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.

Essa Academy – http://www.essaacademy.org/

Story over past 3 years:

- Stop doing the wrong things well. Start doing the right things better. e.g. running a 3 Year KS3 when no need – one year costs £1m+ and adds what?

- Abandon ‘nonsense & rubbish’!

- Remove barriers to creativity

- Translate or transform learning & pedagogy – especially with tech – focussed on transforming, not just translating the old way of doing things to the new tools.

- Motto: All Will Succeed

Built on 3 pillars, all supported by a bedrock of Technology For Creativity:

- Personalised Learning

- Professional Practice

- Social Capital

Technology breaks down the barriers to learning. Massively increases the creativity of staff and students. Improves communications and efficiencies. e.g. students in habit of emailing staff questions as and when they come up wherever they may be. Students ‘notes’ app is a thing to behold – completely embraced as their number one knowledge storage place!

Year 7: New Basics Curriculum

- Much like our Project 7

- Based upon Queensland’s New Basics Project, but tailored for Essa.

- Eng & Maths separate (25%)

- Everything else in New Basics projects (75%)

New Basics Structure - from http://education.qld.gov.au/

- 4 Rich Tasks per year. e.g. Being British, Science & Ethics.

- Classes of 50! with 2 staff. One stays with, one project specialist who rotates through all groups through the year doing the same project.

- Big room with smaller break-off space

- FANTASTIC learning, enthusiasm, confidence – really impressive!

- Staff only teach this and have the 25% time for planning

- Built on key questions:

- Who am I? Where am I going?

- How do I make sense of and communicate with the World?

- What are my rights and my responsibilities

- All work is assessed against ‘Repertoires of Practice’ – a list of learning outcomes

- These are not dumbed down – impressive language for learning used – pupils understand it perfectly well!

- All planned and matched against ECM & Functional Skills competencies

Personalisation:

- Year 8-11 all choose 2 ‘electives’ from a bank of 4. From: WEB (work, enterprise, business); Arts; The World; Social

- Electives last 6 months

- Taught in mixed year group classes.

- Every 6 months pupils choose to continue & deepen knowledge or change and broaden

- Timetable is 9 ‘sessions’ (as opposed to 25 lessons!)

- All learning built on 5 core pedagogies.

- All learning is on Level 2 qualifications.

- Examined when ready e.g. 500 pupils sat Maths last year, 25% of Y8 got C+

Essa Curriculum Structure

- E&M will be timetabled in 3 hour blocks – up to subject leaders how that time shared out

- Allows personalisation to individual pupils needs.

- Each child has Personal Vision Plan

- Supported by Significant Adult (tutor)

- Significant Adults everyone from Teacher to Head’s PA to Site Staff

- 5-12 pupils per staff member

- ‘Tutor groups’ chosen carefully and matched to staff e.g. small challenging boys group have caretaker – and have been brilliantly behaved ever since!

- Assessment recorded every 4 weeks in every subject.

- 5 target review days each year with parents and significant adults

Student Voice:

- Students integral part of leading school

- School Senate made up of 53 pupils – one per tutor group – elected

- School Ambassadors sit above this group

- All meet every week

- Behaviour Panel run by students – restorative justice doled out by the pupils

- Technology is the common denominator that breaks down the barrier between staff and students.

- Relationships have never been stronger, learning has never been more mutual. Student will sit and check all facts and figures on iPods and feed straight back to staff if they aren’t right!

iPod Each:

Creativity – a new literacy. Everyone has one. Parents pay 12.50 a year for insurance. All other costs covered by Academy.

Children will try and fail and try again. Staff less so. Students run iPod clinics. Creativity ideas come from the students and are sent back towards the staff.

Sims accessible. Info direct to staff pockets. Massive efficiency savings. This leads to more time with pupils. No notices etc in form time – quality conversations instead. Form time can be outside – just email form to let them know – instant communication.  Streamlined, productive, gives everyone a voice – (dinner ladies even have one!). Massive impact on quality of work of caretakers etc. Caretaker input to learning – first to tell everyone about iplayer app. Food better as catering team email menus and kids feedback what they don’t like!

