It’s certainly been an eventful year for me. Looking forward to a beach in Turkey next week, I got a big dose of the reflection city blues and have been thinking all day about how best to sum up 2007-8 in a single post. I suppose I started this academic year back last August knowing that most of it would be dominated by GLOW, and of course, that proved to be the case. The GLOW roll-out took me in directions that I’d not envisaged with regard to my teaching as it made me fundamentally examine my own professional practice in depth -the how and why of what I do, but more importantly perhaps, the how and why of my students’ learning. My own particular GLOW journey has been well documented on this blog, but I guess if I have to sum it all up in one sentence it would be…. “empowering pupils by giving learning back to the learners”.
GLOW is not perfect and will never satisfy the technophiles but it’s a great, great, starting base for encouraging teachers to use ICT more and a powerful set of tools for delivering ACfE. In many ways it can be a re-working of the resource-based learning concept but updated in that the students can control the resources and by collaboration with others, create their own communities of practice. This is really the true essence of an authentic individual-centered learning community. This was the point I tried to get across to South Lanarkshire headteachers and education 0fficers at the curriculum conference this year from the main podium; you don’t need lots of money and huge banks of computers in every classroom to make GLOW work in your school. Managing existing resources in creative and innovative ways can be just as inspiring. All it takes is a little imagination and a ‘can-do’ attitude.
Going to Finland was also a truly enlightening experience and it was wonderful to be able to observe good and innovative teaching and discuss educational practice and research with colleagues in such a forward-thinking country as well as taking in the sights and sounds of such a beautiful city as Helsinki.
I picked up my Psychology teaching qualification this year as well as professional recognition in using ICT in teaching and learning, both from the GTCS, and my classroom-based research study on raising attainment using ICT/GLOW for the teacher researcher programme is just coming to the end of it’s first phase. I’ve been quite involved in the Eco-school scheme as well, and the work with our school blog and podcast group continues with plans to investigate the possibility of an internet-based school radio station and a ‘blog/podathon’ to raise awareness of HIV issues for world AIDS day in December.
One thing has bugged me this year though, and it’s this….I’ve been on many courses, attended quite a few conferences, and sat through numerous meetings this year and keep thinking…Why do many people giving presentations read from their powerpoint slides ? - as if the delegates aren’t capable of doing that themselves. Should not the slides just be what it says on the tin - powerful points from that particular strand of the presentation ? key facts and figures ? images illustrating and reinforcing an argument? If you are going to stand up and deliver a presentation or run a CPD course, please, please think about taking some lessons in presentational skills. If I taught my classes this way, my students would very soon switch off, and I do the same very quickly when assaulted with the voice of a presenter or speaker reading a powerpoint slide word for word.
So what’s up for next year then ? well, more GLOW, with training in school to continue, a GLOW video diary to start, the VLE/learn application to get up and running, and LA presentations. Extending our use of gaming in science teaching and learning and, fingers crossed and funding permitting, a P7/S1&2 ICT-gaming project to set up and run. Publication of my research paper results on raising attainment through ICT will be in July or August . Not giving too much away on this yet, but I will reveal some fairly significant attainment gains. I’m presenting the paper at this year’s Scottish Educational Research Association conference in Perth. Phase two of this research this year will involve detailed examination of the way in which using ICT/GLOW affects the classroom dynamic and pedagogy.
I’d like to say that all of these have been the highlights of my year, but if I’m honest, they have strong competition from seeing David Coverdale and Whitesnake last week. I’ve been a fan for thirty years now and seen him on nearly every tour and with every incarnation of the band. Here is his infamous ‘loose women’ interview..
Talking with my students over the past couple of weeks, the subject of what makes good lessons kept returning to the ‘f’ word… fun. We’ve been doing interviews discussing our experiences using GLOW and ICT this year and what the young people particularly like about their time in these classes is this element of fun that seems to be a characteristic of GLOW lessons. They like activity, using messaging whilst working on tasks, and the use of video and podcasts. We’ve been using science-based games for the last couple of months or so, loaded onto their GLOW group pages and they love these as well- We had at least five ‘plant millionaires’ during our lesson today ( a biology knowledge game based on the tv show) and they were getting quite competitive.
I guess what this is leading to is this - pupils think learning should be fun. Mine tell me that when learning is fun, they are thinking about what they are doing. When a lesson isn’t fun, they are thinking about when it’s going to end. Certainly today, the bell crept up on us unnoticed, whereas quite often in classes the lack of concentration and fidgeting kicks in at least 10-15 minutes before the end !
But do teachers think lessons should be fun? I still hear a lot of the ‘you’re here to learn’ and ’school’s hard work - it’s not meant to be fun’ type comments. Brian Boyd certainly thinks learning should be fun. Of course he wanted it to a part of ACfE…but was apparently told that to have done this would have been ’sending out the wrong message’ so there’s not the 5th capacity that he perhaps had in mind. Maybe using games is a way forward here. Kids prefer learning tasks which are fast, active, enquiry-based and which use multiple sources of information in parallel on which they can concentrate for short intensive bursts. Now, traditional school lessons may not meet these demands from today’s digital learners and surely we have to adapt teaching to suit the learners? young people today are not the same as they were ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. It never ceases to amaze me how adaptable kids are, so should us teachers not also try to be adaptable and flexible in our approach to lesson planning?
