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28 January 2011

January 2011 post-BETT Newsletter

January 2011 post-BETT Newsletter

Shifting political landscapes

MirandaNet members who joined us at BETT11 agreed that the changes in the political landscape since the election last May are just beginning to impact on schools education in England. For the past decade ICT funding for education has boomed, with billions spent on hardware, software, infrastructure and training. Now, however, tough economic times coupled with a government determined to cut the deficit quickly means that this trend is being reversed.

In these circumstances I hope our members in 70 countries will forgive the concentration on England’s policy on Information and Communications Technology in this newsletter. Particularly we are having to consider how to operate collectively now that Becta,the government agency for Information and Communications Technology, is going (The Axing of Becta). For example, MirandaNet was the recipient of small research contracts from Becta that allowed us to research the value of MirandaMods and make them more effective as professional knowledge creation events and disseminate what we have learnt. The demise of Becta means that these small grants are no longer available for innovation and information sharing. I see a particular challenges emerging from the loss of Becta that will affect all small professional organisations in this field unless politicians act. "There is a real danger that some unscrupulous commercial companies will rise to the fore, taking knowledge out of the profession and demanding that schools pay large amounts of money to get it back. It is hard to compete when some organisations have whole departments devoted to bidding for contracts."

Endorsements for ICT in schools

The annual BETT exhibition (www.bettshow.com) is always a good place to find out how colleagues are reacting to new situations and BETT11 was as busy as ever. The British Education Suppliers’ Association (www.besa.org.uk), who run BETT with EMAP, said that despite the cutbacks a Market Performance Outlook report suggests that schools in England will spend £3 million more on educational resources between January and March 2011, than they did in the same period in 2010. This year key trends, according to Terry Freedman’s review, have included advances in whiteboard design, a whole raft of hand-held, iPad-like devices, an increase in 3D technology, an ever growing selection of educational mobile phone apps and, to help offset ICT costs, cloud computing – the new buzz phrase describing services available on the net that are designed to free up schools from paying for costly servers and memory storage.

Other commentators point out that a tougher economic climate means that schools will have to focus on ICT that is both effective and good value for money.

In this context, the ICT community were disappointed that, for the first time in twenty years, there was no minister to open BETT11. However, Tim Loughton, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families was persuaded to speak at the EMAP/BESA BETT Education Leaders’ Conference that preceded BETT attended by Education Ministers from all over the world:

This speech is worthy of detailed examination because it is the first indication of the direction that this new government is taking where technology in school is concerned. In brief, Tim acknowledge that:

“Now, more than ever before, technology is of profound importance to young people’s development. We know it supports good teaching, we know it helps students get better results, we know it helps to reduce truancy. We even know it can support higher order critical skills: such as reasoning, analysis, scientific enquiry – and by engaging students in authentic, complex tasks. So, even though when most of us were growing up, it didn’t really matter whether you were particularly computer or gadget literate – in 2011, the world is very different.“

Tim spent time discussing ways of bringing industry and education together to increase the opportunities and minimize the risks associated with digital technologies both inside and out side school. He then points out that, in the view of the new Coalition, England is falling behind many other nations in educational standards. This point is explored in the first White Paper published by the new Department for Education. The Importance of Teaching, intended to point towards a comprehensive programme of reform for schools to promote the building of a truly world-class education system.

Government plans include: “Paying greater attention to improving teacher quality, granting greater autonomy to the front line, modernising curricula, making schools more accountable to their communities, harnessing detailed performance data, and encouraging professional collaboration so that we can become one of the world’s top performers - and close the gap between rich and poor. That is the challenge facing us – and technology – we think – will play a critical supporting role in meeting it”.

He concludes on a positive note: “The future of education in this country depends on how well we equip young people to go on and succeed in their lives. And all of us know that if we are serious about achieving that ambition, it has to include giving them access to the very best that technology has to offer. The time has come to ensure that children and young people are able to take advantage of the wonders that technology brings – without the dangers. The time has come to place technology at the absolute centre of our aspirations for a world class education sector.”

BETT11 MirandaMods

Professional knowledge building resources from three years of MirandaMods can be found on the MirandaMods section of our website. The newest resources from the BETT11 week in London from 12th -15th January, listed below, also provide a taster of what to expect from the Education Show (March MirandaMods) as they are all about themes from Achievement for All. EMAP and Cisco may want to discuss how and where these materials are mounted.

At Olympia, London the MirandaNet team ran four MirandaMods on Achievement for All themes: three on the stand and one in a seminar room. The quality of the resources captured in the room was better than on the stand because the glass and metal roof of Olympia were not acoustically sympathetic.