GCSEPod (http://www.gcsepod.co.uk/subjects/#) – podcasts, subscription based resource. Searchable by exam board, download straight to iPods. Don’t need wifi at home then. E.g. Listen to podcast for homework, tap answers into notes, email back to staff. 900 downloads last year.

VLE – was Frog. But why? Email on iPod more powerful. All dept resources now on Dropbox (http://dropbox.com) so shared between staff and students and available anywhere. Each dept has a 50Gb account. The device is the vle. Frog no longer used.

Edmodo (http://edmodo.com)- used across the school. Excellent communication tool for each class and free. Anne Marie Duffy joined the GCSE English group’s Edmodo and helps them with their homework and revision!

Ipads for teachers: Each teacher given one this year.  Massive impact on creativity. Freedom to teacher. No technicians etc needed. Finance director gifts the app to staff and students. Reviews help assess quality. Direct communication to the developer – most happy to help.

Costs: Textbook outlays slashed. Financing has to change. Less money to depts. Printing costs halved in first year with no efforts to reduce – happened naturally and continues to fall.

Policies etc handed out on podcasts. Done in multiple languages for parents.  Audio is massively increasing as a resource.

Macs bringing massive increase in the quality of digital production. Slowly replacing PCs with Macs – especially for staff.

Interactive whiteboards all removed. Artificial ‘interactivity for one or two’ replaced with truly interactive learning.

Results:

2007: 37% 2008: 58% 2009: 67% 2010 99% 5A*-C.

28-55% 5A*-C E&M in same period.

Costs 7p a day over 5 years. 18p over 2 years. Going to run own insurance.

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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?

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….

The Status Quo

We have 750 students aged 11-16, in total we have approximately 300 desktop PCs and 250 laptops within the school. Pupil facing IT is mainly provided by:

• 4 Computer Labs with between 20-30 desktop PCs.
• 2 Trolleys of Macbooks bought last year primarily for use with Art & Media.
• 6 Trolleys of (aging) laptops spread around other departments.
• Some desktops in the Library.
• 2 other mixed use rooms with approximately 12 PCs around the perimeter of the room.
• 16 iMacs in the Music room.

This is an impressive list for such a small school, but it has been built on repeatedly in prosperous times with little thought for the total cost of ownership (TCOO).

This is also an impressive appearing ratio of Devices:Students of over 1:2. Or it is on paper. In reality the computer rooms are almost fully timetabled to ICT, Tech & Science. The laptops have batteries that often barely last an hour and where they are good then only one trolley to share between 6 concurrent classes. At best that’s an IT ratio of 1 in 6 for students in the Maths department for example.

And then there is the reality of a lesson using IT.  Which begins with either moving your class to the IT suite and logging on (10mins gone at least) or wheeling the trolley in, handing out machines and signing the sheet for each pupil, logging on (slowly).  Again at least 10 minutes gone.  Logins take too long.  We have a wireless G network that strains to cope as we really need double the number of access points, it works great for a few devices but struggles when 30 laptops are logging on.  We also have an aging core network.  I wanted to replace both this Summer but funds won’t allow.  We will be replacing the core network though, a new fibre ring and CAT 6 cabling to each room.  Spare points put into every room too.  It seems strange in this wireless world to still be spending on cables like this but it does need doing and should see us through for many years.  A wireless-N network will have to wait until next Summer if I’m lucky.

These practicalities mean that the pedagogical uses of all this equipment are fairly ‘traditional’. Primary uses are Office needs and Internet research. Maths heavily use online resources from MyMaths & MangaHigh. Some departments have been increasingly using video and audio with Flip Cams, Audacity etc.. We have recently invested in RealSmartCloud as our VLE. This combines the excellent RealSmart suite of online learning tools along with Google Apps. This will be increasingly used by all departments next year.

From my experience I would suggest that this is a fairly standard situation compared to many secondary schools within the UK and elsewhere in the World.