Research shows that learning and recall improve when the learner is performing motor activities, when developing skills is set in familiar contexts and when it engages, motivates and inspires pupils. I have certainly found this to be the case when working with my classes on GLOW and we are developing the use of games to reinforce existing learning as well as to introduce new concepts, and they love working this way. It’s a natural extension of our use of GLOW this year.
Derek Robertson at LTS is doing some really exciting and groundbreaking work in the area of gaming for education.. look out for him if you are going to the SFL in September.
Here is an extract from a speech given by Dylan Wiliam (”Inside the black box”) a couple of years ago. He was talking about getting teachers to change their classroom pedagogy with regard to formative assessment. He calls it gradualism
“Asking teachers to make wholesale changes in their practice is a little like asking a golfer to change her swing during a tournament. Teachers have to maintain the fluency of their classroom routines, while at the same time disrupting them. Teachers should develop an action plan that specifies a small number of changes — ideally two or three — that they will make in their teaching. As teachers establish new techniques in their practices, they can take on additional ones. For those in the school leadership team whose job it is to improve the quality of teaching, there will be a temptation to push teachers to change faster than they might otherwise do, but the result will only be a shallow adoption of the new practices while the teachers are being monitored. As soon as the supervision is relaxed, the teachers will revert to their earlier practices, and nothing will have been achieved”.
Is this how we should be proceeding with ICT/GLOW adoption in schools…. and would it work ?
Maybe there are parallels to be drawn between the adoption of initiatives like formative assessment and GLOW/ICT, even though they can be complementary, as I’ve written before. Here is the link to the complete speech from Dylan William..
So much of it hits home for me, but particularly section 4 in which he talks about “activating students as owners of their own learning” .
This speech could quite easily be talking about GLOW/ICT…and illustrates to me yet again how so much of what we are trying to do in schools is founded on a small core group of principles. Do we sometimes tend to over- complicate just what exactly we are working with kids for and indeed how we go about doing it?
Having been using GLOW in some form or other for over a year now and for seven months in teaching and learning with my classes I felt that it was time to reflect a little on where we might be going with it, and perhaps more importantly, the form this direction might or should take.
Since January, I’ve been doing some work under the ’sponsorship’ of the GTCS teacher researcher programme. Using the title of ‘Will the lights stay on?-embedding ICT into secondary school subject curricula’ I have been researching the recent history of ICT-initiatives such as GLOW in schools and the reasons behind the general failure of these initiatives to produce the transformative effect on teaching and learning expected by educational policy-makers and governments. It is certainly a controversial subject, but fascinating and depressing at the same time particularly when examining the plethora of literature wearing the ‘hats’ of both a classroom teacher and a researcher. Perhaps one of the main barriers to the more widespread adoption of ICT into teaching and learning, according to teachers anyway, is the that there is not enough time scheduled or planned for them to really get to grips with using which ever particular system or platform is being introduced, and that training is rushed and too technology focused rather than on pedagogy. There are of course many other factors to consider in winning the hearts and minds of teachers and getting them to engage with ICT and in this case, with GLOW.
This opens up a wider debate on just how to do this. Is the fact that well-planned use of ICT will raise attainment enough to convince teachers? or does it come down to having the investment in time and in the training? We now have GLOW mentors in most schools who have been trained on how to use GLOW itself, but are they being trained in how to use GLOW to enhance teaching and learning in the classroom. In other words, is their training technologically or pedagogically focused? because whatever it is will trickle down through a school as the mentors do their work with staff. Now that the mentors have been trained would each local authority, rather than having expensive central GLOW teams be better off investing the cost of these teams in paying for time in individual schools to work on how they want GLOW to be used in their particular and sometimes unique circumstances. Andrew Brown has blogged recently about this choice over the direction in which GLOW evolves in schools and nationally. Here is a link to his post on this..
Do we really need centrally-produced GLOW pages where the text sings and dances it’s way across the page in twenty different colours and languages? Will the corporate banner headings and specialised design features really persuade more teachers of the benefits of using GLOW? Or will it be the quality of the materials and debate within different GLOW groups which makes them indispensable teaching and learning tools in the classroom and beyond for pupils and teachers? Will the possibility of top-down management structures being imposed by local authority GLOW teams be a disincentive to teachers with vision, drive and a willingness to make GLOW and ICT work for their pupils in their schools and classrooms? I’m certainly on record as having warned against this particular developmental pathway, and indeed, my authority GLOW team used my thoughts on top-down management of GLOW as a quote in their presentation at the recent SLC curriculum conference for head-teachers. My experiences and observations during a recent study visit to Finland convinced me that this centralised control is unhealthy and unnecessary.
