Daniel Stucke

Just testing out Spotify integration into Tumblr - enjoy!

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:01:16 +0100

Just testing out Spotify integration into Tumblr - enjoy!

Digital Literacies - What Does #StopKONY Mean For Our Students

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:55:00 +0000

You’ve probably heard about the viral campaign to stop Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. The video has been watched approximately 40 million times since it’s release on Monday. If not it’s here:

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

This swept through our school today, all the pupils were talking about it, most had watched it. That’s 11-16 year olds watching a 30 minute documentary about an African war criminal in their own time. Quite unique!

I’m sure that getting celebrity tweeters such as Rihanna on board will have had a lot to do with the viral success of this with young people. It’s a fascinating insight into the power of social media, and celebrity to influence the hearts and minds of our young learners.

Something of a backlash has been taking place online today against the group behind the project, their accounts have been scrutinised and their methods criticised.

The guardian has a nice summary, and also an interesting video with London schoolchildren.

Ethan Zuckerman has a long but well reasoned think piece about the whole affair.

As I left school, I’d not seen the video and wasn’t quite sure of the whole story. But the pupils were already talking about taking action.

It’s taken me a couple of hours to digest many sides of the story, and argument. I’m still unsure as to whether we should encourage our students to show their voice for this cause, or caution them away from it.

I doubt our learners are spending so much time looking at this from all angles. This is a crucial digital literacy skill, and a golden opportunity for us all to engage with students about casting a skilled critical eye over everything they read, watch or hear.

One thing is clear, it’s a brave new connected world and we have significant challenges ahead of us to equip our students with the skills they’ll need to flourish in it. It’s also a world with the tools to do great good, our students can all have a louder voice than we ever imagined.

Why The iPad Is Currently The Best 1:1 Solution

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:09:53 +0000

Yesterday I posted an article looking at the teaching and learning features and requirements that IT provision supports in schools. I concluded that if funding can be made to work (and with creative budgeting it’s not as hard as you’d think) that 1:1 is the ideal model.

So that begs the question: What device?

We’ve looked at this in detail at my school, tested devices, read more reviews and reports than you can imagine. I’ve put together a list of technical and practical requirements that are desirable in the 1:1 device and graded various options against them.

Here’s my side-by-side analysis of the options:

As you can see, in my humble opinion, the iPad wins this race at the moment. Without wanting to spark a ‘fanboy’ induced series of arguments, I’m intrigued by others opinions on this. Have I missed any important criteria? I’ve deliberately not included a higher-spec laptop such as a Macbook Air or Windows Ultrabook. I know some schools around the world use these, but they really aren’t a financial option in the UK state funded sector!

Do you run a 1:1 program or are you planning one? What device are you thinking of?

Why 1:1 IT Provision Is The Answer, And BYOD Is Not

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:59:00 +0000

There’s been much talk and excitement of late about Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) as the cure to all IT provision ills in schools. Whilst it certainly has a place and should be encouraged it’s not a replacement for other models at the present time. This post owes a lot to Ryan Bretag’s recent writing, a large chunk of it comes from work that has been ongoing in our school for the past year and hopefully will result in an exciting new provision model in the near future.

Before we look at where BYOD and other models fit into the provision of IT equipment for learning in our schools, we have to consider what it is all needed for.

When we looked at what we wanted our IT provision to support we concluded we need provision that:

