BlogDale

Today was a Good Day for eLearning at my school. I was asked by the Director of Science to help with a lesson on Global Warming (more hot air, I figured) that had an Information Literacy focus so that the students could learn about how to make a judgement on what to trust on the Internet. After an initial forum discussion, they have produced a wiki of their findings, commenting on the validity and authenticity of the sites they found. I love it when a plan comes together. Read the rest of this entry »

This just in from Becta:

Becta has just published a major review of the evidence on the impact of ICT in schools. The review, carried out by researchers at the Quality in Education Centre, University of Strathclyde, looked at over 350 sources to build a ‘big picture’ of where and how ICT has had an impact across the schools sector […].

The review found that evidence of impact is inconsistent across schools, subjects and technologies. The greatest impact is found where the use of ICT is embedded in everyday classroom experience, has clear educational goals, and is seen as purposeful by pupils.

I’ll look forward to reading that tonight, then.

Gabcast! BETT 2007 #0

This was a quick gabcast from the bus home.  More to follow soon concerning BETT 07, including the results of the annual “Top Tat” competition.

Best novelty prize went to Steve whose eagle eyes spotted a poster on the Microsoft stand where there were images of happy children using laptops - except that the happiest one was using a Mac, and the Apple symbol has been airbrushed out!  Naughty Microsoft, thou shalt not tamper with the evidence.

I just noticed that Steve’s tagged me in the BlogTag game.  So now I have to submit some little-known information about myself and pass the baton.  Well here goes:

1. I was qualified to fly an aircraft before being able to drive a car on my own.  I got my glider wings in 1979 (which doesn’t really count) and I went solo in powered aeroplanes the day before my 18th birthday.  I got my Private Pilot’s Licence about two weeks after that.  It’s now lapsed, flying having lost its appeal for some reason (probably cost).
2. At 18, I actively refused to consider a career in teaching.  My parents were both teachers and I really didn’t want to “follow me dad” into a white-collar profession and pursued an engineering bias, flunking aeronautical engineering at polytechnic then working as a mechanic for a short while and going back to college to get qualified in agricultural engineering (”ummm…hit it with the medium hammer”) and working in animal feed milling for a decade or so.  A change in personal circumstances left me with the chance to go to university to get a degree in Mathematics and qualified teacher status at the same time, so I took it with both hands.  My only regret is that I didn’t get into teaching when I was 18.
3. I once nearly drowned in High Protein Soya meal.
4. I used to run half marathons (even I find that unbelievable now, but I have photographic evidence).
5. I sellotaped bacon to the three highest peaks in the UK in less than 22 hours.  (22 consecutive hours, that is).  That was ages ago too, but again I have photos to prove it.

Here are 5 blogs I enjoy reading who might like to pick up the baton
Leon Cych

Miles Berry

Julie Holmwood

Hope School (um…not sure how this sits with the idea of BlogTagging but it might be a novel experiment!)

Ian Usher

It is interesting that today the QCA has recommended that ministers scrap the plans for the KS3 on-screen test in ICT. I heard the news first thing this morning from Garry, one of our senior managers, and quickly verified the news at the BBC’s site. I dashed off a blog post straight away, but a day of cover lessons and various PC crashes has prevented publishing properly until now.

“The minutes of the QCA board meeting in November say its members agreed “that it was not necessary to burden schools with an additional statutory test, considering that ICT was something that should be embedded into other subjects”.

Hear, hear. Although we have some distance to go yet before ICT gets fully embedded into other subjects, I think that the on-screen test was testing for testing’s sake in so many ways. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that part of the Year 9 curriculum was hijacked simply to prepare for the Test with its unfamiliar interface and mode of working.

What the Test failed to take account of (and never really stood a chance of doing so) was that the world of ICT has moved on - while the core knowledge in other subjects remains similar to that five years ago (although my Science colleagues tell me that their curriculum is changing hugely), technology is developing at such a rate that those that were pinnacle skills five years ago in ICT are now the basic requirements. The basic mechanical skills that were once novel and important could now to be viewed as commonplace, and what is more important is what the technology is used for - the communications, the C part of ICT. The means of building social networks, of using the different ways of publishing on the web to link with others is way beyond the expectations of the on-screen test so that using valuable ICT time to “teach to the test” is frankly, barmy.
The downside is that the recent promotion of ICT to new heights of recognition (”we have our own test, y’know”) in schools might be damaged without a nationally-recognised testing regime. Will it mean a return to the days when just anybody with a pulse could be timetabled to teach ICT, where subject specialists are not valued and the Head of ICT had to train new staff to deliver and assess the curriculum every year? I hope not. The days of endless word-processing exercises are over; ICT is so much more about communication and less about technology these days and we need innovative and knowledgeable subject specialists more than ever in ICT.

I can’t see the Test dying out though. £23m worth of development isn’t just going to disappear. It might be useful in summatively assessing functional ICT skills in much the same way as GOAL or Electric Paper  do to give baseline data and measuring progress against that, and it would be great if this was given as a free resource. Read the rest of this entry »