Is it now time to allow GLOW to develop organically, and in different directions according to an individual school’s particular identified needs and for schools to ask for help from other schools using GLOW effectively in their classrooms without the heavy hand of centralised control acting as ‘big brother’ on this exchange of ideas ? Is an army of ‘development officers’ in each authority across the country servicing a need or could it actually become an unnecessary drain on resources which could be better used by individual schools to develop their own GLOW direction and buy in their own training from outwith their own authority where they choose to…? Real creative subversion (a term of which I am very, very fond) in action…but real leadership with a vision for outcomes is needed in every individual school if this approach is to succeed
The answers to these questions will probably evolve as the months go by, particularly in the ‘early-adopter’ authorities who by now have much useful experience in setting up and using GLOW. My own research (or at least the 1st phase of it) will be published shortly and the project is continuing through to June 2009 to allow me to collect longer-term data on pupil attainment to standard grade through using GLOW/ICT. I will be presenting my findings so far at a national conference in the autumn later this year, showing how I have measured significant attainment gains achieved by pupils using GLOW. But will raising attainment alone be enough to drive forward wider use of GLOW/ICT ? Probably not. I suspect that this task will be a long drawn out affair indeed. But I for one am convinced that if we stick with it, if we keep the faith, GLOW will change the face of Scottish education irreversibly, and for the better.
I’m on study leave at the moment and in the course of my reading came across the work of Ann Brown who in 1992 first put forward the idea of an experimental methodology where there is a synergistic and concurrent relationship between a researcher, designer and participants in experimental studies, rather than the clear delineation that exists in the traditional scientific methodology. Brown developed this way of working specifically for use in educational settings to address the complexities of the classroom environment which can be highly situational (different pupil, staff, environments, curricular requirements, etc from location to location). It’s a flexible approach to research in which the design and process evolve as the research proceeds and allows for questions, interpretations and methodology to be continually refined as data is gathered. So design, research and practice proceed concurrently and this approach challenges the (scientific method) assumption that research is somehow contaminated by the external influence of the researcher (in other words, experimenter bias). In essence, researchers carrying out classroom-based research manage the process in collaboration with participants, design and implement systematic interventions which continually refine and enhance the original research design. This hopefully has the result of advancing the pragmatic or practical applications of the research as well as the theoretical aims, both of which may impact on future practice.
Our professional knowledge can only advance through good classroom-based research, peer-reviewed and founded on sound educational theories, however many teachers are put off or discouraged from carrying out such projects due to the strictures imposed by traditional scientific research methodologies. Might this more iterative approach taken by the design-based method be a way of encouraging more classroom practitioners from within the teaching profession to undertake work such as this rather than career academics who may at times be quite removed from the realities of everyday teaching and learning but who dominate the field of educational research at present ?
I’ve spent much of the past few weeks examining the quantitative aspects of embedding ICT into secondary school subject curricula for a research study I’m running as a part of the GTCS teacher researcher programme. Specifically, I am trying to measure any rise in attainment from a particular group of pupils who are using GLOW as the VLE delivery vehicle for ICT-based Biology materials. The results from this are looking very promising with some quite significant gains in attainment achieved by this class. Whether this can be maintained over a longer period of time is something that remains to be seen as is the cause of this gain. Is it due to the ICT input or is the use of GLOW in the classroom driving a shift in pedagogy ? the answer is probably that there is a transactional relationship between the two. I will be writing much more about this study over the coming months, but another significant aspect of this work which is much more difficult to record is the qualitative change, if any which might be taking place. Are the pupils more confident, collegiate, and motivated ? Now this could be quite difficult to quantify empirically with the necessary degree of accuracy demanded by such a study, and indeed much of the research into these qualitative indicators can verge on the anecdotal. However, today I saw what I believe to be evidence that the pupils’ use of GLOW regularly each week for the past few months has resulted in a change to the way they think and work. We were at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh on our annual Biology field trip. Part of the visit is spent in the education centre on various activities to do with plant structure and function. The kids move around various workstations completing tasks designed to teach them more about how plants work. I was sitting with a group of six pupils and watching them working. They were having a very animated discussion about how to solve a particular problem. All of them were involved, putting forward suggestions and commenting on each others ideas on how to solve the puzzle. Eventually they all reached an agreement of sorts and tried out the commonly agreed methodology, which resulted in a successful conclusion to the activity. Suzie, the eduction manager at the Botanical gardens had also been watching this from a little way away, and came over to talk to me. She commented on the way they had interacted as a group, and how well they had worked together to complete the task, particularly the quality of the pupil to pupil discourse. I thought that coming from someone who sees many groups of young people from all age groups and backgrounds , this was very significant. I have noticed a change in the way this class works (with a noticeable increase in peer-assisted learning) but, wary of ‘experimenter bias’ it was good that it was also evident to an independent observer. I think that the way they were working on this task was also evidence of them being….
successful learners
confident individuals
responsible citizens
effective contributors
So has their use of ICT/GLOW helped to deliver ACfE through the teaching and learning for this group of pupils ? Time will tell, but today’s experience and observations are certainly good evidence for this possibility. I have been able to record a big improvement in their problem-solving and critical thinking skills during this research study so far and maybe today’s observations are further confirmation of the qualitative evidence I referred to earlier in this post.
One other thing though. I have seen this type of pupil-pupil interaction recently….. in Finland during my study visit to Juha Kusela’s classroom in Sipoo, near Helsinki. He was certainly of the opinion that the use of ICT in his school encouraged this type of peer-assisted learning activity. This type of qualitative evidence is certainly something I will be starting to look at in more detail over the coming weeks and months as my research study continues to evolve.
