The Purpose of Education – Learn to fail to succeed #500words


The following is my contribution to the Purpos/ed #500words campaign. After reading not just this month’s  thought provoking and well argued contributions, but also last year’s , I post this short note with some hesitancy. Each and every one of the posts, so far, have struck a chord with me and although I drafted this blog post some 2 weeks ago and there have since been a number of blog posts dealing with the same issue, I thought it might still be worthwhile sharing my thoughts on the topic with you – and so here goes ……..

What is the purpose of education?

As an educator and a father I believe  it is important to prepare my students and my son for life’s pitfalls and successes. As much as we value and take pleasure in the successes  gained through academic and other accomplishments, we all encounter “failures” along the way. I believe that in order to cherish and value the successes we need to prepare students to fail, or rather,  to fail ‘better’ so that they can strive more effectively for success.

My son loves school and football. His passion for both holds no bounds – and he works hard in both the classroom and on the pitch. When he struggles at school, we tell him that as long as he tries his best, that is all that counts – which is what my parents told me. Of course, it might be argued that football is a different matter. I think not and tell him that there is only one thing worse than a ‘sore loser’ and that is an ‘ungracious winner’.

I feel we should encourage students to deal with their learning failures and to learn from them – be it when coding a website, writing code or developing a digital product.

‘Learning to fail better’ which could be rewritten as ‘Critical analysis’ is, of course, not exclusive to ICT, but applies to the curriculum as a whole. Students need to be shown how to deal with failure and learn through these failings. We shouldn’t be avoiding failure, but should meet it head on.

‘Project Based Learning’,  encourages students to acquire and develop ‘self-critique skills’ as well as skills in receiving and dealing with ‘peer- feedback’. Without doubt, giving and receiving realistic, mature and measurable feedback is a crucial skill. As Ron Berger says in his admirable book “Ethics of Excellence”:-

“If you’re going to do something, I believe, you should do it well. You should sweat over it and make sure it’s strong and accurate and beautiful and you should be proud of it”

Ken Livingstone, after losing the 2012 mayoral election, poignantly said, that the “children of today are the first generation[in the post-war years] to be worse off than their parents.” It would seem, therefore, that the skill of ‘learning from failure’ has never been so important or relevant to young people as they attempt to deal with the ‘worrying and challenging times’ in which they find themselves.

So – in a nutshell, I guess the message of this blog post is – that educators  should encourage students to think for themselves and challenge them constantly asking ‘ WHY?’ – why doesn’t it work? why should I do it differently? What should I do and how? As educators, we should enable our students to think for themselves and make the choices which best suit them and their route to success.`

Tweeting smarter with ifttt

Copyright All rights reserved by brandonhuang /  License this photo on Getty Images

A few months ago i stumbled over ifttt whilst browsing twitter. If i remember rightly it was someone giving a practical example of using an IF THEN ELSE statement. As I tell my students as they use Scratch and Kodu; all games from Space Invaders to COD are based on simple and complex IF THEN ELSE statements.

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I was looking for different ways to tweet a little smarter and manage my twitter account. I used a few tools to capture some of my favourite tweets and links such as Instapper and Evernote. What attracted me to ifttt was the ability to search not just my timeline but also twitter as a whole on topics which I find of interest.

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ifttt allows you to do a number of things through your twitter account

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These range from favourites, to tweets by you and also others. There is also a facility to send an auto tweet to new followers. The latter can be a little impersonal in my opinion and also doesn’t add the full @twittername to the tweet although i may be missing something. The tool i have been using is the “new tweet from a search”.

I have been using lists rather sparingly since they were added to twitter but with ifttt i can manage not just tweets from my timeline but also others on a #hashtag or topic which i may miss. I use this facility to add users to a list named after the search topic.

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These triggers are not just restricted to twitter as ifttt offers a number of options to link with a number of different social media channels

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I use one of the recipes available to connect my Evernote account to my Twitter account so that my tweets are archived.

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Of course there are thousands available and given more time I would play with some of the others

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   Through ifttt i know use lists more to filter great tweets about topics i am currently interested in such as

  • openbadges
  • ictcurric
  • digitalstudies
  • solotaxonomy
  • rethinkingict

So if i add you to a list, don’t worry I’m not stalking your every tweet, I’m just using ifttt to tweet a little smarter ;)

Google Apps Edu – Getting Started and First Steps #googleapps

As i aluded to in the introduction i have been using Google Apps Edu for over 4 years now. After an initial amazement of the tools available and the huge potential I took the step of uploading the whole of our school cohort to Google Apps including accounts for staff. I already had the domain registered which made things a little easier. Of course now Google offers the opportunity to register a domain name for around £10 which is well worth it. Should you already own the domain name then this needs to be verified. This can be cumbersome at times but with persistence it does work ;)

In hindsight i regret uploading the whole of the cohort. In some ways it has worked with the groups I have used Google Apps with over the years and they have been very engaged using a number of the tools available. I settled originally on the same format as we had for our moodle which was 05firstinitiallastname@domainname.com with staff eg mr.allan@strobertofnewminster.co.uk. Of course this left around 1000 accounts untouched for 4 years even though i had between 400-500 users using Google Apps over 4 years including a handful of staff.

