Shifting Expectations

Lots of testing, very little learning.

2011-10-16T18:20:00.003+01:00

"I don't understand why I have to do all these tests. I mean, it's not as if I'm learning anything."

These were the words of my son, a few days ago.

My son is in P7, his final year of primary school, and so far his year has been blighted. Blighted by tests, dozens and dozens of them. Blighted by the incessant, soul destroying grind that is the transfer test, formerly known as the 11 plus.

Since Easter, the entire focus of his schooling has been working towards the transfer test in November. The intensity is building up. First practice tests completed in April, May, June. Then, the summer revision pack, "just to keep his eye in". And now he's in P7, all systems are go: 2 practice tests a week, another to do at home at weekends. When he's not doing a practice test, he's reviewing a completed practice test or practising for the next practice test.

The tests he does are either numeracy or literacy or both and that is all he does; day in, day out. And all because of the transfer test. And when I say transfer test, I actually mean transfer tests, 5 of them! 12th November, 19th November (2 tests), 26th November and 3rd December.

And then there are the parents! Crazy, stressed, panicking parents, desperate for their little darlings to live up to their parents' aspirations - tutoring, extra revision, pressure, pressure, pressure. We've not gone down that route, which makes us feel intermittently smug that we're not succumbing to the system and intermittently guilty that we're not good parents seeking to do the best for our child!

"And what's it all for?" I hear you ask. Well, it's all about getting a place in grammar school. Despite the fact that the final official 11-plus took place in 2008, no satisfactory measures were put in place to deal with the transfer of pupils from primary to post-primary education, as the grammar schools insisted that they continue to have the right to select pupils on the basis of academic assessment.

Northern Ireland has, notionally, a two tier post-primary education system; grammar schools and secondary schools. In theory, grammar schools are elite academic institutions while secondary schools pick up those who do not wish to pursue an academic career or who fail to achieve the standard required to enter the grammar school. I say in theory because, as Slugger O'Toole points out in their article on grammar school intake, many grammar schools accept pupils who are well down the academic scale. Equally, many secondary schools offer A-levels and the best secondary schools achieve results that can often compare with those of grammars.

As a result of this, my son has to take two different types of entrance test - one offered by a local consortium, the Association for Quality Education and the other by GL Assessment. One of the schools he is likely to be applying to can be seen in the Slugger article above to accept pupils from right across the academic scale. The other only accepts high achievers, creaming the top 170-odd pupils from the 400-ish 10 and 11 year olds who sit the test.

My son will probably do pretty well, possibly very well - he's bright and able - unless he has an off-day; starts to daydream; spots something interesting out the window. (cue onset of parental panic...) He's aiming for the high achieving school. If he fails, he will most certainly do well enough to get into the second choice. He'd have to mess up big time for that not to happen. His primary school knows this. The teachers in the school know their pupils and know who is academically able and also who has strengths in other areas. But the test is king and must be obeyed. In the meantime, in the words of my son, he's not been learning anything.

So we're up early tomorrow morning for the first of the four Saturdays of testing hell. We all can't wait for it to be over.

I wish it wasn't this way, but it is, so all I can say is "good luck wee man".

Call me a pedant...

2011-06-15T19:16:00.003+01:00

Alastair Darling spoke on Eddie Mair's show on Radio 4 this evening. He was talking about the steps George Osborne is taking to address the banking system and its perceived problems. In relation to these steps, Mr Darling said that "no banking system can ever be safe" but that any steps being taken should be intended to "make the system safer".

Clearly this makes no sense. If the system cannot be safe, then surely it cannot therefore be SAFER ie more safe.

Call me a pedant Mr Darling, but I think you meant that the steps would make the system less unsafe.

I just hope I haven't made any spelling or grammatical errors in this post!

That is all...

Thought of You

2010-12-10T22:10:00.004Z

Been away from here for a very long time, so here's something beautiful to start again. Thanks to Alec Couros (@courosa) for bringing it to my attention.

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

Just saying...

2009-11-05T22:33:00.005Z

I found myself perusing Microsoft's Innovative Education Forum website earlier today to see what was what and I thought I'd have a quick look at the FAQs. And then I came across Question 12...

