edublogs

Sonny Magaña live, after BLC08

One of the things I really do miss about traveling around the world and staying over in kind strangers' houses is the craic that you can have as you talk about the off-conference off-consultancy stuff: music, books, films...

Last summer in Boston, having presented the keynote at Building Learning Communities 08 (this year it's Mssrs Heppell, Weinberger and Benjamin Zander of TED fame), the conference host Alan November had my whole family around at his lovely house in Marblehead, MA, for a weekend of food, drink, fishing and music, along with the Davitts, Torres and Promethean's very own Sonny Magaña. A man of hidden talents, Sonny woo-ed us all with his tunes and charm. Take a peek at the above composition, in HD on YouTube. One memorable moment amongst many.

An alternative view of filmmaking

I'm borrowing electricity and wifi at the back of a Marco Torres and Alasmedia film-making spectacular, delving into filmmaking of another kind.

I found the Steampunk movie below, from Alice, as beautiful and enchanting as many of the 'real' movies I've seen recently. It would make great creative fodder for some creative writing of the kind I was talking about yesterday, taking your mind away to another universe for 4:30.

BLC08: Thinking Out Of The x(Box) update

On Monday I helped kick off the Pre-Conference workshops at Alan November's Building Learning Communities week in Boston, with a four-hour workshop on using video games, text-based games, alternate reality games and consoles as a stimulus for creative writing, art, design and the sciences. The updated notes from Thinking Out Of The x(Box) are now available.

I was ably assisted from 6000 miles away by a Skyping Tom Barrett, who shared his experiences having just come off a four week Myst writing project. His use of one-to-one laptops and Google Docs to coordinate collaboration was interesting, especially since the group back in Boston shared my initial view that 30 laptops in a classroom would have killed the energy visible in Tim Rylands' class. The jury's out (permanently perhaps), and Tom's Google Doc work shows that great things are possible either way.

The updated notes for the session (minus the ARG stuff - that deserves a post on its own, to come soon) are available now, including some of the amazing Guitar Hero work done by Ollie and colleagues at MGS and the Nintendogs project that covered a term last year in Aberdeenshire. Enjoy and, if you decide to set out on an adventure with games in your classroom, please do tell me about it here.

McKerouac - A Month Stateside

It takes about two days, really, to get door-to-door from Edinburgh to anywhere in the States, so one might as well make as much of an invitation Stateside as one can.

Thanks to an initial generous invite to keynote Alan November's Boston-based Building Learning Communities (now sold out and with a long waiting list) later in July, and a tentative word-of-mouth twit/blog/email digital breadcrumb trail, I've been able to set up a month of events, conferences and research in the USA, with the total cost the Scottish taxpayer amounting to no more than about four nights in a hotel. A fair return on investment, I hope, from the following activities:

June 25th: Greenville, South Carolina
Contact me: Drury Inn Suites
I'll be keynoting the Upstate Technology Conference on some of the Participation Culture work I've been doing, and providing a few workshops on gaming, pro podcasting and exploiting digital images for learning. I'm really looking forward to meeting an increasing number of SC educators who have come out of the Twitter woodwork and blogosphere these past few months to virtually greet me. I'll also be thrilled to kick off one of about three rencontres this month with David Jakes, who I've not yet had the pleasure of hearing doing his thing.

June 27th: Arrival in San Antonio, Texas
June 28th: EdubloggerCon, San Antonio, Texas
Contact me: Hilton Palacio del Rio
Two things. First of all, I'm wondering with my 'spare' night in San Antonio whether Mr McLeod is anywhere nearby - or would like to be - for a reenactment of our Malt and Hops sesh last February. Secondly, I'm hoping to share some impromptu thoughts and, above all, I want to really get to the bottom of where US education is at in 2008. With every blog post from the States, I have to say, the virtual heads hang a little lower, a little more frustrated with a perceived lack of interest, progress or time and money to do things right. This is not the case in some other countries I've been fortunate to visit recently, including India, Slovenia, New Zealand or Holland; I'd love to understand why the States seem to be at a crunch point, see whether, in fact, they are, and, importantly, what might be done to reverse that. This group of educators is probably the best placed to look reflectively on a touchy issue. Hopefully some of them won't mind giving their rundown to camera.

June 29th-July 2nd: NECC, San Antonio, Texas
Contact me: San Antonio Marriott Riverwalk
I've ended up swinging a mini panel gig at this, thanks to the generosity of Uncles Will and Jakes. It's on the potential of video streaming for learning, for professional development, for, I dare say, entertainment.
For this week I'll be blogging primarily over at Connected Live, and hopefully updating with some video. LTS colleague Andy Pendry, currently working as the Technology Adviser for Glow, Scotland's national intranet, somehow managed to wangle a ticket and will be there, too, along with some BBC Scotland colleagues. I'll attempt to record a few wags of chin with them.