As I’m thinking a lot about leadership at the moment, it really made me think about what makes a good school manager, and I have to say, I’m leaning very much towards Old Andrews view of things. What do you think ?
A couple of years ago,the case of the 11-year-old girl getting pregnant after a drunken night out on the town hit the headlines. I thought at the time that that was a shocking indictment of the state of sex education in schools. Predictably, the media attached the blame not only to her mother, but also to her teachers. And at the time I was forced to conclude that they may have had a point. This was bought sharply back to my mind by the latest abortion debate and statistics.
Just exactly what was she taught at her school about sex that left her with a disregard for her own body and emotional well-being? And why was the father-to -be, a youth of 15 we are told, behaving in such an irresponsible manner? Did they both know nothing about the dangers of unprotected sex?
The answers may lie in our national reluctance to address the teaching of this difficult subject matter through fear of causing controversy. Despite the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe and some of the worst infection rates for sexually transmitted diseases in the developed world, reactionary groups in Scotland, particularly the religious hierarchies, want to censor and control what little sex education there is in Scottish schools.
Many pupils are woefully ignorant of sex and the emotions that are intrinsically tied up with it (the young girl who was the subject of these latest reports actually believed that it was impossible to conceive during your first sexual experience). This is despite the guidance advising parents that their children will have had the chance to discuss issues such as sexuality and risks by the time they reach the middle years of secondary school.
While we rightly place great emphasis on anti-racist education, sex education and more particularly the emotional and consequential aspects of sexuality, are usually brushed under the carpet and relegated to the quiet months of the PSE course. Teachers are naturally reluctant to discuss these issues, especially those relating to sexuality, as many do not feel comfortable talking about such matters, particularly as most have not been trained to cover such sensitive material.
Much of this reluctance can be traced back to that fundamentally damaging and flawed excuse for legislation, Clause 2A. Even after it was scrapped by a courageous Wendy Alexander (in the face of the heinous actions of Brian Souter trying to buy a flawed opinion poll and the usual rabble of homophobic clergy) its legacy still remains. Teachers are afraid to discuss issues surrounding sexuality for fear that it will be inappropriate and against the law.
Every time something like this hits the newspapers, or there is some new proposal for addressing the piecemeal and inadequate sex education process, there are howls of protest from the so-called moral majority - or minority, as I prefer to describe them. This distracts attention from the real issues, those concerned with educating our young people to provide them with the tools to go out and take their place in the world; to be caring, responsible and productive members of society. Education about relationships and sexuality, about emotions and sexual health, is a vital part in this process.
Perhaps groups such as the Catholic Education Commission, so often highly critical of attempts to reform sex education in schools, should concentrate their efforts on the important business of teaching kids to take their place in a 21st century Scotland where the bigoted opinions of others stay firmly where they belong, in the past.
Glasgow City Council, for one, is taking ownership of some very important problems and trying to address them in a sensitive and informed way, with initiatives in conjunction with health and social care organisations.
The accusation a few years ago that the council breached guidelines set out in the Ethical Standards in Public Life Act (2000), by sending out a questionnaire to S3 pupils about their perceptions on sex and relationships, was laughable. This type of survey should be a vital component of the work done in schools as an integral part of learning and teaching. How else are we to deal with the fears, concerns and problems of young people? Rather than the criticism and abuse they received, again from the reactionary media and the church groups, the council and NHS Greater Glasgow deserved our full and unqualified support on this matter. Maybe if this type of approach had been adopted by the school attended by the 11-year-old mother-to-be, she might still be enjoying the remainder of her childhood instead of struggling to care for her own child.
The time has come for some radical thinking. Remove the responsibility for teaching this sensitive area of the curriculum from schools and hand it to visiting specialists, properly trained in how to handle the subject.
Expensive? Initially, yes of course, but how much money will be saved in the long run? Money at present spent on a social security system which has to pick up the pieces of damaged and ruined lives caused by a lack of education. Surely this cost to our society is the most shameful aspect of that whole sorry affair…
Listen to staffroom chat or read the pages and discussion boards of TES and you appear to get, at face value anyway, a sense of staff feeling overloaded with one so-called initiative after another coming down from on high. Be it GLOW, AiFL, or ACfE, the sense of despair can be at times very real. Now having come through my teacher training at the time of ‘Inside the Black Box’ I tried to develop a real sense of how such research can translate into the classroom. I try to look for the links between the different so-called innovations, and most of the time I think they all actually complement each other. Formative assessment for learning is one thing which dominates my own classroom having been convinced by the quantitative evidence from the Black/Wiliam study. Avoiding this innovation fatigue by developing an ethos of joined-up practice so that these innovations become interlinked is for me, one of the major roles of school leaders. Looking through the HMIE ‘Journey to Excellence’ site last week, I found the following paragraph…
Leaders have a coherent vision of what is important to a school and its community and innovate in line with that vision. They guide and manage that pace of change. They win hearts as well as minds. They understand that change management is all about people learning and adopting new ideas and changing practice. They develop project-management at all levels. They avoid overload, innovation fatigue, and potential division amongst staff.
