Network.Ed

In dependence

José Picardo — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 20:13:01 +0000

The quest for independent learning is schools has always appeared to me to be intrinsically paradoxical. Like flying in birds or swimming in fish, it seems to me that dependence is in a school’s nature.

The culture in schools is one of dependence. Students need to attend school; they need to come to our lessons; they need to do as we say; and they need to pass the exams we set. Students are dependent. On us.

The odd teacher will, on occasion, notice that not all is well and will strive to inject some independence into their ailing students in order to slow down the onset of the chronic dependence. At this stage school committees might be set up in order to find out more about this devastating condition and teachers will spend hours discussing what they need do to fight the problem of dependence amongst their students.

But this reminds me the often quoted story of the drunk man looking for his lost keys at night under a street light. When a helpful passer-by enquires, the drunk tells him he that, in fact, he lost his keys further down the street. Puzzled by his response, the passer-by suggests that he might have better luck if he looked for the keys further down the street, where he lost them. But the drunk, convinced by his own logic, shakes his head and says “but here is where the light is”.

It seems to me that, perhaps, we need to look beyond the clarity of what is familiar and let the patient tell us where it hurts and what shape they might want the remedy to take. I wonder then whether, if we are truly serious about independent learning, what we really need to do is to allow and encourage our students to independently design and implement an independent learning programme. But only if we’re serious.

Just a thought. What do you think?

Many thanks to Marc-Olivier Maheu for his photograph.

The next big thing

José Picardo — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 16:57:01 +0000

Last week I was accused of being a luddite. Me. A luddite. This came about after I was critical of Google Glass, which apparently is the next big thing .

When I first saw the amazing video Google has produced to promote Glass, my jaw dropped. Science fiction had become science fact. Truly astonishing stuff. However, as a short-sighted, fashion-conscious, daily glasses-wearer, I immediately started having doubts about its practicality. Would I want to wear Glass all the time? If I took it off, would it fold neatly into your shirt’s pocket? Would I really want to talk to a computer I’m wearing on my nose in public? On the bus? Walking along the street? And, wouldn’t I look like an idiot wearing it?

To my surprise, I found I wasn’t so worried about Google’s plans for monetizing Glass, or about privacy concerns or about where this technology might lead us. Instead I found myself worrying about fashion, vanity and practicalities and my conclusion was that no, I probably would not want to wear Glass in most circumstances. For me, a small tablet device is still the best option. So I said so. And thus I became a luddite.

The truth is that I rather like the sort of company that Google is becoming: creative, innovative, bold and brave. Apple is reputedly also trying to come up with the next big thing, which, for them, apparently is a wrist watch. But this comes just as fewer and fewer of us feel the need to wear a watch at all. Try this: next time you’re in school ask for a show of hands if your students are wearing a wrist watch. I bet you only very few hands will go up, if any at all.

Cue then Google vs Apple rivalry, which is when things get really silly and we start behaving like small children in a playground – my dad’s Apple is bigger than your Google – and we begin to lose sight of what the next big thing really is, which isn’t a pair of bionic glasses or even a speaking wrist watch. The next big thing is that access to the social internet is no longer limited to the little tablet in your pocket (or the big tablet in your bag). So, let’s not get mired in and diverted by pointless tribal arguments and let’s start exploring the enormously massive implications for our schools of ubiquitous internet access.

For what’s it’s worth, here’s what I really think of Glass: I applaud Google for innovating and pushing the boundaries with concepts such as Glass. However, I don’t think Glass is the next big thing. When I see Glass, I can’t help but think of Segway, another fantastic leap forward in innovation that was only ever widely adopted by shopping centre security guards, sight-seeing operators and the odd airport.

I know, famous last words. What do you think?

Many thanks to John Kannenberg for his photograph.

Vantage Point

José Picardo — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 17:09:40 +0000

I remember my introduction to Astronomy was an artist’s impression of the solar system which hung modestly in the corridor outside my classroom. It was a large poster with jagged crumple lines which traversed it like a lightning strike, revealing the white paper beneath the printed layer and culminating in a big tear in one of its corners which someone, long ago, had tried to fix with sticky tape.

When it came to the solar system, I remember my teacher was only interested in making me recite the names of all the planets in order, according to their distance from the Sun. Mercury was first and Pluto, which in those days was a fully fledged planet, was last. If it weren’t for that old poster, my interest in our Solar System would have dissipated immediately after the test.