The events had been marketed by MirandaNet for about two months before BETT11. Before and during the events information issues from the debates were tweeted and re-tweeted to about 500 educators. Some responded on the Twitter stream and others joined the Flash meeting and commented there. Members from Australia, Greece and Gambia who could not obtain the funding to come to BETT11 attended all the debates as a form of Continuing Professional Development. There will be more in the next newsletter about these contributions.

The MirandaNet team now have significant experience in leveraging these social media streams to great effect as the MirandaNet community become more sophisticated in their capacity to share professional knowledge stimulated by expert speakers and participant educators. The potential for outreach is for the AFA community is significant as they learn to use the technology comfortably.

Leading on the MirandaNet/Achievement for All web pages will be the talks from the three expert speakers to set the theme: Professor Sonia Blandford on Achievement for all; Dr. Chris Yapp on the implications for future learning and Professor Marilyn Leask on the value of communities of practice in professional learning. Also on the website will be the videostream and FlashMeeting record of the four events, including the transcript. The collaborative maps are being further developed by members in a MirandaLink debate during the next two weeks.

The MirandaNet team comment that the quality is good, given this is an ‘outside broadcast’ but obviously event better results have been achieved in the studio at the WLE centre, Institute of Education, University of London funded by HEFCE and Becta. However, this a small, agile and committed group that can set up a broadcast unit and produce results much faster than a media company and with more authentic results, because we are all committed educators. From this set of MirandaMods at BETT11 we discovered a number of things that will improve our “outside broadcast technique’ for the Education Show and make our costings for this proposal more accurate. The equipment at MirandaNet’s disposal and the limited bandwidth from the stand were challenging. More members need to be trained to co-ordinate all the digital streams. Sorting these issues out before the Education Show is vital because with so many more people attending the quality must not be compromised.

These are the opening resources:

  1. Professor Blandford's Speech with a transcript of her speech on Scribd
  2. Chris Yapp’s Speech
  3. Marilyn Leask's Speech

MirandaMods at the Education Show, Birmingham, March 17th - 19th

MirandaNet Fellows are warmly invited to the Education Show in Birmingham March 17th -19th where we will be considering what comes next in digital technologies in association with colleagues from the Department for Education and the Achievement for All Strategy. You will find the draft programme here for the free CPD events. There are six workshops in three days that we are running as MirandaMods so that all the participants can share their knowledge. The topics will be on:

Professor Sonia Blandford will be talking about Achievement for All: Impact and practice following the Lamb inquiry. The MirandaNet team will be encouraging the participants’ feedback and videoing, creating maps and so on. But we will also be running one of the workshops on Thursday afternoon, 17th March when our topic will be 'ICT policy and practice in Achievement for All contexts’. In this workshop we will pay a tribute to what Becta has achieved and do some collaborative thinking about what the ICT community needs to do next. If you cannot be in Birmingham in person you will receive all the information you need to join the online meeting and to contribute to the collaborative concept map. Look out for more details on MirandaLink and Twitter.

ICT CPD Landscape Research findings

One area where research records the effects of withdrawal of government funding is in the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of teachers in the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT). The WLE website continues to hold a wide range of useful research publications on ICT in teaching and learning, although the WLE centre has just closed at the end of their HEFCE grant. Amongst the new publications are three recent Becta funded reports on the ICT CPD Landscape

The first two detailed reports (Daly, Pachler, Pelletier 2010) analyse the international literature on ICT CPD, explore the existing models for ICT CPD and identify the key factors in ensuring that ICT CPD affects pedagogy and Practice. In third report, MirandaNet Fellows interviewed training providers, advisers and teachers in order to outline what kind of training is available in England (Pachler, Preston, Cuthell, Allen & Pinheiro Torres 2011). Many MirandaNet members were involved in the collection of the data where we aimed to have representation from all the agents in the field. One objective was to elicit the views of educators who are less than enthusiastic about technology in the classroom. I was grateful for introductions to thirty teachers who are reluctant to use digital technologies in school- a group that are often hard to identify. I interviewed several in their homes and was surprised to find that many of them were competent users themselves. The second discovery was that they had cogent and persuasive reasons to be hesitant about the classroom application of technologies: practical, ethical and pedagogical reasons that were well argued. My view was that those of us who are enthusiastic about the value of technologies in the classroom need to listen carefully to these doubts and build them into our plans,

Another objective of this final ICT CPD Landscape study was the analysis of the evidence of ICT CPD programmes against existing policy documents. This proved to be the most difficult objective to fulfil. This study revealed that certain key factors make the ICT CPD Landscape increasingly difficult to define and, therefore, to create relevant policy guidance and provide central direction. These factors include: the increasing fragmentation of the commercial market; the demise of many Local Authority advisers; the limited uptake by the profession of university programmes; the paucity and inconsistency of ICT CPD funding and support cover for leaders and practitioners as well as the lack of national benchmark standards (p104).

