Some Thoughts on Dog Training

A few years back we became a 'dog family'. The kids had pestered me for ages and, basically, I gave in. Our dog, 'Mac' came into our lives and I think he's great and am so glad he did.

Next Friday we become a 'two-dog' family.

I'm probably completely mad as I don't really love animals, my wife is allergic to most of them and we are super-busy, but my 12 year old has them as one of the two passions of her life (the other, thankfully, is baking).

We are spending our few remaining days of only-one-dog-ness reminding ourselves of all the important things that we will need to do with Cara, when she joins our household next Friday.

Of them all, I think one of the most important is the whole area of training. We can't expect a pup of a few weeks to simply fall into our lives and know all that she needs to; she'll need toilet trained, (fast!) trained to wait, come, sit, not to share the couch and not to beg in order to become part of our family. Sophie, that's your job, she's your dog, nothing to do with me.

We'll see how that goes.

I remember in school, having had the iPad a couple of months and looking forward to each child in the class having one thinking; "This is amazing, the kids won't need trained and neither will the staff. They know most of this already from their iPods and iPhones."

After teaching for a few months in a 1:1 iPad classroom I thought: "Just put this in the hands of teachers and it will be transformational - just wait and see what they will do."

Four years on I think that one of the most cornerstones of any successful iPad deployment in education is training.

Yes, it's true that iOS is such a ubiquitous platform that most people are already very familiar with it. Yes, it's true that babes and infants can virtually pinch, swipe, tap and touch before they get to solid food. Yes, most apps are straightforward and intuitive and behave exactly as you'd expect.

But this is a world where training is vital.

Teachers need trained not only in how apps work but in how they work together. Here are some reasons, a 'course catalogue' if you like:

Digital workflows

Storage of data

Digital marking

Rubrics for assessing digital content

Open outcome tasks and technology for learning styles

Content delivery and course creation using digital tools like iTunesU

Curriculum content to take advantage of this technology

Classroom transformation 

Digital Video

Reporting and Sharing 

Linking Apps

Classroom management tools

...and so the catalogue goes on. 

This is important because we are in danger of having a bad experience with our new puppy. We are in danger of being up in the night, cleaning up 'accidents', getting fed of begging and being bitten and barking and many other natural consequences of having an untrained pet.

And the story in our iPad classrooms could also be a tale of technology that fails to be transformational, that causes more problems than in solves, that turns teachers away and gives them more work, rather than cutting time for tasks and making things smoother and easier.

It's not a new world anymore. The stories of transformation in our classrooms should be abounding. It's important that teachers aren't left to 'bring the new puppy home' alone and that school leaders and innovators remember - when you're building the infrastructure and planning the wifi network and winning the hearts and minds of parents and stakeholders don't forget to train the teachers, without whom, the transformation will be at best sporadic and at worst non-existent.

Fingers crossed for the new pup.

Primary Reasons for iTunesU

Primary Reasons for Using iTunesU

In the post-tablet educational world, a place where the fact that students can make great movies and other content on their iPad and the internet is a world of knowledge now literally 'on tap' iTunesU is providing a way for schools to make this world make sense  and work for them.

Beginning in the universities and colleges of further education, iTunesU initially enabled people like myself to enrol in eclectic courses in philosophy from Harvard and dream of developing the next 'Angry Birds' because we had signed up to a 'Developing for iOS' course from Yale!

Increasingly schools have been seeing iTunesU as a useful, if not yet perfect, way of distributing course work to students and using some of the materials they have spent a lot of time creating, to great effect in their new 1:1 environments.

But does it have a place far from the lofty heights if Harvard and Yale, and even the large secondary schools that are piloting sharing their course materials this way - in the primary school?

I have to say I wasn't sure. The interface of iTunesU is bland and utilitarian, not immediately inspiring to students in colourful classrooms where so much learning is practical and kinaesthetic. In these schools the student/teacher relationship is so key and learning is often about inspiration - lighting the spark that motivates younger students to inquire, question and investigate.

So it was with some degree of doubt that I decided to introduce iTunesU to our class of 9/10 year olds. I felt, as it was something I could be asked to speak about to other schools the world over, that I should have a practical experience of how it worked in the classroom.