However, the serene marbled Earth and the orange fiery ball of the Sun at the centre of the poster managed to spark tremendous curiosity in me and prompted me to find out more about the universe. So off to the library I went. That day I took home a book on Astronomy that created the most enormous rift between what I thought I knew and what really there was to know. It put me, my life and, literally, my world in perspective and, boy, was I small.

The book began by shrinking the Earth to the size of an orange. At this scale, it continued, the Moon would be a ping pong ball orbiting at just about two meters away and the Sun would be a beach ball eight meters in diameter standing about a kilometre away. Mind-boggling, but it didn’t stop there. It went on to compare the Sun’s size to that of other known stars – as you can see in the illustration, above – and that’s when I realised that I – that no one – could never, ever, hope to know more than a minuscule fraction of what there is to know and that pretending otherwise is either immensely foolish or astronomically disingenuous.

My perspective was changed forever by this realisation and, to this day, I try to remember this moment of revelation whenever circumstances make it appear as if there is only one possible course of action. It is said your vantage point determines what you can see, so I always try to take a step back and zoom out to reveal the bigger picture and, with it, a fuller story that can help me make better decisions.

Picture from Wikipedia Commons.

Alternative reality

José Picardo — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 21:24:31 +0000

Earlier this week I led a seminar for PGCE students at Nottingham University on the use of the internet and its potential for encouraging pupils’ creativity. To start, I asked those present to put their hands up if they used the internet daily. All hands went up. I then asked them to keep their hands up if their pupils used the internet on a daily basis. After a moment’s thought, all hands stayed up.

However, when I asked the PGCE students – who had all finished their first teaching placement – to keep their hands up if they had planned or been encouraged to plan lessons, sequences of lessons or homework that required the use of the internet, all hands went down. Isn’t it curious, I asked them, that all of you and and all of your students use the internet daily but none of you exploit its potential for teaching, learning and creativity? Isn’t it curious that schools force their students to inhabit this alternative reality for six or seven hours every day where the internet doesn’t exist?

Internet Access – Households and Individuals. Office for National Statistics

According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2012, 80% of households in Great Britain (21 million households) had internet access, compared with around 40% in 2002¹. Society has understood the utility of being online and, as a result, the number of us who can access the internet from home has doubled in 10 years.

Percentage of students in whose household there is a computer able to connect to the internet

My own research indicates that 98% of my students has a computer at home with access to the internet (56% has their own computer in addition to the household’s main computer). More importantly perhaps, 73% of my students owns a smartphone which is also able to connect to the internet.

These statistics are overwhelming, as is the unrelenting, exponential growth in the number of people who view the internet as a by-product of living in the developed world². That’s you, me and, of course, our students.

So why do we force our students into a parallel universe, an alternative, internet-free reality? If the internet were so bad, surely people wouldn’t use it, would they? But they do. In their millions. For the good of us all.

So the problem becomes obvious: we can drag our feet all we like, but, in reality, there is no alternative.

Many thanks to James Jordan for this great photograph

Rethinking professional development

José Picardo — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 20:25:45 +0000

The work of a teacher is both challenging and complex and requires high standards of professional competence and commitment. However, research shows that formal professional development may not be the optimum means by which such high standards of professional competence can be achieved. The principal reason for this is that traditional CPD tends to be based on one-off events¹ that can often be a solitary activity and can seem remote from colleagues, students and classroom practice in general².

Many teachers have begun to diverge from only using traditional CPD provision and started to address their individual and collective professional learning needs – which can often be perceived as being different by management – effectively by seeking informal professional development opportunities. An alternative model of regular peer-to-peer professional learning meetings – sometimes referred to as TeachMeets or Show and Tell sessions – is beginning to emerge as a more successful, supportive and motivating way of sharing best teaching practice with the aim of improving overall teaching and learning. Such bottom-up professional learning is more likely to be followed up and to result in innovative practices that are successfully embedded and sustained³.

We are all fortunate to teach alongside excellent teachers whose expert practice could benefit the wider school but often remains confined to their classrooms due to the relative inefficacy and limited opportunities offered by lesson observations. Thus, we would benefit from exploring ways to share highly relevant expertise amongst our colleagues that are not tinged with the negative connotations often associated with lesson observations and other “institutionalised” means of professional development.

