Personal Learning Shared

After listening to Tony Ryan speak about the importance of developing a Personal Learning Network and the benefits of being able to meet face to face, a group of three teachers met for coffee and conversation.

The three of us have a common connection in that we were members of staff at The Australian International School, Singapore. During the 00s. After a recent reunion, we decided we’d like to catch up once a term where we could exchange stories about our schools, our teaching and our own learning.

We decided to dedicate the first half (45 mins or so) to ‘talking teaching’ and the rest on more casual chat about our families and lives. As it turned out, the whole time was twoing and froing between our work and more personal things and I think we left feeling like we accomplished the mix really well. Actually with over 60 years of teaching experience between us – separating our work and our lives is really not possible – hence strictly no partners at our meetings.  

Here are some educational based discussions we had:

Book Week just ended and given that we are all interested in literacy and reading we soon found ourselves talking about our libraries and encouraging kids to read. Yvonne suggested some wonderful programs that seem simple and effective in their goal to get children reading and helping less fortunate children get access to books.

The first one – ‘Mystery Book Challenge’ came from one of us mentioning the issues with Premiers reading challenge where students are restricted to certain titles, some we agreed are not particularly good quality. I had that conversation with Kathryn during book week.  MBC involves taking some of the old classics from 70s,  80s and 90s, (we had fun brainstorming old favourties) wrapping them in brown paper and string and putting them back on the shelves in their original spot. Titles from Gilllian Rubenstein’s, Colin Thiele’s and Ruth Park were examples. Students were then free to choose and ‘unwrap’ their book on guarantee that they read it from cover to cover and give a short review as to why this book was considered quality in its day and whether it still has any relevancy today. Bookmarks were a reward for attempts to revisit and find the magic in popular books written before they were born.

I said how much I love Sonya Harnett’s, Silver Donkey after a discussion of our visiting illustrator of Simpson’s Donkey, which led into a discussion on Harnett’s new title – Children of the King which Yvonne highly recommended and expressed excitement of it being made into a movie which then led to a shared love of, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusack’s. We wait in anticipation of  the movie being released with Geoffrey Rush. Perhaps our next meeting will be a movie night to see it?

Book Swap involves bringing in 5 books to donate to a second hand book sale. Students then buy a book for a gold coin and the $ and remaining books are sent to indigenous schools. This sequayed into my telling of Boori (Monty) Pryor visiting Redlands and a discussion on My Girragunji and the importance of exposing our kids to  Aboriginal stories and story telling.

I asked Zannah about the new library at Ravenswood as I remembered it being showcased in a PD session. She said it has taken on the Learning Resource Centre model and has changed the entire orientation of the school. New reception, new address new way of looking at what was once the traditional library.  She described first level of open design classrooms, second as reception and ICT hubs and the top resources and study nooks.

The inevitable chat about computer programs came up where it was explained that Ravenswood are about to begin a  0ne to 0ne , three year turn around program, Rose Bay are a Mac School and have no shortage of ipads and ibooks (apparently a very active parent body for a public school raising funds for maintaining programs) and I mentioned that Redlands had just employed  a new ICT manager who will hopefully help us solve what’s been a ‘strained’  program in the Junior School. 

And drawing on the glass in the LRC at Ravenswood? I remember that from a video at the PD early this year. This began the happy chat on the whiteboard’s return and the relief we all felt from the whole focus on Smart Boards. Quite a lot of anxiety justifying their cost and We all agreed that  there was a lot of pressure for a few years solely on creating whole units on creating literally 100s of slides and that perhaps it was not getting the balance right in terms of using a variety of tools when teaching. Great to have and in daily use but sometimes the old white board marker served us (and students using mini boards) just as well if not better. Striking the balalnce and undersatning that teachers don’t have time to reinvent wheel. If there are websites with slides already made, utilize those. We also acknowledged those staff who have become so  proficient that it may well be as effeicient and easy for them to continue to heavily base visual aspects of learning using the Interactive Board.

So that was our 90 minutes. As we were leaving Zannah suggested next meeting to have a chat about the National Curriculum. My cloud was ‘do we have to?’ but knowing that it will be pre movie as we line up for popcorn, I think I have to admit that I might even be looking forward to that one!

By Catherine Swinton

Going where there is no path

You have probably seen this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson before. It is often linked to images of paths or footprints and carries with it notions of individuality and the desire to follow an inner compass.

I like the idea that it suggests a search for new knowledge and with this the implications it has for teachers. In a previous post to this site I discussed the ‘questions we should ask’ and in this considered how we encourage our students to ask questions that will lead them to new ideas. In Emerson’s quote I see similar thinking.

In so many classrooms and curriculums ‘content’ is King. There are old beliefs about pieces of knowledge that we imagine students need to be taught. Lists of facts and figures essential for them to know and recall. Maybe it is a list of dates in history, landforms in geography or properties of the elements in science. We also find these essential chunks of content in games of trivia and maybe that is a hint at their value.

Not that all content should be removed from our teaching so long as we understand that our lessons should be about big ideas that are more important than having our students memorise a list of facts. More important for our students are their skills, strategies and dispositions towards developing an understanding. Our goal needs to be to produce learners who can travel new paths and in doing so discover new knowledge and ways.

I teach a unit to Year Six about Climate Change and at the beginning of the year I speak to the parents of my class about this unit. It is a somewhat topical if not outright controversial topic. Past experience has shown that some parents have very strong views on the subject and worry about the message I will communicate to their child. For my purposes ‘climate change’ is just a vessel for the deep thinking I want my students to engage in. Evaluating sources, looking for bias, understanding points of view, applying a scientific methodology, asking questions and then sharing ideas with an audience and possibly trying to persuade an audience are seen as essential skills for now and the future. The content of a ‘climate change’ study has value to me because it engages my students with the learning processes that they need practice with. When explained this way the parents relax, I am not planning to brainwash their children but instead up-skill them so that they can evaluate information for themselves and then act appropriately.

It is worth considering how you imagine the curriculum you teach will benefit your students in their future life. Will your teaching be broadly applicable to the majority of your students despite the many diverse career paths they may choose? Will your teaching be applicable to new scenarios that are yet to be imagined? Or will your teaching be of use to a few who choose to follow one path that requires the lesson you have taught? Does your teaching allow your students to ‘go instead where there is no path and leave a trail?

by Nigel Coutts
Art by Nigel Coutts
Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Empathy: the most important 21st Century Skill

Looking Ahead

Alan November relates a discussion with the head of London-based HSBC Bank. Engaging him in conversation, Alan asked, “What’s the most important 21st century skill?” Alan admits that he was unprepared for the response: “Empathy.” It was counterintuitive. While we in education had been espousing the importance of such critical skills as creativity, collaboration and adaptability in a 21st-century global information economy, here was the head of one of the largest banks in the world citing a completely under-emphasized virtue. Alan readily admits he grappled with the idea for a while, but in the end he concluded it is true. Empathy is the most important of skills we should be imparting to students as we prepare them for life and work in the 21st century.

Empathy - the ability to identify with others - takes on a heightened role in an age where we are gradually merging to form a single global community. The Information Age is only going to bind us more tightly together as people, nations and economies. Empathy does not require us to give up our own perspectives, but to be able to integrate others’ perspectives with our own. Even fairly recently this was not a priority in conducting business and getting things accomplished. It was 1982 when Tip O’Neill declared that “all politics is local.” The world was segmented into smaller communities then. We had impact where we lived and worked. Events happening in other regions of the world seemed distant, even remote in their impact on our daily lives. But the geographical distribution of society has changed. Through global communication and collaboration we now network internationally on personal and business levels. Events such as the attacks on American soil on September 11, 2001 forever changed our perception that we are hemmed in by political and geographic boundaries that offered protection and detachment from the events of the greater human community. Today O’Neill’s notion sounds parochial and out of touch. Today politicians are moving in droves to social media tools to garner support and expand spheres of influence. Everyone contributes to the progress we are making not just in our local community, state or nation, but as global citizens.