Firstly, for the uninitiated, iTunesU courses are 'built' on the Mac, not the iPad. The interface for building them is clear and intuitive once you grasp the structure. I will love the day when it's possible to build the whole thing on your iPad, I'm sure that's just a matter of time right?

Once I'd got to grips with the format for building the course - self-paced or in-session, outline, posts, draft posts, assignments and materials I found I actually really enjoyed making the course. Here are some reasons I enjoyed it:

1. It made me think clearly through the structure of what I was teaching and how I was going to deliver the learning opportunities which I found very helpful.

2. I realised that once the course was made, it was made - forever and next year or whenever, I could use the course again, and again. 

3. Suddenly the trendy concept of a 'flipped classroom' made some practical sense to me as a teacher - my students could continue learning at home, not simply completing rote examples of what we had learned in class. They could experiment, explore and create at home to complete assignments and then bring their learning into the classroom for discussion, further development and assessment.

4.Parents and other interested parties could participate in the learning, or at least be able to see clearly what programme their children were following. I could just enrol them on the course.

5. Finally, and possibly most surprisingly to me, the kids loved it! They really enjoyed receiving their learning in this way and how it linked with the approach we were taking to the iPad. Much of the new content approaches we were adopting in school really suited being delivered through iTunesU and we began to hear reports of students spending real time enthused in learning - at home.

So, iTunesU, I think you could still do with a splash of colour but you're doing a good job - from the lofty heights of Harvard to my 'wee' primary class. 

The Conversation Moves On...

So, the iPad.

Yes it's great. A beautiful device on which you can do so much in school. From blending traditional materials with the digitals world in art, to creating music in new and wonderful ways, re-inventing the textbook and breaking down the artificial barriers between subjects and curricular areas - it's really changed the game.

But we all know that now right?

What happens next?

I think, as a teacher of some four years experience in this 'new world' that the conversation is now getting really interesting.

Once we have come to terms with the technology, realised that it is really not about how many apps you have, and begun to integrate some of the creative workflows that the iPad makes possible into our teaching - what then?

I think there are two frontiers that are now on the horizon.

Firstly, the structures and processes, not just of the classroom but of the school - how does this new technology permeate the environments and administration of our schools and classes? From workflows for distributing course content and marking to storage of files of various types and sharing this content with stakeholders such as governors, inspectors and parents, this is an area that is an interesting one and, in my opinion, has still to be 'sorted' in a way that is innovative and game-changing the way that the device has been in the classroom in teaching and learning.

Secondly, content.

Our curriculum materials are still outdated and fail to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the iPad. We are still fitting the technology to our existing frameworks and materials and only now starting to develop and create content that is specifically designed to take advantage of the 1:1 environment.

In my classroom we are working with new materials developed in the Netherlands by Leonardo Education called 'Journey Through the World of Knowledge'. These are curriculum materials designed around 'un-googlable' questions. Designed to work seamlessly with 1:1 technology and compliant with iTunesU which I am finding a slightly unexpected success in the primary school.

This, accompanied by my 'Reflection Booth' for video assessment, 'Aurasma' for bringing my classroom walls to life with fantastic video rich content, and the success and popularity of the digital report card on iBooks, is what is exciting me now.

Thanks, as always, to this lovely piece of glass that we call iPad for bringing all these questions to life and forcing us to take a rethink of how it all works.

Differentiation and the iPad Effect

I had a question in Aalborg today that got me thinking:

"How does the iPad help differentiation in the classroom?"

Differentiation: the art of good teaching and, I'm sure, at some point, every teachers nightmare question. Each child has different levels of ability and we need to cater for them all.

So often we divide children into groups to make this manageable, we don't call them 'the able group' and 'the average group' and 'the not-very-able-at-all group' so for years our classes have had 'the red group' and 'the green group' and 'the blue group'.

This is of necessity. We have to differentiate to challenge our students but we have to do it in a way that is manageable.

One problem with this method is that often we differentiate not only by the time we give each varying group, or the amount of teacher input but also by task. So the red group do worksheet 1 (the really challenging problems), the blue group do worksheet 2 (the more straightforward problems) and the green group, well, they complete the much more straightforward task.

