Tag Archives: digital

Why every kid should learn to code (in the Humanities as well as Computer Science)⤴

from @ andrewjmclaughlin


Like art, coding enables self-expression. Also, like art, it can be a catalyst for political and social change.
Finding solutions to global and societal problems involves the same set of computational thinking skills as finding solutions to programming problems. Learning to code is not just about learning to use a powerful, modern 'lingua franca' to develop clever apps, but about developing the ability to understand how to break problems down, to spot patterns, to collaborate, to ideate-try-fail-tinker-and try again, to make sense of the world around us.

Learning to code is about learning to change society (hopefully for the better) - it gives citizens agency (see Jennifer Pahlka's TED Talk and read more about her work in '[Re]:Coding <America/>') and the tools to leverage impactful change despite the traditional political machinery being broken (as Jon Alexander champions in his book, 'Citizens').

Jennifer Pahlka's TED Talk

It is important then for children to learn about programming and develop computational thinking at an early age - to build their skills, their confidence and their awareness, and to find new ways to express themselves and shape their world. Goodness knows, they will inherit a world in crisis, it is only right that we give them every opportunity to develop their solutions and build the new tools they'll need.

Linda Liukas succinctly addressed this with HundrEDorg (4 years ago).

This is just one of the reasons that I am grateful for organisations like CodeBase, ​Micro:bit Educational Foundation, Barefoot Computing​ and Digital Xtra Fund, and their efforts to bring coding to our young people in spite of a national shortage of Computer Science teachers.


The Digital Water Cycle – when will the floods begin?⤴

from @ andrewjmclaughlin

When we discuss #Sustainability, we often talk about #FoodMiles and #Renewables. When I taught my Social Studies classes, I would often ask them to think about the #SupplyChain of the lunchbox items (Farming, Transporting, Selling, Shipping, Processing, Packaging etc). But whilst we are well-versed in discussing the hidden carbon footprint of our foods, we rarely give much consideration for our tech. 

For a long time, we have championed digital solutions and cloud storage as "a great way to save paper", and saving trees (especially with deforestation continuing at pace around the world) is a worthy criteria. In a meeting just last year, a Microsoft employee rejoiced telling me how M365 had saved a school so much paper, that, if stacked it would be the equivalent height as London's Shard building. Little was said of the need for energy hungry servers to store all that data - the cloud is a clever label, because we rarely think of 'clouds' as sinister. (Although I still remember the genuine panic around Acid Rain in the late 1980s and have failed to fully trust any human-cloud interactions ever since.)

 The Guardian reported on the increase in digital waste back in 2010, and after outlining the issues back then, they asked the question: "Just how much server space will humanity need in 2050?" 

Worryingly, researchers at Lancaster University estimated in 2021 that the cloud is responsible for between a quarter and 1.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions globally, equating to at least 100 million tonnes per year. Similarly, Greenly (a Certified B Corp) calculated that someone storing one terabyte of information on the cloud using data storage is creating a carbon footprint equivalent to 2 tonnes annually. A terabyte just happens to be the allocated space available for our pupils and staff in schools via their Glow/M365 accounts. 

 If you're a school leader or IT lead, maybe you can take a look at the current set-up for your school to see if savings can be made. ComputerWeekly.com shared the following advice: "One of the most impactful ways an organisation can minimise the impact of its servers on the environment is to use green-powered datacentres, or to invest in greener technology. Microsoft is just one example, with the company increasing accessibility to serverless and open-source software in recent years to minimise the cooling processes and ventilation required in its datacentres. With regards to hosting, organisations should check that their service provider has a meaningful sustainability statement and policies around the use of green energy in datacentres as well as other facilities, alongside wider eco-credentials in energy efficiency. The best policies will have tangible, measurable commitments rather than vague statements. If your existing host isn’t ticking all the boxes, The Green Web Foundation has a directory of sustainable hosts."

Creating a Digital Bill of Rights in Social Subjects⤴

from @ #OnlyLearning

Have you ever taken a moment to consider what you share online? 