Proposed methodology

Having established that staff may have both needs and wants for development, and that the nature of the professional development needs as identified by individual teachers may differ from those identified by their management teams, it becomes important to be able offer our teachers the means through which their individually identified needs can be met. This can take many forms: making presentations to colleagues; observing other teachers; finding out what is happening in other schools; establishing networks and, just as important, casual conversations with colleagues⁴.

Therefore, creating an environment in which such bottom-up, teacher-led, peer-to-peer professional development can thrive would become the main objective of this rethinking of the professional development that takes place in our schools, which could be achieved at different levels in the following ways:

At departmental level – organisers would work with individual Departments or groups of subject-related Departments to identify existing best practice and help facilitate its dissemination within or across Departments, as appropriate, through especially adapted Departmental meetings, which I will refer to as Show and Tell sessions (although I could just as easily refer to them as TeachMeets). Such meetings would take place at intervals established by the Departments themselves (though holding them on a half-termly basis appears to be working well in my own setting). This would enhance the quality of departmental meetings, developing a clear learning rather than administrative focus.
At school level – organisers would work with teaching staff would to identify perceived professional development needs and group them thematically so that themed school-wide Show and Tell meetings can be organised to meet individually identified professional development needs and to disseminate best practice across the wider school. Such meetings would be envisaged to take place termly, perhaps, though not necessarily, during INSET, and would be supporting the discussions of existing teaching and learning groups and committees in our schools.
Beyond the school – organisers would work to bring together colleagues from different schools (perhaps schools belonging to the same group of schools or academies, or schools with the same specialisms) on an annual basis with a view to exchange teaching practices and thus explore ways in which familiar problems can be tackled in innovative ways, essentially applying the successful TeachMeet and Show and Tell format to each of our settings and thus expanding the successful circuit of contextually relevant and participant-driven conferences that actually tackles the issues our colleagues care most about.

Organisers would work to facilitate teacher-led, peer-to-peer professional development opportunities in which teachers take centre stage to share their own practice, experience and expertise with one another. These organisers need not be members of the management or leadership team, especially at departmental level (in fact, it might be wise of management to steer clear at this level so as to avoid the negative implications to which I referred above).

However, I do think that, if we want this kind of truly continuing professional development to take root and flourish as a culture both at whole school level and beyond the school, senior leadership would need to adopt this model of professional development as a strategic aim of the school and would need to oversee its school-wide implementation (perhaps at Assistant Head or Director of Teaching and Learning level).

It is important to emphasise once more the difference between formal (as identified by Line Managers and SMT) and informal (as identified by individual teachers) professional development needs. One would not substitute the other, but rather they would compliment each other. Although it is possible that there may be a coinciding of formal and informal developmental needs, we ought to be cautious about enforcing a link to formal professional review or performance management, though we should not discount or discourage the obvious connection between the two models, should colleagues wish to link them.

These thoughts are very much still in the making and I would very much welcome your views and advice.

If the subject of CPD (and how it could be done better) interests you, I recommend you read David Noble’s Technologies for Career Long CPD, which I used as my starting point for this research.

Photogragh by Ian Usher

Is social media unfit for academic purposes?

José Picardo — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 09:26:28 +0000

Students who have entered secondary education in the last two years can’t remember life before social media. Despite this, the schools tasked with their education often fail to grasp the important role that social media plays, not only in the private lives of their students, but also in the wider school community.

In this context, young people’s use of social media tends to be unfairly misrepresented and very unfavourably portrayed by schools and teachers who, perhaps, feel constrained by the circumstances and pressures in which they work and who might fear a loss of control leading to a capitulation to what they perceive as a preference for immediacy among the current generation of students. The overall conclusion is often that social media is a disruptive force which further erodes academic rigour and undermines the teacher’s traditional role and relevance, thus proving in the eyes of many sceptics that social media is unfit for academic purposes.

The problem may be that still prevailing in the minds of very many teachers is that most insidious of false dichotomies: you can have technology or you can have academic rigour, but, apparently and for some unexplained reason, you can’t have them both simultaneously. This kind of thinking is generally extended to social media, which many teachers blame for an alleged absence of self-control and lack of focus in the current generation of students, as if these traits were absent in previous generations of students. If the technology is being misused or abused, it surely stands to reason that we, as educators, should teach our students to use it appropriately so that that instances of misuse can be minimised and its potential to enhance and even transform the way we teach and learn can be explored.

