Tag Archives: ICT

Photo 28-05-2012 20 10 50

Creating a School Scheme of Work for the RaspberryPi (aka #RPiSoW)

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On 20th September, 2012, I joined around sixty other Raspberry Pi enthusiasts at the very colourful Mozilla Offices in London for the third Raspberry Jam. This is a informal meeting of minds, where hobbiests, indursty bods and electronic startups come to share ideas and (often) reminisce about the BBC Micro.

I went there with my co-conspirators, @jennyfer37 and @missphilbin with the aim of crowdsourcing ideas for an open-source scheme of work for ICT/#digitalstudies, with the Raspberry Pi at the very heart of the scheme. The Raspberry Pi had been gifted to the educational community, but it was up to us to create somethnig from it. What was best?

While the majority of tables filled with wires and monitors, we went all analogue (as regular readers will both know I am a keen advocate of), and littered our table with stickers, sweets, post-its and some garish card. We then harrassed and harangued those walking past and showing an interest to tell us what they knew, and what they thought.

Before showing you the fruits of all our labours, I have to say I was amazed by the enthusiasm of those who we spoke to. They all wanted to see more technology in the classroom, and had several thoughts on what was missing from those recent graduates in their industries. Above all, there was a genuine and exciting sense of willing to help out – we forced several people to say they would help us, but many more said that they would happily write a guide, or answer questions, or give discounts on products. We really were keeping the flame alive!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was clear that we needed to consider the skills needed by the teacher before anything was even taught – a key point which we as enthusiasts hadn’t considered!

The need for the RPi was self-evident from those who spoke to us – this device had a genuine excitement factor, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was essential to the modern school curriculum…

This caused a lot of conversations, with the different backgrounds influencing their decisions. Any scheme of work would clearly have to take into account hardware and software needs and issues, with the RPi needing attention from both.

We love a good project idea, and this was great fun to see develop! The range of uses was varied and in some cases, incredibly ambitious, but almost without fail, the person who suggested the idea also said that they would write something to help others make the project work! Raspberry Recipes to follow (we hope!).

These were added near the end, and I wish we had added them sooner – there was a lot of debate over when some key skills should be taught. Logical thinking for example, should it be taught twice, both in Primary and Senior School? Is it even a skill within ICT, or something else?

This is however my favourite pic – all the calls to arms were worth it! The folks who added their names here were incredibly generous with their support, and may live to regret saying ‘if you need a hand with…’

The Future

To take this further, I have created a blank google doc, which I hope to add to, and others will too, covering the key skills required and needed, in order to flesh out plans for the future! Please please contribute!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hvVG9eSONPSOYtvKvr6sYcBDr2TbS7k-mpyxISPTo9s/edit

 

#RethinkingICT – Refocussed, Reviewed and Reflected.

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Attendees use pens (shudder)

Regarding the number of Re- words that title this post, I should apologise. RethinkingICT, a conference and concept by Chris Leach, who by is own admission simply wanted to start a conversation about what ICT was, and what it would become, celebrated in style in Northampton last week. Over 100 teachers, educators, commercial arms of educational companies and interested parties came together to discuss, disagree, challenge and learn more about ICT, or whatever it will be called in the future.

However, I thought that I would share in this post some reasons why I went, in stark honesty. Gulp.

Who are you?

I went to put real faces to Twitter faces. Although I follow probably 20 or so of the attendees, I’d only actually ever met two*, Oliver Quinlan (who kept a liveblog of events) and Ian Addison (who defines inspirational in terms of common ground ICT teaching). Everyone except one** more than lived up to my expectations built up online, and there has been a definite shift in my approach and attitude toward them online now. I can hear their voices, see their faces and understand a little more their drive and focus (by the way, Eylan Ezekiel,whatever you plan next, I’m behind you 100%, where do I sign?!). I also met some new people which believe it or not I don’t find particularly easy to do.

 

What are we doing?

I went as someone with the charmed but weighty responsibility of being able to change my school’s curriculum. Given it is an Independent School, it is something we have flexibility to do anyway, but such is the value of ICT, I want to ensure that we put our pupils on a path of developmental success. In short, I wanted to cherry-pick the best curriculum provision for my school.

 

What is our focus?