Daniel Goleman’s work demonstrates how empathy fuels intrinsic motivation and effective problem-solving. In his theory of emotional intelligence, empathy is critical to social awareness. It allows us to intelligently build stronger interpersonal relationships that lead to improved informed decision-making. People who empathize well make others feel that their work is respected and worthwhile. Goleman identifies three distinct kinds of empathy:

Cognitive Empathy - knowing what others might be feeling and thinking

Emotional Empathy - intuitively sensing what others are feeling and thinking

Compassionate Empathy - combined cognitive and emotional empathy providing an understanding of others’ circumstances and feeling inclined to help

When Alan speaks of empathy as a 21st century skill, he refers to global empathy: the ability to perceive and appreciate personal and cultural differences across humankind. Certainly this requires a cognitive understanding of what is encountered, and to be truly effective there must also be an emotional sense of what others are experiencing; but compassionate empathy encompasses the true notion of global empathy. Compassionate empathy not only validates another’s background, experience and perspective, it also prompts a response – a call to action – that necessitates that we reach out and connect with others where we can jointly make a difference in the world.

Stepping back to consider this concept, it becomes clear that all our aspirations for our children in the Information Age are contingent upon their ability to empathize with those with whom they come in contact. We are moving away from self-centered and culturally-centric views of the world to embrace our global partners as open, receptive, willing, engaged, empowered counterparts who are ready to move forward together. Efforts to communicate, collaborate, create, innovate, problem-solve and transform will not be successful without global empathy. So how do we pass this on to the next generation?

Empathy is not something we teach, it is something we instill. How? By modeling, coaching, facilitating, moderating and promoting it across all areas of the curriculum. It begins with the empathy we experience one-on-one in our most immediate relationships and builds from there: friendships, small groups, teams, cohorts, classes, networks and beyond. It is not that the traditional geographic and political boundaries no longer exist, or that regional and national identities are not still valued. We embrace these unique identifiers even as we bridge across them to make higher level connections - empathetic and empowering connections - that move us forward as communities and societies and as a common global civilization. 

Read more by Walter McKenzie on ASCD EdGe

Does improving education means acknowledging that teachers no longer hold the key to all the answers?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/31/kathy-payne-education_n_3682290.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003&ir=Education

What questions shall we ask?

Presently I am reading Patrick Rothfuss’ novels comprising the ‘King Killer Chronicles’, the tale of a young intellect searching for answers to a personal tragedy. Kvothe, as the main character is called, is guided by life’s events to the ‘University’ and at an early age begins his study of the ‘Arkane’, a mix of science and magic. A key figure in his study is the enigmatic Master Elodin, a ‘namer’ who is able to control many things by knowing their true name. Those who love a good story and enjoy fantasy should seek out the books and discover the complex world that Patrick Rothfuss has created, for now I am most interested in an epiphany Kvothe has while contemplating why he likes questions.

Without spoiling the story, Kvothe is asked to explain why he enjoyed the impossible questions his father would pose to him. This questioning had started with riddles but Kvothe found these too easy, so his father told him nonsensical stories and asked him to explain what they meant. He describes this to another character who views this as a cruel way to keep a child quiet, but Kvothe disagrees and responds as follows,

'It's the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer all he gains is a little fact but give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers. That way, when he finds the answers they’ll be precious to him, the harder the question, the harder we hunt, the harder we hunt the more we learn, an impossible question . . .'

At this moment in the story Kvothe understands the odd behaviour of Elodin, he sees that the Master’s desire has been to ask these impossible questions and by doing so force his students to discover new learning, to think beyond the obvious and to learn how to think. I don’t teach magic, or naming but I do most assuredly want my students to think and to be able to create new ideas. So, ‘What questions shall we ask?’

For anyone familiar with the ever-growing Internet it is clear that finding ‘little facts’ is increasingly less of a challenge. A learned person can no longer be defined or measured by the facts s/he can recall. I met recently a person who could in moments recall the key facts of almost any event in human history, her name is Siri and she lives inside my phone. It is interesting to consider the proportion of questions we ask students that could be answered by Siri and maybe in contemplating this we arrive at the answer to why so many schools prohibit the use of phones in class. Fortunately there are many questions for which Siri has no answer and conversely many questions yet unanswered.

I am often amazed by television, sadly not the content but the very idea that an image can be beamed to an antenna and appear on a screen in my living room. I know enough about how this works to recognise that I really have no understanding of the process. To me it is most interesting to consider the questions that were asked prior to its conception as a possibility. Today I can readily ask questions that will reveal how television works but at some point in time neither the answers or even the questions existed. This is the point where true innovation occurs, when an individual or team begins asking questions for which there are not answers and for which the very asking of the questions create new realms of possibility.

With two colleagues I have been studying Harvard’s ‘Making Thinking Visible’ course. Most recently we have investigated the ‘Cultural Forces’ required to promote thinking within a school. To provide our students with opportunities to think we have been contemplating the types of questions we ask. As Kvothe’s father did, we seek to ask questions that will allow our students to think. Our goal is to find those questions most central to our disciplines and then pose these in ways that will promote exploration. The challenge is to ask the questions for which the answers are most hard to find or that have not yet been found.

In asking big questions that challenge even experts in the field we play a careful balancing game. We want our students to have opportunities for complex high order thinking while also being able to experience a high degree of success. To complicate things further our students will only experience a feeling of success if it is achieved through opportunities that demand complex high order thinking. David Perkins advocates that to achieve these goals teachers look towards ‘playing junior versions of the game’. By this he means they are engaged with tasks that have genuine purpose and require complex thinking patterns but that they do so at an achievable level. Our Year Six students engage with ‘Big Ideas’ but ultimately the demands placed on their thinking and analysis by the questions we ask are not as rigorous as expected of University students dealing with the same ideas. Regardless the opportunity for even the most complex thinking is there.

Complex questions set by the teacher are all very well but how do we teach students to generate new questions? In his revised Taxonomy Benjamin Bloom places Creating at the top of the ‘thinking pyramid’ as the highest order of thinking. This needs some degree of clarification as clearly the sort of creating that went into the invention of television is not of the same magnitude that goes into a child’s artwork. Creating new knowledge and being creative are not directly equivalent terms. If we wish to promote this highest order of thinking in our students we cannot leave it to ‘happy accidents’, we will need to offer a set of strategies within a culture of creative thinking.

Using a combination of Habits of Mind, Dimensions of Learning and making Thinking Visible a small groups of teachers that I have the privilege of working with offered a set of questions and strategies to promote creative thinking. They can be used as a toolkit to guide students towards asking the right type of questions and when linked to areas of exploration that the students are passionate about offer the potential to generate amazing new ideas. They are provided below written from the learner’s perspective:

5 TOP STRATEGIES:

1. Let your imagination run wild every now and then, but keep track of its ideas and make use of the best ones.
2. First think of the obvious solutions, write them down and then discard them, now you are in the realm of the new ideas, the creative and different.
3. Train your mind to think differently. Consider everyday things and imagine how they could be improved with a few modifications. Add something, make a part larger, replace a part with something else, combine one every day object with another.
4. Keep a journal of your ideas and reflect on it often.
5. Remember Edison's advice, 'Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration'. Work at making your ideas great and then work harder to turn them into that thing that changes the world.

5 QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT YOUR THINKING:

1. How can you transform a good idea into a truly unique idea?
2. What inspires you? What do you find exciting? That is your starting point, now innovate.
3. What habits of thinking have you developed? Identify the habits that are limiting your creativity and make changes.
4. Reflect on the thinking that results in your best ideas, this is the key to repeating it.
5. How will you evaluate the benefits of your idea?

 THINKING ROUTINES FOR CREATING AND INNOVATING

1. Options Explosion - Begin by listing the obvious solutions or Options. Now brainstorm all the other options, generate as many options as you can, combine ideas to create more, allow your creativity to run wild and tap into  your sense of wonderment and awe. Review the list of options and identify the ones that are most intriguing. Use the ideas generated to consider new possibilities and new solutions.
2. Creative Questions -  A good routine for developing ideas and for training your mind to think      differently. Use it to generate creative questions to explore by following these steps:
 
• 1. Pick an everyday object or topic and brainstorm a list of questions about it.       Transform some of these questions in imaginative questions such as: Select a question to imaginatively explore. Write a story, draw a picture, invent a scenario, conduct a thought experiment or dramatise a scenario 2. Reflect on your thinking and the new ideas you have generated. 3. Develop those which seem most useful.