In my experience this can have a major flaw in that it has often been difficult to combat the feeling amongst the less-able 'green group' of students that they are inferior. They see other members of the class working on outcomes that they know they could not manage themselves and they know that their ore able friends also see the work that they are asked to do and know how 'easy' it is.

And so we struggle to engage and motivate what can often be a significant number of students.

So does the iPad have any impact in this area?

The first thing to say is that the iPad is by its very nature a personal device - designed to wrap itself around the individual who owns and uses it. This is a key consideration for schools who view it as many other pieces of technology in the classroom and try to deploy 'trolleys' of iPads in classes where many students may use the device - this was not how it was intended to be used and brings inevitable difficult questions of privacy, content sharing and also removes the powerful motivational feeling of 'ownership' that a student in a 1:1 environment has.

For those students, however able, if they are using a personal iPad in learning it has a powerful motivating effect on the engagement of students. We have seen the enthusiasm with which tasks are approached and tackled on this device and that level of engagement has, more or less, remained in the (almost) three years we have been using the iPad.

In an iPad task the teacher can differentiate the tasks and have children working on separate and appropriate tasks and if they are iPad based it means all students are working on the iPad - this seems to go some way to combating the negative effects of previous models.

Also, and I think most importantly in answering this question, a number of iPad based outcomes allow the students to be working on the same outcome but allow for differentiation by expectation.

Creating a book is a prime example.

Apps such as BookCreator, a must have for any iPad teacher, allow the students to create stunning digital books that can be shared and exported easily to iBooks or further afield. Crucially, these books allow the student to add text, images, audio and video to their pages thus opening a tremendous opportunity for differentiating by expectation but NOT by outcome:

All students are creating a book on the Rainforest as part of a science topic, for example. The more able may be required to add more pages, more text or more complex contents and bibliography pages whilst less able students may use more audio than typed text, or create slightly less pages.

What I have noticed in class is that the fact of working toward the same outcome, on the same task, has the effect of removing much of the 'stigma' that can often surround the less able students due to peer perception of the ease of the tasks they are given.

I am not by any means saying the the iPad solves the issue of differentiation in the classroom but it is another feather in its already 'feathery' cap that it also has an impact in this area.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Finding the New 'Cool'.

One of the great features of the educational landscape today is the focus on creativity.

Many ''future thinking' gurus produce stats about how many jobs adults in tomorrow's society will have, how often they will need to change and adapt and how what is important to teach is not facts but the ability to innovate, problem solve and apply knowledge.

All of which is great - and hard to argue with.

When the conversation falls from the lofty shelf of theory and lands in the dusty floor of practicality there is less clarity about what this actually means.

What are these new skills and more importantly, can they be taught.

There are many people speaking and writing about what these new '21st century' skills are. It seems that there is something of a circuit for people who pose 'the big questions' - "Do schools need timetables?" "Do we really need curriculum?" and other grand ideas. Aside from the fact that asking revolutionary questions is the easy bit, these can be inspiring and thought provoking ideas. But few of these make transformative change in the real world of the classroom, the school and the education systems in which the teachers of today live and work. And the conversation is moving fast. What was acceptable and innovative and interesting as a start to the iPad debate in schools last year or the year before is not enough any more. These new skills we pursue are not novelties

They are not being able to 'do something cool'.
Technology in education always runs the risk of being demonstrated by cool people who do cool things and then categorised in a box where it remains as the domain of the 'cool' task or teacher.

The world has moved on. Take iPad for example. iPads are cool. You can do cool stuff on iPads. Cool teachers do really cool things on iPads. But everyone knows that. What we need to work out is how to make this technology the core of what we do in school and how to adapt our practice to take account of it. Children now have the tools and tech to be creative, handle complex questions and problems, seek advice from world experts and share their education with a global community. These are factors that encourage creativity and which are all increasingly possible now in the environment of an increasing number of 1:1 iPad classrooms.