As a late entrant to teaching coming from the retail business, it speaks volumes to me about how to create a leadership culture in a school that is horizontal rather than top-down. Staff empowered with the confidence to innovate, make links between initiatives, lead, and think creatively and with collegiality about the best ways to do their jobs.
Having worked in schools both here and abroad I have seen that this ideal is not always the reality, but sometimes it can happen. I know that I and many of my colleagues are feeling tremendously empowered by the new leadership ethos in our school which has developed over the past year. This is in itself an innovation which needs to be managed so that staff feel comfortable with starting to take on unfamiliar roles which can take them out of the comfort zones in which they have operated for perhaps quite a while. There are huge untapped reservoirs of talent in many of our schools. Developing the leadership skills necessary to tap into this is vital to the future success of education in this country.
I was going to write a post summarising my study visit to Finland last week (more to come on that in a few days time) but today, I attended a Psychology seminar at Stirling University. It gave me a rare chance to really focus on some of the actual material that I teach for a change, as so much of my work for the past two years or so has been on cross-curricular, pedagogic, and whole-school projects. It was really good to do some CPD related to my second teaching subject which is Psychology and to discuss the theoretical and research material with other psychologists and post-grads.
Of course being me, potential applications to teaching and learning were never far from my mind as the day progressed. I think teaching psychology gives me a very useful insight into the cognitive processes which underlie my classroom practice and much of my work is based on using this knowledge to structure the activities my pupils work on during lessons.
Today, an interesting concept jumped out from the lectures and discussions which I can see myself using and this is the idea of ‘elaborative rehersal’. Put simply, its a way of moving from superficial to deep learning. You think of 5 concepts or terms from a topic and list them. You then have to write something about each of the 5. You repeat this another two times, explaining each new addition and forming a chain originating from each of the original 5 terms, and hopefully end up with an accurate regeneration of material previously learned. In other words, you are actively generating content on a specific topic area.
I can see lots of collaborative possibilities here in the classroom. I can also see how this would work well using GLOW meet, where the pupils could each have a whiteboard and ask for help using the instant messaging if they need a prompt or an idea for the 5 concepts or themes they are working on. They could of course contribute to each others whiteboards. It would also work well with two classes in different schools coming together in GLOW meet, one class starting of with their 5 themes, the other class adding something for each of the 5 and then handing back to the originating class for further input, and so on.
This builds upon psychological theories of memory of course, particularly declarative memory and retrieval. Translating theory into classroom practice is all about taking risks I think, about moving out of your comfort zones and trying new strategies to engage the learners.
And sometimes those risks can pay off !
The Last day of my study visit to Finland was spent looking at how teachers are supported in their use of ICT in schools. First of all, I had a meeting with Lasse Lipponen from the University department of Education. He explained to me how teachers are trained in Finland, and the necessity for them to have a master’s-level degree taking 5 years to complete. We talked about the challenge of integrating ICT pedagogy into an already crowded curriculum and discussed how the use of informal social networking and blogs can be a good way of helping teachers in training to begin to consider how they can key into their students’ use of ICT’s in a way which enhances their teaching. I think there is also another important element to this informal networking worth considering, which is how it can help to inform individual and collective practice. I know I find our network of education blogs and the comments we make on each other’s blogs immensely supportive both personally and professionally. Could these web 2.0 tools become a useful adjunct to teacher training and post-graduate CPD? An informal bottom-up initiative that continues to grow each week as an antidote to top-down managed education initiatives. Worth considering maybe….
The title of this post is taken from an information leaflet describing the work of the Helsinki Media Centre. Liisa Huovinen, the leader of the centre gave me a guided tour of this amazing place which has fully-equipped sound recording and video production studios as well as ICT facilities. The media centre, part of the city education department provides support and training for schools and teachers in all aspects of using technology. Their website explains more about their work, and includes a great introductory video….
Liisa explained in some detail how the centre works to support the development of ICT in schools. She explained some of their past and present projects, including their new VLE (very similar to GLOW). This uses the Norwegian developed ‘Fronter’ software to create a flexible and versatile learning platform for all schools in Helsinki. Its also used in London. If you want to know more, check it out on….
http://fronter.info/com/
The centre works with schools on a consultancy basis, first engaging with the school’s leaders, and then helping them to set their ICT goals, manage the change, and provide training both on the technology and the pedagogy involved for the school and administrative staff. They can help schools to link up (for benchmarking purposes) and identify specialist trainers (who may be experienced teachers from other schools). It is this type of focused, technological and pedagogical support that has driven forward the transformation of teaching and learning in Finnish schools and indeed continues to do so.
As with my discussions at the National Board of Education earlier in the week, I was struck by the level of importance attached to the training and support for schools and teachers, particularly the emphasis on the pedagogics involved in teaching with ICT. I’m talking here about experienced teachers who still teach providing training for others in the new classroom practices which actually work successfully to enhance teaching and learning. These decisions, taken at national and city/LA level appear to have translated into good practice in Finland’s schools (at least if you consider the latest PISA rankings). If you think about our own system in Scotland, might there be too much emphasis on the technology rather than the pedagogy ? And does the roll-out of GLOW need much more input at least at local level in schools towards training teachers to use it effectively ? Personally, I think this is where GLOW will either stand or fall and the pressure in schools for ‘efficiency’ savings at the same time as the introduction of such a potentially transformative initiative like GLOW could be seen as rather short-sighted and a false economy at that.