1. Does it Fit? -  A strategy for evaluating options by applying clear criteria. As you apply      each criteria keep the ideas that are consistently the best fit. Does the option Fit the ideal Solution? Does the option Fit the Criteria? Does the option Fit the Situation? Does the      option Fit you Personally?

Thinking Routines adapted from Harvard's 'Visible Thinking Resource Book'

More ideas for developing Habits of Mind - redlandsyear6.net

By Nigel Coutts

3D Printing

In 1984 Hewlett-Packard launched the first commercial Laser Printer at a price of $3,495 US. Along with similar devices from other manufacturers the laser printer was a device that began life as technological marvel but quickly became a device we take for granted as a piece of office furniture. Today a B&W laser printer can be picked up from your local OfficeWorks for as little a $35 with colour models from $144. 

Although the true history of 3D printing can be traced back to the early 80s in many ways the technology is just emerging now into the collective conscience. Possibly most alike to the HP Laser printer of 1984 is the Replicator 2 product of Manhattan based MakerBot. This miracle of modern engineering can be purchased for $2,199 and brings 3D printing into the reach of many consumers and small businesses. For those willing to explore the DIY approach PrintrBot offers kits starting from $300 for a flat-packed 3D printer. (Read Business Week Article)

In another move towards 3D printing becoming mainstream, UPS (United Parcel Service) has just announced a trial of in-store 3D printers that would allow a customer to walk in off the street and leave with a physical version of their new idea. Alternatively a digital rendering of an object could be sent via the Internet for pickup in store. How long will it be before you are able to have a part scanned in one country and beamed for pick-up in another. UPS is not the first to offer such a service, Shapeways has done this for some time, as has Staples in Europe. The model train pictured below was printed using the Shapeways service. What makes the UPS service of interest is that this is a service offered by a courier that could in essence see the need for sending physical goods rendered obsolete. (Read Forbes Article - Popularizing 3D Prinitng)

It is worth noting that at the time of release the first laser printers were considered a threat to global currencies and a counterfeiters dream device. Similar fears exist for 3D printers with fear of all manner of copyright infringement. More newsworthy has been recent reports of downloadable plans that allow a 3D printer to output a plastic gun. Although the reality is that this is a device of very limited use, plastic guns tend to self destruct quickly, there is enough threat to these stories to cause concern. (Lateline report 3D Printer Guns)

Despite limited negatives the future for 3D printing is certainly bright. This series of TED Talks highlight some of the great breakthroughs we can expect to see in the near future, ideas that are truly worth spreading. From bespoke chemistry kits, artificial limbs and even internal organs, 3D printing is set to bring big changes to the way we think about the physical world.

View TED Blog Post - 7 talks on the wonder of 3D printing 

By Nigel Coutts

Inspiring spaces without a remodel

It would be nice to have an unlimited budget, a talented architect and a large construction crew at our disposal to design the ultimate learning space. Unfortunately the reality is most teachers have tight budgets, restricted spaces and little chance of changing the structural elements. For most we are restricted to what we can do with imagination, craft skills and reams of paper.

Despite these restraints there are some amazing room designs out there and with a little tweaking you could have a space that will inspire. Check out the images shared by 'The School Supply Addict' and let your creativity run wild. Better still, let your students take over the room and see what amazing spaces they can create.

Visit The School Supply Addict’s Blog to see Amazing Rooms

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Backup Plans - The forgotten cybersafety

Our digital lives are great and offer all sorts of new opportunities. Digital cameras have made it possible for us to take photos of all manner of things without a cost per image and a trip to the photo lab. With our smartphones we can capture and even edit video or record sounds. Our music collections are no longer a dust collecting assortment of CDs stacked in a corner but are a library of computer files available on many devices. Our working life is documented in files from Word and Excel and we have countless other files that are important to us. You get the idea, we have a whole heap of stuff stored on computers and all of this is why IBM calculates that we are producing 2.2 million terabytes of data everyday. That would be a line of 1Tb hard drives 323 km long.

All this digital living brings with it one BIG problem, what happens to all that data that is of personal value to us when the computer it is stored on stops working, is lost, stolen or destroyed by fire or flood. These digital files represent not just countless hours of work but are the repository for our valued memories. Photos of our children and loved ones that can never be replaced. We would once keep wedding albums in a safe now these images are on hard drives. So what is you plan for when it all goes wrong? and at some point it will.

Sadly the experience of a drive failure is what prompts most people to develop a backup plan which is a little like realising you need home insurance the day after a house fire. Typically the victim turns on their computer to do some mundane task and instead of seeing their files load happily across their desktop are greeted with an error message. At this point the many stages of digital grief kick in beginning with panicked attempts to restart the device, a sinking feeling that all is not good, anger at how this could have happened, a sense of loss as you realise all that was on that device and finally an acceptance of what has occurred and a resolve to not let it happen again.

I had this experience quite recently when the hard drive that stores my music collection failed. I should have seen its icon on the desktop but it wasn't there. I re-started the computer but the result was the same, it was becoming clear that something had happened to that drive. I must admit that a sense of dread was felt at this point but for me this was short lived. I have backups, multiple backups. Within twenty minutes I had swapped out the drive, replaced a few tracks downloaded since my last backup from iTunes and I was back in business. For me the cost of this drive failure was the price of replacing the drive to ensure I still had multiple backups.

How likely is it that a drive will fail? Manufacturers measure this as Mean Time Before Failure. For consumer drives this is often 300,000 hours, which means that across that time span half the drives of that age will have failed. Google undertook a study of some 100,000 drives and found the actual failure rate was up to 50% higher than this and that 3 year old drives present a significant failure risk. What consumers need to take into account with these figures is that there is nothing in any of this to suggest that your drive will last 300,000 hours, it could fail after one hour or anywhere in between, you could be lucky and have it last twice as long.

Alex Lindsay of the Pixel Corps, 'a craftsman's guild for a digital age' advocates a policy 'that no file exists until it exists in three places'. Alex is a veteran of digital creativity having worked with Lucasfilm on the original Star Wars. He now works with digital artists across the world and manages many large data sets of great value. His policy means that for any file you can't afford to loose you need to have three copies of it each in a different location, one of which must be off site.

To meet the requirements for a 'three places' backup you will need to have a means to save your files on to two locations external to your computer. A backup of a file on the computer is a nice way of avoiding accidental erasure or replacement of an old file with a new version but will do nothing in the case of a malfunction or other disaster. The off site backup is also essential. Too many people store their backup drive next to their computer at home or in the bag with their laptop. Great for convenience but what happens if the house burns down, is burgled or the bag is accidentally left in your favourite cafe? This is when you need that offsite back up.

So how should you backup your data?

There is no single right way and what one person does might not suit your situation. Your plan needs to suit the amount of data you have, how much of it you need access to on a daily basis, how often it changes or is added to, how fast your connection to the internet is and how much data you can send over that connection. I use a mixture of methods that looks like this:

• Multiple external hard drives are used to store photos, images, music, video and longer term backups of documents
• One set of drives is stored at home in case of a failure, the other is stored at a relatives house nearby but in another suburb in case of disaster (fire, flood, tsunami)
• I use Carbon Copy Cloner to create exact copies of the drives I use, it does incremental backups so although the initial backup takes hours, after that only the changes need to be made and it is a quick process. It also means I can swap a new drive into my system and carry on working. I use naked drives for the at home set and USB drives for the off site set. There are many similar options for Windows. (Clonezilla, ToDo Backup - I have not tried either but they have solid reviews)
• For files used on a daily basis I use the cloud service DropBox. This ensures my work files are always backed up and are accessible on any computer. (See below for protecting against user error)
• With new photos or videos the files stay on the SD card until they are safe in three locations. I do the same when traveling, one set on the SD card stored safely in a pocket and always with me, one set on a laptop, and one set on an external USB drive stored in a suitcase away from the laptop.