July 3rd-6th: Burbank, California
Contact me: Safari Inn, Burbank
The foothills of LA will be my home for a few nights as I finish off an eight-part video podcast production for learners of Spanish back in Europe. It's going to be launched on the MFLE later this summer, providing something a bit more attractive to an audience of teens back home, showing what Mexicana teens in the San Fernando Valley get up to, the strains they have with the older generations and the pressures they face in their day-to-day life in this huge City of Angels.
The (young) production company, Alas Media, is one that was a twinkle in our eye last summer as I canoed with Marco Torres' proteges Rosa and Miguel, trying to convince them that starting their own company would be a lot more exciting at their age than following the more traditional routes university was leading them down. Hopefully, what's turned out this past year has confirmed that for them. I'm just looking forward to spending July 4th eating Mexican, if I can find a home that'll take me in :-)

July 6th-July 10th: New York City, New York
Mrs Edublogger and Mc Mini will be joining me in New York for some (required) holiday vacation. Any ideas what we should see and do? So much to choose from, and we don't want to shatter ourselves. In fact, is it possible just to chill in the Big Apple?

July 10th-July 22nd: Boston, Mass.
Contact me (from July 14): Newton Marriott
Heading back up to Boston for more hols, with a few days near Harvard Yard before taking the T-line to Newton for the Building Learning Communities conference that kicked this itinerary off in the first place.
I'll be running a pre-conference workshop which still has a few places left if you're quick: come and enjoy taking some time in what gaming culture can bring to learning in the classroom and at home.

Come the opening day of the conference proper, I'll be a tad nervy as I deliver my keynote, It's Not All Native Wit, trying to get to the bottom of what makes some education systems 'good' and others less good. The title comes from the slight annoyance I've had over the years when demo-ing ideas for the classroom: "It's alright for him, he's young/a guy/a geek/got more time than I do/hasn't got kids of his own/can't sleep at all (delete as applicable)". For me, it's nothing to do with possessing some kind of pedagogical super powers or working a longer day than anyone else. I haven't and I don't. This talk will hopefully get to the bottom of what can make teachers even more remarkable beings than they currently are. I don't know what the reaction will be to a talk based on an annoyance, but this, after all, is where most innovation comes from: a problem or challenge that needs a quick, cheap long-lasting solution. I'm hoping this won't be any different. I'll let you know in a month...

Other sessions include more digital image work, a keynote follow-up and an appraisal of the trials and tribulations of this past year, trying to get more Local Authorities to follow East Lothian's example, and empower their staff (or make the staff feel empowered) to get online and share.

If you're around in any of these locations over the next month, do get in touch. I can't guarantee to be able to have a beer with everyone, though I don't mind trying. Above all, if you have places I need to eat, local foods and drinks I need to sample, or locations I have to visit, leave them in the comments here.

Pics: Greenville hills  |  San Antonio Riverwalk  |  Burbank LA  |  New York  |  Boston

3/3: The best school systems in the world: best students come from best teachers

This is the final of three posts in a series paraphrasing the 2007 McKinsey report (pdf), which analysed what made the best education systems in the world, well, the best.

It's the way you tell 'em
It was a Northern Irish comedian who explained comedy like that, but the same might be said of teaching. The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction, the way teachers teach.

In the top performing school systems learning occurs when students and teachers interact, so the quality of interaction is vital. But it follows naturally that for teachers to learn to be better teachers they need coaching practice, teacher training in the classroom, the development of stronger school leaders and, importantly, more teachers learning from each other.

Canada's Alberta defines instruction with a set of 30 variables: very messy, very complex, in the same way that a year's worth of blogged reflections can be very messy until you review them.

Curriculum development is one way to improve teaching - political, controversial, difficult, but easy from system management: give a space to debate.

Providing teachers with the capacity and knowledge on how to deliver is more important and more difficult to gain an oversight of. Teachers need:

• high expectations
• shared sense of purpose
• collective belief in their ability to make a difference

These three things need to happen at the same time or risk having no impact.

Satisfying every teacher's needs... and a blog will do it

1. Building practical skills during initial training (providing ongoing support beyond the first 24 months, and making better connections between university lecture and classroom. There's no point in learning technology skills, for example, only to fail in updating them - this wastes £800m per year in the UK in unused new technologies).
2. Placing coaches in schools to support teachers - good teachers with good teachers
3. School leaders as 'instructional leaders'. The best teachers become principals (and, I presume, Principals or Head Teachers lead on pedagogy, not accounts).
4. Teachers are enabled to learn from each other, all the time.