Provides exciting and innovative learning opportunities for our students;
Encourages independence and creativity;
Encourages communication, collaboration and teamwork;
Encourages enquiry;
Provides access to the Internet whenever and wherever a teacher or learner requires it;
Provides access to the school communications systems: email; calendars & collaborative documents whenever they are required;
Provides access to the school learning platform and schemes for learning;
Provides access to the Internet and hence Learning Platform, communications etc in the home of every learner;
Promotes home learning;
Promotes reading and literacy;
Is completely reliable;
Is uniform for all, making planning simple and providing a level playing field for all learners;
Narrows the gap for learners at risk of underachievement;
Has as low a (technical skill) barrier to entry as possible;
Safeguards our community;
Allows our learners to develop their digital literacy skills;
Provides access to students with Special Educational Needs;
Allows the creation of traditional, formal documents for controlled assessments and other purposes;
Allows learners and staff to choose from learning and thinking styles;
Promotes learning and the support of learning throughout our school community;
Enables our teachers and learners to take educational risks;
Enables our teachers to work with new pedagogies such as Self Organising Learning Environments (SOLE), Non-Commissioned Time & Flipped Classrooms;
Reduces our reliance and consumption of paper;
Empowers our teachers and learners to share their resources and experiences with the wider world;
Enables us to become renowned as a centre of outstanding, modern teaching and learning;
Enable the creation and sharing of multi media student work;
Can be budgeted for the next 5+ years.

Models

There are three potential models of IT provision that can be considered:

Current Blended Environment

Continuing a traditional mix of dedicated ICT suites, laptop trolleys and various other devices such as video cameras. Wholly funded by the school. It makes financial and practical sense to lease laptops rather than purchase them outright as has been done in the past. They have little or no residual value at the end of their life-cycles, leasing would ensure replacement, flatten budget requirements and reduce maintenance requirements. The number of devices would inevitably be lower in this model, one laptop trolley per department can only be used by one class at a time, often leaving several others without access for that lesson. Current value for money from this model is questionable. This model has little or no impact on learning outside of the classroom.

1:1

Every learner and every member of staff have access to their ‘own’ device. Either wholly funded by the school, or part funded by parental contributions this model is most suited to fulfilling the requirements above. It gives staff and students a uniform platform to build upon, greatly reducing the barriers to creative use of technology in the classroom. Allowing these devices to be taken home fulfills a need to promote learning outside of the classroom in conjunction with parents and the extended school community. Learners only spend 15% of their time within the school walls, it is imperative that we tap into some of the other 85% of their lives. This model is hindered by some funding and safety issues.

Supplemented with some traditional dedicated ICT suites and some specialist laptops for subjects such as Media, Music, Art & Computing.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

Learner’s own devices are used in the classroom, and at home for learning. These devices could include smartphones, tablets, laptops and handheld games consoles. By it’s very nature this model means a classroom will have a wide variety of devices with an equally wide variety of software, function and access to the web and other resources. Student devices are already allowed for use within our school. The majority of devices used are mobile phones and the predominant use is communication and internet research. BYOD is not a solution at a whole school level, particularly in areas of deprivation due to the obvious inequalities involved and the limited capability at present of many devices. This would have to be supplemented with the current blended model. Obviously there are cost advantages to encouraging this model. BYOD is a fantastic support mechanism to a wider school IT provision, but at least in the next 5 years, it can’t be seen as a replacement for other solutions.

Conclusion

If it is possible to fund a 1:1 device that is powerful and flexible enough to cover the majority of the desired outcomes then it is clear that it is the best solution. A successful 1:1 program has been shown in many schools to have impressive impact on the quality of teaching and learning and hence the outcomes of the learners in that environment. If wholly embraced, then there are also many cost savings that can result from a program, that help cover the increased capital funding requirements. The progress in tablet computers in particular are making 1:1 an increasingly attractive proposition.

What does your current school IT provision look like? What are your plans for the next 5 years? Have I missed anything obvious from our list of needs?

Potential of mobile devices to improve education

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:17:25 +0000

This was originally written as a think piece for the DfE for the http://schoolstech.org.uk/ site, think pieces weren’t used in the end so here it is!

Our young learners inhabit a world where communication and access to knowledge is being transformed by mobile devices. A world in which we as adults would be lost and frustrated without our own mobile devices. There are 81 million mobile devices connected to major mobile operators in the UK. 60% of 9-16 year olds in the UK access the Web from a mobile device. More than 1 for every man, woman and child in the UK. This excludes iPod Touches, Wifi iPads, Nintendo DSs etc..