Now, I'm not making a major point here, but it just jarred somewhat to see these restrictions placed on a conference aimed at celebrating innovation. Not even a sneaky wee photo of a key note speaker to pop onto Flickr or a handy flip video of a top demonstration to share on YouTube??? Wouldn't that create a bit of buzz and excitement? Guess we'll never know! Hmmm....

Dr Richard Schwier, Informal Learning and My Web

2009-10-13T22:15:00.006+01:00

Way way behind in commenting on the goings on in eci831, but it's been another busy week. This past week I have listened to MP3s of George Siemens' session on Connectivism, and Richard Schwier's session on Learning Communities. I also watched the Elluminate recording of Sue Waters' session on Educational Blogging where she posed the question "what are your thoughts on educational blogging?".

There has been lots of food for thought from all 3 sessions and it's very difficult to summarise where I am with it all. A few key points would be:

- I'm a lurker, but hopefully not a loafer

- I DO feel engaged, with the learning if not so much with my fellow learners

- I'm a 'not for credit' student - what I'm involved in is definitely non-formal learning with the odd informal moment along the way.

- I feel connected to the course and the social element is something I am conscious of and engaged with on the periphery. I wish I was more engaged, but there are several reasons why I am not. I'm in the wrong time zone - the live Elluminate sessions are at 2am. Not a good time when there's work in the morning! The archive is fantastic, but a live session would be better. I hope to join a live session before the course ends. To lurk in person would be so much better than my current archival lurking! Twitter lets me follow some of the activities of the other students and reinforces the concept of community. There's no doubt that the community and the connections it facilitates generate a new way of learning and accessing knowledge. It's a few years since I studied Piaget and Vygotsky and their theories of constructivism, but the new thinking of connectivism put forward by Siemens makes a lot of sense in the Web 2.0 world.

- I'm a rubbish blogger - I blog too infrequently and when I do blog I do so ineffectively. However, it does force reflection and evaluation and I hope some day to do it better.

- I'm interested in how schools can blog effectively and Jan Smith's approach to safety and parental involvement is admirable. In my work we are trying hard to open up access to blogging sites and many of our schools are certainly involved in looking at what they can do with blogs as a core part of learning. As a key tool in constructing knowlege and reinforcing learning it's hard to beat.

- Richard Schwier talked about how the web has developed into a social web, and reflected on the top sites presented by his browser. For what it's worth, my top 8 sites (as appearing in Google Chrome) are:

netvibes: all my feeds, mail, social networks gather here

twitter: no explanation needed - I guess it's the hub of my PLN...

flickr: less for social networking purposes and more as a simple home for my photos, the vast majority of which are private for family consumption only.

St Johnstone FC: probably the finest footie team in the world

eci831: well, I must be engaged if I go that often to the site!

amazon: it just has it all

linkedin: not so much social networking as business networking - keeping fingers in pies...

google: the launchpad for so much - mail, docs, alerts, reader...oh and the odd search!

A notable absentee from this list would be Facebook, partly because I don't use FB that much, but probably more because I access Facebook in several other ways (via the widget in Netvibes, via Tweetdeck or via the app on my Blackberry).

My final observation would be that I am filled with admiration for those playing a full part in the course, keeping up with the reading and posting and blogging. For my part, I will read more, and I will continue to follow and try to turn my engagement into active participation.

School report: could do better!

Social Media and Open Education - getting started...

2009-09-27T17:27:00.007+01:00

So, I signed up for a Social Media and Open Education course (EC&I 831) as a non-credit student. The course is being run by Alec Couros from the University of Regina in Saskatchewan (which always makes me think of the Proclaimers song "Cap in Hand"), but that was a several weeks ago. Since then, I have, for various reasons, done nothing...

Now, I'm catching up!

Easy stuff:

Follow all the people from the course who are following me, and follow a few extras. I didn't opt to follow everyone - not sure why not, but I imagine it's because I just felt slightly intimidated by the sheer numbers of them. I'm sure I'll add a few more over the duration of the course as I get to see who's doing what and who has interesting things to say. Mind you, if others use the same criteria, I'm not sure I'll generate many new followers!
Sort out Twitterdeck - new Twitter column for course related activity. This should help me to keep track of what people are saying
I've already added a tab to my Netvibes page, and I have the course blog and wiki feeds in there. This helps me keep up with the course stuff and the aggregated contributions by all the other participants' blogs. I'll probably do that little by little over the coming weeks...