 

In terms of usernames, I was conscious of data protection and also the issues I had already encountered with uploading too many user previously. I wanted to avoid a mass deletion of files but future proof the accounts for any changes.

 

At present my Managed Service provider does not offer full integration with Google Docs and our staff use parts of the VLE and the Outlook interface. This is the same for students. With this in mind Gmail is currently unavailable for students but for some staff. The ability to turn on some parts of Google Apps is a great tool.

 

After much procrastination and debate with some great feedback from twitter I settled on the same usernames from the domain but prefixed with the year they started school to ensure easy management of users in the future. For example if John Smith started our school in 2010 and his user name on the network was J.Smith9 his user account for

 

10Smith1J

 

Looks a little confusing but in our case it works really well. I just used the RANDBETWEEN() function in Excel to generate random passwords prefixed with 3 letters. After creating an excel file with the appropriate headings I then created and uploaded the students by user group one at a time.

In order to manage the users I created sub organsiatrions for each Year group and also for staff. This made it easier to manage users especially with the management of the services available in Google Apps Edu.

 

 

 

In our school all students have an email account provided by our VLE. Rather than replace this and becase it is hosted on a different domain, i decided to turn gmail services off to avoid the confusion. At present this hasn’t caused any problems but it does give me the opportunity to turn the service on in the future should we choose to have single sign on.

At present we have restorcte users to the following services

 

 

Getting started in the classroom

 

Prior to rolling out Google Doc my students used Google documents and presentations when we were working in class.

 

Google Docs have a great feature which allows you to control who has access to the document; which can be for specific users or for anyone with the link. Within this option you can also restrict users to either view or edit the document.

I have found in small groups the document sharing works really well, however it takes a while for students to adjust with other users editing the same line or work. The colour coding option is a good feature where you can see who has added to the document and where. As Google Docs has evolved over time the Comment features have improved and I have begun to use this for marking and also AFL activities.

 

The Revision history is also a good tool to review the changes made to a document. This is something we are looking at in more detail with the move to project based learning activities in school.

 

The only downside of the Google Document sharing option is the amount of users able to edit at the same time. At the most I have had 10 users on the same document editing and adding in real time. Any more than this and the document freezes and crashes.

 

Another way of introducing the concept of Google Presentations is using the share and comments tool. As with docs I felt that the best way to introduce students was to create a presentation with individual slides for each student which they could then use to add ideas / their work. We then used comments within the class for peer reviews and set 3 www what went well and also 3 RBI even better ifs. Then students added their own targets. Last year my year 13s did this between 2 classes and also connected with students at @misterels school to do the same. This was a great success and enabled students to share their work to. Wider audience and also see what other students were producing.


 

 

At present we do something similar with key stage 3 students as they set their own success criteria and also targets. You can read more here.

 

I have been using google forms for a number of years now. Initially for a student quiz for world book day and then for feedback on a 3d game my students had created on esafety. The ease of use is a big plus point and also the time stamp when each one is completed. At present I’m moving towards a project based curriculum and I wanted students to be able to review their own and each others using a form. Rather than having different forms I settled on one which I saved as a template that students use and then customise the design. In some cards students have added other questions but the principle remains the same. The beauty of this is that students can review and get feedback on their work at any point by not leaving their desk if the classroom.

Later in this series I wicexplire the different ways we gave used spreadsheets and forms across all Jey stages including flubaroo for self grading quizzes.

My work on google sites is still in its early stages. At present I have one which is the welcome screen when users log into google apps and then click on the area they need to use. I need to add other options but generally students either use the docs or aviary.

As part of the #digitalstudies curriculum students will be creating. Site which will be there digital portfolio which will showcase not only their final products but also their planning, drafts, feedack and revaluations with a section for the diurnal badges they have been awarded. The design will be left to students as we try develop their HTML skills in year 7 but hopefully they will have a page for each of the years in key stage 3 for digital studies and then extra pages for other subjects / work be that in or out of school.

There are lots of different ways in which both I and my students gave successfully used google apps with a number of failures along the way but they will come in the next update of this series. If you have any experiences you wish to share or comment on any of the ideas above please comment on this post.

 

A Starter for 10 or a finish in 5……….

 

As a PGCE  mentor in the past I have found student teachers struggle with coming up with ideas for engaging and relevant starters. Years ago I used to use the book 101 ict starters which was invaluable when I first started teaching. There is also the great wiki set up by Nick Jackson. There have been times when I have flitted with brain gym activities but I doubted their impact even before I read Bad Science,  where Ben Goldman states a case for their lack of impact.