So let's encourage creativity - but let's not leave it to chance. Let's look at building the potential that new technologies like the iPad offer into the core business of running and operating our schools, as well as the teaching and learning of our children. Let us accept that we need to encourage this innovative and creative approach to education but also ask ourselves the hard questions like 'How do we assess these skills?' and 'Where does creativity fit in the current landscape and how, bit by bit, can we incorporate it?' For the rank and file teacher to be a success in an iPad classroom it must be shown to benefit what we already do. It must allow them to do what they currently do better, quicker and in a more creative way. Otherwise it will be visited at courses and seminars from time to time, smiled at and nodded as teachers say "Cool," and quietly go back to school to do things the way they've always done.

An App for the Teacher

Its not so many years since the 'briefcase' was the essential must-have for every self respecting, serious businessman on his or her way to the office. Carrying documents, pens, phone and planner and sending the world the 'I am a serious businessman' message.

Nowadays, things seem to have moved on incredibly. I was recently at an ipad launch in a Danish school where the Headteacher wore shorts, a loose, un-tucked shirt and no shoes to address the conference and only I batted an eyelid!

So, briefcase or backpack?


Many people have an idea that there is a magic list of apps for teaching. I seem to read more and more '100 Essential Apps for Education' on blogs and tweets all over the place.

Having looked at a few of these lists I think that many of them focus on very consumption or task specific apps - i.e those that either deliver information or those that perform some, generally boring, 'school' function such as recording homework plans, sharing files with students or subject specific task.

All of the above are valid functions for the iPad in school, sometimes even interesting and exciting ways of replacing tired routine tasks in a way that is incredibly helpful to the workflow of student or school.

I suppose you could describe such sets of applications as a 'briefcase' of apps; business-like and functional.

However, my set of apps would be a rucksack or backpack; sometimes it contains clothes for the gym, sometimes folders and pens, sometimes art materials, sometimes instruments and even games or toys.

I'm actually not a great fan of lists in the first place but as I look to starting a new school year after the summer I need to reflect on the apps I use and the ones I want to include in the student set for the coming school year.

So without further ado, I begin what shall probably be a number of posts on my essential classroom apps:

1. Pages

At the top of the list is the Apple word-processing app 'Pages'. Any 1:1 iPad teacher would be eternally grateful for Pages and I think it is the kind of app that goes along way to justifying the cost of the device, even if that was all it brought to the classroom.
It's not just that it enables students to type and print their work but it handles text and even basic desktop publishing tasks with a simplicity and ease that produces fantastic results that students are proud of.
Templates are fantastic and intuitive to use and students become almost instantly familiar with many iPad essentials; copying and pasting, replacing and inserting images, link between camera roll and photo library and other apps, spell-checking and text manipulating to mention a few.

Are there alternative apps out there?

To be honest I don't know, and I don't care. For me, at this price Pages is number 1 on the list, or first to be thrown in the backpack.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Simple

Yesterday we were in Newcastle for our second Apple Leadership day.

Once again, it was great to meet educators, enthusiastic for change and progress. I never fail to be inspired by the enthusiasm you meet in the vast majority of teachers and yesterday was no different.

The event coincided with Microsoft's special announcement: the revelation of their new 'Surface' tablet.
It will be interesting to see the impact it will have.

It got me to thinking of the key components that technology must have to successfully embed in our schools today. There may be a number of different boxes that need ticked in this regard; technical things like size, weight, portability and battery life.

Practical issues like cost and, well.. cost.

And educational questions about implementation and deployment. Which is where I would place this wonderful and all-important word:

Simple.

In their book 'Made to Stick' Chip and Dan Heath talk of 'the curse of knowledge', essentially the idea that the more time and effort you have put in to developing a project or product the more you are aware of its complexities and the harder it is to communicate in a powerful, sticky, simple way. For a truly sticky idea, you need to edit the message to its very core.


This, I think is key to the integration of technology in education. 


The core message must be that this piece of tech will become whatever you need. Very few people are switched on by complicated messages about processing power and screen pixels, memory capacity and graphics chips. What does switch us on as teachers and educators is the message that this makes things better, this can bring your maths lessons to life, make your geography projects relevant and interesting, simplify the process of recording your science experiments, create beautiful graphs and charts and give you tools in language, music, art and drama that will make your job easier and your classroom relevant in the 21st century.


We have got the message with iPad, loud and clear. It just works.