Now to the course:

Week one stuff:

Intro and Grad course movie trailer - check - good movie

Listen to the week one Elluminate archive - great to hear the class session and very interesting to experience Elluminate for the first time - the organisation I work for has provided Marratech to all our schools, but this has since ceased to be developed (by its owners, Google) so we are now looking around for alternatives. Elluminate is in the frame so good to get some first hand experience, albeit asynchronous/historic. Timezones permitting, I must try to join one of the live sessions at some stage...

With regards to the Elluminate session, it's useful to hear the archive session, and most of this blog post is being written while listening to Alec. I'm listening and reflecting and writing all at once. As I listen more I go back and edit some and then write and listen and reflect more. Also very useful to be able to pause the session when I am interrupted by miscellaneous family demands!

The Elluminate archive is a very powerful learning tool - the fact that I can pause, rewind and review at any time, watch participants' comments, hear them asking questions is phenomenal. My previous experience of real online learning was when I completed my masters module in Open and Distance Education with the Open University (in 2002) - The main collaboration tool for the course then was First Class with discussions which could be live, but were mostly asynchronous. Access to the tutor always seemed remote - no 'live' communication, all asynchronous, either by threaded discussion or by email. One of the main issues for me as a student was a feeling of isolation. I get the strong feeling from Elluminate that this is much less of an issue. Simply to hear the tutor's voice is a major factor, not to mention hearing the other students. Mind you, Twitter didn't exist at the time, blogs were unusual and the web was still web 1.0!

The great thing here for learning is the potential for learning connections. I'm just listening to Alec (the tutor) asking people what they think about the course and how they find the level. To me, the level will be the level you want - by making connections with media and interacting with people I think you create your own level.

Sorry I wasn't able to respond to the Twitter shout out - I was tucked up in bed at the time!

Going to have to watch Michael Wesch - The Machine is (changing) us , but that will have to wait for another day - much too tired now and work in the morning...

Anyway, week 1 was for credit students only, so this was just a wee practice for me!

Tomorrow....week 2! Hmmm....

Bing v Google

2009-08-03T23:50:00.002+01:00

On the face of it, this battle is still no-contest, however...

I came across an interesting item on the RIA Journal blog pointing out that Facebook now uses Bing to power their extended search results and not Google. This possibly goes some way to explain the apparent optimism detected by Rory Cellan-Jones when he recently met with some Microsoft executives. As Rory points out however, Bing has only 3.3% of the market, with Google retaining an impressive 84%. Rory makes the point that he, like many, tried out Bing when it first came out but then reverted back to Google and that Bing’s biggest challenge would be to break down that user inertia. Basically, why bother going to Bing? If Bing can get itself “institutionalised” by becoming embedded in major tools like Facebook then it stands a chance. If it can’t, it will remain insignificant.

The big question I have is why did Facebook choose Bing?

Words, words, words...

2009-07-29T23:02:00.005+01:00

A couple of items in the media caught my attention and started me thinking about the strange beast that is the English language.

Firstly, there was an interview on Radio 5 Live with two people in Corby in connection with the story about birth defects and the link with toxic waste. During the course of the interview both interviewees either used a word incorrectly or made up a word. In both cases, on first hearing, it was almost possible to believe that the words were correct, but something jarred and the errors made me laugh and despair at the same time. In the first instance, the interviewee said that "the council was clearly negligible" in their dealings with the toxic waste. In the second instance, a few seconds later a second interviewee said that "the ruling showed that there had clearly been neglection on the part of the council...". I assume that the first interviewee meant to say negligent and the second neglect, but the two mistakes started me thinking about the English language, how difficult it is to use correctly, how easy it is to create plausible alternatives and how flexible we are both in using and interpreting the language. After all, in both instances I understood what the speaker intended (I think!).

