be wonderful if , just for once, the immense power of the advances in technology and the ability for people all over the world to interact with each other on a social, political and even interest level could be seen as positive not negative.

The media/press do their best to hype up any issues associated with social networking that they can find. Yesterday the BBC managed, in their early morning news, to link the loss of the data discs by the HMRC offices to Facebook in one swift sentence. Tension makes good news, obviously! The public at large are being ill informed and ill served by being led down a path of doom and gloom with regard to what our young people see as a gigantic leap forward in their ability to free themselves from their geography and expand into a much wider world.

The safety of our young people has to be a prime concern but that is, as it always has been for me, one for education. In your kitchen, are there any knives? Or have you removed them or put bolts on the kitchen door so that children cannot get in to see/find/use them? We know that useful things may be potentially harmful but, in terms of a sort of 'cost/benefit' analysis we make an educated decision about them and move on.

There are key issues here with regard to curriculum in our schools and the necessary importance of personal safety education. (Isn't that one of the aspects of PSHE sessions?)

Dr Tanya Byron appears to me to be a sensible person who will report sensibly without hype. I just hope that the media manage to report her report in the same way.

Podcasting ... easy peasy

Take twenty four, mixed ability, Y6 children with a developing ICT capability, a forward looking teacher willing to 'give it a go', a school prepared to let children try things out, a set of wireless laptops that work with decent microphones connected, a good broadband connection with an ISP that does not block FTP, curriculum idea and Podium and podcasting becomes 'easy peasy' (this is a quote!)

Weather poems was the literacy context with the built in agenda of developing ideas around simile, metaphor and personification.

The children, working in pairs, chose their weather 'topic' and began to brainstorm ideas. These got transferred to phrases and notes and then lines were added to lines. The ideas were then developed in the script writing tool of Podium and allocated to the readers using the functionality built in to the script writer. The groups then, again using script writer functionality, rehearsed their poems.This was the first part of the session with the class teacher leading.

Then I turned up and showed the children how to make recordings using the software and how to import extra MP3 sounds (which I brought with me on a super fast USB drive) and to add images onto their recordings.

It was their turn then ... the initial task was to make a podcast of a single episode with three chapters which was to include their poem and some imported sounds. Many could not find the sounds that they wanted so recorded their own using Podium, saved them as MP3 files and re imported them into their podcasts!There were bees humming, birds singing, snow falling (tickling bells) etc.

About fifteen later it was all done. Poems rehearsed, sounds recorded, images chosen all done and dusted. Fourteen individual episodes all saved as Podium Projects( so that they could go back and add further poems as the year went on) and saved as MP3s so that they could import them into other podcasts they had in mind. And they were all published to the server and a happy group of children wrote down the URL so that they could go home and listen to their recorded works in iTunes.

With time to spare we then did the whole class podcast, one episode/poem. You can listen to the results of their labours by pasting this URL into your favourite aggregator.

http://www.podiumpodcasting.com/~182812/Y6W161107173226/rss.xml

... and not once did the ICT get in the way of the learning. The emphasis was on the quality of the literacy and the opportunity to write, speak and publish to a wide audience.

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 !

Sebran

Letter rain and more

One of the key issues that never fails to 'get teachers going' is the matter of typing and/or keyboarding and the importance that we should place on it. After all, there is certainly a lot of time spent on handwriting techniques!

Teachers have their own ways of dealing with this and for many years I have pointed out to people an application called Sebran - a freeware download from the internet. It is a very small file ( 700 kb), that might just help out. Earlier versions of the software were only in capital letters but now I note that, in the set up options, there is a 'lower case' and a 'mixed case' choice.

More than just a way of improving keyboarding, there are also lots of well-loved games to play that are simply put together and make excellent whiteboard activities.

Better still is the fact that the software currently is translated into twenty three different languages. The program teaches using either Afrikaans, Bahasa Indonesian, Breton, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Samoan, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Turkish, Swahili or Swedish (in Swedish, the droll zebra gracing the main screen is called "sebran").

There is also an offer from the author:
Translators wanted! Has Sebran's ABC not yet been translated into your native language? Would you like to help me with a new translation? All you need to do is to fill out an Excel spreadsheet with all the words and phrases. No programming skills required.