Time, as always, will tell.
Another very interesting and productive day yesterday here in Finland. I visited another school, this time a lower secondary. I spoke with a number of teachers and students, observed a maths class and looked in detail about how this school uses ICT to enhance teaching and learning. A much more measured approach here – evolving practice and capacity-building amongst staff. Many strong views about the usefulness of ICT and the LA approach. This area is going for ‘Smart boards’ in a big way, with five waiting installation in school. I used to really like these but I’ve modified my opinions a little. Whilst they can enhance the classroom experience for the pupils, they can also result in a very teacher-centred approach in secondary schools unless lessons are planned very carefully and the students get a chance to use the whiteboards for multi-media presentations. I like being able to save anything you do on the whiteboard – what I don’t like is the printing off and copying of this saved work for students which could be e-mailed or posted in a VLE common area.
Plenty of ICT used to enhance language teaching here as well.
I spent the late afternoon and evening meeting some of the researchers at the University of Helsinki Centre for Networked learning and knowledge Building. They are heavily involved in investigating the use of ICT in teaching and learning and also in many pan-European projects and research. Here is the link to their publications page…
I would recommend a look at some of their work. It makes for very interesting reading. Amongst other things, I wanted to discuss their work on learning objects and the cross-curricular possibilities these templates might have for use within GLOW. We had a fantastic discussion about the whole area of technologies in teaching and continued it over dinner in a great Finnish seafood restaurant. Fantastic food to eat and much food for thought besides. I am extremely grateful to Liisa Ilomaki, Minna Lakkala, and Sami Paavola for taking the time out of their busy schedules to meet with me, and to Liisa in particular for her help in arranging my schedule of visits here in Finland.
Today was characterised by a thoughtful and cautious approach to ICT in school as well as the application of scientific and critical academic principles to research into the many issues involved in this area of our work. Leaning much more towards the evolutionary rather than revolutionary viewpoint, and different to my own view of this debate up to now anyway.
One thing today really hit home with me today and that was the importance of classroom-based methodologically sound and peer-reviewed research to inform and influence the long-term planning of our education policies and processes. I just hope that the work I am currently undertaking can live up to these high expectations.
I had a great day today, you know the sort of day I mean. One where all the thoughts and debates you’ve had about the way you’d like to work are vindicated by seeing someone else actually putting this into practice. I visited an upper secondary school in Sipoo, a town to the west of Helsinki yesterday morning. The school, and in particular the teacher who hosted my visit have driven forward the use of ICT across the curriculum in a way that has transformed the pedagogy in the classrooms. Juha, the Biology / Geography teacher is justifiably proud of his modern new school and classroom which has been designed around and to facilitate teaching and learning. A computer at every desk, all networked and linked to the teacher. Desks arranged in clusters of four, facing each other to facilitate collaboration, ceiling-mounted data-projectors (are you listening, SLC ?) big screen, and a document / text-book projection system…
Juha has developed the use of Moodle as the platform the school uses to deliver its course content and administration. Individual courses are within the school site containing all the work for each course, delivered in a variety of ways including lectures, discussions, student presentations and both independent and collaborative work. Juha uses the terms ’blended learning’ and ‘meld’ to describe this pedagogical approach. I found this definition later when thinking about what I’d seen that day…
Blended Learning is learning that is facilitated by the effective combination of different modes of delivery, models of teaching and styles of learning, and founded on transparent communication amongst all parties involved with a course.(Heinze, A. and C. Procter (2004).
All the students were very clear on what was required of them for success. They had guidelines for methods from their teacher and deadlines for submission of work. Mind-mapping software allows the students to think out key concepts following introductory teaching on a subject area , and wikis are created (linked to a glossary created by the student explaining important new words) for more in-depth coverage including student - designed questions on the subject matter. The students can see and comment on each others work using this system, and Juha can see everyone’s activities from his computer, even changing URL’s and messaging to bring pupils back on task where necessary! A record of activity for each student is created, including work done outside of lessons. The teacher can move around the class helping individual students or getting involved in small group discussions where appropriate. All this leads to ‘deep’ rather than ’superficial’ learning of subject material and is reflected in the assessment regime Juha has developed which allocates half of the marks for the summative element, and the other half for the process involved in the learning (evidence gathered from each student’s moodle work record). I saw similar uses of this approach in language teaching, including the use of wikis and some impressive new language lab software on which the teachers were being trained (this school offers English, Swedish, French, German, and is introducing Spanish next year !). Open-source software like Moodle and its use here has interesting comparisons to be made with the future use of GLOW Learn.