For the files I need access to everyday and on both laptop and desktop I use DropBox. This prevents all sorts of user errors from becoming a problem. I don't have to remember to bring a USB Thumbdrive with me thanks to this service as it automatically syncs files across any number of computers and even lets me access files over an internet connection on any computer. It has also saved me from 'dumb' mistakes. I recently managed to delete a folder from my laptop and as luck would have it this was the folder that contained the files I needed for a presentation that afternoon. Losing that file on that day would have been very bad but thanks to DropBox I was able to go back in time and access the files I had deleted.

There are many options for this sort of cloud storage. SkyDrive offers integration with Microsoft Office, Google Drive integrates tightly with Google Docs and makes sharing and collaboration easy, Apple has iCloud which is becoming a more useful service after years of neglect. There are also services aimed at just backing up large data sets such as Carbonite or CrashPlan. All these services provide you with online backups but rely on an internet connection which means you will need to consider how much data you can send over your internet plan and how quickly you will need to restore that data after a problem. This sort of storage is also not really an option for your Boot Drive, the one that stores your operating system and programs.

Any online, cloud based service brings up issues of privacy. You need to consider who has access to your files and what is the cost/risk to you of someone else gaining access to those files. No service can claim to offer complete protection. The publicity around Edward Snowden and PRISM reveals that government agencies can access all of our online data and that this is particularly relevant for non-US citizens. It is true that due to the inner workings of the internet much if not most of the worlds internet traffic goes through the USA at some point in its journey from computer to computer. It is also true that most people are not saving data that is worth being spied on so the level of fear need to tempered against the reality of the risk. Put another way, no one especially no one in the NSA, wants to read your email or look at your holiday snaps.

As teachers we should be teaching our students to backup their data as a part of cybersafety. Most students are unaware of the risks involved and while they are perhaps more likely to have commenced the move to cloud based computing ahead of us, they will still have to develop a backup strategy. We all still have files stored locally that we need and cloud services have a nasty habit of being shut down. We all need a plan for how we will recover our files from a service that is about to go away.

Lastly don't forget that you probably have valued files on your portable devices too. Smartphones, iPads, Tablets etc all have important files and are all easily lost, dropped or washed. Your backup plan should include these devices and in most cases needs to be part of a daily schedule. For these devices you will probably find that some sort of cloud-sync is available and provides the level of protection you need.

So, go now and check you backup plan, don't put it off. The drive in the computer you are reading this on could be about to fail.

by Nigel Coutts

Technology as a Tool: Understanding what our students need.

Recently I came across a simple and yet compelling InfoGraphic created and shared by Bill Ferriter through the Centre for Teaching Quality and I am posting a copy of it here as it's worth thinking about its implications. Bill asserts that Technology should be seen as a tool that is used by students as they learn, think, analyse and create. To quote Bill, 'The motivation behind the image was to remind teachers that carefully thinking through just what we want our kids to know and be able to do is the FIRST step that we need to take when making choices about the role that technology plays in our teaching.' 

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InfoGraphic by Bill Ferriter

Unfortunately in the area of technology in particular it is easy to get this the wrong way about. We think about the technology we want to be teaching rather than being clear what the purpose of it is or how is it promoting the sort of learning we want. This raises bigger questions that we should all ask before teaching anything 'What do we want our students to understand?' 'Why should our students learn this?' 'How important is each piece as a whole and as separate pieces?' and 'How will we allow our students to demonstrate their learning and to what audiences?'. I believe these questions are applicable to everything we teach, even those pieces that are sometimes labeled essential skills.

Consider the task of writing or more broadly communication. Assuming that the writing has a relevant purpose and an audience, such tasks are worth teaching and worth engaging with from a students perspective. The task of writing has many component parts and summed together have value. But do the parts have value without the whole task of communicating? Does spelling have value if it is not clearly linked to the larger task of communicating ones ideas to an audience? Does a clear and articulate voice in a forest of isolated skills make a sound?

Beyond an unclearly defined point in their development our students become self aware, they ask questions and look for a purpose in what they do. As educators it is our role to provide learning opportunities that will develop the skills we know our students will require but to do so in ways that meet their desire for purpose. What our students do must matter and when it does their engagement levels follow. 

As a team of Year Six teachers we run a unit on Climate Change. We could teach the students the facts as presented by each viewpoint and test their recall at the end. What purpose this would serve? I don't know; by next week the science may have changed. Instead we empower our students by having them develop solutions that they believe in based on the evidence that they agree with and then present this to an audience of their parents and peers. Ask the students what they are doing and you would receive responses such as; 'I am finding a solution to climate change' or 'we are investigating cloud making ships to keep the planet cool'. As teachers we know there is much more going on here as our students develop the skills they require to manage and share large scale projects. We have the opportunity to focus our teaching on the little bits that we know are important while the students experience the big picture and engage with a project that matters.

This unit was developed as a result of us taking the time to deeply consider the Understanding Goals and Learning Objectives we held important and ensuring our students would be able to play significant roles in the learning process that resulted. Asking the right questions about what your students will be learning across the curriculum can make a real difference to the quality of the learning that occurs.

By Nigel Coutts

Preaching to the School Choir: Why do we need Sir Ken Robinson?

I like Sir Ken Robinson, his TED Talks combine humour, insightful commentary and a perspective on education that I agree with. But after watching his latest speech (see video) I was left wondering, who is he preaching to and why is there a need for it?

On a number of occasions I have seen presenters use the words of Sir Ken as part of their presentations for Professional Development days. The response is always the same; general agreement and a room full of teachers who are inspired to do great things for their students. I have read some of his books too and agree that education should inspire creativity, teach to the individual's passions and allow teachers to plan units of work that are tailored to the needs of their students. Teaching to the test is seen as a problem and a trend that benefits no one. Teachers need to be valued and treated with respect as highly trained professionals. Students should want to be at school and should leave school equipped for life in a modern world possessing the skills valued by their future employers. 

I agree with all of this and so do the colleagues I speak to about these ideas. So too do many of the most valued researchers in the field of Education. David Perkins, of Harvard's Project Zero, in his book 'Making Learning Whole: How seven principles of teaching can transform education' outlines many of the same ideas. Using a sports metaphor he argues that education should teach the 'whole game', make it worth playing, encourage students to focus on the hard parts, seek opportunities to test their skills in new situations, go beyond the surface detail, learn from others both peers and teachers and learn 'the game of playing the game' or 'metacognition. Again, there is very little here to disagree with. Possibly the one criticism I have heard aimed at such theories of education goes something like; 'Well, that's just good teaching with a fancy name'.

Several years back I had cause to write a philosophy of education, a set of guiding principles to be shared with my class' parent body. It included words and phrases such as 'enthused', 'challenged', 'partnership' and 'powerful learners with the ability to determine their level of success'. It speaks of 'an environment that celebrates learning and education as integral parts of life'. I have shared this philosophy with many groups of parents and colleagues since then and have never had any disagreement.

I work in a school that seeks to develop students who are ready for the unique challenges they will face beyond school. I have had the opportunity to study 'Teaching for Understanding' and 'Making Thinking Visible' as these courses support the development of highly transferable skills and dispositions for learning. I know many other schools have provided their staff with similar opportunities and that the teaching skills developed through such courses are desirable among candidates for employment. I have not read advertisements for teachers which focus on a knowledge of standardised testing or rote learning.

So with all this agreement from educators why does Sir Ken Robinson need to spread his message? Why is there a climate in schools that proves he is correct when he states 'Great things are happening despite the system'? As a profession where did we go wrong? When did it become OK for politicians to set Educational Policies that fly in the face of what the profession agrees is best practice? Maybe it is time we started writing educational theories in Latin to keep the 'commoners' off our patch of turf?