Which brings me to the second item. The big technology story of the day was the announcement of the "co-operation" agreed between two of the major players in technology and household names (and words) to boot - Yahoo and Microsoft (or more specifically Bing). The story focuses on the merger of these two famous names who are seeking to take on the dominant force in the market, Google. It is no co-incidence that the name Google has now become the Sellotape of its day (or Scotch if you are American or French!), making the crucial leap from proper noun to verb in daily use.

John Connell has already blogged about the Scottish alternative meaning to Microsoft's choice of search engine brand name which I'm quite sure the brand marketeers back in Seattle never considered. But will we really talk about "binging" someone, have we ever talked about "yahooing" something and will the Yahoo/Bing merger bring about a new term for the English language that we will adopt into common parlance? (Ying? Boo??) The power of language is such that unless this new partnership can coin a term that can compete with that of Google, almost regardless of the quality of the search engine, it will probably have failed before it has even begun. We tweet, we google, I dare say we even possibly facebook (??), but are we likely to bing? (Personally I think Boing would have been a much better name, but then what do I know?).

All I can say is let the people decide and let the language come to the fore. Whatever name is used, we'll probably change it anyway. As we say round these parts, plus ca change... Who'd be an English teacher?

Why typewriters beat computers

2009-01-08T23:19:00.002Z

Image credit: Kent K Barnes/kentkb

This BBC article caught my eye the other day (well ages ago actually), as I guess I had assumed that the typewriter was largely extinct!

Forget One Laptop per Child, how about One typewriter per child?!

For all that it is easy to have a laugh at the typewriter's expense, the article makes a number of interesting points:

In many respects the typewriter beats the computer for simplicity and reliability. This is backed up by Frederick Forsyth who tells us that:

There was the steel-cased portable he used as a foreign correspondent in the 1960s. "It had a crease across the lid which was done by a bullet in Biafra. It just kept tapping away. It didn't need power, it didn't need batteries, it didn't need recharging. One ribbon went back and forward and back until it was a rag, almost, and out came the dispatches."

Better Security with a Typewriter?

Frederick Forsyth “I have never had an accident where I have pressed a button and accidentally sent seven chapters into cyberspace, never to be seen again. And have you ever tried to hack into my typewriter? It is very secure."

While the two points above are doubtless being made with a large amount of tongue in cheek, and perhaps it's easy to be nostalgic about the good old days, maybe all this new stuff does have a way to go before it is as reliable, as easy to use and as simple as a computer.

The most interesting point made in the article is in relation to the creative process. Using a computer makes you work differently than when using a typewriter:

The writer Will Self is a convert. He went back to using a manual typewriter several years ago. "I think the computer user does their thinking on the screen, and the non-computer user is compelled, because he or she has to retype a whole text, to do a lot more thinking in the head," he said in a recent interview.

I think this is valid – I will also write while thinking while editing. I don’t worry about making mistakes and perhaps don’t even worry much about structure. Is this good, is this bad or is this just different. I don't have any answers but it's certainly food for thought.

I wonder what others think? There are lots of fabulous creative things that are enabled by computers of course – no mashups possible with a typewriter, no multimedia productions.

So the typewriter retains a place in some homes. For how much longer I wonder?

Even the people that make typewriters are not exactly optimistic:

Brother UK's Mr Jones admits he is "surprised" that people are still buying typewriters, and "amazed" his company sell a handful for more than £500, which would buy a laptop.

Progress?

For a bit of perspective...

2008-12-14T22:52:00.003Z

...just watch this video from Afghanistan. Meant to post this ages ago, and it was subsequently widely reported, but important to keep this to the fore to highlight the plight of young women in Afghanistan simply trying to get to school.

Too easy to blame Facebook!

2008-06-25T19:32:00.000+01:00

My eye was caught today by a BBC article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7473818.stm) which in part was blaming what they described as the "Facebook generation" for the recent loss of a sensitive document from a train, left by a careless MOD employee. The suggestion is that young people today are totally insensitive to the notion of secret or private information as they are in the habit of sharing and obtaining private information about pretty much everything from social networking sites.

I have to say I find this a typically headline grabbing load of old nonsense. Just because people choose to share personal information on Bebo does not make for a society that is incapable of appreciating the importance of 'top secret' information, nor of being able to be responsible for keeping it that way! Someone made a mistake, end of story!

