Tag Archives: Ed Tech

“I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it!”⤴

from

As you are perhaps aware, 2015 is most famous for being ‘The Future’ in the Back to the Future movies, well it’s February and not much has happened yet….but the scene above is from the first movie, where Marty McFly, in 1955, returns to his parents’ school for the ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’ dance and plays Johnny B Goode (not to be released until 1958!)

Watching the movies with my children the other night – a vital part of a young person’s education in my opinion!- got me to thinking…what would Marty notice was different from 1955 to 1985 and into 2015 in schools?

OK, so crucially, teachers can’t hit you with a belt, which is…well, nice.  Much else has changed socially and culturally that has permeated into schooling, sex education exists, girls are allowed to do technical subjects etc.  What has changed pedagogically though?  Is the way we teach any different?

Confession time, I’m a Mathematics teacher, and I collect (well I actually just rescue them from the bin!) old Maths textbooks, as the archaic language is fun, and the way in which problem solving questions are posed is actually really great – complete with imperial units to add a frisson of excitement…and confusion – sorry US readers!  Here is one:

textbook1

Generally speaking, our pedagogy has not changed that much, in my opinion.  Especially in a subject like Maths, it’s quite difficult to change the way you teach 2000 year old theorems I guess…or is it?

We are very keen wheel reinvention experts as teachers, we tweak and tweak pedagogy, like a game of ‘chinese whispers’ (please let me know if this is an unintentional racial gaffe, I will edit it I promise!) until the original model is unrecognisable.  Then we tweak it back again until we return to the beginning!  I must attest here though to the good intentions of teachers that do the tweaking, we are just trying to get it right.

This raises, for me, two important points.

1.  We need, as a profession, to develop a more critically evaluative mindset…in keeping with the movie theme, a balance should be struck somewhere between Clint Eastwood and Austin Powers.  This has been discussed here already.  We need to be able to get it right, but with direction and with evidence as our guide.

2.  Teaching facts or the translation of information cannot really be changed much…it’s what you do with it that counts…

austin

What is great is that we are starting, with the aid of some clever tech, to do something with ‘it’.  Lessons are being taught via videos and podcasts, freeing up time for more focussed, personalised pedagogy in class.  Students are submitting work online, allowing for auto/quick marking…again, freeing up time in class.  We are even allowing mobile technology in class (Great Scot!!) to gain insight into the learning of our students on a more personal level.  Change is most certainly afoot…

Maybe there has been not much change in many aspects of education, but in 2015 we are no longer tinkering around with a Ford Capri in the garage…we are building the Delorean!  We just need to keep it at 88mph!

delorean

Tweeachers?!⤴

from

I had the pleasure this week of talking to PGDE students about Flipping the Classroom/Ed Tech and general teacher geekery.  They were eager for information, guidance, a place to start…my answer…Twitter!

Gasps ensue..Social Media?  The black hole of depravity? The graveyard for teacher’s careers who posted one too many pics of their lunch?  In a word…no.  To be fair, you are probably reading this after following a link on Twitter (thanks by the way!) so you are, perhaps, well aware of the fantastic and fertile land of ideas, sharing and collaboration…some might even say revolution that Twitter is the catalyst for in education. Watch this video if you have 14 minutes, more on it later.

I dislike posts entitled “10 steps to decluttering your home”, “5 steps to losing 6 pounds in 7 days!”etc.  My dislike is borne out of the fact that a few of these steps are usually quite good, and the rest are there to make up the numbers – so I’m going to start giving a few good tips and see where we go…

1.  Become a Tweeacher – make a professional account, try not to use your personal one where you retweet the ridiculous video of the dancing cats…or worse.  Treat this account as one you wouldn’t mind sharing with your boss, or their boss for that matter.

2.  Who to follow?  Search #edchat or #flipclass for starters and follow quite liberally initially, some will follow you back, but this depends a little on your contributions, which leads me on to…

3. To Tweet or not to Tweet? Just ‘lurk’ in the virtual shadows and absorb the collective wisdom of the Twittersphere if you wish, retweet things you like and contribute to the conversation, not every Tweet need be a perfectly composed nugget of literary genius.

The reason why I think Twitter has become so important in education is the potential for like-minded individuals to connect, organise and foster progress from within the education system.  Events like TeachMeet, Pedagoo and others in the UK are organised through Twitter, collectively drawing on the passions and expertise of people who are engaged in education and moving the system on in a revolutionary way, this is no CPD course folks, and because of this community CPD will never really be the same again.

So go on, take the leap, become a Tweeacher, and get the leg warmers off the cat!

 

When the Flipped Classroom opens a can of virtual worms⤴

from

Firstly, I must apologise for my absence from this blog over the past month, I have a note…but the Unicorn ate it.

Anyway, as I have delved deeper into Flipped Learning as a concept, I have become acutely aware of the sheer volume, and variety of technological learning tools (try the twitter hashtag EdTech to see for yourself!) that are being promoted on a daily basis.  Many are great, and most are free too!

Opening this very pleasant can of worms has been a great exercise in realising the potential of technology to have daily impact on learning and especially on engagement, in our classrooms.  Prior to flipping my classroom, I may have been guilty of dismissing these innovations as gimmicky and lacking in real value…I have since changed my tune considerably.

BYOD?

Whilst browsing twitter, if that’s indeed what you would call it, I came across the acronym BYOD.  Now, I should preface this next attempt at humour and holding your attention with cheap laughs with some background info, I grew up in a town near Glasgow, Scotland where BYOD means Bring Your Own Drink!

In our case though BYOD stands for Bring Your Own Device.  This could be any internet enabled device, like a smartphone for example, that most young people in our classes have anyway.  I have found, so far, an excellent product called Socrative (will link soon!)

Socrative is a free product that allows students to simply join a ‘room’, so no login required – it’s is really quick and clean.  The teacher can then pose questions in a variety of formats (multi-choice, true/false, short response) which the students can respond to in real time, seeing their responses displayed on the teachers screen.  They can then vote on responses or simply discuss them collaboratively.

There are options, such as quiz sharing, that I have not got around to using yet, as the basic functions are too addictive to be honest!

The students that I have used Socrative with loved the potential for anonymity when offering answers.  I felt a possible ‘way in’ to embedding a culture of trying without the fear of public failure that to a teenager, makes the four horsemen of the apocalypse seem like ‘My Little Pony”.

The world of Educational Technology truly is expanding at an exponential rate and we as teachers, need to critically select those resources that bring value to the learning experiences that we provide.

I’ll finish this post with a quote from Ken Robinson that is particularly apt:

“…preparing kids for a world we cannot predict using methods that we do not change..is alienating millions of children”

So go on…get the tin opener!

 

time to open a can of worms!

time to open a can of worms!