What about all those photographs of your children? Have you even asked your child if they are happy with you sending their digital likeness into the ether, at a time when an ever-greater number of tools are being launched, and used, with minimal thought for their longer term impact.

The United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child was written a long time before we had any reason to worry about online presence - after all the the UNCRC came into action in 1992, a year before CERN placed its World Wide Web technology in the public domain and gave birth to the phenomenon of online communication.

Yet the UNCRC has incredible relevance for our children, especially given omnipresent online access and these new AI tools:

  • Article 3 - The best interests of the child must be a top priority in all decisions and actions that affect children.
  • Article 8 - Every child has the right to an identity. Governments must respect and protect that right, and prevent the child’s name, nationality or family relationships from being changed unlawfully. 
  • Article 16 - Every child has the right to privacy. The law should protect the child’s private, family and home life, including protecting children from unlawful attacks that harm their reputation.

Consider this recent video from Deutsche Telekom:


One possible solution: A digital Bill of Rights

Philosophy is best not when it tells you what to do, but when it is used to help democratic publics better understand the urgent challenges we face, so that we can make better decisions about what to do, together.
~ Seth Lazar, Tanner Lecture (Stanford HAI, Jan 13, 2023)

In his lecture introduction, Seth goes on to say, "Political philosophy, ultimately, is about how to live together. It depends on properly understanding our social relations. But it is yet to adequately address social changes induced by computing, intensified by AI."

The idea, that we are living in a reality which is no longer aligned with our social contract, is one with which many find they are increasingly ill-at-ease. Great science-fiction has grown from the fear of technological developments which outstrip our ability to control them. But the growth of AI is not the existential threat that we have been led to believe by films and books. The leaders of Big Tech companies are far more likely to be the cause of untold damage (c.f. Instagram's impact on Mental Health, YouTube's algorithmic promotion of extremism, Twitter's polarisation of political views, and all social media's increasing mining for our attention to generate greater revenues)

This demands discourse within our classrooms

Our young people need opportunities to discuss the issues if they are to better understand the impact of these tools, and this Forbes article is a wonderful provocation with which to engage students in the creation of a Digital Bill of Rights, most likely within Social Subjects/RME contexts.

An opportunity which might involve:
  • an examination of the successes and failures of the US Bill of Rights (c.f. The Fugitive Slave laws (1793, 1850)),
  • looking at the current lack of protection students (and all users) have from Big Tech
  • exploration of a new (digital) social contract
  • raising awareness of ethical considerations
  • reworking the sentiment of the Port Huron Statement (1962) in an "Agenda for a Digital Generation"

If anyone is interested in collaborating to create a resource which could be shared with schools, I'm keen to hash out ideas, so please get in touch.


Education needs free, safe spaces for creation, collaboration and discussion.⤴

from @ andrewjmclaughlin

[ P.S. An abridged version of this post was published in TES magazine 22nd December 2022 ]


Safe spaces in which Scottish Educators can discuss, debate, share our thoughts, enquiries and practice are few and far between these days.

Barely have we had we chance to draw breath post-Covid (no pun intended), but we find we are already diving into a period of National Discussion, examining the findings of a slew of reports and a flurry of thought papers (among them opportunities to redefine the place of the Four Capacities and of IDL in our schools).  In such a time of flux, we would benefit from a safe place to share and explore ideas, but our options are instead reducing.

The Future is behind us

Could relics from our recent past be our best shot at establishing grassroots opportunities to collaborate, share and discuss - as Pedagoo provided for a while - regardless of our geographic or digital locale, so that we might optimise this season of reform and renewal?

Blogs and Wikis were once ten-a-penny in the Scottish Education sphere, until microblogging rose to dominate the landscape. Unlike social media, these older content-creation tools did not restrict the length of contributions or steal your attention every waking moment thanks to incessant dopamine-releasing notifications. Instead, they allowed developing thoughts to be published, ideas to be shared and shaped, links made to like-minded thinkers, and documents written collaboratively. The very values cherished both by luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment and the creator of the Web.