This is the job that the new Microsoft tablet must do to be successful. Convince us that no matter our level of technical expertise it will do what we want, with no hassle.

Simple

Gathering Steam...

Today is a warm and muggy day in Brussels, I think it is even warmer back home in the UK. In Scotland, where people put summer clothes on as long as it isn't actually snowing, any available piece of grass will, I'm sure, be put to good use by keen sunbathers.

As we enjoy the feeling of heating up after a long winter I'm also impressed with how the interest in 1:1 technology in schools is also hotting up.

In Brussels today I'm speaking to a group of representatives from the various education ministries across Europe, all of whom are very interested in how to deploy the iPad in schools in their countries.

There are big questions to answer: When Europe is penniless how do we afford this? Why iPad? Can we increase attainment?

But there are also very powerful messages coming from the grassroots in the countries of many people I spoke to today. Parents, for example, are hearing of schools and classes where children are learning in 1:1 iPad situations and are beginning to make their voices heard in asking for change.

Encouraging stuff.

Above all, I appreciated being with other educators and civil servants who are determined to do the best for their children.

Phew, I may need to remove my jacket, it's certainly hotting up!

Report Card

I've posted a short video of the digital version of our recent report card as many folks have been interested in it.

You can see the report card here

Breaking News

I'll never forget the day I came home with my report card.

Mum was always waiting for me and no amount of excuses could overcome the black and white on that page.

One year I borrowed a black biro and changed the 'C's' to 'A's' on the school bus home. I still feel like there's a part of me looking over my shoulder waiting to be nabbed for that one, but there you go, I've confessed, I can relax!

So when the time comes to write report cards in school, I'm always aware of that feeling of dread that can rise in the stomachs of children, usually the ones who have nothing to fear, the ones that do don't seem to mind so much!

But really, if a report card tells pupils or parents things that they don't already know ("What? I'm terrible at Maths?!") then surely the school, and us as teachers are doing something wrong.

Also, if the report card is just a mushy set of generally positive fuzzy remarks, then is it really a valuable document?

So what should the report card be, if anything?

Well, in an ideal world, reporting to students and parents is an ongoing dialogue. We share progress informally in emails, chats at the school gate and informal meetings after school. We also open our doors to parents setting up formal interviews with staff to discuss specific areas of concern.
Students are involved in the process, feeding back comments on their learning via formal and informal reflections on their progress and target setting the steps they should be taking next, all of which is documented and often shared publicly on websites and blogs to celebrate achievement.

So, a report card?

This year I have been tossing these thoughts about in my head and have developed a new format for my reports to take account of the 1:1 iPad environment in which my students learn, but also to try and deal with some of the concerns above.

I wanted the document to share the life of that student whilst they were in school with the parents. I wanted somehow to use the document to open the walls of the student's experience whilst in school to parents and family and let them experience something of what the year has meant.

I also wanted the document to relate the successes and challenges each student has faced over the year as related to national guidelines and targets and make them accessible to parents.

Lastly, I wanted the students to have a voice in the report, able to give their own views and opinions.
So, I decided to use iBooks Author and create a digital report for each child. I printed a pdf copy so each student had a paper copy to take home but also published each report to the student's device.















I included photo galleries, taken from the class blog and work submitted via email from students, video reflections from the class 'reflection booth' and a video comment from me at the end, as well as tables showing progress and descriptions of experiences students have had over the year.

























They went home yesterday.

I have received a number of excited texts and emails from parents.

Here's one that just came in:

'...Oh my goodness. I've just had a look at the reports. They look spectacular. An awesome first..'


But they must have taken ages surely?

Yup, they did. Possibly too long to do in the same way again unless I find ways of minimising the workflow. Perhaps creating the skeleton template at the beginning of the year and having the students work on their own report over the year? I'll need to think about that.

But one thing's for sure. At least this year, my report card meant something.

A+

Double Espresso!

Sitting in a trendy coffee shop after dinner in the setting sun by the canal in Copenhagen - I know - things could be worse!

Thinking over the past couple of days here in Denmark.

It's a beautiful place. Architecture, climate and countryside. Easy to see why Denmark consistently ranks as the happiest country on earth.

