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Mobile, Personalised Learning – The Essa Academy

May 17, 2011 By 6 Comments

These are my notes from a fascinating day at the Essa Academy, courtesy of Apple. We were treated to a tour and talks by a number of staff including the Principal - Showk Badat, Abdul Chohan & Jeff Ellis.

I was fascinated by not just the integration of mobile technologies (they are famous for giving every pupil an iPod Touch, and now, every teacher an iPad), but also their innovative New Basics Year 7 curriculum and their elective personalised curriculum for years 8-11. I was also impressed by the fantastic pupils and the excellent learning that we saw.

Below are basically my notes as I took them, I hope they’re of interest to some people and I will reflect on them further in relation to my IT Provision Plans.

[Read more...]

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Filed Under: Classroom, EdTech, ELearning, Leadership
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IT Provision in Secondary Schools in 2011

May 8, 2011 By 33 Comments

Another what’s the best way forward? blog post where I try and dissect my own thinking on what IT provision should look like in a Secondary School in 2011.  Continue the current mix of laptop trolleys and IT suites or move towards a 1 to 1 environment of tablets or laptops?

iPad at age 2

Are tablets the answer?

Financial Planning

This year so far has been all about planning ahead for me. We’ve started the process of planning two completely new courses to deliver to our students in ICT, and I’m delighted that both GCSE Computing & Creative iMedia have enough students interested for me to run both courses next year.

Next on my hit-list is managing & planning our IT provision across the whole site for the next few years. Our school has always been relatively cash-rich for a variety of reasons. This is not the case going forward.  Despite Michael Gove & the Conservatives’ claims that they would not cut school budgets we are receiving less money this year than we have previously. This is after we take into account the pupil premium (and being situated in Central Manchester we have an above average percentage of Free School Meals). All of this at the same time as costs are increasing thanks to the Government’s removal of the Harnessing Technology Grant. Historically the IT Support team has been given a fairly modest budget with which they maintain the existing equipment and add some provision each year.  Replacement of entire suites / trolleys etc have then been funded by ‘Summer Projects’ funded from surplus school cash. I am acutely aware that the surplus school cash may well not be here next Summer and it is time we plan and budget ahead carefully for the next 2-5 years.  And so I come to my current position where I am left impressed at the cost of continuing as we are, yet thinking there must be a better way…. [Read more...]

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#LWF11 Dawn Hallybone – Games Based Learning in Primary

January 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Disclaimer: I would consider Dawn a friend, thanks to many interactions via Twitter & Teachmeets etc even though we’ve only met a handful of times..  I won’t go into great detail about the work she has done as her blog has details of it all. LWF Bio.

Dawn discussed using Nintendo DS & Wii with the pupils are so engaged in their learning that Dawn doesn’t really need to be greatly involved for large parts of the lessons.  Writing and learning underpins the gaming experience.

Sharing via Twitter and Teachmeet have been great inspirations for Dawn.  Redbridge game network has allowed them to share their knowledge and their resources.

They have developed great cross-currciular learning projects, with games based learning as a small inspirational part of it.  Kids enjoy their ‘secret learning’

Dawn’s school and the Redbridge network have began to look at evidence.  There are clear signs that Maths & English are improving, very clear signs that engagement, attendance and punctuality are improved considerably.

Again this is an example of fantastic innovation in Primary classrooms, this innovation needs to spread into the Secondary classroom.  How can we do this?  Costs are higher and timetables don’t make things easy.  I think we need strong leaders who can remove these traditional constraints.  And again, as Dawn said it;s about sharing the good practice that has gone one already.  Borrowing the great work that has happened via the Consolarium in Scotland that Derek Robertson spoke about earlier.  One school in the research group is Secondary.

Inspirational as ever – well done Dawn!

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Slumdog Pythagoras – Minimally Invasive Education

December 11, 2010 By 18 Comments

Inspired by Sugata Mitra at the SSAT National Conference I decided to try and ape his ‘minimally invasive education‘ within my own Maths classroom.

In a really tough December week this two hours shone out as a great teaching and learning experience.

Before going any further, please head over to my previous post to read about the inspiration for this lesson.

In a nutshell, Sugata discovered that children can teach themselves with the aid of the Internet.  His hole-in-the-wall experiment inspired the book that inspired the film Slumdog Millionaire.  He has since been investigating how to apply these findings in Western school systems.

I followed some basic rules that Sugata has developed.  I split the students into groups, each with a computer and then gave them a problem to solve.

The rules are simple:

  • Students were told to get into groups of their choice of around 4 children.
  • They had one laptop per group.
  • They could walk around and cheat, looking at what the other groups were doing.
  • They could move groups if they wanted to.
  • No input from me other than some encouragement and praise.

My Year 7 class (11-12 year olds) are an able group who I have done a little group work earlier this year.  I gave them a simple question:

Who was Pythagoras?

And with it, the text (but not diagram) of a typical GCSE question:

A ladder is leaning against a wall.  It is 5 meters long, the base of the ladder is 3.5 meters away from the wall.  How far up the wall does it reach? [Read more...]

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SSAT #NC10 – Sugata Mitra

December 2, 2010 By 1 Comment

Bio

Sugata Mitra is currently Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University.  He has spent many years in a huge number of research posts.  With regards to education he is most famous for his Hole In The Wall Experiment whereby he put an Internet enabled PC in the wall of an Indian slum in 1999 and left it there for anyone to use.

You can see the talk here, or watch his similar TED talk here.

Reflections

Sugata was charming and engaging.  The driving message that he had was that given some time and an Internet connection, children are quite proficient at teaching themselves.

He first discovered this in his now famous Hole In The Wall experiment.  I won’t go over the details of that here as you can watch the videos above or read about it in detail on Wikipedia or it’s own dedicated website.  Sugata explained that he did not go looking for this effect, however his experiments demonstrated that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Sugata calls this minimally invasive education. [Read more...]

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SSAT #NC10 – Dylan Wiliam – Formative Assessment

November 28, 2010 By 4 Comments

The first of a series of notes / reflections on sessions at the 2010 SSAT National Conference.

Bio

Dylan Wiliam has the grand title of ‘Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment‘ at the Institute of Education in London.  He is a former Maths teacher and co-author of the book “Inside the Black Box“.  He is a world renowned expert on assessment for learning, and was recently to be seen on BBC television in The Classroom Experiment.

My Notes

On learning environments & the role of the teacher: Teachers do not create learning.  Learners create learning.  Teaching is engineering of [Read more...]

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