After all, “when he launched the Web in 1991, Tim Berners-Lee intended it to be used as a collaboration tool, which is why he was dismayed that the Mosaic browser did not give users the ability to edit the Web pages they were viewing. It turned Web surfers into passive consumers of published content.” (Walter Isaacson, The Innovators). Blogging and Wikis were the tools which emerged to mitigate this effect, encouraging user-generated content and collaboration. These tools did not restrict the length of your contributions or steal your attention every waking moment thanks to incessant dopamine-releasing notifications. Instead, they allowed for fully-formed thoughts to be published, shared and shaped, links to be made, and documents to be written collaboratively. The very values cherished by Enlightenment luminaries such as Burns, Hume, Hutcheson, Reid, and Smith. 

A Historical Context

In the early 18th Century, Scotland was recovering from a period of great change and unrest - the economic and climate crises hitting late 17th Century Europe, the failure of the Darien Scheme (1698-1700), the Union of Parliaments (1707), the Jacobite uprising (1715). In the 1730s, there was an explosion of clubs and societies established to improve knowledge in key areas – agriculture, philosophy, industry, medicine among them – and to drive recovery. These clubs were “characterised by their cross-disciplinary focus. The boundaries between different subject areas were not as fixed as they are today. It was quite common for philosophers, artists, scientists, churchmen, and lawyers to be members of the same society and to share ideas and discoveries from their different fields of knowledge” (NLS).

 Two hundred years later, as the world emerged from the chaos of the Second World War, a number of large companies sought to drive innovation and economic recovery. In the process, ways of working were revised and traditional workspaces were redesigned. “Bell Labs director Mervin Kelly guided the construction of a new home for the lab that would purposefully encourage interaction between its diverse mix of scientists and engineers.” explained Cal Newport in Deep Work.  “Bell Labs showed how sustained innovation could occur when people with a variety of talents were brought together. The corridors were…designed to promote random meetings among people with different talents and specialties, a strategy that Steve Jobs replicated in designing Apple’s new headquarters seventy years later. Anyone walking around Bell Labs might be bombarded with random ideas, soaking them up like a solar cell.” wrote Walter Isaacson in his 2014 book The Innovators.

It barely needs mentioning, but we are coming through our own tumultuous period. Over a decade of austerity has impacted on schools and communities across the nation, the Climate Crisis is escalating at pace, and Covid closed our schools and forced us to rethink all that we took for certain in the education of children for the first time since the threat of aerial bombardment in the 1940s. For over a decade now in Scottish Education, Twitter has been the space to share ideas, or more commonly, to show off achievements and practice. The balance of broadcast versus collaboration trod a fine line, but it was convenient for most. Until recent weeks, when we saw an escalation of distressing incidents: racist abuse of staff and learners, personal attacks on early career teachers. Elon Musk’s takeover in November further escalated fears that such incidents would become more commonplace and led to a migration from the platform to the tune of 700,000 users (and growing).

Consumers not Owners

While Twitter use has risen, we have seen a growth in 'consumption' rather than 'creation' around Education. Social Media creators on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube seem alien to the education landscape, where we have become accustomed to simply "searching", "finding" and "downloading", rather than "editing", "creating" and "collaborating".

Away from 'social media', the challenges to collegiate sharing are no less significant. GLOW would once have been the obvious solution, but many Local Authorities are turning their back on the platform to pursue their own needs, leaving users frustrated from the need to jockey login details and switch browsers. Meanwhile, we urgently need to liberate ourselves from the Big Tech 3, who are currently carving Scotland into digital fiefdoms, stifling cross-platform collaboration, luring teachers with shiny badges and gamification - as if being a Scottish Teacher isn't achievement enough!

Resourcing Collaboration

Bringing together colleagues from across Scotland, and across sectors, is one of the notable successes of the Education Scotland PLL team. Their leadership courses provide opportunities for collaboration, sharing and network building. However, capacity is finite and the cohorts of these courses (though expanding) make up a tiny percentage of the teaching body in Scotland. How then can we have meaningful discussion of the many reports and ideas.