I also went to speak. In my sub-10 minute talk/rant/lecture, I spoke about the importance of the analogue in our digital world, that digital is simply a conduit to the ‘real’ world, and the importance on context in our lessons. This idea was seeded with me watching the fervour of emails about BETT in January, and me thinking that for the majority of attendees, digital devices may be seen as the panacea to education. I also took a risk on a joke which I luckily got away with, but fear may also be the one thing people who attended remember me by! In truth, it was a joy to talk, and also to speak to so many attendees afterwards who agreed that we need to keep some measure of reality with the drive of digital.

I realised on my drive home that the Conference summed up my thoughts towards analogue entirely. We could have conducted the whole conference online, send each other messages and videos, shared resources, but it would not have had 10% of the impact that our good old analogue meeting together had. Face to face conversations, away from distractions which force us to multitask, produced something exciting, refreshing and tangible.

Would I go again? Absolutely!

* Oh and Miles Berry, but I can’t think of many who haven’t met Miles.

** Not really.

Rethinking ICT

No-one should write the ICT Curriculum

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Rethinking ICT

Two years ago, I was asked to produce my vision of ICT in five years time. This turned into something far more wide in scope when I asked for help on Twitter, and I had lots of kind, ICT-led practitioners joining in, all giving their perspective on that future ICT had, both in general, and in Education. This report is here.

http://www.scribd.com/mrlockyer/d/20910178-Where-do-you-see-ICT-in-Education-in-five-years-time

As you will discover if you read it, not only were we, as practitioners, fairly off on the rate at which certain aspects would change, we also never mentioned the curriculum we taught. This could either be because we assumed that a conversation about ICT would cover the whole curriculum, or that we were happy/had adjusted the ICT curriculum to our own needs.

Certainly, something needs to be done about a curriculum so lacking an a modern vision that boredom is papered over by the mildest diversion of not ‘working in books’. In another subject, we would not tolerate such a stunning lack of modern context, such a weighting against skills, and such a tired prescription of schemes that most Key Stage One children could now complete work in advance of Year Six, such was the expectation.

Who should rewrite the curriculum though? A Government-oriented curriculum has the (justified or not) threatening suspicion that it is written with an overt purpose in mind. A teacher-oriented curriculum would clearly focus on the strengths of the teachers, but a true curriculum would focus on what the children should need to be taught, and not what they learn through digital osmosis. Show a pupil how to use PowerPoint for example, and they are away in minutes – and most of the time the slideshows are bright, bold, colourful, anarchic and in some cases, quite hideous! Our job as teachers then is not to refine the skills of a presentation program – they can do this themselves – but to guide in effective design and layout. The best people to write the aim for this curriculum should be the students themselves. They are more ambitious, and can deliver; they are more open to change, and can transfer abilities; they are more creative, and can learn to produce to task, rather than deliver from a personal skillset.

A curriculum is about what they want to achieve, and our job as educators is to put a value on the essential aspects of this achievement, and guide them in fulfilling their potential. I have seen firsthand the excitement from both teachers and pupils when a curriculum is forged together, and a child-initiated curriculum would forge a strong bond between peers, demonstrate innate abilities, and allow the children to let ICT pervade all their learning. ICT is more than lovely laptops, electronic slates, and shiny shiny. It should encourage a way of thinking where we strive for practicality, simplicity and clever problem-solving. It should allow children to think of the best tool to solve a problem, not just the newest tool. More than this, it should be an experience rather than a destination.

Working blind to change

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blindfold by crumpart (CC)

With the majority of my time in my current job teaching ICT, I see a vast array of skills and abilities on display.

Some children appear to grow these talents instinctively (if that is possible), whereas others  put in the hours at home to make dynamic leaps in terms of progress. Using MSN for example makes a massive difference to children’s typing speeds.

I find it fascinating then from reading in various forums the resistance to teachers improving their own ICT. As a flavour, how many of these statements would you agree with?

  • Children are better with computers than I am
  • There is too much changing with technology to keep up
  • Children can type faster than I can

The difficulty is the context we are viewing these questions from. Let me rephrase them:

  • Children are better at writing than I am
  • There is too much changing with communication to keep up
  • Children can think faster than I can

To ensure we are able to not only keep up with students, but help them progress, we need to ensure we understand the new channels they are using to commuincate with, and the ways in which they engage with technology. Simply saying that ‘things change too fast’ is not enough any more.

We are able to buy the latest TV, not because we understand the technology behind it, but because we can see the intrinsic benefits it brings to us.

Any thoughts would be greatly received!