Option 1 then would be to continue the status quo – planning ahead financially replacing the current machines as they reach their end of life.  I have been using the incredibly useful Becta (God rest their soul!) ICT Investment Planner to help with this.  This spreadsheet accounts for all of your current IT provision, factors in lifespan and replacement costs alogn with other annual costs to give you the total value of equipment, the annual cost to ‘stand-still’ and the ability to plan large scale replacements / improvements in future years.  It’s a really useful tool and I’ve embedded a copy of it below as I’m not sure if it’s easily available following Becta’s demise.

ICT Investment Planner v.1.04

Class sets of Desktops & Laptops in 2011

Desktop PCs in 2011 are becoming cheaper and cheaper. For the last few years the average PC has been more than capable of coping with the demands of the average user, and it’s only when you get into heavy video editing and gaming that more expensive machines are required. It’s perfectly possible to use something as cheap as an Acer Revo for Web/Office needs.  We’ve been getting them for under £180.

Acer Revo PC

Better spec’d machines based on the new Intel Core i3/i5 processors can be had for £250-400 with machines at the latter end of that bracket more than capable of performing any tasks we throw at them right up to editing in Adobe Premier Pro. LCD monitors last from one machine to the next (although some good do with a bump in resolution) so the upgrade costs are not too bad.

Laptops on the other hand don’t seem to be getting much cheaper. There are two over-riding requirements for laptops that make up class-sets and they are build quality and battery life.  If they need charging 2-3 times a day or if you are constantly replacing keyboards, screens & hinges then they become increasingly costly and increasingly unavailable. We have a set of 30 Toshiba NB200 netbooks and whilst they have been a cheap class set the compromises in screen size, keyboard size and speed make them less than ideal for class sets.  Prices have increased on netbooks recently as well.

Toshiba Netbook

There’s a wealth of cheap 15″ laptops, but they often have poor build quality and awful batteries that then need upgrading to 6 or preferably 9 cell variants – that’s £80 on the base price immediately. A decent laptop with battery life to last a day seems to cost close to £500. And don’t forget to add £1-3k on top of that for a trolley.  We’re yet to find trolleys that do everything that’s expected of them, we have supposedly top of the line Lapsafe trolleys at the moment and they have a terrible habit of overheating machines and destroying their batteries.  Support is also expensive.

As you can tell I’m no great fan of laptop trolleys! From a cost, practicality and ease of use point of view they’re not a great solution.

Using the aforementioned budget planner rough estimates for the cost of continuing our provision along similar lines are £50,000 per year. Software costs don’t have much of an impact as the new Microsoft agreements based upon the number of Full Time Staff has reduced costs considerably to schools and the number of machines no longer affects these costs.

1 to 1 Options

I’m convinced that an effective and affordable one to one solution must be out their somewhere. Logically we’re edging closer to that ratio in school as things stand, and yet as I’ve discussed the pupil use ratios are way below the actual machine ratios.

I’m also convinced that a 1 to 1 programme would transform teaching and learning within our school.  Staff would be able to plan confidently to use ICT effectively within their lessons. Pupils could access the web whenever they saw fit, using it to support their learning just like we all do in our lives. As we increasingly move towards the cloud pupils and staff would have access to all of their electronic lives wherever they happen to be learning. It would also transform the amount and quality of home learning that could take place, not only for the students themselves but also the rest of their families – a real positive impact throughout our community.

There are a few options to investigate here.  And again there are priorities:

• Cost
• Battery life
• Time-to-online
• Durability
• Weight
• Compatability
• Management demands

Battery life and time-to-online are crucial, if these are to be embedded in every aspect of our pupil’s learning then they need to be able to pull out their device whenever they choose, know it will work and be online within seconds. It has to be affordable and the software needs to be right.

In an ideal world the perfect current solution would be this:

MacBook Air 11″

But of course the first priority of cost ruins this option. That aside I love my Macbook Air. The SSD hard drive makes it much more powerful than you would imagine, the battery is amazing, it weighs next to nothing, it’s incredibly well built and it turns on in about a second. Going back to something like the netbooks I discussed earlier seems like a trip to the dark ages.

Netbooks could work, but I’m just not convinced they are durable enough, they take an age to log on and they really don’t have much of a ‘wow’ factor now. They obviously have an advantage over the current generation of tablets in that they will run Windows based software. Friends and colleagues that I have spoken to who have run 1 to 1 projects with netbooks have struggled to get buy in from all parties, often not actually reaching that 1 to 1 ratio.