It is time then to look to our recent past. A network of blogs, free standing from any one provider, hyperlinking to one another to debate and develop ideas, formed a healthy part of the discussion on all things educational in Scotland just a decade ago. What was missing in 2010 was any sort of directory: a working record of the many blogs, themes and ideas. An attempt at this was made by ScotEduBlogs, though this currently hinges on centralised moderators to update and organise the aggregator. Instead, a “ScotsEduWiki" would quickly surpass this, editable by all, allowing for information to be updated quickly and providing a map for educators, linking ideas, papers and research. In short, providing a one-stop shop to support the National Discussion.

Ollie Bray’s The Future of Digital in Scottish Education – Brief Thoughts⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

I’ve been listening to Ollie Bray’s The Future of Digital in Scottish Education. I say listening rather than watching as I huffduffed the video to a mp3 file so that I could hear to it on my commute 1.

Ollie was looking for feedback, so I though I’d jot down some notes. The quotes are taken from the Youtube transcript so are a bit odd. I’ve snipped out the audio too. There is no license but I think quoting in context is probably ok…

young people probably then going to need some content gosh we’re terrible and Scotland about Reinventing content all the time now we want to have agency to be able to create our own content but actually you know some sort of nationally procured content for some things is probably a good idea

One of the reasons it might be difficult to find the time for new and innovative digital practises is the amount of time spent by Local Authorities, schools and staff buying, filtering or creating resources. I know my own and most of my colleagues pocket is lighter.

Another reason is:

we’ve got an overcrowded curriculum in many ways I hope that we’re able to strip some of the things out

I’ve been hunting for the audio of David Cameron railing against the number of E&Os (>1800 I think) and the difficulty of keeping that in our heads. It really speaks to this, but can’t find it yet.

we also know of course that actually probably we’re about to kind of see and I I feel this that we’re about to get a bit more of a Resurgence of creative technology approaches and what I mean by this is that probably for a number of years now you know in some parts of Scotland we focus quite a lot on the productivity tools um you know 10 or 15 years ago there was a lot of work going on around podcasting and digital video and that seems to have dipped you know for a little while and we’ve been focusing more on these kind of productivity Tools around around that things like the ability to do a spreadsheet or a PowerPoint presentation or to format something in word and all these things are worthy in nature that don’t necessarily you know develop kind of the creative approaches to using ICT

There is more in this vein.

I hope the resurgence happens soon. I’ve never understood why podcasting, in particular, didn’t catch on. I’ve listed some of the benefits before. So I’ll not go on.

I wonder if the dip in the creative use of digital is due to the power of the major software platforms we use for free. An examination of our choice of tools is something I hope Ollie will address. We tend to use the tools that are supplied without thinking about them critically. All software is opinionated. All vendors need to have their shareholders in mind. Are the education philosophies of these giants aligned with ours? I am wondering about social media tools as well as productivity & creative suites. Some of the more “creative” tools they supply seem to not give the user freedom but more the choice between predesigned templates, sometimes at random. What are the reasons for supplying free tools to education? I am not suggesting we should not use them, but that we should think about it.

Talking of tools, I wish Ollie still kept a blog. He asks for responses via e-mail or twitter. A blog post might have been a good choice. Could pull together the video, a transcript & responses.

There is a lot more to think about in the video, even if you only listen to it. Refresh of Glow, supply of devices and conectivity and more. If your interested in digital education in Scotland it is worth a listen. I’d be interested in others responses.