I own a smartphone, tablet and tiny laptop. I have 24/7 access to tools, knowledge and people that was unimaginable even just a few years ago. I have learnt more through applying ideas picked up in discussion with colleagues all around the World via Twitter and their thoughts and experiences recorded on individual blogs than I ever did during my PGCE or any school-based CPD

Are we allowing our learners access to this amazing pool of knowledge and opportunities? Many schools need to re-align their thinking in three key areas if we are to make the most of this revolution:

Student owned devices: Schools are actively encouraging the use of student owned devices. With clear and consistent expectations they can be used to support learning and supplement school devices.
Internet filtering: Schools that have prioritised wireless coverage and fast Internet connections can allow students access to the majority of the Web, including the likes of Youtube and Facebook. Allowing student owned devices onto your network means you can continue to filter and monitor.

IT provision and procurement: The days of the Computer Lab are numbered. Is your school still investing in desktop PCs? Or have they investigated mobile devices, perhaps funded by parental contribution models?

What would learning look like if your students had increased access to learning opportunities through mobile devices? A pedagogical shift is needed to make the best use of the opportunities that are provided. My personal experiments have shown promise new pedagogical models such as Minimally Invasive Education and student led 20% time. Opportunities abound to collaborate with learners worldwide, revolutionise assessment, and to tap in to the 80% of learner’s lives spent outside of school, but alongside their mobile devices.

What are your experiences of using mobile technology and connectivity for learning? Where do you see the biggest opportunities and barriers?

I’ll leave you with words from Lord Puttnam at The Schools Network National Conference 2011:

“Technology has not as yet been able to make anything like the significant impact as has proved possible in most of the other fields of human activity”

“We need to develop a far better sense of the challenges [our students] face and we need to engage far more effectively with their world… to see the digital environment as they do, as transformative… as something that’s already changed the nature of how they go about their daily lives and indeed the way that they learn and can be helped to respond to learning.”

BBC Micro 2.0 #ictcurric

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:32:31 +0000

I attended Alan O’Donohoe’s excellent Hack To The Future event at Our Lady’s High School in Preston on Saturday with 13 of our students, many of whom are on our GCSE Computing course.

There were many highlights, in particular I should mention Freaky Clown and his tales of a hacker turned good. I won’t repeat his story of hacking a whole country in 7 seconds as that would be bad form, but safe to say it was engrossing stuff and our pupils were intrigued by his story.

I spent a good portion of the day talking with the team from the BBC who were there with their pre-alpha software that was the much rumoured and discussed BBC Micro 2.0. I’ve written about this previously when Keri Facer put out her call for a response on the topic.

I felt a tad smug as my guess that a 2012 BBC Micro project should take the form of a software only programming environment, hopefully outputing HTML5 results, turned out to be pretty close to the mark. Parmy Brar has been the lead developer on the project and kindly talked me through some of his work so far. They have taken Eclipse (something I’d not come across before) and forked it to begin creating a simplified programming environment for children. Programming could be done in HTML or Javascript and the package was being developed to be as forgiving as possible for the amateur coder. In it’s basic mode there are 3 panels, one for coding, a browser to output the code and the final one a project file explorer. As well as outputting complete HTML5 websites, the team have an Android App output that was in semi-working form, and eventually will be looking at iOS output.

Integral to the project are built in lessons that talk you through the basics of programming different projects (akin to taking a course on CodeCademy). Parmy talked me through the back end to this area where he is creating a tool that will allow anybody to create their own help file / course for others to use. If this project is really going to take off this will be crucial as they look to build a large community around the environment. Michael Sparks had put together some exercises for the young learners to have a go at for the day and I saw kids ranging from about 8 to 16 all enjoying their first stabs at programming. Response from teachers seemed a little mixed, I saw many who were as excited as me but I also heard some discussing what was one show as scary looking (these were Heads of ICT!). I think this shows what a long way we’ve got to go on the rebirth of computing in schools and in particular the huge skills gap that we have to overcome. Projects such as this are going to be crucial in skilling up the teachers as much as the learners.