The research team also reflected whether further research should be instigated involving the development of the collaborative domain map. At the start of the study the ICT CPD Landscape in England was known to be fluid, subject to frequent change, fragmented and open to different interpretations. As has already been noted, several factors contribute to the fact that the map does not offer a definitive, lasting representation of the landscape but, rather, it represents the time-bound consensus on perceptions amongst those who contributed to its construction and engaged with its development. By implication, greater accuracy, detail and currency of the map could be achieved by engaging a wider range of informants and by keeping it under review in light of ongoing changes, such as the untimely demise of Becta (p105-106)

Let us know if you want to contribute to further versions. We will be presenting the details of this study at the Education Show in Birmingham March 15th to 17th.

The MirandaNet response to the research we have done in the field of ICT CPD over the years has been to develop the iCatalyst Management of Change programme that we are currently running in England and India. If this is the way your school likes to work get in touch with Christina Preston.

MirandaMods at CAL11, Manchester April 17th- 19th

MirandaNet will be running a MirandaMod here on 18th April dealing with the big issues in the conference title:

Learning Futures: Education, Technology & Sustainability

Theme 1: Sustainability, globalisation  and social justice
Theme 2: The future of learning technologies
Theme 3: Informal learning and digital cultures
Theme  4: Looking back to look forward

More details will be supplied soon
www.cal-conference.elsevier.com

The transfer of Becta’s ICTRN Mail List

In December, Becta's ICT Research Network (ICTRN), which debates the role of ICT in teaching and learning, passed to a consortium which includes the MirandaNet Fellowship, Naace, ITTE, the Association for Learning Technology, and the eLearning Network. The ICTRN list always had limited functionality and so far there has been little change because there have been no funds to assist the transfer. Many of the remaining functions of Becta, such as policy development and support, research and analysis and the ICT Services Framework, will pass to the Department for Education. The assets are being distributed amongst the relevant organisations.

Web publications worth reading

There are several publications about digital technologies worth adding to your RSS feed. But these all seem to be English. Any recommendations from our global members?

Terry Freedman, Chair of many MirandaMods
Terry’s blog: www.ictineducation.org

Merlin John online
A fun review of collectable bags at BETT11- Frog wins.
www.agent4change.net/index.php

Leon Cych, who webcasts the MirandaMods
Here is Leon’s delightful blog about teaching in a primary school. No wonder he has recently been named as an innovative practitioner:
creativeteaching.posterous.com

One extract indicates the vision which he illustrates with a class on Shakespeare:

I believe in a totally open classroom where everyone passes on their expertise, knowledge, insight and skills in a constant flow of interactions around the task in hand. It is highly interactive, involves a lot of discussion and involvement and participation at all levels coupled, where possible, with good pace. I believe a lot of what I do is serendipitous within the context of the arena of the classroom and it has to embrace and involve everyone constantly, each according to their interests and engagement - it's a performance and it challenges people to discover and share their learning. If someone isn't quite making it I want to know why and tease out what it is that's switching them off ... I know people have different learning styles and I'm intrigued by how all this will pan out.

This is the kind of atmosphere that Leon helps to create for teachers in our MirandaMods as well. Inspirational stuff
Learn4Life www.l4l.co.uk

Theo Kuechel who coordinates MirandaMod technology
Digital Signposts - an occasional blog on visual resources
theok.typepad.com

Dave Smith’s Visualiser group
The new PC Pro Education supplement.
www.pcpro.co.uk/news/education/...-ict-reviews-for-schools

Conference speeches to view

Graham Brown Martin has released videos of the speakers at the LWF Festival hosted in London in January 2011.

In the ICTRN list Graham also draws attention to a recent LWF Talk presented by Ed Vaizey MP, Minister for Communications, Culture & the Creative Industries, “where he discusses the influence of video gaming and other digital media technologies on learners and the skills requirement by industry to promote UK growth in the creative, digital and info-tech industries”:

Graham says Ed. Vaizey’s talk makes an interesting contrast to the one given by Michael Gove the same week at the Education World Forum (bit.ly/fHTerg) as does the LWF Talk given by Karen Cator, Director of Educational Technology, US Dept of Education presented at the same LWF Festival of Learning & Technology:

Geoff’s corner

Geoff Scott Baker sends some more interesting tidbits about what is happening in ICT and Education in the US.

Teacher Ratings Get New Look, Pushed by a Rich Watcher - By SAM DILLON - Bill Gates is financing research by dozens of social scientists and thousands of teachers to develop a better system for evaluating classroom instruction.

More Professors Give Out Hand-Held Devices to Monitor Students and Engage Them - By JACQUES STEINBERG - More than half a million college students now use wireless devices to register class attendance and take quizzes.

In Study, Children Cite Appeal of Digital Reading - By JULIE BOSMAN - Many children want to read books on digital devices, while parents worry that technology will distract young bookworms, according to a survey by the publisher Scholastic.

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