By Nigel Coutts

Google Glass and Education

Google Glass is one of those technologies where the idea alone is enough to start conversations. For those who grew up on a diet of Star Trek it is an idea from that world brought to life. For pretty much everyone else it is technology that pushes right up against Eric Schmidt's 'creepy line'. Even though the release of Glass to the general public is still some way off it is worth pondering what it might mean for Education and address both the fears and promise of Google's next big idea.

Google Glass was announced last year at Google I/O, their international developers event. At that time attendees were able to join a wait list for Google Glass and become the first to receive this new product. What was amazing at the time is that Glass rapidly sold out despite a price of $1500 US and that at this stage there was no product, just the promise of a new way of interacting with your information and of recording the world around you.

This year in time for  I/O Google delivered Glass to the initial group of users and revealed, at least in beta form their vision for wearable computing. The initial response from those who have experienced Glass has been positive, despite it very clearly being an immature product that will require committed developers and time to deliver what was promised. Glass is one of those products that is easily mocked by those who have not experienced it yet rapidly embraced by those who have. Rob Demillo, the Chief Technology Officer for Tekzilla (part of the Revision 3 network purchased recently by Discovery Networks) is one early adopter impressed by the potential of Glass. He describes the experience of having been involved with the program for 12 months as a member of the Explorer Program. To Rob the devices 'notification centric' operating system is a paradigm shift not seen in the tech world since the wide adoption of the desktop metaphor. That it puts your notifications and the information you need front and centre but goes away when not needed is a game changer that takes this beyond the realm of a head mounted camera.

What is important to take away here is that Glass is, truly, a new paradigm for interacting with a computer. Everything from the display to the interface is new, and the immediacy of the system lends itself to a "Notification First" environment, which is a different world from which we currently operate.

Read Notes From The Rocket Blog

For those who have missed the buzz on Glass it a small projector mounted to a spectacle frame so that it can present information to its wearer via one eye. Linked to the users phone and thus to the internet, social networks, emails and GPS the device is very aware of its users personal information. By combining data from all of these sources augmented with live information from its camera and microphones Glass becomes a powerful device for a new augmented reality. Backed by the information processing power of Google, Glass knows more about you and your daily routine than you do. It knows your schedule, your interests, your commute and it combines this with detailed real time data about where you are to deliver meaningful data. Your calendar will tell you when you have a meeting, Glass will let you know when you need to leave given local traffic data, indicate when you are near that speciality store you searched for two days ago and then show you the LinkedIn page for each person at the meeting.

See how glass works on Edudemic

So far much of the attention around Glass has centred on its camera. Initial reports were that this would be an always on device that would capture all that its wearer saw. This is not the case but fears persist that the device will be misused and the world will be flooded with privacy invading images captured in public toilets. It is this type of hysteria that must be overcome for the device to succeed and as a result facial detection has not yet been permitted. It is almost certain that the initial conversations in school will focus on these fears of privacy. Even now few schools are comfortable with smartphones due the camera risk and unrestricted internet.

When Glass becomes publicly available at a price point that is less prohibitive it will undoubtedly begin to appear in schools. Most likely this will begin with students who are early adopters of new technology and whose parents are willing to support the purchase of a new toy. The response is likely to be a swift ban but overtime will this change. There is real potential in such a device but unlike other disruptive technologies the use case is not as immediately apparent. Glass is not the re-imagining of an existing product into a new form factor, a laptop with a virtual keyboard as in a tablet. Schools will need to evaluate the potential of a notification based operating system that prompts students with relevant information as and when they require it.

Sugata Mitra in an article for the Guardian questioned our romantic attachment to previous models for learning. He questions a school model that locks students away from the Internet and sets strict conditions for assessments yet has the goal of preparing students for adult life where they will be expected to make use of every option available for exploration and collaboration. We know our students will enter an increasingly connected world but continue to teach them in ways that are perfectly suited to the early 19th Century. The potential of Glass is that it becomes the mechanism that provides its wearer with the information they need, when they need it. In a school system that values deep thinking, analysis and evaluation of knowledge over the restatement of facts, this ease of access to data should be seen as an advantage. Glass has the potential to free the student's minds from the recall of information and allow them to have it popped into view as they require it. Visual search in art lessons, notes linked to a video, easy access to search results via speech commands, new options for collaboration and the many uses yet to be thought of. For Glass these are such early days that it is likely to be our students who will be the ones to invent the use cases for such a device.

Once we move beyond Glass as a device the students bring to class with them and think of its potential as a device worn by teachers the options change. Imagine a class with a teacher and students wearing Glass. A class in which every member is able to access and share information, record photos and video from their point of view and review what has been recorded. In some respects the idea might be frightening and one that raises many new questions, how do we control access?, how do we prevent sharing of these videos?, how will we prevent cyber-bullying?, how do we ensure equity of access to a new and expensive technology? All are significant and valid questions and yet the prospect of a classroom of Glass empowered learners is worth pondering.

What might this Glass enabled class look like? What might Glass enable and how may it enhance the learning of the students? Many ideas come forward when you ponder these questions. A students struggling with a Maths problem replays the steps they have taken and recorded. A teacher records a lesson from their perspective and edits this together with views from the student's perspective as a tool for revision and reflection. Teachers view online a colleague's lesson and offer suggestions in real time that appear in the teachers eye-line. A specialist or behavioural expert observes a child for signs of a learning disability as they work in their classroom with their teacher. Students on an excursion or field trip capture images and videos of what they see, share notes with classmates and have access to information from the internet to augment their experience. Students working in a group record their interactions for review after the lesson, to identify how they worked together and to ensure the ideas of all members are considered. While watching a video students back channel ideas and perspective with students across the globe, while the teachers are able to pose questions without the need to pause the film. A teacher shares a positive moment recorded from their class with an anxious parent or presents a clearer picture of a child's behaviour. 

This video shows how Andrew Vanden Heuvel used Glass to inspire Physics students

It will be most interesting to see how people respond to Glass and other wearable technologies. The response of the wider community will play an important role in how these ideas are accepted in areas such as education but as educators we should consider honestly and openly the potential or not that is presented. If a new tool offers genuine advantages to our students then we should give it due thought. If it is a tool that our students will be expected to master then it deserves our time too. If it is just a new shiny toy then it is perhaps best left for playtime. Where Glass fits in this scale is far from decided at this point.

By Nigel Coutts

A Romantic Attachment to the Past

In this interesting article Sugata Mitra questions why we are so attached to patterns of education that have been outdated by new technologies and new ways of learning. He questions the skill set we teach in schools despite knowing that these are not the skills valued by employers or the adult world in general.

Read the article from the Guardian

With thanks to Martin Levins for sharing

Because we need inspiring people

As individuals and as a society we need people who inspire us. Maybe they are Heroes, maybe they are just people we would like to be a little bit more like. ​Chris Hadfield is one such person. In addition to being an astronaut, a profession that is undoubtedly cool, he has produced the first music video ever filmed in space. If what we aim to do as teachers is to inspire our students, then Chris is a great role model for them to follow.

Leadership for Everyone

Leadership is a skill and attitude we are keen to promote in our students. To do so we provide numerous opportunities for this and a variety of formal Leadership Positions. Even so it is worth asking what does it mean to be a leader and how can we provide every student with the experience of leadership.

There is much debate about the nature of leadership and the character attributes that make an effective leader. Some feel strongly that leadership is an innate quality and that some people have it and others don't. This form of Natural Leadership is not common and while schools can encourage the growth and positive application of these characteristics this approach offers little to those who are not natural leaders. The other side of the coin is that leadership is a set of behaviours, attitudes and knowledge that can be learned. If this is so then schools can make a real impact in developing leaders.

The second question is how can we provide every child with leadership experiences? Even if we subscribe to the Natural Leader model we may never see this side of a student unless we provide the right experiences. The video below provides an answer to this by viewing Leadership not as the actions of the great and mighty but as the little actions we can all take that change a life. Drew Dudley relates Everyday Leadership to Lollipop Moments based on a story of how he came to realise the potential he had to change lives. This is a TED Talk worth sharing and discussing with your students.

TEDxToronto is the official TEDx conference for Toronto, Canada. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, it brings together the city's foremost thought leaders, change makers and everyday people from each discipline and challenges them to deliver powerful, unforgettable and unique TEDxTalks. The theme of the second annual conference was A Call to Action.