The thing that gets to you very quickly, and powerfully, is how laid back everyone is, from the hippy types I walked past in bohemian Christiania to the teachers I spoke to in the rural countryside near Aarhus, there is a relaxed, almost laid back approach to life which is infectious.

What is more impressive, however, is that this chilled approach is coupled with a powerful decisiveness that mean that decisions are swiftly and confidently made, and (it seems to me) big visions are evaluated and backed wholeheartedly once their value is assured.

It's a powerful combination - and one if not used to seeing at a local authority level.

So often the horizon is obscured by the pedantic problems (often really the particular bugbear of specific individuals) that lie in the foreground.

With reference to the iPad in education, the case for its benefit to schools is increasingly made. The questions are moving away from 'why?' to 'how?'

What is most desperately needed is the ability to keep that horizon in focus and make the wheels turn until we are there.

Unfortunately, where the Danes, with all their relaxed cheerfulness, are getting it done (I was preceded yesterday by a Mayor who had been very resistant to the idea of iPad in her schools but, once convinced became an enthusiastic advocate and pushed the whole project forward) we are not. Local authorities refuse to see the big picture because of 'the way things are' and that is precisely the problem.

We'll never get to the way things should be for our children and our schools unless we change the way they are now.

So I'm sitting in a Danish coffee house, enthused and inspired... and slightly depressed.

Double espresso please.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Gothersgade,Copenhagen,Denmark

Inspired by Denmark.

I'm in Denmark.

The invitation came to speak at the iPad launch near Aarhus.
5000 student devices and 500 teacher devices.

The attitude hear toward the integration of technology is so refreshing.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

iTunesU

Briefly.

I had a first glimpse of what lies under the very sleek bonnet of iTunesU this week.

I suppose I have been slightly apathetic towards 'U' in past years as I saw it mainly as the domain of US universities who could upload course materials so that everyone could follow the Stanford course on 'App Development' for example. I couldn't see that, beyond being an interesting tool for sharing such content, it would shake up life in a smaller institution like ours.

What we really want is a way of delivering our course material to the students who pay to come here. We want to be able to deliver them in such a way as to make the practical business of teaching and administering a course simpler for both student and teacher.

iTunesU has now revealed itself to be just this.

Simple, smooth mechanisms for gathering course materials, sharing assignments and accessing files, linked seamlessly with iBooks store and iTunes and readable on any iOS device. It offers teachers the chance to do things better and easier than before.

The impact remains to be seen but we start to see what all the fuss is really about surrounding the recent Apple edu announcements.

Exciting times.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Times Are They A'Changing

I speak as a teacher of upper primary and sometimes lower secondary school students.

So we have the big education announcement from Apple, a revolution in textbooks, a way of authoring high quality books for iOS devices from your Mac and iTunes U becoming a way of distributing our courses.
So what to make of it all.

On the face of it, slick and beautiful interactive textbooks, an intuitive and powerful way of creating the super resources and a very handy environment for sharing them with students and the world.

Very nice.

I'll be the first to compliment some of the new tools and I'll certainly be using them. My student report card, for example, this year will be written entirely in iBooks Author and include video and audio of myself and true students.

I am left, however, with an ever-so-slightly sour aftertaste.

Textbooks?

Is this where the revolution is headed? Have we challenged the old ways and methods only to create new electronic digital versions?

Did anyone else notice that in the promo videos last week all the teachers featured were in classrooms of individual desks in rows with interactive whiteboards at the front from which they taught. A sort of digital 'chalk and talk'.

Sorry, but if all the genius of the iPad is reduced to a screen for an interactive textbook that is using a mallet to crack a nut.

My esteemed colleague, Fraser Speirs, sees the marketing genius of Apple behind much of my objections. The people who hold the purse strings of education are the 55+ generation who value the textbook as the zenith of educational materials and to such people, the demo of last week may finally convince them that the iPad is indeed worthy of significant investment for todays youth. If so, Apple, I salute you, and hope that this is indeed the key that will open the door to 1:1 programmes that will put this magical device in the hands of kids all over the country and the world.

But for those of us who are fortunate enough to teach with it. Please do not tame it to a meek textbook reader, however beautiful those textbooks may be.