My coding experience starts with BASIC on ZX Spectrums & BBC Micros, takes in a tiny bit of Visual Basic and then stops. My experience of the past month or two with CodeYear do suggest to me that Javascript seems like a great choice of language for us to teach in schools. I discussed this with a few of the BBC team and they were all big proponents of the language, pointing out that it is now ubiquitous across the world and that almost everyone has a device that can and does read it on a daily basis.

More details about the extended BBC Hello World Project should be up at http://www.bbchelloworld.co.uk/ soon (it was online this morning but has disappeared again at the time of writing). I’m excited to see how this one develops.

WCYDWT? Pinterest Style

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:02:39 +0000

Sometimes a couple of ideas come together to form a little flash of inspiration. I’ve had a Pinterest account for a while but not really used it personally or thought of using it in education. A blog post from Mark Warner got me thinking though. Pinterest is a social site that encourages users to create a virtual pinboard of images and videos taken from across the web.

I’ve been a great admirer of Dan Meyer’s efforts to drag Maths teaching into the 21st Century and the real world. He’s been campaigning with ingenuity against typical textbook Maths problems. Particularly their over abstraction and removal of any space for thinking creatively about problems and making links between the real world and the maths thats being taught.

Dan’s TedX Talk is essential viewing:

His latest post sums up a lot of these thoughts well:

Original image ripe for mathematical questioning and modeling.

Mathematical abstraction.

Textbook example cutting out the important process above.

Dan’s work in this area started with his What Can You Do With This? (WCYDWT) series. A photo or video provided on his blog for readers to suggest Mathematical teaching ideas, inspirations, questions. He’s more recently been churning out 3 Act Tasks. These start with a piece of media (normally video) ripe for mathematical abstraction and modeling and some expected lines of questioning from students (Act 1). Act 2 involves some carefully crafted questions and perhaps an additional layer of information to enable investigation. Act 3 provides a solution. Have a look through them, there’s some great stuff there.

So put these two bloggers ideas together and what do we have? A Pinterest board of Mathematical inspiration:

Pinterest Mathematics Inspiration

I hope this can be a great way to crowd source some rich mathematical resources. If we can build this into a library of visually arresting media surrounded by great questions and potential problems and solutions I’ll be delighted.

If you’d like a Pinterest invite then please let me know in the comments, equally if you’d like to be added as a contributor to the board then I’d be delighted to oblige.

This is my Google Teacher Academy application video. For more...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:22:00 +0000

This is my Google Teacher Academy application video. For more information on 20% time in my classroom please visit this blog post, our class blog and Adeel’s Rubik’s blog. Fingers crossed, I couldn’t apply last time around as it clashed with my wedding!

BYOD and 1:1 are not the same

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:16:55 +0000

BYOD and 1:1 are not the same:

Ryan Bretag nails some thoughts I’ve had recently on Bring Your Own Device as an IT provision in schools. It’s nice to have, and common sense in this day and age to allow learners to use their own devices in your classrooms and on your networks. But it’s no replacement or real alternative to running a 1:1 environment.

Desmos For All

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 11:34:11 +0000

I was most impressed with the Desmos Graphing Calculator last year. It’s a powerful and user friendly graphical calculator.

It’s just been re-written from the ground up in HTLM5 which means it will work perfectly on an iPad or other tablet. It’s genuinely impressive and exciting to see what magic coders are starting to weave with HTML5.

Head over to https://www.abettercalculator.com/c on any device to try it out for yourself.

Oh No Mr Gove!

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:58:00 +0000

And just like that, world order is restored. I felt a little uncomfortable praising Mr Gove for his radical move to remove the ICT Programme of Study.

But all is back in balance now.

As MSN reports:

“The Education Secretary has called for longer school days and suggested that teachers should also be happy with longer terms.

Michael Gove said “we’re all in favour” of extending the school day and potentially also cutting short the summer holidays.

Asked about how this would impact on teachers, he told ITV’s Daybreak programme: “If you love your job then there is, I think, absolutely nothing to complain about in making sure you have more of a chance to do it well.”

Really Mr Gove?