However, this exploration necessitates that school leaders understand that the internet and social media have come to play a very important role in all of our lives and that this bright, colourful and engaging new way of transmitting information and creating knowledge is here to stay. With this in mind, schools ought to examine their social media policies in a different, more positive light and begin to develop organic policies that deal, not just with the abuse, but also with the appropriate use of this new medium so that its potential to deliver innovative teaching and learning practices and improved communication across the whole school community can be developed.

What do you think?

Photograph by D Hull

The last laugh

José Picardo — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 19:38:41 +0000

A Level results came out last week. In a year which has seen the number of top grades reduced nationally for the first time in decades, Nottingham High school – my school – has seen, not only a continuing improvement, but its best results ever (72% A*-A), a feat that saw us move up to the top ten independent schools in the country.

In Spanish – the subject I teach and for which I am directly responsible – our results have also been our best ever (88% A*-A; 100% A*-B). Few of my students would have believed this possible at the beginning of Year 10, when they could barely say their names and where they lived with any confidence at all! Four years on, thanks to their hard work and dedication to the subject, they have done themselves – and me – very proud indeed.

It was during these four years that I began to research the transformational potential of social media and and ICT in general and to apply some of my findings to my teaching practice. Many fantastic things happened during those four years: my wife and I had another boy, my work in technology integration started to be recognised nationally and internationally, I was fortunate to be promoted to Head of Modern Foreign Languages and I gained a Masters Degree in ICT and Education.

However, during that time there have also been plenty of those who have questioned my approach for having the audacity to suggest that social media in general – and social networking in particular – could be harnessed by schools to be potentially beneficial to both teaching and learning.

Still prevailing in most schools and the minds of very many teachers is that most insidious of false dichotomies: you can have technology or you can have academic rigour, but not both simultaneously. Take the use of smartphones as an example of this false dichotomy: texting was once the sworn enemy of proper English and literacy, however, in a time when we are writing more than ever in all kinds of devices (Ofcom has confirmed that text has overtaken voice in the UK in mobile telephony) the suggestion that writing more will somehow have a negative effect on literacy seems ludicrous.

When it comes to social media, the story is a similar one. Many teachers have ridiculed the current generation of students because of an alleged absence of self-control, lack of focus and a preference for immediacy, caused by the use of technology. Particularly unfit for academic purposes seems to be social networking, which frequently tops the bugbear list.

But there are those who think that there is such an obvious symbiotic relationship between social networking as a means of communication, collaboration and cooperation and learning in the school environment that teachers would be unwise to disregard its potential so out of hand.

There is a new technologically enhanced social medium in the learning ecosystem and it is challenging the position of existing media, which, as John Naughton has pointed out, need to “either adapt or fade into irrelevance”¹.

Whilst others question the effectiveness of these tools and methods, my students and I continue to prove that there is an inherently false dichotomy established between technology and academic achievement. You can certainly have them both.

Your opinion is always welcome.

Many thanks to Ryan McCullah for his photograph

Generating ICT

José Picardo — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 17:31:47 +0000

In the early 1950s, my grandparents leased a humble patch of farming land in rural Andalucía where they were able to grow crops and graze their modest herd of dairy cows. There they built a house and raised their children.

In those days if you needed water, you had to dig a well. So they did. Incredibly they managed with a well and without electricity – using butane and paraffin lamps – for another 20 years.

By the time my dad was a young man, my grandparents had invested in a diesel generator that would allow them to run some electric appliances and watch TV or listen to the radio in the evenings. Eventually, round about the time my mum and dad got married and I came to being in the mid seventies, civilisation arrived and they were able to connect to the mains for both water and electricity.

As you can imagine, the well and the generator, which had so faithfully served the needs of my family all those years, quickly fell into disuse.

Why am I telling you this?

I’m telling you this because the way we deal with technology in schools is very much the way my grandparents had to deal with water and electricity.

Schools are still investing massively in physical ICT infrastructure. They’re not digging wells or buying generators, but they are ploughing money into racks packed with servers, storage and data back-up contraptions of various kinds, unwilling to relinquish these duties to the Cloud.

Just like schools once had to generate their own electricity, they are generating their own ICT. This has worked well so far. However, as the amount of information schools need to handle increases and its quality improves (HD, 3D and whatever comes next), one can see how the strain on budgets and resources will continue to increase in tandem.