The other issue has been with plenaries and measuring the learning of every single student. In my school we currently use the Must, Should and Could criteria for success criteria and although specific to each lesson and learning activity i have been using it more and more to differentiate by a set task in the lesson. However where students have been setting their own success criteria which is a level 7 attainment criteria am I restricting students by saying they must achieve level 4 criteria while I am also saying they must also achieve level 7 at the same time? In a 50 minute lesson I defy anyone to confidently say that they can say they can check and measure to see how 20 students (I’m lucky in terms of class sizes ;) ) have achieved and attained.

So here are a couple of things i have been using to start lessons and also use as plenaries. These are not just exclusive to the start and the end of the lesson and have been used throughout and also for home learning.

Students setting their own Success Criteria – see this blog post

Essentially this involves students setting their own success criteria on a shared Google Doc. This is referred to at the start, throughout and at the end of the lesson.

One great way to introduce topics i have found is the use of infographics. I have blogged about it here and also presented some ideas at #tmhum

Using Homework

Year 7 pupils have been developing their own games in Scratch. As an independent home learning task I set all students a challenge of creating their own version of Snake. The principle of game had to be the same but they could be creative as they wanted to be. I was also not looking for everyone to complete the game. The challange was to have a go and see how they progressed. The only compulsory part of the hoemwork was for students to create a Scratch aacount online and then upload their attempt. The repsonses formed the starter for the next lesson with a discussion of the procudures and sub routines with a judgement by the class on the Level of the work and improvments. This gave students ideas and motivation for their own projects.
Learn more about this project
If this does not load up try clicking here to play the game.

Bert and Ernie Alphabet and Primary Pad

I have a draft blog post about encouraging and promoting literacy in ICT and the following is part of that. Ive been looking to encourage students to become more comfortable using subject specific langauage in all key stages. For Key Stage 3 i have been using this at the start of some lessons but also at certain points, calling it “Thinking IT time” with students asked to come up with as many words as they possibly can beginning with the day’s / week.

This is recorded on a specific primary pad or a group one

As part of the the Year 7 Scratch project my students have been supporting each other with an online helpdesk using Lino.it. I have used lino.it before a lot but after “stealing” @4goggas idea i tried it out to great success. My initial idea of having post its for the different thinking hats eg black for problems and green for solutions didnt really work with the colours in Lino.it but after a somehwat messy start here is the ongoing helpdesk.

 

As part of the Google Apps roll out in school all KS3 pupils will from September be using a Google Site for their digital portfolio. All schemes will be projects with students evidencing their work as it progresses taking a lot of ideas from Ron Berger and his excellent book An Ethic of Excellence. This of course is part of the new #digitalstudies course we are running. More information can be found on the digital studies wiki

Students will be required to evaluate not just their own work but also others in their own and other classes. The form below is a pilot form we have been using to great success this year.

Finally here’s one i made earlier ;) Not a new idea i know but ive turned the traffic light upside down on my classroom door. As much as we need to show our students what needs to be improved we also need to celebrate their successes; something i will explore in more detail as part of my purposed 500 words post later this month.

I presented some of the ideas above and also more at #tmclevedon on 3rd May 2012

#digitalbadges Feedback

 


Over the past few weeks in the planning of the new #digitalstudies curriculum a number of people have been discussing the use of Digital Badges. There have been as number of thought provoking feedback and blog posts which have given me some confidence that we are on the right lines with #digitalstudies and also the application of #digitalbadges.

As part of the planning of #digitalstudies myself, Brian and Nic are looking to put a lot of things in place by the end of June to coinicude with the @ReThinkingICT conference and also to help other schools to plan for next year.

In order to gauge opinion about #digitalbadges and help with the planning I would really appreaciate some feedback for across the edcuation sector. Please share this form with your collegues in school and/or your local authority. We will only use the information collected to inform the planning of #digitalbadges in #digitalstudies to create a successful platform. Our aim if successful is to then make the badges available for other subjects/sectors.

If you would like any more information about #digitalbadges or #digitalstudies please let me know @infernaldepart or via email.

Alternatively visit the #digitalstudies wiki or the #digitalstudies Moodle for further information.

 

Complete the form below or click on this link

#DIGITALSTUDIES – A remix of #ictcurric

After the “visit” last month and sorting out all my marking. (very organised at the moment ;) ) i started to think about Key Stage 3 for next year.

I have been planning to reorganise Key Stage 3 for a while now, and in my time as Head of Department we have started to introduce across the board units of work looking at Scratch / Google Sketchup / Animation and Video Editing to name a few alongside working on some tesources for #ictcurric. It may seem a long way off but September 2012 will soon be on us like a rash so what better time to start but now!