1. Huffduffer is a system for organising your own podcast from audio from the internet. Say episodes of podcasts you do not want to subscribe to. It also converts, using huffduff-video, videos to audio to add to your feed. Here is mine ↩

Developing Digital Skills for Citizenship⤴

from @ andrewjmclaughlin

I recently read Stepping into a Virtual Reality Classroom for Teacher Training (columbia.edu) and I was intrigued to see the situation in Myanmar pre-pandemic described in very similar terms to how I have previously described the situation here in Scotland today: 

...teachers often lack not only digital skills themselves, but also the pedagogical breadth to meaningfully engage students in inquiry-based activities that make the most of access to technology

The Myanmar: Connect to Learn project site details the issues faced by their schools when it came to developing digital pedagogies:


It was clear that knowledge, skills and infrastructure were all lacking. The same concerns raised in Scotland. Having just supported an authority with upskilling teaching staff and deploying thousands of devices into the hands of staff and students alike, I feel I have a good understanding of how these three factors impact on education here.

The ongoing work being undertaken by a number of organisations, not least council education departments and the Scottish Government's Digital Citizenship Unit, all focus on equity of access and equity of opportunity. The pandemic brought under the spotlight the negative impact caused by poverty when it came to citizens accessing information (health information, financial services, education).

In both countries, lots has been done. During Covid we saw WiFi provision for the poorest students prioritised, devices deployed and upskilling supported. In schools, we saw teachers engage head-on with developing the digital skills they needed to continue to support their learners, at least in so far as managing a work flow solution to pass work back and forth. But on return to in-person learning, the momentum was lost and many practitioners returned to their tried and trusted ways, eschewing the new digital tools.

Perhaps, most surprising though was the range of solutions proposed. While we recently upgraded the network connectivity of every school, Myanmar was deploying 3G and 4G enabled devices. They, like us, were introducing a development programs both for teaching staff focusing on the use of ICT in the classroom. And while we deliver inputs on SAMR and digital skills, and planned to develop curricular pathways around Computing Science, Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety, the Myanmar project was building a Virtual Reality sandbox where teachers could "gain additional confidence to integrate the use of advanced mobile technologies in the classroom".

  • Are we doing enough in Scotland to build teachers' skills, knowledge and confidence around digital to help them better prepare our young people for the world around us? 

  • Are our young people (and their communities) being provided with the tools they require to be successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens in an increasingly digital world?

If the answer to either of these questions is no, then who is responsible for making Digital a national education priority?

We are in the midst of a mammoth review of all things Scottish Education, perhaps now is time to put pressure on ministers to renew their ambition to provide devices for every learner (and, subsequently, ensure a device in the home of much of our population). With Education Scotland and the SQA under the spotlight, perhaps we can also seek opportunities to enhance the digital landscape across the nation, build our own digital sandbox, create safe spaces to share, collaborate and question. Extricate our schools from the digital fiefdoms where big tech companies have rieved them and cut them off.



From the Archive (3): Targets I set myself in 2009/10.⤴

from @ andrewjmclaughlin

 The following excerpt is from a much longer reflective piece I wrote in 2010 as a student teacher. I've included it below to force me to reflect on how my practice has changed over the subsequent 12 years.

Considerations for Future Practice: Inclusive Environment and Learning Experiences

I feel in many ways I missed a golden opportunity with this class.  Although we used ICT, we used in a pedestrian manner.  In this modern, digital era, it is both easy and essential that we provide activities which will benefit everyone in a class, not just those with perceived inhibitors or disabilities.  “Difficulties” of a wide variety can be leveled through the use specialist programs, specific equipment, or even just through new ways of using readily available resources.  Technology can easily augment the learning of struggling pupils, can enhance the education of all pupils, and can be geared to stretch even the most able students in a class.  Mobile technologies, such as iPods and mobile phones, can be used to reinforce learning through applications, games, homework reminders or specific tasks. Word processors and laptops can be used to make life easier for pupils with conditions such as dyslexia. Returning to the idea of communication difficulties, ICT provision can help children struggling with direct speech (for whatever reason) gain confidence using speech bubbles in online cartoons or automatically generated speech through programmes such as Voki or voicethread.


Using Digital Intentionally⤴

from @ andrewjmclaughlin

Since first appearing here, this post has since been posted on the Education Scotland PLL blog.