Commercialisation

It goes without saying that we become teachers out of a deep desire to effect the development of our students, to play a role in their path to maturity, knowledge and understanding. But in addition to shaping the future citizens of our society there are other good reasons for selecting teaching as a profession. In the long term one of the most interesting aspects of the profession is the ever changing nature of the challenges each new batch of students bring and with this the constant demands on your creativity, knowledge and problem solving skills as you strive to meet the needs of every student.

Teaching is never dull and unlike many professions it provides an ongoing intellectual and creative challenge. Teaching is often more like performance art in which we combine our ideas, our beliefs and values with resources designed for the task into a highly choreographed dance that results in our audience leaving the room a little more able than when they entered. Visit any primary school classroom and you see the evidence of this performance on the walls and hanging from the ceilings and if you look closely you will see the creative spirit of the teacher and students.

A concerning trend in education is placing this creativity at risk and as a profession we must decide if this is good or bad for our students. Education is big business and always has been but increasingly Big Business is seeing it as a potential market and this could change the landscape for teachers, schools and students.

As Education shifts from Text Books to online and blended learning has created a new market sector and the publishing houses and media conglomerates are likely to pounce. There is real potential here to develop teaching resources and programmes that fill the gap for schools looking to provide what is seen as a 21st Century Education. For a large media company with a stockpile of digital resources and a staff of developers and editors the potential of selling an App or Managed Learning Environment must be alluring. For schools adjusting to the demands of a new syllabus or common core standards the offer a tailored programme is also tempting especially if it is marketed as supporting the new objectives and outcomes.

Text books for a long time have been seen as the easy way out, the but of jokes about bad teaching practices in which the teacher input to a lesson is "Open your text to page 45 and answer the questions at the end of the chapter". Good teachers didn't do this even if they made use of texts. We picked pieces that supported our lessons, used a page here and there for independent practise or used illustrations to support our teaching. We were in charge of the process and wove the resources we had at our fingertips into our craft. Will this continue when programmes are crafted by large media houses who protect their intellectual property with Digital Right Management? 

A continuing challenge faced by schools is how to implement new ideas that move their teachers forward and challenge the tried and trusted practices of the past. Resistance to change is real. One strategy schools have used is to buy into a programme that achieves the desired goal. One example of this is seen in an attempt to encourage the use of an integrated inquiry based approach to learning that included an awareness of individual learning styles. Key staff in the school undertook extensive research and all staff involved were provided with extensive support and PD. In the end it was considered easier to implement the Middle Years Programme as developed by the International Baccalaureate. Had the school done this it would have had an easy to follow programme with ready made resources for teachers to follow and less opportunity for resistance. In the end the project was disbanded.

The same pattern can be seen in other areas. In the realm of thinking skills and learner behaviours that promote success there are numerous paths a school can take. Bloom's Taxonomy, Dimensions of Learning, Habits of Mind, De Bono's Thinkers Hats, Gardner's Multiple Intelligences are all employed by schools to varying degrees to achieve the desired goal of supporting positive behaviours in their learners. As these are Open ideas researched and shared openly and collectively schools are free to implement them in ways they see fit. The varying models for implementing this are as diverse as the schools that use them. But there are those who see this as an area for commercial gain and thus in place of developing a programme to implement these behaviours it is possible to purchase a set of resources designed to do it for you and with this to buy into a system for teaching and learning a key set of skills. But will the results be as effective as homegrown solution, will the desired level of ownership be achieved and if not does having an integrated system provide sufficient benefits for this not to matter.

I am not saying that this is bad thing, only that it is different perhaps from the way schools and teachers have operated and that it is a change that is likely to accelerate. As education becomes increasingly commercial will lose something of the craft that went with the profession? Will we give up ownership for well polished and presented resources? In the end the question has to go back to 'what is best for our learners?' Do they learn more from a teacher who gives them access to the best resources or do they learn more from a teacher whose classroom is full of their spirit and soul?

By Nigel Coutts

Google Reader, Skeumorphism, Games, Apps and Schools

On October 7th 2005 Google launched its Reader platform. Designed to be the best RSS (Real Simple Subscription) aggregator Reader grew to quickly become the most popular platform of its type. Despite its initial popularity on March 13th Google announced that Reader will be no more and that from July 1 its users will need to find an alternative service. For those who follow tech, Reader is just another example of an idea that had its day and has now been replaced by new processes. For schools Reader's demise has further implications and possibly a lesson for how we plan for teaching with and about ICT.

In the world of technology, change is inevitable. New ideas, new ways of working and interacting are driven both by advances in what is possible but also in response to our changing needs and wants. Faster chips, high speed connections and ubiquitous access are creating online communities that invent services to cater for their needs. As the needs of the community change and evolve so new services arise to meet those needs. Sometimes the new service creates a community of users around it, sometimes the service is a response to a community. 

Reader has gone away, not because people no longer want to have a one stop shop for their news but because new services have moved this community of RSS users on to other ideas. Why have a bland page of feeds when Flipboard presents you with a beautiful magazine like interface or Pinterest that provides a compelling experience by tapping straight into our desire for visual stimulation. 

David Winer the alleged inventor of Podcasting (a media distribution system that relies on RSS) says that the average user of the RSS model has moved on to living in a 'River of News'. Unlike RSS where the news is gathered together in one place 'The River of News' model involves watching a stream of news go by and the individual consuming the pieces they want. It is all very fast moving and focused on the immediate. In short it is Twitter. Twitter is not just short in terms of characters, but short in life span. Tweets come and go and the average user might see at best the tweets from the past hour. The perfect news source for the instant gratification, short attention span generation.

Of course Reader is only the latest victim of the pace of change. Some readers might recall MySpace. It had a huge user base, the backing of big names from the world of music and Hollywood and the financial might of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Founded in 2003 it allowed its users to create personalised profile pages to share with the world and in doing so build a community. MySpace was the next big thing, until in 2008 Facebook eclipsed it as the place to be seen on the web. In 2007 MySpace had an estimated value of $12 billion, by 2011 that value had plummeted to between $50 & $200 million.

Today Facebook is king and has over 1 billion active users. Some believe Facebook will survive and along with other tech giants, such as Google and Wikipedia, will survive the next 100 years. But in 2009 Forbes published a list of companies that would survive this timespan. Few would have argued the merit of Eastman Kodak appearing on this list and yet today the company is in receivership and the iconic red and yellow brand that started the careers of so many photographers and was immortalised in song by Simon & Garfunkel is likely to pass from memory. Mark Zuckerberg surely knows he can not rest easy, for Facebook the pressure is to invent the next big thing or be replaced by it.

Google founder and CEO Larry Page understands the need for innovation. His company is famous for the motto, 'Fail Fast'. When interviewed on the importance of 'Moon Shots' (Big New Ideas) he described the difficulties faced by companies that don't think big,

"That’s why most companies decay slowly over time. They tend to do approximately what they did before, with a few minor changes. It’s natural for people to want to work on things that they know aren’t going to fail. But incremental improvement is guaranteed to be obsolete over time. Especially in technology, where you know there’s going to be non-incremental change." (Larry Page interviewed by Steven Levy of Wired) 

These thoughts are echoed by John Herlihy in the quote below courtesy of "Business & Finance" - 

"Part of our culture is that we celebrate failure," says John Herlihy, who heads up Google's European operations centre in Barrow Street. "It's okay to fail here. If you are not failing enough, then you are not taking enough risks. When the Romans used to ransack Europe, they had this fantastic model where they would send scouts out in five different directions. The four that didn't come back, they knew not to go in that direction. So what we do here is fail and fail fast." 

So what does this mean for schools.