With these satisfying conditions, there are also skills or attitudes on the part of the teacher if (s)he is to take advantage of them, which include:

1. Becoming aware of the weaknesses in their own practice
2. Gaining an understanding of best practice, which is precise enough to use in their own practice, immediately, ideally in their own classroom (think doctors and lawyers)...
3. Holding a shared purpose and a collective belief that they can make a difference: both required to make this happen (salary is not enough).
4. Knowing how to carry out frequent lesson observation and being open to being observed regularly, significant time to plan jointly (one afternoon per week), timetabled well so that teachers of same subjects can cooperate and collaborate, with systems in place to disseminate excellent practice throughout the school as quickly as possible.

Alberta benchmarks itself against international tests such as PISA and TIMSS to know when standards need to be raised. Finland "does well because [we] ave high standards". As systems get better, the system relaxes. Where things are not going so well the curriculum is highly unflexible.

Do you have an increasingly flexible system or an increasingly relaxed one? Are teachers therefore being empowered or held back? Are teachers, Principals and Head Teachers then taking advantage of the flexibility to improve, swiftly and in a connected way, as they best systems already do, or are they ready to help build a system which affords greater skill in the workforce?

Photo: Swimming lesson: I like this title graphic: the coach teaching by holding on, only to let go later. It's a good metaphor for restrictive systems trying to make things better, regardless of whether that's what the systems should be doing.

Related posts:
1/3: It's not (all) about the money
2/3: Finding the best teachers

2/3: The best school systems in the world: finding or creating the best teachers?

This is the second of three posts in a series paraphrasing the 2007 McKinsey report (pdf), which analysed what made the best education systems in the world, well, the best.

Duh Point #1: You need Good Teachers
We've all had the experience of being taught by a dire teacher, someone who turned us off learning or, at best, made it difficult to enjoy. Why is that as professionals we have such a hard time saying that there are Bad teachers out there, just as we find it so easy to say that there are some Good ones, too?

Tennessee and Dallas research shows that a good and bad teacher can make a 50%/49% difference in attainment over three years. Students learn three times as fast as those in poor teacher classes. Low-performing primary teachers create damage which is irreversible. Quick progression early on is essential, with p.15 of the report giving lots of examples of the issues of not doing this by 11 years, with the impossibility of getting to university by 14 years old when the damage has been done earlier in the school career). Reducing a class size from 23-15 improves performance by 8% at best.

Again, let's take a look at the most successful systems. Finlanders only start school at 7, for 4/5 hrs per day for the first two years. Similarly, evidence in the UK recently points to the damage that can be done to reading when children are pushed into it too early. So starting students early, having smaller class sizes, pumping in more money... nothing seems to work at creating excellent systems. Maybe the answers lies in those (who should be) empowered to make the biggest lasting changes in education: the teacher.

Duh Point #2: Faakid ashay la yua'tee
One cannot give what one does not have
In the USA and the Middle East teacher recruiting comes from bottom third of college graduates; these countries also lag in the school system league tables. So is a challenge behind the success of any education system raising the profile of the profession, in order to attract a better raw ingredient to 'bake' into a teacher?

In many far Eastern countries there is a far more 'Confucius' respect for teachers, leading to a greater status for the profession and, in return, more people coming into it. Selection of teachers is often competitive and tested (otherwise there's potential for 40 years of bad teaching, with maybe 10,000 children affected).

Where teachers are selected after the teacher training course, there is oversupply and difficulty in finding employment. Therefore the best candidates are turned off from teaching and every student ends up with less attention during the teacher training course.

So how do you attract the best, and keep them away from other professions which, traditionally, have paid more salary? Financially, Korea has got away with paying 161% of the OECD average by doubling class sizes from the average 17 to 30, allowing the percentile increase in salary.

Finally, though, is the question of what you do once you have the best initially trained teachers, and what of the ones who've been in the profession for years already? The answer, logically, is in professional development and reflection on that development. Again, those languishing in the league tables tend to be offered less structured opportunities to reflect: just 1 hour of paid professional development per year is given in New York schools versus 100 hours of supported, paid professional development and reflection in Singapore.

For those systems which won't move, maybe some other instrinsic reward is required, like the potential for being re-employed. Maybe Jeff Utecht's interview questions should be asked of any teacher wanting a new job in 2008.

This is where blogging teachers stand to thrust themselves, and their countries, ahead in the international stakes. By reflecting regularly and as part of an internationally benchmarked professional group, blogging teachers are already heads and shoulders above the average.