In my last blog, I asked leaders to think about how they might liberate the minds of their staff teams. To adopt “intention” instead of “instruction” based leadership strategies. The notion of ‘intentionality’ has been at the fore of my thoughts for some time. Whilst discussing the benefits of digital tools, and training staff and students to maximise those benefits, I have been in the habit of asking leaders and teachers about their intended use of digital as part of wider school improvement ambitions.

Often, the responses have outlined a drive to integrate digital tools into classroom activity or develop digital literacy amongst staff and students. Recently, though, I was told “I want to see the devices used in every lesson”. It may seem counter intuitive, but I reacted negatively to such all-encompassing digital goals.

In another conversation, an early career teacher rightly asked me about the long-term effects of digital tool usage on younger children. The same question was often raised during the remote learning of 2020, when people rightly worried about the negative impacts of too much screen time during Covid lockdown.

Both of these conversations were revealing about how important it is to discuss intention when planning the use of digital tools and technologies. To both, I responded in a similar way:

Our classroom teachers are professionals. They know our children and know how best to provide engaging, meaningful learning opportunities for them. Classroom teachers will look to provide a variety of experiences, some of which might be digital, most of which will be analogue. Indeed, you wouldn’t ask your students to write all day every day, or walk around with a bean bag on their head for hours on end. Everything in moderation allows for skills to be honed without negative side effects. The use of digital is no different.

On reflection, these conversations revealed more about competency than attitude. Just as would be done for outward-bound trips, planning is essential for a positive digital learning experience. Moreover, a robust Risk/Benefit Analysis is required to ensure any risks are mitigated where possible and worthwhile where not. In my experience, the best RBAs for trips are done by people who visit the site first, are clear about the learning goals and fully understand the activities which are planned, and are knowledgeable of the measures in place to keep children safe: outdoor education instructors have a depth of experience and expertise within that field that the average classroom teacher simply hasn’t and as such, the RBAs of teachers who work collaboratively with the instructors to plan the excursion are generally far more detailed than those written in the classroom. (Indeed, never mind analysing the risks, some dedicated teachers can struggle more than the pupils with the treetop ropes course or abseiling off a tower!)

One challenge with digital then, is that relatively few teachers have yet to build-up sufficient professional expertise and experience of digital tools to feel confident in planning meaningful experience, identifying the risks or providing digital safety. Central teams then, whether at local authority level or the @DigiLearnScot team at Education Scotland, are charged with providing scaffolding and training across a range of topics and platforms, stretching their capacity and resources to the limits without really getting the chance to collaborate with the classroom teacher.

Some help may be at hand. In his book, DigitalMinimalism, Cal Newport writes, “I am glad that we are worried about digital wellness but I think we have to go beyond small tweaks and hacks, and start thinking seriously about ‘What is the role of technology in our modern notion of the good life?’

And so I ask you, ‘What is the role of technology in our modern notion of good learning and teaching?’

By identifying the goal, we may avoid much of the risk. Either by reducing the potential for over-use or by avoiding the potential for misuse.

The idea of planning deliberate use of digital tools and technology might seem obvious, but when speaking to teachers across the country, I am regularly amazed by how many focus either on digital learning as the end result without fully considering why digital is the best medium for the planned learning activity (like the earlier conversation, the use is in itself the achievement). Almost as common are those who see the use of digital as little more than a threat to discipline or learning (without contemplating the opportunities to leverage rich learning experiences through strategic use of digital technology).

To those who simply view digital tool use as the ambition, I urge caution. As Newport remarked, “Simply put humans are not wired to be constantly wired”. If you are asking your young people to plug in, be sure to have a clear rationale for why.

To those, who see digital tools as little more than a distraction, disruption or hazard, I urge you to look for the benefits but embrace the principles of Digital Minimalism.

Digital minimalists see new technologies as tools to be used to support things they deeply value—not as sources of value themselves. They don’t accept the idea that offering some small benefit is justification for allowing an attention-gobbling service into their lives, and are instead interested in applying new technology in highly selective and intentional ways that yield big wins. Just as important: they’re comfortable missing out on everything else.