Ive been following very closely the great work of Brian Sharland, Chris Leach, Nic Francis, Ian Addison and Matt Lovegrove as they have looked at planning their take on ICT. Brian, Chris and Nic have concentrated on the area closer to my comfort zone – Key Stage 3 and have generated some fabulous ideas about the formation of #digitalstudies as “replacement” for ICT. Brian and Nic have been creating and contributing to the digital studies wiki. For years i have never been comfortable with the title, at time preferring to call it IT or more recently IT/Computing Studies. Even last week i asked my Year 10s if they actually knew what ICT stood for and only half of them did (is that my fault?!?!?) Interestingly i floated the idea of a rename and threw #digitalstudies into the pot to a very warm response – “that makes more sense” to “that is what we are really learning about”.

I also gathered feedback from ALL students who study ICT at our school under the following questions, asking them to answer honestly and anonymously.

Sum up ICT in 3 words
What do you enjoy about ICT currently
What do you least enjoy about ICT
How could we improve ICT / what would you like to learn?

I will add the word clouds for the above responses when I can edit this post from my laptop but they mostly made interesting reading. I think the most popular words for both the 2nd and 3rd questions was fun and interesting while the 5th for the 1st question was c***. This has certainly given me food for thought in the planning of our new curriculum and I’m a firm believer in student voice and involving them in the shaping of the new pos. At present I’m trying out a range of strategies and content across Year 7-9 involving the students in the evaluations of the content and also the assessment of each lesson.

In light of Mr Gove’s speech at BETT12 i have been looking at ways to respond the exciting challenge / gauntlet laid down to create an engaging and exciting curriculum for our students.

Of course there is the must attend event – RethinkingICT which i will be attending but in the mean time i have been getting my head around where we are now and where i want us to go. In essence i am working with a blank canvas but am lucky to work in a department where all members are keen to move things forward and embrace the changes we face.

Taking the ideas from Brian, Chris and Nic i have settled on the following strands of #digitalstudies

  • Digital Literacy
  • Digital Society
  • Digital Technologies
  • Digtial Creativity
The assessment sheet for KS3 has become a key planning document in the past but under the new proposals of no programme of study how relevant is it now….. I’ve looked at shoe horning the strands into the 4 new ones and have been successful so far but I think the best approach is to completely rewrite the whole 4 new strands looking at some of the elements of the planning and evaluation areas and keeping the core of handling, modelling and sequencing somewhere between the strands.
And of course ensure that computing / computer science / coding lies within the scheme.The main focus I believe is to develop a project based curriculum with yearly themes and rather than discrete units, have terms devoted to certain knowledge, skills and understanding in particular areas which give coverage of the four strands over the year. At the moment the yearly themes will be
  1. Digital developments
  2. Digital identity
  3. Digital futures

The main areas I’m looking at for the terms are (these are still at the drafting stage and could change / be added to before June):
Year 7

  • Copyright awareness – Storybird
  • Game design – Scratch
  • Around the The digitl world – Google maps / earth
  • Social media in 2012/2013 – Infographic Creation – Adobe Illustrator
  • Cyber bullying – Podcasting -Audacity
  • Digital Portfolio Dvelopment – Google Sites / HTML /coding

Year 8

  • Digital identity Fraud – Kodu
  • Viral Videos for YouTube – Serif Movie Plus
  • Code academy / JavaScript
  • Google Sketchup
  • Digital Animation

Year 9

  • Olympic Gaming 2052
  • Digital Literacy
  • Computer Science Introduction
  • App Development

Last week a met with a member of our SLT to sound them out about the proposals, I have to say from the outset that I am very lucky in terms of the school support for myself and also ICT as a subject since I took over as Subject Leader. After giving the background to #ictcurric and the recent developments in computer science I broached the topic of #digitalstudies and received an enthusiastic response. I have to return to the full SLT after the holidays to present the whole concept with firm ideas and plans for the next 2 years at least. Again I would like to reiterate that I’m in a fortunate position in that there have no moves (as yet!) to move away from discrete ICT as a subject area even though at present we are not core at Key Stage 4 but still remain an option.

Here is the following proposal taken from the words of Brian Sharland :

#digitalstudies

An Introduction


As a department we are working on developing an exciting, relevant and modern curriculum for pupils. We aim to provide a subject which will introduce pupils to computing and computer science but continue to encourage those pupils who are interested in digital creativity through multimedia as well as continue to provide the digital literacy skills which pupils need.

We believe that although all pupils should gain experience with computer science not all of them will go into computer science and therefore the subject should remain varied enough to provide all with appropriate challenge. #digitalstudies is therefore based on four strands, digital literacy, digital authoring, digital technology and digital society which will give pupils clear aims in a range of digital areas.

How is #digitalstudies different from ICT?