Pic: Gillian Craig

Related posts:
1/3: It's not (all) about the money

The problem of talking about the new web: you have to do it, too

I do hope Stephen Heppell responds to Bill Kerr's points on his Australian keynote speech, points that sum up something with which I, as a conference presenter, become increasingly uncomfortable:

1) An important international expert arrives from overseas to tell us that local knowledge is the most important thing;
2) We sit in lecture mode hearing that the lecture is no longer important;
3) The limitations of web2.0 apps are not mentioned. There was no context either historical (computer science) or historical, about all the knowledge discovered before computers were invented.

When I'm giving a talk I'm nearly always within the constraints of the organiser: "can you please come and give us a talk at this time slot", they ask. I then go on to lecture on how important it is to collaborate, but hope, at least, that collaboration will take place after the initial lecture.

The extended conference experience - not just a lecture
In my classroom I would start with 2-5 minutes 'lecture', setting the context, before the carousel of collaboration would begin for the rest of the 50 minute period. On the same scale, if I'm giving a one hour lecture you can expect the collaboration to go on for at least ten weeks thereafter (one hour a week responding to the concerns of locals who attended the talk). An essential part and package of my offer is the blog, and that people have the courage to at least email or leave comments on the 'lecture post'.

This both shows that local knowledge and skills are indeed the most important element but within the context of a global communications space, hence my professional relationships with teachers in New Zealand and the States being, arguably, more in-depth than my professional relationships with non-blogging teachers in Scotland.

The final point, about historical and cultural positioning of new technologies, is vital. That's why one of the talks I enjoy giving the most is Why Scotland's Been Blogging For 5 Million Years, applicable to most countries in showing that this is less a revolution, as a reformation. It's not so much new, as reminding people of what it means to be a human being, what makes us tick, and bringing that back into learning. These things include connecting to others, conversing, asking questions and giving answers. None of that, of course, is achievable in a traditional lecture format, but possible in my 'extended lecture' notion. If only more keynoters picked up discussions on their blog (if they had one of them, if... ;-)

If you haven't seen or heard Stephen speak you can catch him at the Scottish Learning Festival video website, in one of many videos captured for the Learning about Learning series or in the new Journey For Excellencedownload him onto your iPod for the trip home tonight.
site (search for 'Heppell'). You can even
Enjoy - it's good stuff - but you may have to do some of your own thinking to work out how it applies to you. And I can't think of anything good teachers would enjoy more than thinking about how to do their stuff better.

Building Learning Communities 08: See you there?

I was fortunate enough to have an invitation from Alan November to give a few talks at 2007's sell-out Building Learning Communities (BLC) conference in Boston. I'm delighted to have been asked back this coming summer to deliver the opening keynote and provoke some thoughts for the rest of this festival of learning.

I've chosen a theme close to my heart: teachers and how we feel when confronted with newness. Conferences and workshops often aim to 'train' us, give us new skills and some enthusiasm to tackle new things in our classrooms. This keynote will hopefully shake up something far more profound: our attitudes towards our own learning as teachers.

As we design curricula that inspire students to learn in more independent and personalized ways, the role of the teacher becomes increasingly vital and increasingly complex. It's a role most educators are not comfortable navigating. When we could learn to be enthusiastic for so many learning approaches, tools and technologies, when everyone else seems to be so fluent in change, just where exactly are we meant to start?

Maybe the question has nothing to do with the approaches or tools. Maybe it's all to do with attitudes to our role as teachers and as learners. We may wax lyrical about offering opportunities for our students to be more creative in school, yet how creative do we as teachers get? Is creativity in itself helping to bring around educational improvement, or is there a longer game to play?

In this keynote address, I will show how every teacher and learner can be remarkable, not just creative but ingenious and, in turn, how this is actually being reflected in the work and attitudes of learners in Scotland and beyond.

There are certain things conference goers can expect from this hour. First, it's a lot longer than one hour. The keynote will be the beginning of a conversation that will take place on the web, on mobile (cell) phones and in person, over a beer. The channels will also be open before, during and after the talk itself. It's hard (impossible) to have a conversational dialogue of the nature Will is talking about when addressing 700+ people in a room, so we'll have to find other ways to interact.

One of the principle means will be (if Alan allows it) a backchannel that is displayed on a big screen for all to see. I had this two years ago at Les Blogs 2.0 and really enjoyed the 'live' feel of it. It changes what you say, makes you clarify your position when your vague and makes sure no-one walks out of the room feeling that there isn't enough substance or that I've left out an important point. Ultimately, it takes something that has often been for those "in the know" and makes it accessible for everyone.

I hope that by next summer I'll have a US cell phone number that participants can text message to, in order to take part without a laptop. That means that most, if not all the people in the room, and elsewhere around the world, can take part with whatever technology they have in front of them (or in their pockets).

It's time for conference keynotes to become the most accessible and most approachable elements of the conference, rather than the opposite. I, for one, hope that we manage to achieve this next summer.