You mean there’s a plan???

It is often said that people fail to plan, but never plan to fail. So for a while now I have had a loose collection of thoughts that I have kept in my head about the way that I see my role in our organization progressing in order to achieve the goals that we would like to see accomplished. It sounds a bit woolly and vague I know, but there is a need for flexibility in all things innovative.

So, to know where we’re going you really need to know where we’ve come from. If you’ve read my blog from the beginning then you’ll know that we’re clawing our way out of the dark ages (didactic PowerPoint) into pastures new, full of the green grass of Evidence Based Teaching growing from the fertile soil of technology. In order to understand this analogy you need to understand that our students are the sheep (I like sheep ) gaining sustenance (knowledge) from the grass (our teaching) which is aided in its growth by the fertile soil (technology).

But we have a problem… only a few of our staff (the farmers) know how to use these new techniques and even less know how to use the technology. Therefore it is imperative that we invest in our staff time, money (resources) and personal commitment so that they are empowered in these areas.

So we need a team to teach the teachers, but who teaches the teachers’ teachers? That would be me when it comes to technology!!

I’ve come up with some loose objectives to try and achieve, they’re relatively simple. They are:

1. Teach how to use the technology to create resources
2. Demonstrate how to use the technology within a classroom

Like I said vague, but there are some other things that I am going to throw in as personal objectives:

3. Raise the standard of course resources.
4. Allow the teachers to be more creative
5. Encourage a culture of sharing and collaboration

So how am I going to do this?

Well, I intend to use our Moodle VLE as the medium for pretty much all of our lessons. From this I was asked if I intended to use e-learning packages to teach and the simple answer is no. From my check list above I would meet objective 1, partially objective 2 and 3 but would barely touch on 4 and would not encourage 5 at all.

What I am going to do is to use the other activities within Moodle, wiki’s, databases and forums within lessons. So, some examples:

Using a wiki + choice activity:

First get the class in to pairs. This is done through the use of a choice activity. Students select a number from 1 to 5 (there is at most 10 in a class) with the maximum limit of 2 for each choice. The students cannot see who has picked which number until after they have chosen, therefore guaranteeing that the pairs are random.

Then we get on to the actual exercise: comparing the design of four websites against a list of suggested criteria that they will be learning about in the rest of the lesson. To do this the assignment is presented as the first page in a wiki, with 5 sub pages already primed, but not created, for each of the pairs. One person uses their PC to access a web page, while the other accesses that pairs page and begins to take notes on the aesthetics. To ensure that they both use the wiki they are required to swap roles for each web page.

At the end of the allotted time, about 10-15 minutes, the class is called on to look down the front and the thoughts of each pair are shared with the rest of the class. Common traits are picked up on and good design principles are emphasised. These are then bought out in the topics that follow.

This hits all 5 of my personal check list items and more.

1. The teachers are using the technology to create a learning resource: the wiki pages
2. The teachers are using the technology within an actual lesson.
3. The teachers are learning good design principles through what they themselves like and, more importantly the collective thoughts of the group reinforced by myself.
4. The teachers are exposed to sources of inspiration and are allowed to format their wiki page however they wish.
5. By working in pairs, and ultimately as a group of 10 within a single wiki they are sharing information with each other and working collaboratively.
6. The teachers are gaining an advance knowledge of the principles they will be learning about later, this helps them to retain future information.
7. The teachers can relate what they learn about with what they have seen.
8. The teachers are already thinking about design principles when the actual teaching occurs.

In short this is a highly engaging activity which forms a strong foundation for the rest of this subject area.

Using a database activity as a consolidation exercise:

A simple database is created which has two fields, a file upload field and a description text area. There are to be no student names attributed to any of the views of the database or any of the files uploaded. Comments are enabled for each database entry.

Following the “basic design” lesson students are asked to design a two slide PowerPoint presentation, consisting of a title slide and a simple content slide. They then upload this to to the database and are asked to look through the other slide shows that are uploaded. They are asked to make written notes on each entry.

After the allotted time (10-15 minutes creation and 10-15 minutes browsing) the class discuss each of the slide shows in turn, the teacher emphasised the anonymity of the owner by asking everybody providing two points of positive and negative feedback. A brief class consensus is drawn up and a member of the class is called upon to enter this as a comment on the database.

The students are told that if they like the resources then they are free to use them but to comment if they do so.

What this achieves:

1. The teachers are using the technology to create a learning resource: both the PowerPoint slide shows which can be used as a template by others and the commented database.
2. The teachers are using the technology within an actual lesson.
3. The teachers are employing good design principles through what they have produced.
4. The teachers are actively encouraged to try new things.
5. By uploading their slide shows and providing feedback they are both sharing and collaborating.
6. The teachers are using what they have learned in a practical manner, meaning that they are more likely to do it again in the future.
7. The teachers comment when they reuse a resource, this means that the person that has generated that resource gains recognition for their efforts

The most important thing though in a both of these examples is the way that they are created: there is a great deal of weight placed on active participation by all involved with no option for a student to sit back and do nothing.

The use of peer review, pairs work and whole class discussion ensures that sharing and collaboration occurs. More importantly it allows people to be honest without feeling the intimidation of acting as an individual. Even in the slide show exercise when students are asked individually for feedback to the group: no-one knows who produced the slide show so that honest feedback can be given by all.

The final point that I am going to make is that this way of teaching is then passed on to the other teachers. Hopefully they will enjoy the level of interaction and collaboration that occurs in the lessons and be more inclined to be less didactic in their own approach.

Only time will tell…

A group of would be friends

I was on Twitter the other day and managed to get myself involved in a discussion with Jane Hart, the Founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT), about social media in the workplace.

The question was asked “r most “learning” initiatives doomed due 2 either org constraints or employee non-interest?”

I asked for clarification “non-interest or not being engaged by the programme” as in my organization various programmes have come and gone purely because they did not reach out and grab people. They failed to actively engage with staff and provide them with reason for their existence. The staff turned off and the initiative died.

Jane clarified that she meant “non-interest in their job, as without that programme engagement is irrelevant” and to all extents and purposes I agree with that. Die hard ostriches will only choose to get involved with something that offers them something for nothing. But could a programme change this? Could active engagement by a learning programme add job enrichment and therefore make someone love their job more?

Well I have seen this happen. Jane asked me to tell her about it. This is that story…

Within our organization our teaching staff are divided down into teams teaching similar subjects. I’m not sure if it is because all of these teams are scattered to the four winds throughout our building of some 300 rooms, but they are very insular: there is little meaningful communication between them. This affects the organizations work, as far as I can see, in so much as best practice is rarely spread and initiatives and events are seen as being “owned” by teams and other staff therefore disengage from them. People work within 20 metres of someone who they may never speak to in 5 years.

Sad isn’t it. The effect that this has on staff moral can be crippling, with little staff motivation and a general feeling of disconnection within the place. I would go to the extent of saying that some staff literally just turn up for their pay check. For a normal office job that may seem acceptable, but in a teaching environment that lack of enthusiasm is crippling as it can carry over in to your work.

We have been running a programme of evidence based training for several months now headed by our training development guru (not me!!). We call it “Supported Experiments” because we give our staff the opportunity to take a risk with a lesson: to try a new style of delivery and to document and share their findings. Over time we have built up some telling data the most surprising piece is that barely a single “experiment” as gone awry. They have all added something to our lessons.

After the initial brief we received 40 requests to take part in the training for the programme. At the evaluation point (6 months later) this number had dropped to about 8. Reasons cited for withdrawing ranged from overwork through to not being able to see the advantages through to a few people saying “I thought that I was only having one day of training… not three”!!!

Those that stayed shared information, findings and ideas, both in the training sessions and online in forums, emails and through our Moodle based VLE. In fact, it was my job to upload testimonial videos of our students as to how much they enjoyed their lessons and other media and evidence generated by our staff.

What I began to notice is that those that stayed and shared began to grow closer together. Gradually they began to leave their offices and walk and talk to each other. People who had previously been isolated by geography were breaking down the barriers themselves and beginning to forge new frontiers… to the office just down the corridor!!! They became more lively, confident and began to speak with enthusiasm and hope.

One of the people who stayed in the programme loved their job immensely: they really wanted to teach and wanted to be the best at it they could, however, other issues conspired against them and they wanted to leave the organization. They were on the brink of handing in their resignation. But by taking part in this programme they found themselves working with a group of individuals that they could relate to and connect with.

The group really came into their own when they had to travel to our headquarters to take part in a Learning Fair, showing off their work to others and talking with senior management to promote the initiative. They won over the crowd and showed what could be accomplished in a few short months with a few dedicated people. My friend’s status on Facebook read “This is why I love my job”.

But, the night before they went out for a meal… I’ve seen the pictures and by all accounts it was a fantastic night and this is when it struck me:

This programme had achieved much more than improving our teaching practices. By sharing information we had tapped into the human “need” to be social and created a sense of community founded upon mutual respect.

I cannot overstate the value in what I have said above. Sharing breeds mutual respect and understanding. A sense of belonging and identity. With children we encourage them to share toys and sweets while infants will naturally share food. Even cats, the most independent animals on the planet, will quite happily drop half a dead mouse at your feet!!

So, what are my plans. Well, I want to facilitate sharing.

I’m now investigating Social Media as a way to overcome the geographical constraints of a couple of walls and a flight of stairs!!! From a serious point of view Social Media is the only viable way to have over 200 staff sharing coherently. Now, I know that there are going to be security issues with me getting the platform approved, so in the meantime I am going to do my best using Moodle. I am looking to provide forums, wiki’s, shared file space and even a rudimentary “wall” for staff to post to.

In order to gain engagement from the staff I am going to get our charities and professional training people to actively use it. One of our training officers is about to start publishing a news letter for the building so I am going to provide them with help uploading it and making it available online. Publicity and demonstration of purpose will have to be high on the agenda along with content, interaction and engagement by staff at all levels.

I feel that by doing this we can go some way to replicating what happened with that small team. While we may not break down all the barriers, we can at least begin to introduce sharing and gain some, if not all the benefits that it generates.

Smartphone Technology for Learning

I’m a newcomer to smart phones… my students have had them for years, but I’ve never had a reason to get one. So when we changed broadband providers I took up their offer of a mobile and invested in a little smart-phone… WOW!!! I have hardly used my PC in two weeks hence no blogs!

So once I’d got over Angry Birds I started looking at other stuff it could do, although technically I’m not over Angry Birds, I’m officially in rehab!!

The first thing I did was use the web browsing functionality to get into our works Moodle site. Which worked! I then managed to take a photo and upload it to one of the course image galleries. The importance of this cannot be overstated: now our students have a way of capturing a whiteboard or piece of paper and having it accessible to them outside of the classroom, outside of the building. Even potentially outside of the country!!

It also enables them to share it with the rest of their course. This enables groups to work on separate topics and projects and have a “mixing pot” where they can gain opinions and feedback which is stored online for them to refer to at a later date,

But that wasn’t the end of it as I needed  to download some MS Office files and my phone didn’t support them. So I downloaded an app called ThinkFree Office Mobile which allowed me to view them. Then I found that my phone manufacturer (HTC) had an Office viewer/editor app online called QuickOffice so I eventually settled for this. I found it less cumbersome to use.

I was then able to download and view Word, Powerpoint and pdf documents held on the site. I then started thinking about our course notes… if our students could view them on their phones then fantastic, but how can we make them more accessible, so that they can get to exactly the document they need.

I did a little research and stumbled upon QR codes, you might have seen these on products or in magazines.

This is one:

You can create these by going to a website such as http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ and within this complex pattern is a URL – a hyper-link to a website or file to download. They can be read by apps: I use QRdroid which can both read and generate these images but they don’t just have to hold URLs they can hold text, business card details… lots of stuff.

Now what we can do is to put these at the beginning of our presentations and our students can download their training notes, activity sheets, videos, even the slide-show that you are presenting and have it to hand on their mobile. You could use them to set homework or give a starting point for research. But the beauty is that once students understand what they are, you can place them on posters all around the place and they can choose to learn more. You could even have a kind of treasure hunt around the school as an orientation exercise linking to several web pages each providing information and a clue as to where to go for the next one.

The other thing that students can do with QR codes is to use them to share information. For example a student finds a particularly useful website – they can use a reader like QRdroid to generate a QR code from a URL and display it on the screen or save it as an image. This can then be uploaded to Moodle or scanned by another smart-phone and the recipient now has access to the same information.

Suddenly you start to enable mobile learning, mobile collaboration and you can begin to engender a 24hr learning culture. But I know what some people are thinking: what about those people who do not, or choose not to have a smart-phone. Well like I said earlier, up until two weeks ago I was one of those people. I can honestly say that now I will never be without one! But I do hear what you are saying.

The argument boils down to this; education should be totally inclusive, should have no barriers, it should be a level playing field.

Well I do agree with you, to some extent. But we must also understand the reality of those that we are teaching. We need to understand that teenagers nowadays use this technology as we used to read comics, magazines or listen to Sony Walkman’s (for those too young to know what these were they were the things before the things before MP3 players – they played tapes!). Culture shifts and if we do not embrace these changes we marginalize our students and byt virtue of this ourselves.

So how do I see this fitting in? Well believe it or not pretty much all of our students now have phones that can run these applications. So their use will take off, however some of our more die hard teachers will struggle to understand the benefits. More importantly some aspects of our organization actively prohibits their use on security grounds. So what do we do???

Well we do what we do with everything else. We don’t stop using electricity because it is dangerous we teach people how to use it properly, we educate them about the dangers and give them a safe environment to learn how to use it properly before letting them out in the real world to work on it. With smart-phones we teach them about the dangers of releasing sensitive information, of EMF hazards and where and when it is inappropriate to use them. We then give them the opportunity to demonstrate that they know how to use them in a safe training environment and react accordingly when things go awry.

By doing this you empower your students to learn, to socialize and to be more active in their learning. You can teach responsibility and self discipline along with a whole host of other secondary skills.

By not allowing the students to use their technology you not only lose the advantages of mobile learning, you remove the additional opportunity for a better rounded education and ultimately build resentment by removing what students see as a window to their world. We have seen this in our student population and we are beginning to take steps to change it.

Just one last thing. Follow the code!!

What is intelligence?

I caught this one posted on Twitter by Sir Ken Robinson.

http://talentdevelop.com/articles/WIIA.html

It’s made more poignant for me by the fact that one of my sons tends to do badly when faced with writing or maths… but, to quote his teacher, “Has it all going on upstairs”. I often find myself telling him that you cannot be good at everything and that we all have our talents. He is a fantastic visualiser and creator and I don’t ever want him to lose it.

So, for all those geniuses out there, this might bring home a thing or two

Style over substance?

This one will hopefully set the cat among the pigeons or even put some Piranhas in the tank as one of my friends says.

There is a common misconception that content is paramount to style. That what you say is far more important than how it looks. That if your content is sufficiently well worded or factually accurate then any style will be superfluous.

I hate to say this… I totally disagree.

Personally I see “Style over substance” as a phrase that some people use to be lazy, or to conform. Both are bad in my opinion. The other that I hear a lot of the time is that we must consider those with Specific Learning Differences like dyslexia, dyscalculia or dyspraxia. Again I feel that this is wrong, not because I discriminate against those with SpLD’s but because I feel that there are far better ways of doing things that make everybody’s life easier.

What we end up with in my teaching establishment is something along the lines of:

Yellow text in comic sans on a bright blue background

As someone interested in design this makes me feel physically sick!! Now imagine that you are a student who is having to sit through 7 hours of this a day… over as long as twelve months. At some point you have to ask yourself: WHY????

The answers that you get back are the two that I cited above: what about SpLD’s and my content is that good that it stands alone.

Well to dispel each of these in turn. Firstly it is true that high contrast between fonts and  backgrounds make reading easier for SOME people suffering with SpLD’s However, anyone that knows anything about scotopic sensitivity knows that each person is slightly different and that if you get the colours wrong then you make things worse. Therefore the opinion that we will be serving most people with SpLD’s better is, in my opinion, balderdash. We can serve everyone better by using the software properly, making the presentations available and teaching our students how to alter the colour schemes for themselves. In doing so we teach our students coping strategies that will enable them to move forwards and not be left abandoned when they leave.

The second point is that content stands alone. Hmmmm…. if that were true then there would be little work out there for web designers, graphic designers, illustrators, advertisers, movie directors, animators… you get the gist.

We need to make our content appealing to maintain interest – at the very least so that it does not put people off. But if we try hard we can make presentations that actually grip the attention of those listening. By not cramming them with information we create key points which the students can focus on, even better would be to use a single slide with a model map or another graphic organizer!

The simple truth is that we can work both smarter and more creatively to achieve more… in actual fact, a lot more.

There is a feature within PowerPoint (our tool of choice) that allows us to create a template by which all slides conform to. This is the Master Slide and you can find it under the View menu. The reason that this is so important is that if you design your master first and use it as a template for all the other slides then you can make a change on the master and it automatically updates every other slide. This reduces the amount of work that you need to do to produce the slide show initially but more importantly it makes your design infinitely more flexible.

Now you can design to your heart’s content, and should one of your students have trouble with your slide you can quickly tailor the slide-show to their needs. Even better than that:

They can download the slide-show from Moodle and alter it themselves so that it fits their needs exactly!

Now that you have done that, you can break free of the monotony of yellow on blue and begin to get creative. Have a faint picture as a backdrop or a smart gradient fill. Try other fonts, but choose Sans Serif fonts (without the squiggles on the letters) so that they are clear to read. And remember it is always best to get your presentation previewed on the medium that it will be used on, for example an interactive white board or a screen to make sure that the colours work. It is often best to get some help with this as a second opinion can bring in useful feedback and some brilliant ideas.

Most importantly TRY!!! If it doesn’t work the first time then try something different: colours, gradient direction, font, placement, images, borders, animation, transitions. Just remember that a slide must only be as complicated as it needs to be: a single word does not need lots of animation, an explanation of a circuit diagram may need more.

The way that I see things is that style adds to content. It helps to create the narrative and ethos of your lessons. The students see how much effort and care you have taken with your media, whatever it may be, and they will respond accordingly. More to the point, when you produce good work, you show it off to the best of your ability.

Good style coupled with good content produces an excellent backdrop for learning.

In the meantime, here’s some points to think about.

The way things are

Gradient fills

Adding contrast can add coherence

Too many styles loses coherence

Be Bold, Be Brave

Children are the future

My daughter wanted to be a fashion designer; she has loads of really good ideas for dresses, tops, skirts and trousers. But she’s a little bit too much like me – she loves computers.

Over the past few months she’s been looking at some of the work that I do and has been quite complimentary in her feedback. So I started to teach her a few things.

Firstly I scanned in some shapes that could be used as clothes and converted them into brushes in Photoshop. Then I showed her how to use them in “anger”, using layer styles to add patterns, effects and gradients. She became quite proficient but she soon tired of it as she ran out of brushes and combinations.

I’ve had her create a short (20secs) stop motion animation in MS Movie Maker that she planned and animated herself with her camera. But she seemed to bore of the repetitive nature of the task. She is like me: she hates monotony.

So I showed her Fireworks. I love Fireworks because it allows for a more structured creative experience. Vectors are much easier to manipulate and alter and the styles are easier to apply and reorder. Admittedly for image editing it does not have all the features of it’s big brother but then… it isn’t trying to be. So she got to grips with it and began to produce some good stuff.

Now she has moved back to Photoshop. She still uses Fireworks but now it is very much a tool and not an outlet. It is a means to an end. She is taking the concepts that she has learned and applying them to her Photoshop work, learning from me as she goes. I have no doubt that in time she will be an excellent designer.

The point that I am trying to make, albeit somewhat circuitously, is that we have to give our children, students and colleagues chance to grow and develop as individuals. With a little nurturing and encouragement they are a thing of beauty.

But for now I’ll let her work speak for itself:

Her sister

A gift

First commission!! :D

Experimenting with HSL and Layers

Fun with a name

Homework

More home work!

IE6!!!

For a laugh I thought that I’d try posting from work. Well… I say a laugh, actually it was more of a test.

Little did I know what a negative impact that using Internet Explorer 6 (!!) would have. Never again… at least not until I have some decent kit!!! :-/

Spreading my tentacles far and wide

I love smileys… >:-D

They convey so much more meaning than just normal text. Hence why they are also called “emoticons” an icon conveying an emotion. The one above  is a cheesy grin with horns… so you may gather from my title that I have been a little minxy!!

As well as running with technology, I am providing support for my organizations other “big push”… Evidence Based Teaching. For over ten years we have allowed our teaching methods to stagnate to the point that we now have a generation of students who have known no other form of teaching – slides/powerpoint and a person spouting “stuff” at students who promptly give up the will to live and drift off into the depths of oblivion.

Don’t get me wrong, Powerpoint has it’s place, but it is rarely the best medium for a teacher led lesson. What Evidence Based Teaching does is introduce strategies for students to learn pro-actively. It is based upon the research carried out over hundreds of thousands of lessons across the world and  is “evangelised” by a very well regarded chap called Geoff Petty. You may have heard of him.

We have received some training in EBT from a couple of consultants, Ian and Oliver at Model Learning, and this has been a huge help for the programme. Some of our teachers have adopted the styles and seen fantastic results, others have shied away from the apparent lack of control… I think that I’ve mentioned control before.

So where do I feature in this… well on the fringe really, but also at the centre. Sounds like a dichotomy really… like being both male and right!!! It’ll never happen.

The support that I offer is primarily in recording the experiments that the teachers carry out and publishing the results on our VLE. But I also like to spread the good work that they are doing in order to convert people to the cause. The funny thing is that with a little effort to adapt a lesson we can teach a whole lot more in the same amount of time.

Let me give you an example…

We have a lesson that consists of sitting down and watching about two and a quarter hours of Powerpoint at the end of which our students know how to fill out about seven different types of form. It seems a lot yes, but they do get a lot of time to practice one of those forms in other lessons. They have had complaints that our students cannot remember how to fill out the forms at the end of their year long course… can you think why?

So I got talking to a fine young chap, and he will thank me for calling him young, who said that they were now looking at increasing the amount of time that they gave the students to practice. FANTASTIC!!! 3 more hours of forms!!!!

So I stuck my thinking cap on and had a thought, why not introduce a scenario based around a “control desk” in a workshop.  Hmmm… could be good but how would it work in real life???

1. Student A fills out paperwork for Student B.
2. Student B goes away and carries out the task and fills out the relevant form.
3. Once complete Student B returns to Student A
4. Student A then compares Student B’s answer against a “model answer” and marks and advises them accordingly
5. Student B then takes the desk and raises a task for Student A
6. Throughout this the teacher supervises the marking and raising of tasks.

The teacher should only intervene if there is a point that the student on the desk needs to know. They should really only need to talk to Student A as they should then raise this point with Student B!!! What is more, with three teachers in a lesson we can run 3 pipelines of tasks giving all the students more 1-on-1 time and improving lesson flow. The students learn both by doing and by teaching and they also become familiar with the task control role that they may have when they complete their training.

You could argue that by letting the students see the answers they will know what faults are on the equipment and can cheat. But seriously… how can you cheat by knowing how to fill in a form?? Yes, you might know what the final fault is but you still have to carry out the work correctly and interpret the readings correctly too. Otherwise it is easy to see by the way that the job is written up.

So how is this being devious and cunning…. well the teachers that run this lesson are not part of the EBT programme. But they are keen to move forwards and improve their lessons, but still don’t see the point. What I have done is to take the concept to them and show that they can use it within their lessons. They can do this without increasing time and without requiring additional resources – the two things most precious to our instructors.

Will they take up the mantle?? We’ll have to wait and see, but I think that they will.