"Hey Baldy!"....you just have to laugh...

2008-04-16T22:34:00.003+01:00

Came across this news story on the BBC website today and if it had been April 1st, I would have assumed it was a spoof! Bald teacher can't teach because he's bald! Now, I'm generally a fair-minded sort of soul, but try as I might I have been unable to locate any sympathy for the retired teacher who "claimed he was a victim of disability discrimination because he is bald"! Funnily enough, he lost the case as the judge decided baldness was no more of a disability than having a big nose or being short... Are you sure it's not April 1st???

It's an old person's game apparently!

2008-03-13T23:15:00.004Z

So AOL - Time Warner have bought Bebo in an attempt to get in on the social neworking act. Not THAT much money(£417 million-ish) and I'm sure they know what they are doing! I'm quite sure they have done their sums and know what they are about - with 40 million subscribers there are lots of users out there and time will tell if they have backed the right horse. Will Bebo remain popular with notoriously fickly kids who wouldn't feel they have any particular brand loyalty if something cooler came along...

Anyway, I heard an interesting statistic on BBC Five Live as I was driving home this evening - during an interview with a web analyst bloke from an organisation whose name I forget. He said that there are almost double the number of over 50s online as under 18s. This seemed a remarkable figure, and it certainly took me by surprise! There must definitely be an opportunity for someone to come up with that killer app for the silver surfers out there!

Kids talk mobiles

2008-03-06T22:23:00.008Z

Interesting post on Rory Cellan-Jones’s blog. Rory was in a school filming for the BBC’s School Edition project.

Rory clearly ‘gets it’! He talks about how the kids are “knowledgeable, articulate and very demanding of the technology” and that “While adults are dipping their toes into the mobile internet rather gingerly, children are taking the plunge”. And Rory also recognises that there are implications for this technology for the teachers; who, although the school currently bans mobile phones (without success) “they are even beginning to explore how mobile phones could be used in lessons – one class was using phones to film simple animations.”

Good to see the BBC getting it and getting it right!

Where do i fit...

2008-02-29T22:17:00.007Z

...in the big picture???

I was reading Stewart Mader's excellent blog on wikis and his post on where wikis fit in the overall scheme of things. This article linked to a blog by Erica Driver on some work the Forrester people have done on looking at Web 2.0, its core technologies, its applications and most importantly, what they let you do and what that means for people, business, life.

I was particularly taken with the third concentric circle, Behavior Changes, and Erica's statement that "Not everyone is out there blogging and tagging; we've found that people fall into several buckets: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives." This came to me just as I was contemplating similar thoughts myself in respect of me. While I blog a little (very little and very badly!) and I tag a bit (a bit of delicious and some flikr) I'm not really sure I'm a fully fledged creator. I comment rarely on blogs, so probably not much of a critic either. I suspect I'm probably either a collector or a joiner though I haven't investigated sufficiently to find out what in detail these are!

I think, however, that it's important that there is room for all these different types of people in the Web 2.0 world. It can be an intimidating place if you feel under pressure to come up with interesting and original posts when you appear to be surrounded by so many people doing so many amazing things and with such insightful comments that you can be left feeling rather overwhelmed and discouraged. Maybe the life of a joiner isn't so bad after all, and better a joiner than an inactive!

Still, in the words of my wee fella's teacher when he was in P1, "stick at it...".

Identity + the right tools = UCC

2008-02-05T21:44:00.000Z

I'm a little bit excited! I attended a workshop at presentation at work today on Unified Communication & Collaboration or UCC for short. The presentation was given by one of our partners, HP. An outline of HP's view of UCC from a corporate perspective can be found here.

The essence of the technology is that it allows communication in any way (ie with any connected device), at any time and from anywhere. It incorporates technology such as Instant Messaging, VoIP, Videoconferencing, Email all bundled up into one. The actual technology that is being looked at is Micosoft's Office Communications Server with Microsoft's business-based instant messaging tool, Communicator.

This is going to be great. We're going to try this out in schools, just a few, to see how they get on with it. We're going to start with teachers, but the pupils will follow close behind, and we're going to see what the schools come up with, how they feel they can use it and what benefits they feel it may bring.