~ Newport, Digital Minimalism (2019) 

I was given pause for thought during the HarvardX Leaders of Learning course, when educator and PBS commentator David Thornburg’s observed, “We use to ask the question, 'What can I do with technology?' as opposed to 'What can I do now that I have technology?'"

There is no denying that digital tools can have a negative impact on focus. We see this every day in our classrooms as children and young people struggle to focus without checking their phones for a dopamine hit. Countering the lure of the phone may be one of our greatest challenges and one of our core responsibilities going forward. By embracing digital minimalism we do not reject the innovations of the internet age, but instead reject the way so many of us currently engage with these tools. In some ways, the tools themselves might even help us mitigate this addictive behaviour, through careful use of assistive technologies built-in to cut out distracting notifications or app usage. The deployment of centrally managed devices, like in Glasgow, the Borders and Edinburgh, might also stem the constant distraction by enabling tougher stances on unmanaged device use within schools (including phones). On breaking our reliance on attention-seeking tech, Newport has written extensively, illustrating how we might go about (re)building focus, training our brain: it starts with 20 minutes of avoiding distraction. Warning: It's not as easy as it sounds.

Beyond competing with social media, we must open learning experiences that have never been available before to enrich curricular and non-curricular offerings. Fundamentally, schools and councils will have to provide teachers with greater opportunities to develop their understanding of digital pedagogies and to explore the positive benefits of digital technologies.

My former colleagues in the Empowered Learning team at Edinburgh might provide an initial step for this. Their #SAMRTuesday girds on Twitter support the intentional use of digital tools with clear planned purposes and worked-examples of using the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Reimagination) framework (created by Dr. Ruben Puentedura) to show how digital can enhance and even transform many aspects of learning and teaching.

Leveraging the power of digital in the classroom can improve outcomes for all our young people. But with great power comes greater risk, don’t run with those digital scissors in your hand. Embrace digital minimalism. Use it sparingly, build your competencies and wield your digital pedagogies intentionally.




Inaugural National Schools’ Minecraft Finals⤴

from @ andrewjmclaughlin

It was an absolute joy to bring the first Minecraft: Education Edition Scottish Championship to Abertay University's School of Informatics and Design this week. I will be forever grateful to Prof. Gregor White for throwing open the doors and welcoming the young people into the heart of the school - and for handing out the prizes at the end of the day too - making for a very memorable experience for all our young people.

On the day, teams from three local authorities were present for both Primary and Secondary finals. The brief was to design a sustainable school of the future and resulted in some fantastic submissions. The judging process was particularly challenging as we found ourselves splitting hairs to finally declare the winners.

What has been quite disappointing is the slow uptake around the country for Minecraft Education Edition. Education Scotland cannot provide this as a national app and the ongoing mismatch of DPIA/GDPR risk appetites/educational benefits within our schools sees many councils opting not to deploy the platform.

This is to the detriment of learning opportunities.
  1. Minecraft is beloved by kids across the nation
  2. Minecraft is a beautiful tool for authentic IDL approaches




For an exploration of the benefits Minecraft offers our learners, who better to ask than Chris van der Kuyl, the Dundee games mogul who brought Minecraft to the console? Here he is back in September last year proclaiming, 

“Not only do I think a creative game like Minecraft has a space in school, I think it is going to become the centre of the learning experience for many kids of today, including children who haven’t even gone to school yet.”

Worthy of mention too is the work done by Derek Robertson nearly a decade ago around the use of Minecraft in the Scottish classroom and it was great to be able to have Derek join us for part of the day to see the activity.

Lastly, a huge thanks to colleagues from Dundee, Aberdeenshire and Edinburgh councils for pulling together to make this event happen. A hat-tip to Dean and Aspire2Be - the Welsh outfit put in a pile of work to ensure the event took place, with Dean helping run regional competitions as well as the big final. And also, my thanks to Louise Foreman at Education Scotland for joining us for the day, and helping ensure the judging was impartial.