Most school systems, by comparison to Tech companies, move at a glacial pace. We invest our time and resources into projects that will take in excess of thirteen years to meet fruition. We plan for our students a journey that will take them from early childhood to adulthood via a series of carefully planned stages. Each phase or stage of learning builds on what went before and prepares them carefully for the one ahead. In maths students are firstly introduced to a set of symbols learning to move their minds and vocal chords around the sounds required to verbalise them. Sometime after they are performing operations with these numbers and are expected to solve simple problems, eventually they will know the inner workings of a complex system of numbers and symbols and face the challenge, if they wish, to discover new ideas where they apply their carefully developed understandings as mathematicians.

But technology challenges this system of carefully planned teaching and learning and lately it has been smashing it to pieces. 

All schools at some stage develop a strategy for teaching through and learning about ICT. We evaluate the needs of our students and the possibilities available to them and design programmes and resource acquisitions around these evaluations. A key part of this is typically the development of a scope and sequence of skills required of all computer users. With great care and diligence we map out a progression of knowledge required from beginner to expert.

Not all that long ago such a goal may have been achievable. Students would need to understand the fundamentals of opening and creating new documents, saving files to a folder and printing final copies. We would teach students how to copy and paste text or images from one file to another or from webpages. As students progressed they may learn keyboard short cuts for some of these operations and move from simple programs to more advanced ones with more options. Many schools taught students to touch type confident that such a skill would be as crucial as handwriting, assured that QWERTY would be with us for a long time to come. Some schools used Windows and so taught the subtle nuances of that system, others used Apple, all seemed to use Office and with that Word and Powerpoint. 

In more recent times schools have started to understand the need for their students to be versatile in their approach to technology. We have made efforts to be platform agnostic. To teach students to understand the common elements between operating systems. To read the symbols that make these platform intuitive to the user. Need to save a file, look for a picture of a disk, a pair of arrows pointing apart enlarges something, pointing together makes it smaller. Software designers tried to help by making icons that looked like items we use in the real world. This is what has come to be known as Skeumorphic design, a strategy that Apple took to extremes under the guidance of Steve Jobs.

But today the pace and scale of change means even these simple skills are of questionable value. 

The first big change to deal with is Touch. With the birth of the iPhone and then the iPad the way we interact with our devices started to shift. What this means for the existing paradigms of Graphic User Interfaces is still to be seen. Windows Eight will introduce its users to a new world of swipes and gestures. Developers for the three major platforms (iOS, Android, Windows 8) are all experimenting with different ways of interacting with their programs. Some aim for single handed use, others two thumbs, some a hybrid of touch and onscreen keyboard. The impact of voice control is yet to be seen. Do we now teach thumb typing and if so do we teach pick & peck or swipe?

With the passing of Steve Jobs even Apple is re-evaluating its passion for Skeumorphic design. Under the guidance of Sir Jony Ives we are set to see a flatter modern interface that takes its cues from a digital world and no longer mimics the physical. This new design language which was perhaps first seen in Windows 8 has few standards or conventions and yet the digital natives who use these devices are still able to discover its secrets.  

Apple has also turned us away from many of our typical routines. Create a new file on an Apple Computer or iOS device and you will discover some big changes. The way we save documents has changed, much of the process is automatic and to the cloud. Other than the first save it all happens without you doing a thing. Close an application and the document is saved in its latest form. As iOS and OSX share more features the features we are used to on our desktop computers will increasingly give way to those we use on our touch based devices, at some point many say the traditional Apple Computer will go away and we will all be using iPads.

Maybe schools should look at Microsoft for a vision of the future, not that Windows 8 is a great success but that here we see a once mighty company struggling to keep up with the pace of change; to discover the next big thing before it runs them over.

Microsoft was once mighty and feared by all. If it released a product into a category already occupied it was certain that the existing product would not survive. Microsoft was late to the internet but with its launch of Internet Explorer it both crushed Netscape and introduced the world to the term 'Anti-trust'. Microsoft has also been late to 'Touch' (it is recognised by the author that this statement belies the complexity of Microsoft's Tablet history). We now see Microsoft reinventing its core product, Windows, and in doing so forcing its users onto a new way of working and interacting. The Start button which has been with us since Windows 95 is gone, despite the many protests. 

Microsoft has launched two products onto the market, one which points to its needs to allow users to slowly transition, the other a sign of where they are going and where they hope to take their users.

Surface RT, is to many the future. It is a stripped bare Tablet operating system. It runs programs only from the Windows Store and is a clear response by Microsoft to the success of the iPad and more recently Android Tablets. Microsoft's other recent release is Surface Pro, a touch screen computer running a full version of Windows 8. It will run existing Windows programs and offers a traditional desktop environment although with no start button. The question is which product will survive, RT or Pro. My money is with RT, the Real Thing, the future, but not what we predicted. 

Presently the future for Windows 8 is bleak. It is unpopular and has been branded by many a fail of the same magnitude as Vista. For those without Touch it is difficult to use and breaks many traditional workflows so much loved by power users. Many tech pundits are already looking ahead to Windows 9 as the saviour. Others are looking to alternatives. Many users are quite happy with their Tablets or Phablets running Android or iOS. In a twist from the trajectory that technology was on, speed and power are of less importance than portability and convenience. The best device is the one you have with you.

Google has other plans. Their Chromebook computer runs no software besides a web browser. All services and file storage is provided via the cloud. The device and its significance as the holder of the users information and programs is removed entirely. For the user all that matters is their Google login as with this they have access to their digital world as they want it, on any device. Switch from one Chromebook to another and the experience you have with it will be identical to the one you have with your Chromebook. For a user coming from a traditional computer paradigm this presents numerous challenges but for the new user or one who has already shifted life to the cloud the experience is very smooth. For the up and coming generation of Digital Natives the demands of maintaing an expensive set of software on a bulky virus prone device are easily shed in favour of devices that just get them to their stuff, their community, their online life.

So how should schools approach ICT? What can we realistically hope to achieve for our students?

Instead of starting with the tool we need to first look at the purposes we wish to achieve. Learning any skill or piece of knowledge has no value if it is not to be applied to a meaningful task and the use of technology is no different. When looked at this way the constant changes to the tools available has little impact; the purposes remain the same. Our students will always need to Inquire, to use the resources available to them, to locate information that helps them to answer questions about their world. They will Create, taking their ideas and transforming them into products in many different forms across multiple mediums. They will Collaborate with peers both face-to-face, one-to-one and as a part of much larger communities that cross borders and cultures. They will Communicate for many different purposes and in many ways. These are the purposes that do not change and that as educators we need to include in our teaching.

But what skills should we teach? Computer Games and $1.99 apps for Tablets may have the answer.

Computer games face three challenges of design in that they must be easy to learn, instantly engaging yet sufficiently challenging to maintain the players interest. If a game is too hard for a novice user they will move on to something that offers less resistance. If the game does not offer a challenge the user will become bored or will finish the game too quickly. Good games manage this challenge well and are able to engage the player from first game through many hours of committed use. Great games balance ease of use with increasing complexity, immediate feedback and high levels of engagement. Developers of productivity software could and in some cases are learning much from game developers.

With the launch of the iTunes App store developers had a new market to tap with the $1.99 App. In this market the user has made a very minimal commitment to the App they have just purchased. If it is not immediately engaging, if it does not give instant satisfaction and results they will move on with little regret. The user of the $1.99 app has not committed sufficient coin to the purchase to warrant time spent learning it. The developers know this and the result is that only the apps which are easy to use and quickly meet the users needs will succeed.

Watch a child play a game or use an iPad and you will see how quickly they discover the workings of it. Discovery, inquiry, exploration and engagement combine to ensure rapid learning. The same is not true of programs like Office, but are these programs going to survive into the future. Already suffering because of their reliance on mouse and keyboard in a world of touch, these traditional stalwarts that rely on users taking courses and reading manuals are surely short lived.

So we teach our students to understand the purposes which ICT may assist with, we foster discovery and exploration and we assist our students to locate software and services that meet their needs. As users we demand with our purchasing power apps that meet our needs without imposing a steep learning curve.  It was once said that if you give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a life time. Today this has changed, now we must teach our students to teach themselves how to fish in waters where the fish learn new skills for dodging hooks on a daily basis.