'Friends, Romans, Countrymen...' Julius Caesar, Great Teaching and the iPad

I loved Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar'.

 I used to study it in school aged 15. The classroom was so dull, we sat in rows, the walls were bare and the desks were unsteady and spotted underneath from the chewing gum of thousands of kids that had been there before.

The time I spent in that classroom was some of the happiest hours I ever spent in school.

The play soared through epic themes of betrayal, love and friendship and as we read and debated the ebbs and flows of the plot and the relevance of the themes, the time just flew. I was disappointed when the lunch bell rang.

The reason was a great teacher.

She knew her subject and was so passionate about it that it was infectious. She ran a debate masterfully, allowed us to grapple with the big questions and directed us so subtly that I'm sure we all felt we were discovering the ideas that came into our heads for ourselves and what a powerful feeling that was.

 I suppose my point is that the teacher made it. Not the environment, not the space, not the adherence to any sort of 'magic' formula. She did not, for example, share with us our learning goals at the outset of the lesson, adhere to a strict time frame or use any 'active-learning' strategies. And there were only the well-thumbed scripts - no technology.

 She stands out, in my memory, above almost all the teachers I ever had or saw. A great teacher.

So should we all, can we all be great teachers?

I shall speak only for myself. I do not think that I am a great teacher in this way but I do aspire to be great - surely all teachers should?

 I am enthusiastic, I feel I am a good communicator, passionate about much of the content I teach and good, after 15 years, at reading and responding to the children in my class. I am interested in current ideas, love co-operative and active learning and perhaps best of all, I teach in a 1:1 iPad classroom, with the vast resources that that brings to the fingertips of every child in front of me.

I do strive to be my best and would love to be great. But strip all of my super ideas, cool tech and modern strategies away would I be so great? I'm not so sure.

 At Cedars we get requests all the time:

 'Can you give us a list of the apps you guys use in Cedars?' 'What apps do you use?' 'Can I just make a note of the app you are using?'

 Even though we frequently tell people not to bother trying to make furtive notes of apps they see being used on their tour of the school, we'll give them a list at the end of the day, they still feel the need to make scribbled notes in notebooks or on iPhones.

So here's my point:

 After over a year of teaching with 1:1 iPad, I am convinced of this, the iPad can impact teaching and learning in a transformational way, but it is not a substitute for great teaching.
It has to be there to help, to explain, to help create and bring to life. It is not there to teach.

 So, may 2012 be the year where schools everywhere, teachers great and aspiring to be great have the joy of 1:1 technology. May we be blessed with iPad filled classrooms.

 Not to take the place of great teaching but to enhance and help great teaching and learning for 2012.

Where Does The Track Go After Turn 1?

The day after the news broke of the death of Apple legend and founder Steve Jobs, it is good to reflect on the impact he and his ideas and vision have had on our lives.

Certainly, there can be few people whom we do not personally know who have so profoundly affected the everyday lives of so many of us.

For me, it is not simply the products we have been thrilled by, that have transformed how we listen to music, play movies, teach, relax and play, but the sheer vision if the man who developed them that is striking.

Clear focus, simple vision, pure dedication to that vision, and an extraordinary ability to see the next step in the game. These are qualities we can admire and learn from.

It's easy in education to become obsessed with the next fad, the next gimmick and so often that's all they are - gimmicks. What the life of Steve Jobs inspires in me is to find, in the sphere of education, that clear sense of vision, ability to see the path ahead and simple attention to important details.

These are timely lessons, the iPad project in our school has brought incredible and exciting change. Digital content creation that we, and the children are so proud of, and many new ways of doing things. The important thing now is to be able to see the underlying principles of transformation in the way we teach, the process of learning and the steps that join these things together.

After the excitement of the first year we are now able to look under the hood at the powerful engine of change that we have switched on.

Mary Queen of Scots and A Whole Lot of Words

"Marriage, Murder and Mystery. How Does the Life of Mary Queen of Scots Influence Us Today?"

I bet you've never taken a coffee break to ponder that particular puzzler! Well that is the big question we are looking at in class this term. It's a great subject for study. Art, language,history all combine with a most fascinating tale of one of Scotland's most famous daughters.