Netbook advantages: Cost, compatibility, battery life.

Netbook disadvantages: Power & speed, durability, screen & keyboard size, time to online, weight.

Tablets have seemingly sprung from nowhere to be the darlings of the computing world. The iPad has been an incredible success and the iPad 2 has built upon this. I love mine and think it’s a device packed with potential.

iPad 2 – A ‘Magical’ Device

Some pioneering schools have started 1 to 1 deployments of iPads.  Frasier Spier’s exploits at Cedar’s School in Scotland is perhaps one of the most well documented. He is a great advocate for the differences in teaching and learning opportunities that his students have enjoyed since the deployment. A few salient points from Frasier’s writing:

“I can tell you some long-term big trends that I’ll bet on right now:

• Pupils and teachers will never wish they had fewer computers.
• Pupils and teachers will never wish their devices had shorter battery life than the iPad.
• Pupils and teachers will never wish that they had to queue up to get access to computers.
• Pupils and teachers will never wish that their internet access was slower.
• Pupils and teachers will never want a device that’s harder to use than the iPad.
• Teachers will never want to have to go to a special classroom to use The Computers.
• Nobody will want a device that’s more expensive and less capable than the iPad.
• Nobody will want to carry around a device that’s significantly heavier than the iPad all day.
• Pupils will not want to use a special “education device” when the market is going elsewhere.
• Schools will not want to deploy a device that requires more tech support than an iPad.”

And on things like voting systems & the effect of the App Store:

“Put simply, if you’re in the business of making discrete hardware for the classroom you are in very serious trouble. Your business is about to be replaced by a $5 download from the App Store and the rest of your company’s existence will be about trying to sell a refresh to your existing installed base.”

I genuinely believe that an iPad per pupil could transform pedagogy within our school. Yes the lack of Flash & Windows programs is a problem. But the pace of development in the App Store is amazing and the move to the cloud & HTML5 mean these are issues that will shrink over time. The ability to output the screen straight to your projector makes it a great teaching tool now.

I’ve had initial discussions with our local Apple supplier. Discounts are sorely lacking for schools other than the obvious VAT saving. Apple Financial Services have started to run a finance package called iStudent. This allows parental contributions which is something we would need to do to even approach affordability. Unfortunately when you start to add on Apple Care and insurance. This takes costs right back to around £400 minimum per machine spread over a 3 year lease.

Other issues to overcome are the management of 750+ iPads. Central management would become impossible at this scale. It would seem logical to allow students to manage their own device – they are intensely personal devices after-all. But what about ensuring certain apps are present – gift cards or app gifting would probably be required. And what about those students who don’t own a PC to sync their device to? Staff training and perception would also be a big challenge – but not insurmountable.

I’d love to be able to do this but initial funding calculations suggest I’d be coming up £40-50k a year short. Even factoring in the various savings we’d make elsewhere around the school such as on printing and paper planners. This also includes factoring in parental contributions of around £6 per month. I think this would be possible, and in a world where every pupil seems to have their own blackberry, not unreasonable.

iPad Advantages: Time-to-on, flexibility, weight, battery life, durability, wow-factor, App Store, other cost savings, hold value well, OS updates.

iPad Disadvantages: Cost, App & sync management, staff training / mind shift, Flash support, no keyboard, no USB/SD card options, theft & pupil safety off-site.

Apple of course do not have a monopoly on the tablet market, and the other manufacturers have been playing catch-up ever since the release of the original iPad a year ago. Largely based around Google’s Android operating system it’s fair to say that comparison reviews have not rated the first generation of alternatives. My limited experience of them has reinforced this view. However the latest version of Android has been written with tablets in mind and some machines are starting to look more competitive. Although it also has to be said that Apple’s dominance has allowed them to beat almost everyone on price as well as quality.