Let’s take a look at my last week in teaching:

Saturday (Xmas Hols) - 3 hours (mainly planning lessons)
Sunday (Xmas Hols) - 5 hours (mainly whole school data analysis to make sure we’re on track to do well in the league tables)
Monday (07.30-22.00) - 14 hours (teaching, meetings, planning, supervising break, research)
Tuesday (07.30-18.00) - 10.5 hours (teaching, leading) + (19.00-22.30) 3.5 hours (learning & sharing)
Wednesday (07.30-21.00) - 13 hours (teaching, marking, supervising lunch, meeting, leading, reflecting on your policy decisions)
Thursday (07.30-20.00) - 12.5 hours (teaching, planning, supervising lunch, analysing data, meeting, parents evening)
Friday (07.30-15.00) - 7.5 hours (teaching, more data, more meetings, more duties)

That’s 69 hours.

And that’s an average week.

Where appropriate I’ve removed 30 mins for eating dinner at home. I’ve not had a lunch break, nor a ‘break of reasonable length’ during the day. We work these hours, for 5-8 weeks at a time, and then we collapse, speak to our loved ones and sleep for about half of our holidays, before spending the second half preparing work for the next term.

If you want people like me to run your schools, to innovate new ICT curricula and share them across the country, to make sure my school does well in it’s league tables and receives another Outstanding in it’s next, no-notice, Ofsted inspection, oh yes - and to teach, what exactly should I stop doing?

And all this whilst paying me less? I don’t think so. According to the NUT’s pension calculator, if your proposed changes go through, and if I were to make it to 60 years old, doing my bit to fill the upcoming Headteacher shortage, and then decided to retire at that age. I would be £750,000 worse off. Three quarters of a million pounds worse off.

This does not compute.

I do love my job. But I couldn’t do any more of it. If you asked me to, I’d leave the classroom immediately, and that would be a shame.

Bravo Mr Gove #schoolstech #ictcurric

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:27:33 +0000

Unless you’ve been living under a rock today I’m assuming you’ll have seen some excitable headlines followed by a more detailed speech about the future of technology in education in the UK and in particular the future of the subject of ICT.

In a nutshell Mr Gove has scrapped the ICT curriculum, whilst keeping ICT in the curriculum. Confused? Don’t be. We can now effectively teach whatever we want. There will be a consultation, and there will hopefully be new ‘Computer Science’ qualifications in the pipeline. Mr Gove has listened to the calls of industry and responded with startling ruthlessness.

I’m delighted that my school is in a great position to make the most of these changes (in fact we won’t have many changes). We acted on the NextGen report when it came out last year and have a Y10 group working on the OCR Computing GCSE that I suspect Gove was alluding to in his speech. (Some of our other decisions back then with regards to Creative iMedia & MOS might not prove so long serving).

I never thought I’d say the words, but bravo Mr Gove!

The ICT programme of study was dull and out of date in places, and there is a lot of poor ICT teaching across the country. There is also a wealth of incredible teaching by teachers who have ignored / bent / destroyed the current program of study to their needs. Gove’s decision today means they are free to do so without worry of Ofsted and co castigating them for doing so. There is of course a danger that specific ICT lessons will dwindle in number further with this move. Integrating the skills across the curriculum is key, but we still need specialist teachers delivering these skills with panache if we are to really generate the next generation of talented, creative, coders.

The move to include more Computing / Programming / Computer Science has been much debated of late. It needs to be optional at KS4 but I’m in full support of this. Well qualified & skilled teachers to deliver this will be an issue.

It’s an exciting time to be involved in ICT. It’ll be interesting to see if we really do make it through the next few years without being told what to teach. And it will be interesting to see what qualifications become available at KS4 for us to work towards (and in turn what skills they focus us upon). This is a great chance to continue some of the great work that has gone on with #ictcurric and other endeavours to start putting together a set of core skills and competencies for Digital Literacy & ICT.