I spoke with many of the students and staff who were very much in favour of this way of working. The atmosphere permeating the school was relaxed (no uniforms for either students or staff, and first names used by all) and the ethos was one of empowering students with responsibility for their own learning and treating them as young adults. The interaction between students and staff was informal and positive in both the social areas and classrooms. I came away with the impression that I had seen the type of education I would have wanted my children to have had. Clearly the school and the teaching had been designed with the student absolutely at the centre of everything. Students were even able to take courses independently via the school Moodle site, and the school was almost paperless, with the system taking care of all administration (Juha could even SMS his students’ mobiles to remind them of an impending deadline - a whole class in less than a minute). The small photocopier was tucked away in a corner room, hardly used!.
I had a meeting later at the National Board of Education to give me a national perspective on the use of ICT. I will probably write more about this later, but the feel I got was of the significance of government backing and funding for good-quality training for teachers to meet the challenge of teaching their digitally-native pupils.
Getting back to my hotel later, I relaxed in the sauna thinking what a good place it was to reflect on the day’s observations. Looking out from this rooftop hot-room over the sights of Helsinki, it crossed my mind that I should be putting down my thoughts and that the Finns should probably have come up with some way of getting computer access into the sauna. But then I thought better of it - why would they do that? No need you see, because the whole culture here is built on an approach that like the teaching and learning in Juha’s classroom is also ‘blended’. A time and a place for everything. Finland is a country with an outward looking populace (language education as well as technology is an important part of this) taking the best from the past and mixing it up with the promise of the future. Real joined up attitudes indeed…
I have the evening to acclimatize before starting my programme of visits tomorrow so I thought I’d take the chance to do a little bit of exploring. Its a very strange feeling, being here, alone, in a strange city, and it suddenly struck me as I looked at bus and train timetables whilst finding out how to get to the schools I’m visiting, that this is all a little scary. It’s a long time since I did something like this on my own, so I thought perhaps I should get some practice in. Off I went, guide book in hand, bought a ticket from the machine and jumped on a tram. It’s supposed to be a great way of seeing Helsinki….and it was. The guide book tells you how you can save 25 Euros by doing the 3T tram circular route rather than the official bus tour, as this tram passes all the sights and landmarks. And the book was correct. I had a great hour or so scooting around the city taking in all the tourist sights. The Finns are really friendly, a couple of them taking the time to point out things of interest as the tram trundled around the city. Its a beautiful one as well, very clean with loads of open spaces, wide streets, and hardly any high-rise buildings. You can see the sky all of the time.
Having developed the mother of all colds over the weekend, I got off the tram by a pharmacy to get some medicine, and then I spotted it - McDonalds ! in fact there are shedloads of them here, and I just couldn’t resist I’m afraid. One meal-deal later and I’m back on the tourist trail, and just to prove I’m not a total philistine, here is a photo of the national Museum…
In the morning, I’m off to visit an upper secondary school in Sipoo, a town about 30 KM to the east of Helsinki that specialises in using ICT to enhance teaching and learning in all of the subject curricula. It will be really interesting to see how they managed to get to this stage, and compare this to the situation in Scottish secondary schools.
I’m on my way at last - and sitting writing this post in Schipol aiport, Amsterdam. Got a change of flight here, long enough to get bored but not long enough for a wee spin around the town. Lots of things flying around, screaming kids, and stressed-out adults. So very much like school then.
Got a three hour flight to Helsinki and I’m absolutely shattered after a 5 oclock start from Glasgow.
I did a lesson with my S3 Biology class on Thursday which didn’t go to plan. So as is usual for me, I sat down later (well, this morning actually) to try and put my thoughts about this in some kind of order. And when I started to do this the realisation that it actually went quite well hit home.
It was a GLOW lesson. Usual routine; pupils arrive, log onto GLOW, and find a news item from me on their pupil page with lesson learning objectives attached. After we had gone through these together, they all opened up their class GLOW group page, located the folder with the day’s work (detailing how to achieve the learning objectives) and started to watch a video which set the tone for the lesson -people dressed as Orang-U-Tangs protesting about the destruction of habitats due to over-production of Palm oil. Suitably amused, and engaged, they followed a link to a virtual botanical garden tour and started to complete a web-quest which comprised a series of questions about the different uses of plants and plant materials. They had to travel around the virtual tropical garden, locate plants which revealed information, and decide on the correct use of that particular plant to man. They each joined GLOW meet and imported their word docs containing the questions and their answers. They were soon checking out each others whiteboards and helping each other and the usual classroom banter continued on the instant messaging section of ‘meet’.
I moved around the room helping pupils where necessary. They had two other tasks to complete as well as the web quest ( watching another video about endangered plants and commenting about this on the discussion board). They all got really engrossed in this first task, and I have to admit, so did I, being kept busy answering questions and prodding a few in the right direction. The kids were pushing each other on as well. When I did do a time-check, I had to move them onto the next tasks and we didn’t all get the chance to post on discussions. I was a little concerned that we might not have achieved all our lesson objectives but the plenary questioning at the end revealed that the pupils had applied the knowledge gained from the first task and had started to think about the consequences of destroying plant habitats in terms of losing potential medicines and foods for the future. They all saved their whiteboard work and we will re-visit this task again and complete it next time we use GLOW.
I am finding more and more that using GLOW is helping my pupils to develop abstract and critical thinking skills and this has been evident in their credit level assessment scores. Their social skills are also developing well evidenced by the increasing level of peer-to-peer instruction and assistance that is now taking place.