One new device that looks like it has real potential is the Asus EeePad Transformer along with it’s keyboard & battery dock:

Initial reviews seem positive and this could be a great option going forward. Android tablets don’t require a base PC to sync with, but then again their software and App Store don’t offer the breadth and quality of the Apple alternative yet. But you could buy a tablet each and then have a stock of keyboards available to use within school when extended writing is required. They also offer USB & SD Card compatibility.

Android Tablet Advantages: Time-to-on, flexibility, weight, battery life, durability?, wow-factor?, keyboards, SD & USB.

Android Tablet Disadvantages: Cost, market fragmentation & OS update lifespan (many older tablets can’t update to the latest version of Android for example), values drop more rapidly, staff training / mind shift.

Of course a more modest device could be used. The Essa Academy in Bolton have had great success using iPod Touches as their 1 to 1 device under the expert guidance of Abdul Chohan. Whilst it lacks the power and extra flexibility of a full tablet, it still has the App Store and is of course half the price.

iPod Touch

iPod Touch Advantages: Cost, Time-to-on, flexibility, weight, battery life, durability, App Store, other cost savings, OS updates, camera.

iPad Disadvantages: App & sync management, staff training / mind shift, Flash support, theft & pupil safety off-site, smaller impact on need for traditional PC & laptop provision.

The final possibility that is on the horizon is the new generation of netbooks from Google based on their upcoming Chrome Operating System. These devices have no hard drive, just a small SSD for the OS. They are cloud based machines that really need to be online to be much use. They will come with integrated 3G connections. The simplest way to think of them is a laptop that runs Google Chrome and nothing much else. Traditional storage can be used via USB or SD cards. We use Google Apps so they would actually integrate nicely with much of our current work. There would obviously be full support for flash. Issues would include what happens in student’s homes without wifi. Could we get them with phone contracts? They should be available some time this Summer. There has been a pilot programme but it was only available in the US unfortunately.

Until production models are available for us to play with it is hard to judge if these notebooks offer a real alternative.

Conclusions:

It looks like, unless I can source funding for an iPad project the costs for a full tablet deployment in our school are just too prohibitive. We don’t work in an area where we can ask for significant parental contributions, some maybe, but not to cover the full costs. Another issue that springs to mind with this or any device is the lifespan of the device and what you do at the end of it. We could start by buying all of our Year 7′s a device this year. But then in 3 years time they’d probably need replacing. And we’d be up to 4 year groups worth of leases and serious issues continuing the funding.

I’m not wholly convinced that the current crop of netbooks are up to task, the investment required wouldn’t transform our classrooms as I’d like.

Android devices are expensive and just don’t have the accomplished finish of an iOS device.

iPod Touches would be do-able right now, but I fear they would seem outdated in just a year or two’s time.

Chrome OS isn’t here yet.

So perhaps a cost and learning effective 1 to 1 solution isn’t here right now. But it feels very close. I am tempted to make do and mend a little this year, the forever downward trend of IT costs and upwards trend of power and portability mean that by September 2012 there could be a good solution. I’d rathe not invest heavily in old tech until then.

I’ll also talk to my friends and colleagues at Toshiba and see what they have up their sleeves.

And cheeky as this is, if you work for Asus, Google or a supplier and would like to provide me with an Android tablet or Chrome OS notebook that you believe could fill our 750 device shaped hole then please do get in contact with me.

Do you work in a school that has a successful (or not!) 1 to 1 programme? Or do you have a traditional provision like we do now? Have you invested in iPads? I’d be fascinated to hear other educators views on this whole topic – I can’t imagine we’re the only school going through these thought processes in 2011.

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I was delighted to be contacted last week by one of our Humanities staff with the following email:

I presented Project 8’s new learning platform for next year, ‘The Village’ in the Humanities teachers toolbox on Tuesday. Our idea is for us to set up an imaginary world where students can create a community, developing alter ego’s through role play and using their imaginations etc.

The other major element to the ‘The Village’ is to create a virtual world where students can create their characters inside a virtual setting. We were thinking about building an online virtual community through ’Second Life’, and linking it up with the new VLE. Building the imaginary world virtually is an opportunity to create wider out of school opportunities, linking with home learning. I was wondering if I could  arrange a meeting with you when convenient, to discuss if this is at all possible? How would we go about it? What implications may be when setting something like this up?