  1. #digitalstudies is portfolio based – pupils produce work over a period of time designed to be presented and shown elsewhere
  2. Assessment is done through blogging and end of year hack days.  We also use badges to motivate pupils and demonstrate progress and acquisition of skills.
  3. #digitalstudies is career focussed – pupils learn skills which are useful for future career options
  4. #digitalstudies is a wiki based curriculum – no central programme of study instead driven by teacher and pupil editing
  5. #digitalstudies at primary level is focussed on developing the basics of computational thinking through simple systems development often revolving around building basic games
  6. Although the ICT programme of study didn’t specify specific software certain brands became indispensable.  #digitalstudies is being designed to allow as much flexibility as possible in software choices.  There may be certain portfolio tasks which require certain software but this will be the exception.


How is it different from Computer Science?

  1. It includes programming and computational thinking from Computer Science
  2. BUT keeps digital literacy from ICT
  3. It also includes Digital Creativity where pupils will also work on a range of multimedia skills not included in traditional Computer Science.

Digital Literacy

At our school we recognise that we need to prepare pupils for a digital world through a sustained engagement with technology and media relevant to their context. We show pupils how to use digital tools to control their relationship with the digital world and negotiate other software programs from previous knowledge and experience. Pupils develop cognitive skills that enable them to process both the information they encounter online and the tools they need to make sense of that information and produce their own information. Units of work which form a part of the Digital Literacy strand are designed to meet these needs through challenging and engaging work which seeks to produce pupils who are literate in digital technology and relevant processing and thinking skills.

Digital Creativity

At our school we recognise that technology and digital tools can be used as a creative tool as well. The basis of many arts today rely on the effective usage of digital tools to create a product whether it is audio editing, movie computer effects or photo editing. Digital tools can also be used to create new art forms as well. We therefore feel it is important to not only provide experience in as many different digital creativity fields as possible but seek to encourage pupils to develop their own talents and ideas using digital tools for creativity.

Digital Technology

At our school we recognise that pupils will be using hardware and software throughout their career and will need to understand how that technology and hardware works. However in order to become proficient users of technology pupils should also understand how systems work and are built and also how to design, build and improve systems themselves. Our pupils are therefore taught the basics of programming, networking and how to build a computer. These skills are applied in relevant contexts to show pupils the relevance of these skills.

Digital Society

At our school we recognise that pupils should not only be taught how to use technology but also how to use technology appropriately in society. Pupils should understand that online communications whether from an individual or an organisation or government can have both a positive and a negative impact on themselves and society. They should also understand that they themselves can contribute to society through their own communications online.

Through the three other strands pupils will be producing digital products. In this strand pupils will explore how their work is legally protected but also how to use legally acceptable work produced by others. Pupils will understand their digital rights online but will also be expected to learn about the the digital rights of others.

The overview for each term’s content may look like the following:

 

Which brings me to assessment……..And of course the badges!!!!!

I had a lightbulb moment a few weeks ago while watching Chris Addison live in Newcastle. Not at all related to his set even though I found myself agreeing with a lot of the content (as expected I might say) but my mind was buzzing with a few ideas about #digitalstudies and different ways which would make it stand above what else that was on offer. I had read quite a bit about Open Badges while off work and was interested in the concept of awarding badges. While attending Liverpool matches with my son he loves collecting different badges and has a small collection alongsidee others he has collected. Recently he has been rewarding me with badges ( don’t ask ;) ) and I was wondering how in fact the principle of digital badges could be applied to #digitalstudies and also recognise not just levels but also other achievements not related to “measurable” success by the data monkeys. In the last 2 months my students have created some I’m else work using Scratch and Sketchup and are just starting to produce Infograhics, Kodu games and viral videos for YouTube. The main focus has been to develop their independence in these areas and allow them to try and measure their own success throughout the project by periodically setting their own success criteria but also drafting and evaluating their work on a very regular basis both themselves and also by their peers. Of course at the start they struggled to get their heads around the principles of success criteria and for their current projects have been more realistic about what, how and why they want to achieve. I have blogged about this here

This brings me back to badges. As with all schools in the UK we have to report to parents and within this report sub levels at least every term to show student progress. This of course is monitored for quality assurance and something HMI look for when they come into the classroom – what level are you, what is your target and do you know how to get there? The question is whether requirement to report levels for NO programme of study; I can imagine the short and very quick answer is yes. However what if we used badges to recognise this and also other areas where students have shown progression no matter how big or small. These of course can be awarded by teachers but as students become more comfortable setting and measuring stheir own success they can become involved too.

I blogged about my idea 3 weeks ago and got a number of replies and comments of this google doc. Whilst some questioned my rationale others liked the concept and behind the scenes I’ve been working on the concept further.

On Friday a number of us had a discussion on twitter over value of badges and this lead some excellent blog posts form @misterel @teachesictand @sharland with some great input from @milesberry and @ethinking to name just a few (sorry if I missed you out :( ).

I looked again at Open Badges and will hopefully have a conversation this week with members of their team to see how we can move this forward not just for #digitalstudies but in line with my thinking of the wider curriculum.

Ivan’s blog post look at levels v badges whilst Brian has commented on the promotion of badges and Nic’s looks at bportfolio’s something which will be a core of #digitalstudies. If I’m honest at the moment I sit on the fence and am yet to decide which is the best route. Ideally I would just run with the badges awarded for levels achieved in line with targets for the school. The big question of course is what are these levels and how could they be attained. This goes back to earlier in the post when I mentioned about rewriting the assessment structure. In order to present to SLT I am going to write to separate assessment structures. One using the old criteria fit to the 4 new strands and then a brand new one for the 4 new strands. Some might say a lot of work but I firmly believe we need to make this right before we launch in September.

A someone mentioned on twitter we are still required to report on levels to SLT and HMI should they visit unannounced but I feel that we will cover all bases but using the badge system to award these but also more on top as well. As for the rationale i I’m looking along the same lines as open badges but want the badges to be independent of any learning platform so teachers/students have the freedom to set their own criteria for awards.

There are a number of key areas I would like to badges to focus on. Throughout my teaching career I have taught students who have struggled to plan and evaluate their work because either of poor literacy skills or other issues. Their products in some cases have been amazing and they have been able to utilise a range of ict tools and techniques to produce a superb piece of work be it a weather forecast using iMovie and green screen technology, an animation, a video, a scratch game or even a game using kodu. So under the old assessment regime these students have always struggled to achieve higher levels (in some cases their target level has been below average but I have noticed that in the last 5 years the target grades have shot through the roof with some expectation of progression of 1 1/2 levels a year a tad lets just say high!)

So why not reward these pupils with a badge that recognises their work for what it is in terms of their final product. Indeed the life cycle of the whole project will be rewarded too but each element has its place and although is interdependent of the other elements each has its own importance). This badge could be for excellent use of a new piece of software but also recognition that they have taken on feedback from their peers and improved their work.

As a thinking school we have been using tools such as thinking maps and hats for the last few years. In some cases I do not tell the students that they should use a particular map or in fact even a thinking map at all but when undertaking a task choose the best tool for them, and the task. This could just be a list or a mindmap or as one pupil did last week a square map! These tools are just a few in a number of strategies to encourage students to think smarter about tasks and I have used De Bonos Hats quite a bit when planning and evaluating work. In fact I’m currently re-organising my classroom to reduce the number of individual desks and one have one large set of table to encourage whole class discussion surrounded with different coloured rugs to represent each coloured thinking hat. Will this work? Well I won’t find out until I try as with trying to incorporate some of Ron Bergers ideas from An Ethic of Excellence and using Solo Taxonomy in the summer term I will never know until I try them out. I order to achieve success I expect a little failure along the way but the key is to learning from it. That is why in some ways I want the badges to be a success not just for the students but also for staff. I want staff to be confident in issuing badges ion the same way I want the students to be confident in all aspects of their work, from planning, to design, to giving feedback, taking feedback, incorporating this in their work, using new software, trouble shooting and evaluating work to nam just a few. I could go on but if you have got to this point I the blog post youve probably come to the conclusion I’m on a bit of a ramble ( I hope not!)

So where do we go from here? In terms of the badges I am in the process of designing and creating a set of badges for #digitalstudies and other key areas outlined above as well as HOTS, habits of mind and other subject areas. I have the infrastructure in place to manage the issuing of badges and think I’ve cracked the elimination of students just copying someone’s badges! I looked forward to chatting to Open Badges very soon too in order to discuss a way forward.

The next stage is to complete the assessment structure for #digitalstudies and put together digitally all the ideas and content for the #digitalstudies moodle site. A tall order some would say but a lot of it is already done and I will have more free time after the 15th May :) The plan is to have everything done for June and the latest the Northern Grid for Learning Conference 2012 and also the RethinkingICT conference. In the meantime I will be taking a well earns break for a few days, hanging out with @sharland and @teachesict to plot and plan and drinking a lot of coffee.

If you haven’t heard about #digitalstudies as yet please check the wiki, check out twitter and also watch out for the #digitalstudies Moodle resource site.