Although I was worried a little that the lesson had lost its way, the actual situation was that the pupils had taken control of the learning and teaching and used it to their advantage. All of my lesson objectives had been met (important when pushing through a standard grade course) and the pupils had applied their Biology to the real world. When considered in the light of ACfE, they certainly were successful learners and effective contributors, communicating in different ways, settings and in partnership. They took the initiative, solved problems and applied critical thinking well. As confident individuals they managed their own pace of learning and helped each other and as responsible citizens they developed informed views of the environmental and ethical issues involved in managing or destroying the rainforests after evaluating the evidence presented. And as someone else who was observing in class that day pointed out, they were totally engaged and concentrating for the whole 55 minutes of the lesson.
So maybe things didn’t go as wrong as I thought after all. Or maybe my judgement as to the success or failure of a lesson is less important than the views of the pupils. Having given them a clear set of learning intentions, a road-map for achievement and the tools to use, should I begin to trust them more to put it all together and finish the job in hand, asking me for assistance if necessary? Surely this is what ACfE is all about?
I’ve written before about how using GLOW changes my role in the classroom. Reflecting on this particular lesson has emphasised, to me anyway, how significant this change in role might actually be for my pupils and how important and powerful the reflective process is to my understanding of teaching and learning…
I came across this video earlier today and just had to laugh - it reminded me so much of my grandson. The way he’s going, he will soon be teaching me how to do stuff on my pc !
Great !
But seriously, these are the kids we teach at the moment and will teach in the future. So at home with technology they take it for granted. I’m constantly amazed at the things I can do with my computers. I just hope I never lose the buzz and sense of excitement I get from learning how to do new stuff like Animoto, for example. And what a challenge to keep the digital natives sitting in front of us in the classroom everyday engaged and motivated by our use of technology in teaching and learning. Its a tough gig keeping up wih the natives. But fun !
I recently came across an award-winning blog post from Karl Fisch which poses the following question…
‘Is it okay to be a technologically illiterate teacher ?’ Fisch is clearly of the opinion that it is not. He goes on to make this rather bold statement..
“If a teacher today is not technologically literate - and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more - it’s equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn’t know how to read and write”.
I think that this is a debate that is going to rear its head more and more often over the coming months in Scotland as GLOW is rolled out in LA’s and schools across the country. Is there really such a sharp digital divide through our profession ? and perhaps more importantly, is this divide also apparent in the intentions and aspirations of Scottish teachers with regard to ICT use within subjects and schools?
I was at our LA head teacher’s conference today, and there was a significant part of the day devoted to GLOW. Many of the assembled throng were keen to see how it could be taken forward in their schools, but there were issues raised about access to computers or lack of hardware. Now, GLOW can be used in lessons as a focus for activity, stimulating group work , demonstrating pupils’ work, video-conferencing without necessarily getting each pupil logged onto their own machine. Creative subversion comes into play here, with the teacher using the available tools to enhance teaching and learning. Using the available resources. Because we don’t live in an ideal world and we have to work with what we’ve got sometimes rather than what we might want. To quote from the Rolling Stones…
“You can’t always get what you want…but if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need”.
Now I think the problem some people at the conference today had was that they could not get past the perception of GLOW as an ICT/Computer issue. It has to be viewed as just another set of teaching and learning tools available for teachers to use, and to help them deliver A Curriculun for Excellence. And sometimes the form our use of GLOW takes might not be what the original designers and developers envisaged or what LA managers might want but the important thing is that it works in the particular teacher’s classroom at any particular moment in time for the benefit of the pupils. I think the work of my SLC colleague Caroline Gibson with her use of GLOW with her primary class is a fantastic example of this creativity (check her Blog - link on the blog-roll to the right). And I’ve met many others who are doing great work all over the country.
The literature review for my research on embedding ICT into secondary school subjects has thrown up some interesting stuff about this resistance to change. Amongst this was a paper by Cuban who used the phrase ‘dominant cultural norms’ to describe the ethos in some subject departments which impacted negatively on attempts to introduce ICT and acted to neutralise development. This of course has a major impact on student teachers and probationers who need to see ICT in action enhancing the classroom experience for the pupils in these subjects. Fisch has some suggestions for dealing with this, as well as other issues surrounding the use, or lack of it, of ICT in our schools. Here is the link to his post..
I don’t think I would want to go completely down the Fisch route, (although he makes some good points about a professional responsibilty to regularly update our skills) but I do think we are in a battle for hearts and minds on this. There is no going back with GLOW and it will change the face of Scottish education. The lights are on and they are not going to be extinguished. The political will to deliver has been demonstrated and Scotland is unique in having its own schools intranet. How do we build on this?
Those of us who have been involved in the roll out of GLOW need no persuasion. Our SLC headteachers have now seen the kit in action. What we have to do is engage them in the process of winning the hearts and minds of our colleagues. This partnership-leadership will be crucial for individual school roll-outs. The influence and support of our Headteachers could advance the progress of GLOW in schools significantly. Lets hope we’ve made some progress in further cementing this alliance today.
I recently came across an award-winning blog post from Karl Fisch which poses the following question…