Attached is my power point, which outlines our idea a bit further for your interest.

Appreciate your time and support on this, I will get us some cakes and coffee’s for the meeting!

This was accompanied by this presentation:

I was obviously delighted with such a fantastic idea and look forward to meeting the team tomorrow to discuss the ideas further.

However I have little experience of Second Life. Has anyone out there got experience of using Second Life in schools, I’d be really interested to hear of the pros and cons, bonuses and pitfalls. How easy is it to set up your own ‘safe’ areas? What’s the learning curve like? How easy is it to link Second Life to external content? How do you keep pupils safe in Second Life?

My second thought on this project is that it would make a fantastic project to collaborate on with another school or two from around the World. If you’re interested then please get in touch and we’ll see what we can make happen.

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Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.

Another presenter who is challenged by presenting ‘in the round’!

Seeing a massive change in the quality and quantity of informal learning.  Talk about the dream of free knowledge for everyone.  Free access to the sum of all human knowledge.

What is free access?  Free as in speech, not as in beer.  Something more fundamental.  Free to redistribute and re-use all of Wikipedia.

What is the sum of all human knowledge? Wikipedia is not an archive or library, nor a textbook, can be an adjunct to a textbook.  Not designed to lead you through the learning.  Not Youtube, no funny cat videos, try to keep things serious.  Encyclopedia offers a summary of human knowledge.

Joked about being sick of seeing his face on the website calling for donations to the charity.   Around 50 employees and a budget of $21million.  It’s the 100,000 contributors who make it happen.  All design and content is done by the community.

16 million articles across 270 languages.  199 languages have at least 1000 articles.  Over a million in English German and French.  Abandoned China for 3 years due to censorship.  But was made accessible again around the Olympics, just with certain pages e.g. Taiwan, Tianneman being filtered.  But only ranked around no.50 in China as a website.

Showed some funny Chinese menus translated into English and ended up with Stir Fried Wikipedia, probably due to it being first entry for every search on the internet:

Global content comparisons using a graph of % of page hits for the top 100 topics:  Similar written content across countries.  But readers vary more.  Japanese love searching for pop culture.  Germans most interested in Geography!  Sex very popular except in France and Spain - because they are actually having sex while the rest of us just read it on the Internet!

Wikipedia has 408 million unique visitors (per how long?).

Who is writing Wikipedia?  Important to know for young people as it is such a dominant source of information for young people.

• 87% male. Too many computer geeks!  Want to simplify the editing interface.  Excluding women but also elderly and other less confident users.
• Average age 26.
• Double % PhDs – geekier crowd than normal
• People at the intersection between intelligence, obsession and free time!
• Invitation is in the edit button to allow people to take part – nice quote from a ‘user’ in a video Jimmy showed

What is beyond the encyclopedia?  Encyclopedia is just the start.

Library is much much bigger.  Wikia is Jimmy’s next project to take over the rest of the library.  Place for people to dig deeply into, used example of comparing the entries for Twilight the novel.  No need for the ‘source’ in Wikia, more opinions and discussions.  Went on to talk about Lostpedia, which was created on Wikia to write about Lost the TV programme.  Believe that the writers took great inspiration from the fans documenting it, the show was something of a wiki in it’s self.

Jimmy’s final point: How can we get the learners involved in the creation of their learning?

As big a sales pitch as some other talks today, but enthralling.  If only because of the influence it has on our learners, it’s so often their number one source.  Who needs to know the dates of Kings & Queens when it’s a search away?

Final questions with Jimmy, Lord Puttnam & Graham:

Good point in the questions that the whole idea of Wikipedia was seen as complete madness beforehand.  Which feeds into the ideas from Stephen & Lord Puttnam of this next multi-billion making innovation potentially being in the sphere of learning.  Lord Puttnam later added that he thought that great innovation would stem from the games industry.

Great anecdote from Lord Puttnam about someone challenging a member of parliament in parliament as they searched on their phone about a speech from the week before and pointed out that what they were saying was not true and that they were contradicting themselves.  Something that happens more and more in the classroom.