Two great apps start off our project: Moxier Collage, the moodboard app that we use regularly and which is superb for this type of research recording task,and WordFoto, an iPhone app which allows you to overlay a picture with words of your choice.

In this case after an introductory co-operative learning activity looking at 'clues'. The children created a collage or WordFoto of their findings. A great start, beautiful results and enthusiastic pupils.

What more could you want?

Just wait til we reach the 'murder' bit...

In That Sleep What Dreams May Come!

I don't sleep very well the night before returning to school after a long summer break.

The wave that has been slowly building at the edge of my consciousness for a week or two, that contains all the plans, commitments, projects and responsibilities of the year ahead becomes more and more difficult to hold back and I fight with it through the hours of the night until eventually I give in and get up from bed to once more start a new school year.

If thats how I feel, I wonder what the children feel!

This year promises much. After the incredible year we had last year with the iPad and the many ideas and projects that sprang around it, we look forward to what this year holds. Everything has changed somewhat; planning, recording, assessing, communicating all look different through 1:1 iPad lenses. Day 1 back I began using my new video 'reflection booth' (an old walk-in cupboard transformed) and the children all recorded their first video reflection using PhotoBooth.

This is going to be great. I've already created a report card in ePub format which is ready to be enhanced with video content from these reflections and offered to any parents who are interested. I have a feeling many will be. If I were to attach a keyword to this year or 'tag' it,'video' would certainly be a tag near the top of the list.

And so it begins, the tide is rolling in, the children have arrived, the iPads are distributed once more...

...and so I sleep much better again!

Old Cupboards, New Treasures

Basically, I had an idea.

Hopefully a good one, I decided to take an old cupboard in my Primary 5/6 classroom and transform it into a video 'reflection booth.

More and more I can see the ease, relevance and sense of using video in the classroom. It's so straightforward now to shoot, edit and share video that I'm going to make an effort to use it more regularly next session.

I'm not really talking just about special 'video projects' but more as a way of recording the everyday working of school life for the individual children in the class. Assessments in maths, language and traditional subjects as well as Challenge Based Learning projects and interdisciplinary work.

So, with the help of one of my daughters and some old movie posters from a local IMAX cinema, we set to work.

Here are the results.

Perhaps we'll glean some new 'treasures' out of that old cupboard!

Stay Where You Are, Don't Anybody Move... Unless You Want a Whole Lot of Work!

Man, it's been some year!

Today we are being visited by a delegation of interested educationalists from Switzerland and Holland, to talk about 1:1 iPad, unsurprisingly. They will leave impressed with the difference that the integration of an incredible tool has made to our school this year.

Hopefully they will not miss the fact that the iPad itself does not form half of the story. Surrounding and supporting the device, willing it to work and straining to wring every drop of innovation and creativity from it's sleek, shiny form, there is a whole lot of people working hard. Very hard.

Don't anyone be fooled that transformation with iPad comes easy. The device will happily sit unused on a desk or in a cupboard, it won't shout 'There's a better way to do this!' or even, 'Wait! There's an app for that!' it needs coaxing, it needs to feel wanted, to be used.

A teacher needs to give time to discovering the sometimes hidden depths of the App store, to integrating sound pedagogy and curriculum outcomes with new apps and ideas. Some work, some don't. You have to refuse the temptation to use the iPad as an educational soother - to keep the kids quiet and give you an easy life. You have to integrate digital work and ideas with 'get out of your seat' activities which stimulate the body and mind. You must consider records and storage, where to keep files that students produce and how to assess them. How you mark and give student feedback must also be considered, along with coming up with classroom use rules for the sudden appearance of the internet in the hands of every child.

Perhaps above all, the teacher has to learn to analyse the heady 'eureka' moments where you suddenly have a 'great idea' for another way the iPad could help do something really great ('Let's start an iPad band!,' 'I could do the report card as an ePub!'). Remember: these don't just happen, even in iPad land, they require a whole lot of... yup... work.

These are just the start. If you're not prepared for all this, keep your money for new textbooks, stay comfortable where you are and plan your summer holiday.

Hang on, maybe I could give the kids access to the class blog to post over the holidays...

...maybe next year!


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