World News Service for Children

Back in the early 50s when I was in primary school I remember that one of the highlights of the week was to listen in class to the radio. I think we listened to lots of different things from stories to assemblies. Later when I began teaching in the mid 60s my classes missed their playtime each Friday because the BBC broadcast the Look and Read TV series at 10.25 (I think it was) and we had no way of recording at the time. Now much is digitised and available online for anywhere/anytime consumption either as sound or video.

Today's early morning news brought back these memories as I listened to a piece about the BBC's World News for Children, a five minute digest, broadcast weekdays at 07.15 and 12.00 GMT (or, of course, available online).
Monday's bulletin consisted of: In today's international news bulletin for children: Children put to work in Indian factories, Tornado in Australia 'American football fever: New York giants beat Miami dolphins. And our question today: what's the capital city of Mexico? So I went online to listen to the whole thing. The reports I listened to were wide ranging and concerned Africa, India, USA, Australia, UK and Mexico.The BBC news item showed children from Africa listening to the bulletin and in the ensuing interview they gave credence to the information they received. It appeared that one group travelled in a minibus to a centre just to listen.

I was transported back to my early 50s classroom as I just listened ... and I thought of the all the technology that as been put in place since then ... but for five minutes this morning it was the power of the spoken word that held me and I wanted children to be held by it too.

Nostalgically I recall the Queen hit 'Radio Ga Ga'

The Great Book Survey

My friends at Television Junction are involved in making a programme for Teachers TV about the books that have influences educators and have supported them down through the years.

Teachers TV and the NUT are looking for people to participate in the Great Books online survey, to be made into a Teachers TV countdown programme later in the term.
We’re looking to discover the top 10 books that have most inspired you in your teaching/ educational career.Everyone connected with teaching has a favourite book in their lives. We asked hundreds of people in the educational community to name the book that has most inspired them in their careers. Now it’s your turn. We want to know what books have had the biggest impact on you. Then we’ll be making a programme announcing the Top Ten – and you could be in it!
Librarians, Teachers, students, educationalists – in fact, anyone interested in education – are invited to vote for the book which has most inspired them personally about teaching and learning. We need you to vote now on what book has most inspired you.
We’re starting off with a list of 40 influential books suggested by Dr Dennis Hayes of Canterbury Christ Church University: from Plato’s Republic to Sue Palmer’s Toxic Childhood; from Rousseau’s Emile to John Holt’s How Children Fai; and takes in along the way books by writers as diverse as George Eliot, Paulo Freire, John Dewey, Margaret Donaldson, Matthew Arnold and Sue Cowley. If your top choice is not on the list you can even add it yourself.

The survey is now open and closes on the 26th October.

We welcome all comments on what makes your choice the greatest book and will feature the best responses in the programmes. So please don’t forget to add your comments and you could be featured in the programme. Please also let your colleagues know about the survey.

You can vote online now at Great Books

Cyber bullying

Is it all just hype or is it that our media conscious society can now get information about anything quickly and simply? It is very, very right that we protect out young people and that we make sure that the use of wider technology does not leave them open to abuse in any way from anyone ... but please, let us not blame the technology.
The Government launched its documentation last Friday ... read it here.

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.

BBC KS 1 Bitesize Games

If you haven't already discovered them the BBC KS1 Bitesize Games for both Literacy and Numeracy may well 'float your boat' as starter activities, independent work or even plenary. They look good to me as the sort of thing I would tell children to have a go at when they get home. Love the idea that the levels are 'medium', 'hard' and 'very hard'.

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.

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.

Interactive planning tool for the Primary Framework for literacy and mathematics

For those of you who teach in English primary schools just available is a planning tool for the Primary Framework for literacy and mathematics. The interactive planning tool is designed to support your use of the Primary Framework website. This tool enables you to plan electronically drawing on the framework materials, allowing you to manipulate the Primary Framework content to personalise the learning and teaching in your classroom.

Enjoy !

From the BBC News this morning ...

'Pupils at a Devon school have had their textbooks replaced by personal computers and webcams.' ..... this is the scariest thing that I have seen for a long time. If this is the face of the future for education then I think we should have an uprising now !!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6310000/newsid_6316000/6316013.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm