However, during my recent ACEC presentation in Melbourne, I was quite surprised by the number of teachers who came to talk to me about this issue and how they can best advise their school’s leadership.  One of the greatest issues with blocking access is that it creates a sense of fear of the unknown amongst our community.  I am always keen to see how we can help educate our whole school community on the real issues of internet safety and helping children grow up in a digital age.  Unfortunately, for me and those who hold to the values of educating folk of the real issues, the sensationalised media is doing us all a massive disservice.  What these reports fail to mention is that there is always a way around a filter or a block.  I spent some time early on at my current school monitoring what students were searching for and how our filters were handling the search requests.  Time and time again I found searches for the “proxy” or other path around particular filter systems we were using.  I then started to think about the amount of time students were spending doing this and then equated that into wasted learning time.  Furthermore, what amazed me was that children were not trying to access material that we would all agree was damaging or inappropriate – they were simply trying to access sites such as youtube, facebook and myspace.

Which brings me to my next point.  Why would we regard these sites as inherently bad?  All of these sites can be quite useful.  They can give students access to information and innovative ways of learning, as well as it being a core part of social development in this day and age.  Of course I know, like many of you who work with children, especially teenagers, that they don’t use them for that purpose very often.  Could this perhaps be because we don’t actually show them the educational potential?  Our students need to be shown the power of any tool and lead in the right direction.  This is not to say they do not innately work it out for themselves at times, but it is our job as educators to help them see further potential.  Is this not what a facilitator of learning is meant to be doing?  It is not uncommon for my students to list their problems with homework on Facebook as a status and canvas the help of their peers.  This is not a WOW moment for them – but for too many of my colleagues it is just that!!  If more of my colleagues saw the types of questions being asked on facebook about homework, they may just have to question themselves over the actual purpose of that homework.

The idea of blocking students access to damaging material and inappropriate content such as pornography etc is not a bad thing in and of itself.  However, where we all fall short – including my own school (mind you we are changing) is how we educate our students on the issues around this material.  Why do we not answer the big question of Why we block certain content?  A poor and misinformed decision on blocking social networking in the classroom because of the potential of “cyber bullying” is no different to banning pencils for the potential of “Paper bullying” or banning lunch time due to the potenital of “playground bullying.”  We have a duty of care to our students to protect them from these issues but we also have a duty of care to educate them.  Just like we don’t ban lunch time due to the risk of bullying we should not ban social networks for the same reason.  What would happen if we did encourage our students to use Social Networking for educational purposes?  I dare say the same thing that happens when we teach children to play together as friends and understand mutual respect!!

Maybe I am going too far here, but is it at all possible that we have a legal case brought to our schools for not educating students in the appropriate use of digital technologies?  In essence the pen and book are a technology and folk have tried to bring a case against schools for not educating a child to write or read!!  If you love kids you want the best for them – and you want to see them become wonderful people who contribute to society positively into the future.  However, we will continue to rob our kids if we do not rethink our approach to access in schools.  The fact remains that our students have access on their phones, which is not filtered, they have access at home which is often not filtered.  This to me is a big enough argument to make sure that we are appropriately educating them.

Recently, I had a phone call from a concerned parent who was quite upset that her daughter managed to update her facebook status while at school.  After a long conversation about the apparent “issue” and why she was so upset about it, we both worked out that her daughter updated her status via her new birthday present, an iPhone.  This is not an example of a parent not in control of her daughter – this was a prime example of our failure to educate our community in what exactly is possible.  We have sold the idea that we protect children to the point that parents believe kids are 100% safe online while in the boundaries of our school.  This is completely false and obviously misleading!!  But then those who want to ban would argue that we should ban the phones at school.  Well in falling short of metal detectors at schools entrances to detect phones – we all know that is not possible!!  Answer once again is to educate.

In my school and in many schools throughout Australia we play Rugby Union.  This is a high level contact sport and with it carries risk of injury.  We would never attempt to tell our parents of Rugby playing boys that they are 100% safe.  What we do is inform them about appropriate gear to purchase to minimise risk.  Parents understand that an injury is possible, but also trust that we as teachers and coaches are doing everything we can to minimise the risk.  During training our coaches will spend time teaching the boys how to tackle properly etc, they do not give the false idea that players will never be hurt or injured.  Why can’t we take the same approach to digital technologies.  Educate parents about how they can minimise risk and educate students on appropriate behaviour online.

This does not solve all problems and it certainly does not stop issues occurring – just like the best coach and greatest protection gear does not stop injury in a game of rugby.  Recently I shared in a presentation the issues our school faced with the creation of a facebook page which ended reflecting poorly on our school.  This was certainly a learning experience for us and our students.  We spent time monitoring the site and checking what it was that students were saying.  When it got out of hand we educated our kids on the issues.  Why it was wrong to defame teachers and how a comment online is your “digital tattoo.”  While I am certainly not naive enough to say that this is going to solve the problem and now all kids will be good boys and girls online, I do hope that as we continue to educate our students, they will become better at understanding the impact of their actions online, as well as be smart users of the technology.

During some research I have found copies of the withdrawal forms for each state.  It is your right as a parent to take your kid out of these tests and send a message to our government and schools that this is not the type of educational reform we will tolerate!!

Exemption forms can be found on the following site, along with more information.  If you truly love your kids you will not allow our Government misinform and mislead you.  There is more to come on this disaster and we need more parents, teachers and school leaders confronting our Government and questioning their motives!!  Does our government love our future generation or do they want nothing more than cheap vote grabbing!?

Gillard has been quoted declaring the Myschool ranking site and the NAPLAN test a great success based on the 2.7million hits to the site.  Ummm….  since when did hits = support!?!?  Gillard’s policy has been informed by those who created similar disasters overseas such as the United States.  We have warnings coming our way from all over the world that standardised testing has failed miserably the world over and causes more harm than good.

The facts remain that our fear of league tables is nothing compared to the damage this does to our education system.  Schools are forced to see these tests as the be all and end all and therefore make poor decisions in their programs.  Such decisions as teaching to the test and replacing extra curricula activities with test taking “practice” are common place in schools.  It demonstrates the great dumbing down of our education system – ultimately ripping of our kids.  These tests have never demonstrated real improvement as a result of the data from tests.  Gillard and the clowns driving our apparent education “reform” need to forget about what maybe popular with misinformed parents and begin to take advice from experts who have the best interest of our kids at heart?  May we continue to drive enough media attention so our parents can be informed and take steps to vote against this stupidity!!

Let me know what you think…

My rant though….  What is with these flaming IWB’s….  Almost enough IWB’s for a 1 to 1 IWB program to launch!!  After my presentation I sat back and just observed the IWB stands….  We had a bunch of people playing with the “touch” screen to view the twitter feed, another person playing their iTunes library on a massive screen and another playing multi guess games with “Who wants to be a millionaire” style gadgets!!  So I started tweeting to see what the general thinking is for the use of IWB’s.  No response beyond “Kid’s can use it – up to 4 at a time” and “well we need to present sometimes and it is great for that.”

Yesterday I gave the demo folk a chance and sat through an entire session with this.  Within 2 mins I was disengaged, bored out of my brain and trying to work out how I could do something cool with the response remote – BTW you can’t!!  We went through a number of different multi guess questions followed by some exciting clip art created diagrams of volcanoes and some more questions.  Then the corker came for me – quote presenter… “What a great way to see if kids are ready for the test.”  Oh so we are going to take technology and use it to prepare kids for tests?  All for the low cost of what?!?!?!

What is the point of these contraptions and further more where is the evidence they are doing anything more than making some corporate folk $$?  I have asked for the evidence all conference of some great work done with these devices…. NOTHING has been sent…. some thing promised (get back to ya) but nothing with substance….

So what is going on with this tool?  Happy to accept that you can use it for a nice presentation but don’t see the true value…  Our government grants and happy times for bussiness is coming to an end sometime and we need to spend wisely!!  Please someone justify the expense….  Or please more people start questioning what we are doing here!!

That is my rant….  Something more structured soon!

Digital Literacy is the area we see linking our curriculum and how we give our students 21st century skills. Here I will look at three key skills I have used in my own classroom and have been working with our staff to develop further.  I want my students to be able to create, collaborate and critique.  These are skills we see as key to our students succeeding in the 21st century.  The idea that they become creators of information, they have the ability to collaborate in a variety of ways and the ability to critique and discern information.

This section will also focus on how we have included our students in the whole process of preparing for this program.  Students involved in committees, students training teachers and creating learning resource for teachers.  We do not see our students as the “Digital Natives” and us the “Digital Immigrants.”  Our students are simply more experienced with digital technologies than some of our teachers.  Therefore, they are of value to the whole process.  I will also share some examples of how our students are taking the role of teacher.

Staff, Students and Community.  These elements are key to making such a massive program work.  Plenty of research done before us makes it clear that we just can’t throw laptops in the hands of these students.  The students don’t understand what is possible, the staff get overwhelmed and the wider community will not support it.

Staff really must own the program and this has been a continuing process for us.  The idea of just “making” staff do it will never work.  Our staff should be treated as professionals who can make good decisions about teaching and leanring and therefore will embrace whole school decisions that will advance these key areas.  In this section of the presentation I want to go through 6 key areas.

1)  Who runs the show? When it comes to IT in schools often we forget who runs the organisation and who has the best interests at heart.  Like everything our ICT programs must be lead by educational experts in the field.  Education drives IT and yes education do make IT decisions.  This is quite a big statement for many to get their head around, but one I will spend time explaining and going through how we managed to achieve good ICT decisions being made by good educational thought and philosophy.

2)  Learn together as peers! It is vital that we do not learn in a vacuum and forget that there is a large base of expertise within our schools that can help and guide.  It is not about learning the tool as much as it is about learning the way the tool could change teaching and learning for the better.

3)  Learn together as a community! Involve the wider community in what you are doing.  Get the expertise that is around your community to add to the program in a positive way.  Past students, Parents, Industry etc.

4)  More than one “teacher”! There is more than one expert on staff when it comes to IT.  Those who embrace it early on become your “e-coaches” or mentors as the program develops.

5)  Digitise with purpose! We must make sure that all ICT tools bring value and purpose.  We must continue to ask the question…  What value does this bring to the learning process?  We have looked at technologies that will help enhance our vision for learning… amongst students, staff and the wider community (parents etc).

6)  No on is a native – Just more experienced! I don’t buy into the digital native/immigrant discussion.  Often this is used as an excuse by teachers.  My experience is this does not do anything to create a positive culture.  That is why we use the students they are not natives they are simply more experienced.  We utilise their experience to help our staff and community.

Presentation Summary

Objective

To deliver a 45 minute overview of our College’s journey to becoming an effective digital school – Focussing on improving learning and teaching through digital technologies.

Goals

Share practical steps in plaining our 1 to 1 roll out
Help participants develop an Educational vision for their school IT direction (Hardware, Software, Professional Learning, Pedagogy)
Stimulate discussion around the issues involved in taking a whole school in one direction toward effective use of learning technologies.

Abstract

King’s Christian College has been on a journey toward creating an effective digital environment that enhances learning and teaching outcomes.  The College began this Journey in 2008 with a large injection of funding into IT resources and the development of plans on how to best spend the funding coming from the Federal Government.  The vision for a 1 to 1 laptop school was the beginning of our journey and helped develop direction for a successful implementation of such a large undertaking.  Through all we have done our focus has been on making sure quality curriculum and teaching drives all IT decisions.  With large amounts of funding available to many schools for IT, we realised the temptation of simply spending and not taking time to justify the educational benefit or advantage.

Throughout all of our committee meetings and planning time it has become evident that if we succeed in implementing these technologies with good teaching and pedagogy at the basis of all decisions, we should achieve not only a digital learning environment, but more importantly an environment where teaching and learning focusses on good pedagogy as well as being learner focussed.  This is why a big part of this journey must be developing ways to help change mindsets of the school community.  Our College’s journey is at an exciting point where a number of different strategies have been implemented to help with the core focus of our journey.

Our key at all times is to respect the professionalism of the teacher and provide all practical support needed.  The basis of what we have found work has been providing opportunities for team teaching and creating a culture of being open to learn from each other.  Every member of our staff has something to share and contribute to our learning community.  We quickly realised it was time to get the expertise and experience out of the locked cupboard and out into the light for everyone to share and learn from.

This presentation will look at the strategies that worked and failed through out our journey.  It will help participants identify their own valuable human resources that can help make an effective digital school benefit teaching and learning.  All materials and documentation developed to help us on this journey will be available to participants as a way of helping others considering a similar journey as well as a way to foster continued discussion.

So first blog of the year….  Not sure if you have heard, but here in Australia we have recently had our elected representation (Federal government) launch their brand new fancy education website www.myschool.edu.au It was the brain child of our deputy Prime Minister and Education minister Ms Julia Gillard.  This site is worth a look – it basically gives everybody access to the standardised testing scores of each school in the country, allowing anyone to compare schools.  Our Government believes this will help parents make the right choice of school for their children and will help schools compare themselves to similar schools and learn from them.

So to start the year I thought I would post a letter I would like to send to our Deputy leader and receive some feedback before sending it.  I would like to thank some twitter friends for their thoughts on this topic.  Please read my draft letter and comment.  I will send this off in the coming weeks.

Dear Ms Gillard,

I would like to thank you and your Government for the recent launch of the MySchool website.  This resource has helped me as an educator and a parent realise that I live in a nation that thankfully has access to important statistics that can help me make educated decisions about where I work and where my child should go to school.  Your efforts to provide us with information of this nature will surely help citizens of our nation make one of the most important decisions parents everywhere will face.

The genius that has been displayed with this concept must NOT stop here Ms Gillard.  I would like to suggest that the Government continue moving forward with this concept while they are on such a great run.  Please consider my proposal for the MyMP.gov.au website.  Think about it Ms Gillard, you could provide a resource that helps me as a concerned citizen and voter understand my local member of parliament and so many other politicians in our nation.  I would like to have access to you and your colleagues academic transcripts, your attendance in parliament, your average number of bad hair days, fashion disasters and most importantly the number of babies kissed in shopping malls during the most recent campaign.

I believe this level of in depth analysis of our members of parliament will provide as valuable criteria for making a decision of representation as the myschool site does for choice of school.  Just like the myschool site, the myMP site would help citizens make decisions by looking for the schools that had more green than pink in the key.  You see I don’t want to be represented in the parliament by just anybody.  Voting is quite a tough decision and it would make life so much easier if we just had a resource that was so nicely colour coded to help make this decision.

Your commitment to providing such an in depth analysis should continue.  All of life’s decisions should be able to be made by simply looking at a colour coded chart of such in-depth statistics.  In fact why don’t we select two days every year where every citizen sits a test that measures their understanding of what their local MP is doing to improve our society.  Furthermore, just like the suggestion from the creators of MySchool, if any MP’s are shown to be performing poorly through these tests they could “learn” from other MP’s that are doing better even if they were opposite sides of politics.  Just because you are seen as opposition doesn’t mean you won’t help each other learn?!?!

Ms Gillard you must continue providing information like this to our nation.  I look forward to hearing you and your colleagues thoughts on this proposal.

Regards,

Concerned Citizen

So why not give me a few thoughts to add to the letter after taking some time to look over the myschool.edu.au website.  Oh and for those who don’t know our genius of a deputy and education minister….  Why not have a look at this clip I found of her.

]]> http://blog.brettmoller.com/2010/01/30/a-letter-to-our-education-minister/feed/ 5 http://blog.brettmoller.com/2009/10/10/school-may-have-to-change-if-we-allow-social-networking-oh-no/ http://blog.brettmoller.com/2009/10/10/school-may-have-to-change-if-we-allow-social-networking-oh-no/#comments Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:48:47 +0000 Brett http://blog.brettmoller.com/?p=314 Before the mid Semester break I did a presentation at a parent night about social networking. There was the usual discussion about safety, the appropriate amount of time using them and if they are worthwhile. However, what came across as I was presenting this and preparing it (1 hour before parents arrived) was the fact that allowing social networking sites at school and using them for educational purposes means we must change the way we teach and assess. Stupid old me started a trend with my film and media class of allowing social networking for school purposes. This started off harmlessly enough with the beginning of a class group page.

After the class page students started using some initiative and created Facebook pages, youtube accounts and twitter feeds to manage their group assignments. All of these pages/groups invited me to be a part of it so I could add thoughts and advice along the way. However, the exciting thing here for me was when students started adding experts in the particular fields to the groups. What is that I hear you say – There are experts on topics more knowledgeable than me – The teacher?!?! You must be mad!! (Sarcastic tone there ladies and gents!!)

So far so good – All I had to do was encourage the collaboration with tools the students were already fans of and we began engaging students. Next I got a little smart and thought I would challenge the students to develop any means possible to engage the largest network of experts to help them with their personal documentary projects. One student started a facebook page and started inviting the experts… Well as luck had it his documentary topic is all about technological change in society and how schooling has not kept up with the rapid change. However, the interesting thing here is that the apparent experts he is engaging are fellow students. With some encouragement these students are beginning to see the value of connecting through these social technologies.

But the real mind shift came when the following was found on facebook 2 days out from our class exam last term. After encouraging students to us social network sites to help with ideas for assignmnets, I didn’t realise they would use the same site to help them work out what was coming in the exam. One student decided he would use Facebook to contact some of my past students at my old school. He had success, and in fact ended up asking the right questions of the right people from my previous class.

I had informed my students that the exam would include a few essay questions that would ask their opinion on different quotes from various film makers. This student finds some of the quotes from class notes and begins posting them to some of my past students to see if he can get any idea as to what is coming up in the exam.

I found the posts at this stage and had a decision to make… Do I put a stop to this or do I encourage the initiative to crowd source. Is this cheating? Or is this an example of why traditional assessment must change?

I believe the best lesson here is that we must change our methods if we are going to embrace new technologies in our classroom. Furthermore, it is clear to me that when a teacher encourages students to use the technology they will embrace the opportunity and run with it. Watching students develop in this space is just awesome!! They demonstrate a true desire to learn when it is relevant and challenging. I am sure there will be more to come here!!

1) Calendar… Sounds boring but it is a life saver. Once you have this puppy linked to your exchange server at school or iCal server there is no missing meetings and appointments. I have had phones and PDA’s in the past with similar features but they have never worked. The key with this app is it’s ability to sync with the calendar services on your school network. Meeting requests, reminders and appointments all just push through seamlessly without me doing anything special!!

2) Tweetie… So not everyone is a twitter freak like me, but the usefulness of this app and the twitter service is amazing me more and more each day. The ability to crowd source so quickly and easily absolutely anywhere is a lifesaver for me each week. Free assistance on any issue from using advanced editing software to teacher recommendations on particular software or class activities!! All of this depends on you creating a network of worthwhile friends and colleagues, but once you achieve that there are some awesome advantages to an app that gives you quick and easy access to a wealth of knowledge!! Starting next term I am starting a project with 1 class to follow the a twitter feed of class information (more on that as it develops). (My twitter name is brett_moller)

3) Ping… Oh ping is an amazing push messaging service that I can see going nuts. Best of all it is free to download and free to use (basically). Push messages is just like sending an SMS to your iPhone buddies without the crazy telco charges. Push messages work over wifi or cellular. Each message is around 2Kb of data so there is no going over your data limit, unless you send 1000’s of messages a month. I see this as a great way for teachers and students to communicate. So far I have used this more as a social tool – but as more and more colleagues are on board I can see this becoming a great tool for connecting and communicating. (My Ping handle is Molski)

4) In the same category as ping would be AIM (iChat client) and Skype. The potential of these apps as collaboration and communication tools is great, however, we have had some interesting technical obstacles to get skype working 100% within our school network. While I was in Hong Kong earlier this year I participated in a conference call to a meeting back at school with skype on my iPhone. I was on the ferry on my way to a school visit off the main island, connected to the free wifi on the Hong Kong ferries participating in a meeting back home in Australia.

5) Evernote… Oh my this is an amazing tool that is so simple yet so powerful. Evernote is a great note taking app that syncs to your account which can be accessed via iPhone, web or desktop. Finally all my meeting notes, class notes, assessment of oral presentations are all synced, backed up and easy to access. Your notes can be private or made public. This is a great tool as it also allows me to share notes from class discussions with students on a public page. My evernote feed for my Film class is in our class LMS page and often contains text notes from class discussions, copies of workflows, even basic voice notes and pictures can be shared their also.