Capture, Cleanse and Weave⤴

from @ andrewjmclaughlin

Originally posted on Education Scotland's PLL blog


With Tartan Day celebrated on 6th April, the news was awash with stories of Brand Scotland being celebrated and promoted internationally. With Social Media timelines jammed with digital shortbread tins and heartfelt pleas to those in charge of American business budgets, it was all feeling a bit like Brigadoon had set up home in the Metaverse.

One story caught my eye though, that of Moray-based tartan textile specialists Great Scot. The firm have created a new 'Ukraine Forever' tartan using the colours of the Scottish and Ukrainian flags as a gesture of support the war-torn Ukraine. Apparently, it was a real team effort leading up to the production of this tartan. The idea came from their online community and everyone in the company was involved in the creation, from seamstresses to the delivery team.

It is amazing the opportunities that can arise when people work together.

On a frosty November morning, back in 2020, I joined the “International Blether” with Dr. Simon Breakspear of the Gonski Institute in Australia. Simon was invited by Education Scotland to share his thinking about leading through the complexity of that first year of Covid, and how to make the most of the opportunities that came with that uncertainty. Like the new tartan, Simon emphasised the need to spot those new opportunities. He challenged those listening to capture, cleanse and weave those opportunities into our established practice.

Capture

The pandemic was both furnace and tsunami. It applied heat and pressure to established practices, stress testing them for weaknesses. And didn’t we all see systems that just could not stand up to that new pressure. Covid also acted like a giant wave – disrupting the ways we worked as it crashed down on us, but also revealing new complexities and insight as the initial impact ebbed again. We were all thrown around by the impact, but we flexed and made small changes to how we worked. I’ve spent the last year encouraging staff not to let all that learning be forgotten.

The use of Teams to share work across Faculties leads to much more effective moderation and is a blessing for any Faculty leader trying to pull cover together during absences.Recording quick expositions, as was common due to the need for anytime, anywhere learning, now saves classroom teachers from having to repeat themselves, freeing up time for more targeted support instead.Using voice notes for feedback avoids the need for teachers to write screeds on student work, and also allows the student to re-listen as they redraft, making the effort far more worthwhile.

While it has been tempting to return to ‘normal’ due to the stresses of the last two years, some changes are definitely worth hanging on to.

Cleanse

As schools now return to something much more akin to our old ‘normal’, have you and your team snapped back to the old, established ways of working or did you take time to make deliberate decisions about how you wanted to move forward, learning from the innovations of those turbulent Covid times? Whether it is lengthy paper trails or poor communication, think about all those frustrations that have impacted on your team’s ability to deliver. This is your chance to unpick from the complex systems any aspects that are no longer fit for purpose. I’ve been lucky to visit many schools over the last 9 months and it has struck me that in some, those new modes are still battling with old practices. In some schools, online parents’ nights (although challenging at times) were incredibly successful, allowing for additional dates to be added, tighter control of time slots, and greater flexibility for parents – in those schools, these might be preferred to the old in-school setup.

Weave

The hardest part of all of this perhaps, is seamlessly bringing the new practice in alongside old systems to create a whole new way of working. Having unpicked that which no longer works for you, this is a chance to create systems that allow you to build on the successes of the past whilst enabling greater improvement, weaving innovations into the fabric of your team.

Right now, I’m working on how we make better use of data in our schools. I certainly don’t want to ask teachers to create more data (goodness knows we have an abundance of high quality data in our schools already), but I have to ask if we are using all that data effectively. I hope that small changes and simple innovations can help us share that data around the school more easily, using digital tools to synthesise and analyse different sources and generate reports to help build clearer pictures of our learners, our classes, and our schools. In essence, weaving the data that has always been generated with a new process to tell an enriched story.

Like a new tartan, your weave of old and new will in itself tell a story of your team. The old ways, customs and traditions rooting you in your locale, while the new ways celebrating your ability to, not only survive, but thrive under the pressure, heat and crashing power of the Covid crisis.