In order to stop our schools resembling ever more closely Google’s data centres, I believe we need to learn to let go of generating our own ICT and start encouraging suppliers to take on the challenge of providing the services we require, so schools can concentrate on their core business of providing an education to children. As the old adage goes, you don’t buy a drill because you want a drill – you buy it because you want a hole.

What do you think?

Many thanks to Alan Antiporda for his photograph.

On bandwagons and innovation

José Picardo — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 21:23:57 +0000

I was recently at a conference where I met a newly appointed school leader who had heard of my work in technology integration. As we were introduced, the expression on his face gradually changed from your-name-rings-a-bell to ah-I-know.

He was interested to know what the latest trend was in technology in education and quick-fired some questions about using technology in the classroom, answering quite a number of them himself with a lavish sprinkle of the latest buzzwords.

He was, it turned out, on the look out for “the latest innovative practices”. As if innovation was a product you could purchase wholesale at conferences.

What I really wanted to say to him was that innovation is a culture that needs to be fed and allowed to grow and flourish, that he should encourage and celebrate the innovative practices already existing in his own school and that he didn’t need to be anywhere near computers or the internet to be innovative.

But it soon became obvious that he knew all the answers anyway, so I told him what he wanted to hear. I told him to get some iPads. He agreed enthusiastically.

After remarking on my accent, he revealed that he’s always been a great fan of Fawlty Towers and we shook hands good-bye.

Many thanks to Tim Lauer for the fantastic photograph.

Our own worst enemies

José Picardo — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:22:03 +0000

Language is a defining feature of people. We are unique in Nature in being able to turn physical objects and abstract concepts into words and thus share ideas¹. The Internet provides our innate propensity for communication with means to engage in social interaction beyond the constraints of time and space, allowing us to engage in synchronous or asynchronous discussions that would be inconceivable otherwise.

The potential of this type of communication for education is already evident. Teachers and students had embraced blogs, online chats, fora and social networks to share and disseminate commonly interesting knowledge.

As a learner – and who isn’t? – blogging in particular has been instrumental in my own learning, which is continuously being constructed, modelled and re-modelled by reflecting on the social interaction provided by blogs such as this one and then feeding the newly constructed knowledge into further interaction, enabling me to learn in a divergent manner by providing the stimulus that allows me to pursue new ideas and explore new threads in a creative way².

So far, so good. But there are some problems. Firstly, linguistic communication relies on a plethora of visual and non-verbal cues and clues – a slight change in intonation or the raising of an eyebrow – that are simply absent from computer mediated communication.

These can be overcome by using emoticons and such like but, if – like me – you don’t populate your blog posts and forum or comment contributions with smilies and LOLs, there is always the constant risk of misinterpretation. For example, I once had a comment removed from a forum discussion by a moderator who didn’t like the tone in my comment. In fact, the tone had been assigned to the comment by the reader, not the writer.

Secondly, we employ social conventions when interacting online that differ widely from ordinary social conventions and to which, shockingly, we seem to be growing accustomed. On the internet – as the old adage goes – nobody knows you’re a dog but it also allows everyone to adopt a different persona.

Anonymity is arguably one of the Internet’s main strengths and freedom of speech is one of our most revered rights, and quite right too. However, the distancing effect of anonymity allows many to debase online discussion and debate by emboldening them to interact with others in such a way that would be unthinkable in real life, as is perfectly illustrated in this video:

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws_ywYMSQOc']

Rudeness has become an inherent feature of online discussion. This is a shame. The ability to explore and discuss topics in a dialectic manner, in which views are challenged constructively, is being sapped away from discussion boards, online newspaper comments threads and blogs by people with names like MontyPython or MrBig who say things online they would not dare say to your face.

I find it very peculiar we should let behaviour go unchallenged online that would not be tolerated otherwise. I can’t imagine MrBig or MontyPython being that rude to you face-to-face or even over the phone.

There is no need for any of this. There is an alternative to the current, accepted model. We need to create an environment that fosters exploratory talk, in which participants challenge the opinions of others with their own ideas and opinions. An environment that stimulates higher order processes, such as self-reflection, knowledge application, decision making, criticism and revision of concepts and solutions³.

We don’t need thoughtless belittling, ridiculing and abuse. We ought to know better. No wonder then that schools feel so uneasy about the social Internet, if the very people our students look up to aren’t able to provide them with appropriate models of behaviour. We are our own worst enemies.

Many thanks to Bisgraphic for the photograph.