 

Why infographics are a FAD in and out of my classroom…

 

THE BACKGROUND

Last January I was introduced to infographics while attending the Learning Without Frontiers conference in London. Among many highlights including Evan Roth was the session delivered by David McCandless the author of Information is Beautiful, I have since bought his wonderful book but I was astonished about how data can be be visualised and have taken a keen interest ever since. One of the many great visualisations from Information is Beautiful is the Left v Right infographic

With another one being the demographics of social media users

I was going to include the great visualisation about what is censored in China but was ironically blocked by my managed service ;)

There are a number of great websites for Infographics as well as Information is Beautiful such as:

Infographic’s  are of course not a new thing. I recall a Royksop video from a few years ago


Röyksopp – Remind Me by hushhush112

And there is also a French TV advert:-

Areva Tv Commercial 2004

In terms of reading material it might also be worth checking out:

Colin Ware (2000). Information Visualization: Perception for design. and also Information Visualization by Robert Spence

Lastly there are also the following:-http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0132065509

And also

One of the great parts of the site aside from the great visualisations is the ability to take some of the data to  create your own visualisations

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmCeWwNKr6FmdFVlSjRFRTdlMVRNaTVLdGNQVGNDclE&hl=en%3Cbr%20%3E%3C/a%3E

Info from http://www.briansolis.com/2009/10/revealing-the-people-defining-social-networks/ and http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/

Of course there is a also great way of representing data via video using the Debtis UK video which is a given for me in demonstrating the power of infographics and visualisations.

THE CLASSROOM

I want my students to be not just consumers but creators in ICT / computing / digital studies.

I have set my year 10 homework this week to find ANY infographic they can which does not have to be related to ICT. They have / will tweet a link to it and explain it to the rest of the class on Monday. The main aim is that students are creating a WordPress site about digital footprint and I want them to gather data from their peers and beyond. This is then going to be represented individually as an infographic which will be embedded on their site.

Last week with my year 13s we used this infographic about download speeds as students have to.

In order to achieve distinction criteria students are required to

  • Evaluate the impact of evolving output mediums on the design and creation of graphic images

After initial discussion they then compared and contrasted a mobile site and a full site in order to look at design and content. Using Hyerle’s Double Bubble map first individually and then as a group we came up with the following.

Then individually students where then required to discuss the impact of different output mediums when designing graphics for the web.

My year 8: are embarking on their Kodu project. I have already developed this course for #ictcurric using the great resources produced by Nikki Maddams. For homework students were required to define online identity theft in 140 characters exactly. We then discussed the wide range of answers before looking at this infographic.

Students then came up with their own examples from the tv series Friends and Family Guy where identity theft has been covered.

So far they have been a great way to engage with learners and great for giving them the opportunity to understand data presented  in a more user friendly way.

CREATING INFOGRAPHICS

Now this is where I had come to a brick wall in the class. I have been looking for my Year 7 and 10s to be able to create their own infographics. There are a number of websites around who offer the tools to create your own. One recommended by many is http://visual.ly/ which allows you to create an infographic from your data linked to various things such as your Twitter and Facebook Account. For example I created the following for my twitter account

This isn’t something or anywhere near what I was looking for especially for my Year 7s.

Rather than looking for online tools I have been looking for the most efficient and dare I say it easiest way for students to create their own infographics. One idea was for students to model either using their own or exiting data in Excel (or anything similar)  and then grab this image and use Photoshop / Fireworks do generate the whole image. Of course students are required at Key Stage 3 to combine tools and techniques for Level 4 and onwards but some of my classes in Year 7 are low ability and this would create more problems than solutions and I’m looking not just for a great visualisation but a short and snappy project.

DESIGNING AN INFOGRAPHIC

A great site to get yourself started is  http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/awesome-free-tools-infographics/ which has a number of tips to look at before starting to think about an infographic. For example:

Some great tips for designing infographics:

  • Keep it simple! Don’t try to do too much in one picture.
  • Decide on a colour scheme.
  • Research some great facts and statistics.
  • Think of it as a visual essay: ensure your arguments hold and are relevant.
  • Remember that it’s all about quickly conveying the meaning behind complex data.
  • Draw conclusions.
  • Reference your facts in the infographic.
  • Include your URL so people can be sure who made it.

There are a lot of great tips and tricks out there and some nice resources but the find of last week was this

http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/designing/how-to-create-outstanding-modern-infographics/

This tutorial uses Adobe Illustrator to create an infographic. The step by step instructions are very easy to follow and my “test” bed of students who come into my room at lunchtime after created some good solid infographics.

We are lucky in school to have the CS3 suite which Illustrator is part of. The next project for my Year 7s and 10s is to create infograhics using Illustrator so i look forward to seeing how things progress.

In a nutshell I have to say the Infographics are a FAD idea in my classroom – “Flippin’ Amazing Development!!” and i am really looking forward to seeing how this project develops and sharing some of the infographics my students create

 

Using Badges for #digitalstudies

 

BADGES FOR LEARNING


Whilst planning the new #digitalstudies curriculum for Key Stage 3 I have come up with the following idea for assessment/rewards. This is by no means a new idea as a number of people have been either toying with the idea or tried these out as in the classroom. My real inspiration came from my son who loves collecting Liverpool badges and gave me this yesterday.