A particularly exciting thought crossed my mind when reading the full transcript of the speech. As the programme of study goes, so do the assessment levels and criteria. There will be nothing to say what a Level 5 in ICT is. So how about we scrap levels? What does achieving a Level 5 in ICT really mean? And who understands it? I’d suggest that half the students in KS3 don’t know, no teacher outside of the subject would know, and very few parents would know. Could we put together a simple list of core skills and competencies and measure learner’s progression in each of these. Something akin to APP lite, maybe with a Mozilla Badge system to award and recognise mastery and application of these skills? I suspect that National Curriculum levels will be phased out across the board over coming years, so this could be a great opportunity to put together something far more meaningful. I’d be much happier with my Maths teaching hat on if I could look at my learners records and see who has a Silver Award in Spreadsheets, or a Bronze Award in Scratch Programming, it would be far more meaningful to me and make planning the integration of ICT skills into that subject far easier.

So. Bravo Mr Gove. I may disagree with you a lot of the time, but you’ve been bold today and deserve respect for it. Join in the conversation that has been started today using the hashtag #schoolstech and at the website http://schoolstech.org.uk/. And welcome to the brave new world, when the National Curriculum review finally kicks into action don’t be surprised to see other subjects head in a similar direction.

FizzBuzz CodeYear Fun #schoolstech

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:06:00 +0000

With todays announcement from Mr Gove it seems a good point to reflect on my first steps on a year long coding journey. I spent my Tuesday evening completing the first week of lessons on the brilliant CodeYear. It took me about an hour and a half and was a great little introduction to Javascript. First week covers defining variables, basic arithmetic, and moves on to if/then/else/while statements.

It’s an interesting learning model, there are hints at each stage and I didn’t find myself stuck on too many occasions. If you teach ICT or Maths then I’d thoroughly recommend you take a look at it. It was quite a challenge and I’ll be interested to see how far students could get without a teacher to help them. If they do get stuck, some good Googling skills would help them find a way forward pretty quickly. It’s not a replacement for a skilled teacher thought, but that’s a conversation for another post!

The final bonus challenge is to write a FizzBuzz program that writes out a set of consecutive numbers, but replaces multiples of 3 with “Fizz” and multiple of 5 with “Buzz” and of course, multiples of both with “FizzBuzz”. It’s a great little challenge that the Maths teacher in me loved!

I’ve been encouraging staff and students at school to join me on this journey so it’ll be interesting to see how many are up for the challenge.

Here’s my final FizzBuzz code in case you’re interested or stuck:

// Ask user how far we should Fizz Buzz for
var Total = prompt("How far shall we fizz buzz?");

// for the numbers 1 through to Total,
for (i=1; i<=Total; i++) { 

  // if the number is divisible by 3, write "Fizz"
  if ( i % 3 === 0 ) { 
    // unless the number is also divisible by 5, then write "FizzBuzz"
    if ( i % 5 === 0 ) {
    console.log("FizzBuzz");
    }
      else 
        console.log("Fizz");
  }

  // if the number is divisible by 5, write "Buzz"
  else if (i % 5 === 0 ){
    console.log("Buzz");
  }

  // otherwise, write just the number
  else {
    console.log(i);
  }
}

Has anyone written this in a neater, purer way? I’d love to see it if you have.

EDIT:

I have to include this, a solution in a tweet by Martyn Colliver:

20% Time in School - Leaving them to it...

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:08:43 +0000

Stretford High School has five core values, one of these is creativity, one is independence and one is drive. I have been trying to instill these core skills into my Year 8 Maths class this year by giving them an hour a week to do whatever they choose.

Motivation:

I was inspired at the SSAT National Conference in 2010 by Dan Pink’s talk about drive, in particular his discussions of non-commissioned time, or 20% time as it is known as at Google. To see exactly what I’m talking about it’s well worth 10mins of your time to watch this:

Or you could even read his excellent book which is on special offer at Amazon at the moment: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Without going into great detail, Pink suggests that humans perform to a higher level and with greater creativity when they are working on something of their own choosing for the sheer pleasure of it. The intrinsic motivation and drive to learn beat the usual game we play in school of using rewards and sanctions to encourage learning to take place. Personally I can really relate to this, 4 years of blogging and spending far too much of my spare time reading about education and technology online has been done, in part, for the sheer enjoyment I get from it.