Great question asked of Jimmy as to whether a step by step learning based wiki could be built that would transform free education with a crowd sourced curriculum.  The foundation have tried a variation with wiki-books but it has struggled as software not suited to assessment etc..  But also problems with fragmented educational standards.  One of the big things that inspire people to take part is that they know someone will use their contribution.  Jimmy thinks that people would feel that schools couldn’t use their content in the classroom -I’d disagree with this quite strongly.  So many of us blog about our teaching BECAUSE we hope someone else might find it useful in their classroom.  However he does think it should be possible.

Final question was about what 3 things you’d have in a new school.  Lord Puttnam points out that it’s easy to do great things in a school but it’s really difficult to scale to every school.  Jimmy would want to see increased teaching of media competence and the ability to assess the quality of a source of information, in context of Wikipedia – how do you use it as a starting point to go deeper into a topic.  Fantastic point to finish on.

And that’s it – battery nearly flat on the laptop, and internal batteries exhausted – interesting day of live blogging, will read back later and see if there was any quality to it or if I just missed the salient points through distraction!

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Lord David Puttnam, man of many hats, but perhaps pertinently Chairman of Futurelab:

Joked that Stephen Heppel and he had have achieved so little in the last 20 years!  Not yet a state where what’s best for the child is also what’s best for the child.

Left film industry as it had ceased to be inspirational in it’s use of tech and thought more could be done in educational policy.  Sadly was wrong in hindsight.

Barely begun to explore how technology can transform education.  Digital creation economy is fastest growing.  PwC report shows us as poor exporters of our services.  Education has prospective growth as an industry for the UK.  Could be a driver of growth in modern & competitive world.  More dignified than Financial Services!

Significant division within government on the role of technology in education.

Platforms and technologies have become embedded in the daily lives of teachers, they too are now digital natives.

How did we get ourselves into this mess when BETT has 70 education ministers from around the world?

Digitising old practices seeks to simply get the old outcomes only faster.

What would a digital curriculum look like if disruption did take place?

Apple re-imagined the computer and phone. Disrupted those markets.  Even got a joke about Flash in for the iPad 2!  The App economy has consequentially changed the landscape for software.

Mobile tech is close to reaching every single human being on Earth.  So where is the specific disruption that will change the way we learn?  When will we recognise the learning that takes place in creating a Youtube video or collaborate within an online World?  Our job is to build ontop of these experiences and develop them into learning opportunities.

Worst possible moment to abandon use of tech within learning, but exactly the right moment to re-start the discussions about technology in learning.  Need to talk about what the World of work will look like in 2020-2030 when the students of today begin work.

Next multi-billion invention may be in the field of learning.  Fitting in with Stephen Heppel’s evolution from earlier.

Imagine being able to lower the amount of time spent in school, increasing the productivity.  Would allow us to revisit the economic discussions around school.  Higher productivity, higher skills, higher wages could let the teaching industry enjoy higher prestige.

Young people have less time to listen to ‘corporate speak’, dialogue makes online connections work.  Expect to be active participants within a discussion.  To win back their trust we need to engage effectively with their World.  Need to move technology to the core of their learning.

No matter how gifted or charismatic you are you will never effectively teach someone who does not relate to and respect you.

No education system can be better than the quality of teachers.  Teacher training in digital age has to be continuing. With paid time out for development.

We have to become far far more persuasive in getting our message across.

Another impassioned and inspiring call to action – I think he and Stephen may have been talking before today!

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David is the author of http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/.

Worked through some fantastic infographics from his site, go look at them now.  Better still see his TED talk:

Some interesting insights from using Google InSights to track search terms.  Great tool for use in the classroom.

Nice talk about needing to compare proportions rather than totals, in the concept of military spending.  Love the Maths of normalising figures for population.

Take data and use it as a lense to clarify your thinking.

Like Stephen Heppel’s learners David is self-taught in his technical skills using the likes of Youtube.

What happens when you make data beautiful?  Visualisation helps make the mind envisage scale and proportion far better.  Can condense a huge amount of info into a small amount of space.

Nice graphic of the difference between the Left & Right in American politics.  Helps you to see where someone else is coming from.