6) iDisk… For all you mobile me buffs iDisk on the iphone is a must have. Simple access to all my documents and important files on my phone is just so useful!! I can’t remember the number of times I have been in meetings where someone has questioned something and I have been able to clarify with direct access anywhere to my important files and folders (obviously I have all my work documents on my iDisk)

7) OmniFocus… Expensive but well worth it for the disorganised and very busy teacher. I have struggled for so long to manage projects and basic tasks. With this app you can easily setup projects and tasks that need to be completed with basic steps and reminders. The app has a desktop companion which synchronises with your iPhone. For me this is the best productivity app I have ever used. I like the way it lays out projects and lets you setup and schedule tasks.

iExpensit… This is a great app for keeping track of departmental budgets. With different budgets that I take care of it is great to have something that helps me keep track of what is and isn’t spent. Always good to keep your school accounts staff happy with you!! I would love to see a expense app or budget app the synced to a web service so it could be shared amongst other staff. Any suggestions?

9) Wikipedia.. At your fingertips anywhere this is just priceless!!

10) Voice Recorder… I am constantly using class discussion and debate in my classes to help students form deeper meaning and understanding of issues. The ease of voice recorder to capture those priceless conversations is just an awesome thing!! Often I grab a conversation and with minimal mucking around I have the file on my computer submitting to our podcast server. Next step for me would be podcast capture for the iPhone!! App to capture and submit media to your podcast server!!!

Folk who read this blog know my personal and professional opinions on IWB’s and if you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed my new # tag – #IWBcircus…. Must we be inendated by insulting and pathetic attempts from technology companies. Anyone who tries to tell me that I should use technology to make my job “easier” is assuming that I am in this profession for myself. You certainly don’t enter teaching for the money and you most certainly do not decide that teaching is a menial task that should be “simplified” by some device. It completely disregards the years of study and constant up-skilling by professional teachers to make sure they are engaging their students and making a difference in their lives.

Besides the second rate marketing attempt at dumb teachers – I was amazed that this company has found people who are now declaring that technology like “Student response” systems are making a difference in student learning outcomes. Are we really trying to convince folk that turning the classroom into the set of “Who wants to be a millionare” will really engage and benefit students? I do not understand how well educated colleauges will fall for this rubbish!!

I have quoted much of the work done over at “Educational Insanity” – in particular the critique of a recent research project funded by Promethean. This morning I sent it to some of my staff who have been keen on IWB’s in their area of teaching as a way of starting a good conversation as to how we would use these devices if they were ever purchased. Much of the response I got back was along the lines of it just being another tool and how it must be good as “so many teachers” are using them and love them!! This also started a great conversation on if we could not have the same arguments for any peice of technology, and if we should just ditch the lot of it and go back to the “good ol’ days.” Surely there are credible critiques on all educational technology research?!?!?!

Thought I would post part of my email responses to these folk…

My argument is simple – just because someone likes teaching with it doesn’t mean it is educationally beneficial. Number 1 argument is putting the technology in the hands of the learner – not only the teacher. Their world is these skills…. An IWB is a replacement for chalk and talk – if someone uses it in another way that is engaging and demonstrating educational value for the $$ spent then that is great…. But I am yet to see it – I have visited the schools that promethium say are their schools of “excellence” (in fact I worked at one!!) and their excellence is judged on how many $$ the school spent with the company!! (I make this judgment purely on observations on how it changed teaching and learning outcomes).

A critique of the methodology is actually a critique and questioning of the educational levels and benefits. The research methodology is called into question – hence indicating that any claim of educational benefit must be questioned and further investigated.

As for the bring back the “good ol’ days,” No one can successfully argue that post chalk n talk fails to improve education levels or outcomes. The research is there and quite convincing – 1 to 1 laptop programs have stood the test of time and are making a change in student engagement…. Are they giving our kids a better shot at the standardised test system? No – probably not – in fact it could be argued we are disadvantaging them. If you want that type of education find a school that will teach you the test and you will get a good result at the end of school. You maybe completely illiterate in the commercial reality of a connected world but you would have got a good school exit mark!!

IF someone wants to send me research on 1 to 1 or a critique of the research I would love to see it!! IWB research fails when it tries to justify test results improving due to the implementation. Teachers will love IWB’s because it ticks the box for them that says they must use ICT’s – It Keeps the bosses happy, but at the end of the day they are still teaching chalk and talk!! No one jumped up and down and told us that changing all the chalk boards in the school to whiteboards back in the 80’s and 90’s was going to improve test results!! Maybe someone should have done some research? Because whiteboards were so much nicer and fancier than those smelly old chalk boards!!