A number of companies including Google and Atlassian are actively setting aside time for their workers to work on projects of their own choosing. Google News & GMail amongst other products came out of this time. We had a fantastically productive staff training day last term where departments were given the time to go off and work on anything they chose. Hopefully we’ll collate some more of the output from that day on the Creative Stretford Blog.

In The Classroom:

Time to think, create and follow a whim are not something that we’d often associate with school classrooms, particularly in secondary schools. Kevin McLaughlin has been encouraging his primary students to work on projects of their own choosing. Discussions on that article revolved around timetables, curriculums and secondary schools and how hard this would be to make this work in a secondary school. Which sounds like a challenge!

I’m fortunate to teach an able and enthusiastic Year 8 class (12-13yrs) who are always game for trying something new. We have four hours of timetabled Maths each week, and with this class that’s more than enough time to cover the work that is required. So in September I told them that they would have one of the four hours each week to do anything that they choose. This caused a little confusion at first, I think a few thought I had gone a little mad (or lazy!). Choosing something to do in their 20% time was a real challenge for some at first. We agreed a few ground rules, that although they could do anything, there should be some mathematical or logical bent to it, and that they would share their learning with the rest of the class. We agreed that students should be able to spend this time doing extra work on the Maths we’d been doing if they felt they needed the time for that purpose.

After a bit of time getting used to the concept the ideas started to flow. A group of boys decided they wanted to learn how to solve a Rubik’s Cube. A group of girls wanted to do some art, so I pointed them in the direction of MC Escher and left them to it. Another group wanted to look investigate how optical illusions worked, another group started to build their own Sudoku from scratch. I arranged for us to have access to computers for the hour a week and quite a few groups have started to build games in Scratch and Kodu.

As a teacher I’ve found at times that it’s a little hard to let old habits lie:

I’ve had to bite my lip and stop myself putting too many ideas into students heads, I’m keen for this learning to come from them not me;
I’ve had to avoid getting hung up on outputs, although we have started to blog a good deal of our work and I hope to develop this further this year;
I’ve had to sit back and enjoy the slightly chaotic looking classroom, creative learning looks messy!

The whole group has really enjoyed this time so far, they really appreciate the freedom that it offers. There’s been some fantastic work, and some fantastic Maths and logic skills being developed. I’m particularly proud of Adeel, he has taught himself how to solve a Rubik’s Cube, taught some of his peers and then worked with them to produce their own how-to videos and finally created their own blog to share them on! Many of the others have done some great work, I’ll encourage them to share them in more detail on the blog.

We’re going to continue with this for the next term and see where it leads us. I might start making a few suggestions of areas of interest that students might follow, I’ve already suggested that Code Year would be a fantastic use of the time, and I’ll be completing that myself so I hope some of them take up the idea and we can take that learning journey together. Please keep an eye on our class blog to see our progress.

There is time in timetables for work like this, it just takes a little eeking out and a little confidence to make it available. What’s more interesting is how this could be scaled up? Could a secondary school timetable work giving students an hour a day to work on whatever they wanted to? What would we cut? How would we staff it?

#BETT2012 In Lists

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:26:15 +0000

For the first time in about four years I won’t be visiting BETT this year in London. For the un-initiated BETT is an enormous educational technology trade show / conference held at Olympia in London each January.

Things I’ll miss:

Bumping into other educators I know from Twitter etc.
Attending some of the fringe events e.g. Teachmeets.
Seeing some of our existing partners who we currently source products from.
Seeing the personal friends who I stay with when visiting.

Things I won’t miss:

Being harassed at every turn by a salesman.
Walking round and round and round and round.
Queuing to put my coat in.
Searching for some phone/wifi signal.
Buying over priced snacks.
Seeing the latest 3D screen / projector / TV.
Seeing the latest amazing developments in the world of Interactive Whiteboards.
Seeing the latest and greatest VLE.
Seeing the latest….. oh you get the idea!
Sleeping on a sofa-bed to save money for school (although see point 4 in the positives).
A bag full of useless freebies - seriously I got some 64Mb USB sticks last year - who knew they even made them so small still?!?