Information design is about solving information problems, something we have lots of now.

Fascinating and enlightening talk – a breath of fresh air after the intense debate from previous session.  And to top it off his book is on sale at Amazon!

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Stephen started with a nice anecdote about starting his career asked a tough group of students to help him out by getting teaching tips from other teachers in return from him teaching them the content.

Be Very Afraid programme.  Students taught themselves to play an instrument in a month.

Evolution of tech in our lifetimes: Hardware -> software -> databases -> searching -> socialising -> learning next.

Learning will happen where we least expect it.  e.g. subtitling Bollywood movies in other languages in India; superclasses – 3 teachers, 90 kids, 5 terms learning in 3; Sugata Mitra – hole-in-the-wall.

Spent a few minutes tearing apart teacher training, if you don’t have the very best schools in that area then what right do you have to teach teachers?!

Should be ashamed to be at the top of Gove’s English Bacc league table – child cruelty!  We can do better.

People plus technology breaks cartels – education is a cartel that will be broken by people and technology.

Interesting to hear that Stephen is planning a free school, taking advantage of Gove’s policies to push his own way of doing things Academy!

Pupils need to prepared for the uncertainty.  The reason we are in the vanguard is because we’ve lived through the endless surprise of technological innovation in our lifetime.  We haven’t articulated how good this could be.

The World is broken, learning can heal conflict and suffering.  We have the chance to do so.  Make it loud make it heard!  A proper call to arms.

A captivating talk, Stephen showed how easy it can seem to present when you know your subject matter so well, no notes, just a series of images and a belief in your argument.

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Keri Facer.

Can’t continue to argue about whether we focus on the individual or whether we use technology to bring learners together.

We need to learn to live with connectivity that we’ve never imagined before.  Evolution of non-human-like intelligence.

Need a curriculum for collaborative and collective intelligence.  Diminishing economy and rapidly changing aging demographic.  Need to understand the relationships between generations.  Beginning to see education become divided by wealth.  Changeing environmental situation.  Responding to refugees, water supply issues etc..

It’s all doom and gloom, but truly passionate!

We need to develop spaces where we can all come together and solve these issues.  Can’t continue the lie that  a 1st class degree will be the ticket to immunisation from these issues.  Education needed that is engaged with it’s communities.

Cooperative education movements, democratic education movements, small schools, sustainable schools and education justice collectives are all helping to bridge these gaps.

How do techs build communities and enable learners to think about their futures?  Need to start shouting about these projects and values so that the next Government might support this movement.

A highly passioned, and not surprisingly well received argument.  Graham chose these two contrasting viewpoints well, certainly enlivened the debate.

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Katharine Birbalsingh, the former Head Teacher famously sacked following her outspoken speech at the Tory Party conference.

Started with the story of challenging behaviour in Secondary Schools.  How have we got to this point, a dark age of education?  How can we move schools on into the 21st Century?  Need to equip children with a bag of goodies to enable them to thrive in the World.

One thought is to stop teaching so much content and to concentrate on skills, group work etc..  Basic knowledge though is necessary to be able to be creative.  Need to move back towards a more traditional form of teaching.  A middle class child already has this as they pick up so much at the dinner table, from the Maths tutor or from Dad reading at bed time.  Not so from less advantaged children who rely entirely on their schools.

Many reformers went to Grammar school and mistakenly think that most children are going through a similar education system.  Creating a system where children do not get access to the ‘bag of goodies’ that they themselves received.

We know that exams are being dumbed down. We are letting down many many pupils.

Many believe that an injection of tech is needed.  But this is reformers again misunderstanding what is needed.  Eton has only 2 interactive whiteboards.

Katharine continued talking along these lines, pointing out that Eton etc are very different to main stream schools, but without really going anywhere with her argument.

Argued that lack of technology not an issue as children are already skilled to the hilt from their own use.

“The education that is best for the best is the education that is best for all”.  Need to be educationally Conservative.  Argued that main stream schools reject what is successful in the likes of Eton.

There is no hiding from negative feedback in this room, the Twitter feed on the hashtag #LWF11 throughout this talk was cutting in it’s criticism.

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