The key principle is that students will be awarded badges when they “achieve” in #digitalstudies. These will be either physical badges or buttons they can add their to their digital portfolio. At the moment I’m trying to get it clear in my head exactly what for and how they can achieve this but the main areas at the moment I’m looking at are as follows:

 

  • Achieving their target level overall – school set
  • Achieving their target level overall – own target
  
  • Great work using a software package
  
  • Achieving their target level overall in a digital strand
  • Great work in one of the digital strand
  

 

These of course could be awarded by their teacher but what if a peer feels that a piece of work deserves a badge? Ive built this into the ICT Feedback form which ALL students will use for AFL of their own and others work.

Ive already played about with some designs and looked at online badge creators but really welcome peoples feedback on this.

Please give feedback or add ideas to this Google Doc.

Either add a comment to the ones I have  listed (insert/comment) or add your ideas (please add your name / twitter name so i can attribute your idea.

I look forward to your feedback

:)

 

Jumping ship………can we rely on free web tools?

 Some rights reserved by Gerald Davison

Yesterday i found out that Twitter had bought Posterous

As with other free tools bought out by “bigger” partners there was an inevitable outcry on Twitter. Whilst Posterous have stated that things will remain the same for the time being the long time future of Posterous blogging remains wide open.

I have been using posterous personally for a couple of years, with this year using it for my #atrackaday366 blog. One of the reasons i chose this was for the simple interface and very easy to use alongside the email options.

More recently i was looking for a blogging platform for my BTEC students to use to blog their personal development plan throughout the year and also use as an AFL tool. Posterous came out best in the comparisons with WordPress and Tumblr for the same reasons why i chose to use it personally. All my students now have a Posterous blog which at present is Private as they get used to blogging on a regular basis with me being the only follower. I blogged about the set up here and my posterous blog is here.

Of course this is not the first time a popular web based tool has been “gazumped” with a number of popular tools going the same way. I blogged about the uncertainty of Delicious over 12 months ago and also about free web tools in Free is good….or is it?. As a teacher i am constantly looking for new tools which will enhance the teaching and learning in my classroom. In some cases the “free” title can be appealing to some but i have become very wary of relying too much on them. I don’t agree with the saying in all cases that you pay for what you get as this is not always the case with ICT. The real time editors such as Etherpad and also Google Docs spring to mind.

As i plan for the next steps for our ICT/Computing curriculum i am looking to build in a teacher and student toolkit to underpin the learning in and out of my classroom. Popplet is a great tool and has lots of potential in terms of student collaboration and presenting work. Whether i can rely on this being free for the long term is another matter to be honest. In a school where we were fortunate to benefit from BSF and new computers / software (classroom technologies will be blogged on soon ;) but where do we stand for future funding? As with most things related to ICT the future is uncertain. In the case of the curriculum this is a welcome challenge which we intend to respond and move forward. However will we continue to use technologies which are current and relevant? Yes the internet and broadband speeds are a bonus but the rest is very open.

So the next time to see a tweet with a “free” tool, try it out, enjoy it, let your students try it out and give it a go, but be wary……..

Measuring success – Students setting their own success criteria #googleapps

 

This of course is not a new idea but something i have started to use at Key Stage 3 with Google Docs.

We have started to use Google Docs with students to share their success criteria for Scratch and a Google Sketchup project. The aim is to improve student independence and allow them to set measurable success criteria which they can both use to measure the success of their solution but also use in AFL activities.

We started by sharing initial ideas on a primarypad of what makes a good game of elements of game design but also bad game design

As a class we extracted out the keywords for both good and bad game design and students decided to use at least 3 of these to set the success driers for their solution. Prior to this exercise students have been using their scratch planning document and have previously played around with Scratch with a supply teacher. For homework students are  playing retro games in order to understand the principle of game design (blog post to follow).

The main difficulty of the task was students setting measurable targets for their tasks. The words interesting, good and challenging were commonly used but with class discussion we tried to set ones which they could use in order to manage the success of their solutions.

 

Interestingly I read @misterel’s blog post at the weekend which looks at students achieving a Level 6 in ICT. We have very high attainment targets with the vast majority of students expected to hit level 6s by the end of year 9. By using this idea I’m hoping to give students more ownership over their projects and enable them to achieve the level 6 level descriptors.

For Sketchup, students explored a similar theme and some settled on content rather than the design of their buildings.

Once students feel confident in setting their success criteria using both the project outline and their knowledge of the software solutions they should become more confident in setting more achievable success criteria.

We are also using a google form to gather feedback for their projects periodically for themselves and also from their peers. This has been a success so far, where initially we were setting aside time in the lesson to peer assess, students are now independently asking their peers for feedback and using the google form to record this.

At present Google Apps Edu is underpinning a lot of the learning in my classroom and i hope to blog on this soon.