Things I’ll do instead:

Keep up on anything valuable I’ve missed via Twitter hastags and people’s blogs.
Ask companies to come and see me personally at school if we think we want to work with them.
Teach my Year 11s on the run up to their exams.
Save school a chunk of money.
Look to visit some schools that are leading on areas that we are planning to develop.

In this day and age, unless you have a bunch of projects on the go and products to buy then it’s hard to justify attending BETT. I’m speaking from the viewpoint of a teacher / school leaders / IT coordinator here, I know if you’re working in the industry it’s useful to have everyone under one roof. But as educators, in this day and age, you should be able to see and hear all about the latest and greatest tools for learning online as and when they appear on the market. And you should be able to hear this from real teachers who are really using the products with real children - that beats sales patter any day of the year!

Will you be attending BETT? What do you hope to get out of the show?

Learn To Code

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:35:06 +0000

Learn To Code:

Code Academy have set up Code Year. A lesson a week that over the course of the year will teach you how to code.

Slate suggest each lesson will run to about 5 hours. Which is a hefty commitment. But I’ve signed up and will be encouraging learners at school to do the same. With our big push on Computing and the future ICT curriculum changes on the horizon, it’s about time I can walk the talk!

"Secondly, never make any comment about your work, about your employer, about teaching issues in..."

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:25:32 +0000

““Secondly, never make any comment about your work, about your employer, about teaching issues in general.””

- Jim Docherty, assistant secretary of the SSTA, getting it all wrong.

Please don’t listen to him. Speak your mind, share your ideas. And like I always tell my pupils, think before you post. Common sense not scare-mongering.

Which reminds me I have a policy to write for staff to include this. Does anyone have any good exemplars? I’d like to keep it simple as we did with our Learner’s AUP.

A Gift

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:02:57 +0000

“It was a gift to us,” she said. “And for him to be so confident and unafraid of death and to share it with other people was so touching.”

Ben Breedlove’s Mum. Ben passed away shortly after making these videos.

Is this classed as educational? Why are we still discussing filtering YouTube? An amazing resource.

"I often refer to Animoto as a gateway to “real” video projects. Animoto makes it very..."

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:01:00 +0000

““I often refer to Animoto as a gateway to “real” video projects. Animoto makes it very easy for anyone to create a great-looking video.””

- Richard Byrne on Animoto for iOS.

Good point, great product, good app. Our Humanities department in particular are using this to create fantastic, engaging videos for topics and even for types of lessons - almost using them to brand the lesson.

Animoto.

Outstanding Design Pt.1 - Typerighter.com

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:46:10 +0000

Typerighter is one of the best designed web apps I’ve ever come across. You can try it out here. You’ll be presented with a completely blank web page. In which you can type. And that’s it! The user interface is non-existent, the options appear non-existent, it’s just a blank page that gradually fills with text as you type, and it’s so simple it works identically on any web browser you can imagine, including all smart phones, tablets etc..

Typerighter is also unusual in that it isn’t free. At present it costs $5.97, and that goes up a penny for each new user. With that you get your own url, mine’s http://danielstucke.typerighter.com. Type in any sub-domain to that and you’ll create a new blank page. I’m writing this article at https://danielstucke.typerighter.com/typerighter as we speak. All you will see as you type is the occasional tiny ‘saved’ flash up in the top right of the screen. It’s a fantastic, distraction free, writing experience. There are a few features. Add ‘.txt’ to the end of your url and the text is automatically downloaded as a text file. Add ‘.html’ to the end, and if you’ve written your text using Markdown it will be displayed in perfectly formatted html.

I’ve started writing my blog posts in Markdown on Typerighter, and I’ve also started keeping an open page on whichever browser I’m working in at the time and just using it as a scratchpad for making any notes as my day goes by. It works flawlessly on iPhone and iPad too.

Typerighter in all it’s pared down glory, that’s all there is to it.