By Nigel Coutts

Early Days with a Chromebook

For sometime now I have wanted to experiment with a Chromebook, to take on the challenge of living and working in the cloud. Until recently though the purchase of a Chromebook in Australia was not easy but this changed when Google announced local availability. A quick visit to the local JB HiFi and I became the owner of a Samsung Chromebook and a wallet that was only $346 lighter than before.

The experience of purchasing the Chromebook is worthy of some comment. The customers ahead of me were a father and daughter looking for a laptop and asking the clerk about the Chromebook. After a number of somewhat failed attempts to demonstrate what the computer could do he described the device to the pair as being just like a Windows or Mac computer but made running Google's software. I wonder how many people will be told this and leave with a device that they believe will run Word and Photoshop just like any other laptop. How many will then protest that their Chromebook doesn't perform as expected. I hope those charged with selling the product receive the support they need to do a good job of it and that Chromebooks wind up in the right hands.

Unboxing and setting up the Chromebook was unlike any computer I have used before. The box is very thin and light and the manual had fewer pages than a recently purchased toaster despite covering multiple languages. After an initial charging period I turned the computer, typed in my Google login, connected to WiFi and was immediately into my online world of bookmarks and previously opened tabs. A little time spent on the Chrome Web Store and I had access to the core Apps I use such as Evernote, DropBox and Skydrive. It was all very uneventful, no need to find discs of software or wait while software was installed. After 30 minutes of exploration it was as ready to go as it ever will be. With no work to do I put it down and went to make coffee. Such a very different experience from setting up my last Mac which provided hours of 'entertainment' as I installed all my bits and pieces.

So now I am using it for an increasing number of daily tasks and in most ways it is meeting expectation. All but one which is requiring a little rethink. I have used DropBox for years as my cloud storage option. It gives me access to all my files across all my different devices. On my computers I have it set to sync locally stored files so I always have access to the latest version of the files I work with. I can also access my files on the web and the DropBox app for the Chromebook is great too. Except that I don't have a way to edit my files and keep them updadted through DropBox. I have access to Live Office and Google Docs but neither gives me access to my DropBox files so for now I am shuffling files back and forth.

If I was starting over I would use either Google Docs or Skydrive for my cloud storage as both offer editing options for all my files. As I am rather committed to DropBox I am hoping to find a workflow that works with that.

In Other areas I am very impressed. Evernote unsurprisingly works very well and I can edit and publish my websites with ease. I like the keyboard and the new web centric buttons make life easier, or will once I get used to having them avaialble, I am still looking for the refresh button on screen even though I have a key for that exact job. I am getting to know the system a little better and have changed the way I work with Tabs so I can easily shift between workspace with a keyboard press rather than having to mouse between them.

I like that the device is light weight even though it is a little heavier than my Mac and while it is very plasticy it was very cheap and I am happy using it in places where I would be less relaxed using my Mac.

It is only early days but I like my Chromebook and can see how for many people it could be the perfect computer.

By Nigel Coutts

Tools to Help Learners Learn

We all know the adage of teach a person to fish and they will be fed for a lifetime and we can readily see how this fits with education. Ask any teacher about their goals for their class and in the mix will be the idea of creating lifelong learners who can take charge of their own learning. Despite having this goal often we get caught up in the content of what we are teaching and those essential and transferable skills which are required by effective learners are forgotten.

KQED presents a blog post that covers Five Tools to Help Students Learn How to Learn. The article explains the role that good tools play in an inquiry based approach and lists five that are essential:

1. An Inquiry Community
2. An Inquiry Circle
3. The Inquiry Journal
4. The Inquiry Log
5. The Inquiry Chart

Learn how to use each tool by reading the blog post at KQED

Eight Essential Elements for Project Based Learning

Project Based Learning can be seen as one of the rising trends in education. It can also be viewed as a trendy reinvention of well worn wheel. Confusion over what makes an effective example of Project Based Learning is the root cause of this argument. Some clarity is required if we are to get Project Based Learning right and achieve the desired outcome for our students.

Fortunately the writers at the Buck Institute for Education have created this check list for Project Based Learning. In a simple format it suggests eight essential elements for a successful project.

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Good Assessment Gone Bad

Many teachers find the task of designing an assessment almost as much of a challenge as the Assessment is for their students. Perhaps the difficulty can be found within the stages of an assessment's design from initial concept to its use with a group of students. My goal here is to identify where we might go wrong with our assessments and locate the point at which Good Assessments Go Bad.

Typically when we think about an assessment we have the best of intentions. We want to see what it is that the students have learned, to check that our teaching has resulted in the desired learning. What we don't notice is that we have already made our first mistake and our assessment is  on the road to ruin. We have imagined that we can have a device, a test, a question, an assignment that will provide us with the answer we seek. But if the assessment is not an integral part of our teaching and of the student's learning it will be inherently disconnected from the process of learning. Even worse if it is placed at the end of the process the results will be of little use to those to whom they matter most, the students.

But our assessment is only part of the way towards going bad. The next stage in its downfall comes in the form of external pressures. We also want our assessment to inform our reporting and we want to it to be of value when allocating grades. We need it to be fair, which translates into the 'same for all students'. We want it to place students along a bell curve and as such it is inherently designed so that half of the students will underachieve. We want it to produce data we can readily analyse, so we design it to produce a number. Our assessment, that started life with such an honest goal, is on the verge of turning bad.

The final stage is when we consider our needs in the process. We want an assessment that is easy to administer and easy to mark. We are, after all, time poor. We are also certain that it will be the teacher who marks it and maybe we should give the task to one teacher to ensure equity of marking. Our assessment has undoubtedly gone bad. It is now a 'test' and sadly as this is what many of us are used to from our days as students we barely shed a tear at its demise.

But does it have to be this way, is it inevitable that assessments will 'go bad'. I hope not and the designers of the 'Teaching For Understanding' programme agree.

Assessment needs to be an inherent part of the teaching/learning process. For those who follow 'the learners way' it is focused on the needs of the learner. It is a tool for an effective teacher to use on a regular basis to check their learner is headed in the right direction. A feedback loop that guides their thinking and keeps track of their progress. It never becomes a thing that is done at the end of a unit. It is instead the sum total of every evaluation that the teacher and more importantly the student makes as they engage with their learning.

A new edition to our teaching team (1) has reminded us of the process of 'Traffic Lighting' progress. A simple set of questions asked frequently allows the students to give feedback on their level of understanding. It is a risk free process for the learner and they recognise that it is a part of their learning. Through a simple silent gesture they indicate that they have understood the lesson, are not quite sure or are needing extra support. A simple assessment that immediately leads to an evaluation of the learning that is occurring in the room and as needed an adjustment of the process for all involved.

Teaching for Understanding describes assessment as an essential part of the process of learning. Through simple metaphors they describe how the process of evaluating an athletes performance from training sessions to the playing field is a positive example of assessment in action. The coach is constantly assessing the players performance and constantly giving feedback. This same process occurs between players and at every stage the player is involved in the process too as they are able to evaluate their own performance. This is what assessment should be like in the classroom.

That is not to say there is no place for concluding assessments but the results of these should never be a surprise. The student needs to have been shown where they are going wrong along the way and be empowered by ongoing assessment procedures that they are involved in. Self assessment is a powerful tool and there is good evidence to support its application in every stage of teaching and learning. The student who is involved in the assessment process along the way will have already identified areas for growth and as a result of their relationship with an engaged educator had access to the support they need. When this phase of their learning comes to an end, they will be provided with relevant and meaningful feedback and tools to assess their progress. This concluding assessment becomes the first building block for the next phase of their learning.

This article by Tina Blythe and Associates forms part of the 'Teaching For Understanding Guide' and presents an easily digested outline to designing effective ongoing assessment. The article clearly states that assessment is 'more than just evaluation: it is a substantive contribution to learning'. The article is worth reading again even, if you have completed the Teaching for Understanding course, as it provides clear examples of what good assessment looks like and could help us all stop our assessment from going bad.

   Read 'Ongoing Assessments from TFU'
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(1) With thanks to Jake Turnbull for sharing 'Traffic Lights for Immediate Feedback' 

By Nigel Coutts