The essential aspect of the technology is that we have a very clear grip on user identity. We have a massive Active Directory with every teacher and pupil in the country having a unique ID and password. This means they all have a very clear, very secure identity and this is what enables these technologies to be rolled out.

The importance of Identity
This was something that I focused on most closely as a result of Stephen Heppel's keynote speech at the Scottish Learning Festival. where the notion of identity is picked up by Stephen as one of the key elements in taking learning through technology forward. If the concept of identity can be cracked in terms of having a verifiable and secure online identity, then a lot of other things can fall into place. This is picked up further by Stephen on his own blog with his article on "Identity Lost"

Ewan McIntosh has also discussed this area in his article on Socialising, Identity 2.0 and education where he links the concepts of identity with those of social media and this is where the beauty of UCC appears to come in - linking the issue if identity with the social tools to harness it in a controlled way.

Instant Messaging - Social and Secure
Users will be able to use instant messaging (IM) anywhere (in school or at home) in a safe secure environment. I'm hoping to see teachers using it with colleagues from their school and other schools, and with pupils. I'm hoping to see it used during the day and out of hours. It really has the potential to open up learning. Backed up by the virtual learning environment I can see the potential for all sorts of collaboration. A teacher responding to a pupil's homework query, the teacher on a laptop and the pupil on their mobile phone, both running the same IM tool. The possibilities are endless and I haven't even begun to think of them.

It's a bit late, and I'm a bit tired, but as I said, I'm a little bit excited!

Wii, Wii, Wii, Wii all the way home!

2008-01-25T22:58:00.000Z

Interesting post from Chris Brogan today. Chris writes about the future direction of online gaming, second life and the like, prompting the reader to contemplate where these technlogies may be heading in 2008 and urging us all to participate and organisations to get involved.

It is interesting to see how someone more involved in the world of trade and commerce is thinking along the same lines as someone like Ewan MacIntosh is thinking in education with use of the Wii remote, and games consoles supporting creative writing.

It seems to me that there are a lot of people who are excited by the technology, have explored a few possibilities but are not really sure where it is going. Perhaps that is what will be the big new thing in 2008. Not more new technology, though of course it's not going to stand still, but rather that someone, or some people, will come up with some really cracking ideas for REALLY effective use of this technology in a universally accepted way with outstanding educational (or business) outcomes, and I for one look forward to learning about them!

And like Chris, the Wii is truly a transformational technology. We, sorry, my son, got one for Christmas and it has engendered a constant flurry of family collaboration and fun ever since!

Web 2.0? It's all very well...

2008-01-23T23:19:00.000Z

...but what do you do when it breaks???

I've just come home from a hard day's labour, followed by a fun, friendly evening class, sat down with my laptop, logged on to Netvibes, to be met with...well, a message telling me how much better it's going to become! Which is no good to me right now, as I want to see what's going on in the world. All my carefully collected feeds and blogs, wikis and social networking connections are contained therein, and I can't get to them. Well, that's not strictly true, I could get at most, eventually, going through them one by one, tracking them down, logging on etc etc, but that's no good to me, that's not how I want things to present themselves to me.

It was almost a panicky moment, which is ludicrous of course, but I hope I'm not alone in that. Makes me think about backups, plan B's etc. Maybe I should use i-Google after all. I'm sure it never goes down. Their server cloud model probably means this never happens to them. I have an account there and a few bits and bobs, but somehow it's not the same. Too corporate or American or something....hard to pin down...

Maybe I should just go to bed and let Web 2.0 sort itself out by morning time!

Confused?...You will be!

2008-01-03T13:34:00.000Z

People are scared of technology. Not all, but many. People feel they don't know what's going on, they don't know what they can and can't do and they don't know where it is all leading. We're always being told that things are getting simpler to use and easier to work with, but alongside that is that it is the feeling that it is getting easier to break the law, or that maybe the law doesn't apply online or.... It is little wonder people are confused when they go to a webpage such as the Times Online Technology and Web News section. Copyright is dead, but illegal downloaders will be banned and anyway you're using obsolete new technology so you might as well not bother! All part of the fun I guess!