Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

Online Information Conference:

Part of my passion lies not just in how learners and learning can exploit social software to achieve a higher plane, but also in how organisations can work smarter using these tools. When you work for the public purse and, what's more, in the knowledge industry (I prefer wisdom industry) organisation within that sphere, working smarter and having employees who are experts and on the pulse of their area is vital.

That's why I'm really chuffed to have been invited to take part in two panels at the Online Information Conference this year at Olympia's Grand Hall.

Social Software - Delivering Value to 21st Century Organisations and The Future of Social Software and Web 2.0 are the panels on which I shall be sat, responding to the audience's probes, questions, statements, queries and opportunities. I'm so happy to have spent time with my LTS colleagues this past few days talking through our rather public service-ish position and look forward to sharing some of the basics as well as some of the more specific boons of engaging with social media in the public service.

I'm thrilled to be sat alongside Robert Scoble, Matt Locke, Ben Edwards, Alex Bellinger and Adriana Kronin. I think it's going to be an interesting day...

I'll post links to what I mentioned after the event, of course. Feel free to make points in advance of this morning's and this afternoon's sessions right now to be included in the debate, as it were.

PBWiki rich text editor preview

  PBWiki rich text editor preview 
  Originally uploaded by factoryjoe.

PBWiki, the free online service which gives you websites and webpages anyone or anyone you choose can edit, are perhaps about to launch a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) page editor. This means that you get the great looking PBWiki pages (far nicer than those on Wikispaces) with the ease of clicking 'B' for bold and 'I' for italic etc. etc.

Great news as we start to rationalise our wikis in East Lothian. I'd have much preferred using PBWiki as our 'recommended' service but the current interface has been just a bit too technical for most digital immigrants. Now it looks like we might be able to take the jump.

Now, for me, PBWiki is in competition education-wise with SocialText. SocialText's Ross Mayfield announced that they had partnered with Microsoft's Sharepoint, the mechanism behind Glow, Scotland's forthcoming national intranet. Voilà 'SocialPoint' - there's more in IT Conversations' Podcast. This, in turn, implies that incorporating an authority wiki system with SocialPoint as its basis might be easier and slinkier than trying to incorporate a PBWiki as an outside web page in a 'Web Part'. All a bit technical - sorry - but interesting for those considering wiki integration with Glow. Thing is, I like the look of PBWiki. is it only a matter of time for SocialPoint to pretty herself up a little? Looking forward to trying to nab Ross at Online Info or LeWeb3 in coming weeks.

Help design Scotland's Internet Safety Qualification

A few months ago you might have remembered a post where I was a little critical of the SQA Internet Safety qualification, which seemed to miss out any mention of the extra complexities introduced by social media in our kids' use of the net. There were fourteen comments on that from people wanting to chip in and help form an 'alternative curriculum'.

Well, you can't say they don't listen. Bobby has just posted news of the official qualification development wiki. Educators (and students?) are invited to head on over to add anything they think has been omitted from the internet safety outline and make any necessary corrections. I think this is a brilliant example of an organisation realising that the collective wealth of its users is better than anything one individual or group of individuals could come up with in the confines of the 7th floor Optima Building.

That said, I'm sat on the 8th floor and I still haven't met Bobby. Do we need a coffee now the wiki's up?

Update: And now there's a Skype chat on Thursday to talk things over!!!

Ewan's Local Authority planning tool - a map

East Lothian hold a Celebrating Success day every two years. I was lucky enough to make it along this year and spotted some projects which would benefit so much from being online, either so that others can learn from interesting ideas or so that the schools' own projects could become more collaborative ventures and move on to the next level. Here are some of the projects I saw that captured my imagination. You'll notice a lack of links: it's time these guys get blogs!

It's on a CommunityWalk so that you can actually see where the school is and what kind of environment it is in. Head right in now. Anyone can add a comment. If you want to add your school and some ideas, just get in touch with me through the blog right here.

School websites are not about schools

They are about people. This was the message I was keen to get across to around half the ICT Coordinators at last night's get together in Prestonpans. Kudos to them for making it there on the first Monday evening of winter (it was dark by the time we started) and making it home in one piece after an interactive, challenging hour.

I asked three questions about web presence and the coordinators, the people responsible for the use of ICT in their school from admin tasks to creative educational uses, put their views across after some discussion. After each point of discussion I did a bit of an overview of the possibilities a blog or a wiki could offer to meet the needs that they had expressed (luckily my telepathy was working well last night - four years of looking at what people want out of websites has its advantages ;-)

What do schools do online now?
Websites tend to be run by one webmaster and are therefore a nightmare to update. They present information from teachers to (normally) parents. In some instances there are already some weblogs up or simple webpages where children's best work is presented and some even share their learning experiences. Where children are building their own websites and learning about this process there is a way around the sustainability issue - but this is a situation difficult to replicate in many schools.

Wikis
Wiki is hawaiian for quick and is a web tool that matches this definition. I presented an examples of a wiki that is used for simply getting information online in the quickest possible way. I also showed a nice example of collaboration over a longer period of time to plan a podcast (radio show) and to plan an event or policy. Coordinators liked the idea that, as long as you can use Word, you can probably get publishing straight away.

There wiki software I like best has been Wikispaces. You might want to create one web address for the school and have pages come off that or you may create a wiki for each project as it comes along. It's not that important, since you can always link things up later.

What would you like your school's online presence to do?

Teachers want some familiar things:

• to display student work
• something that can be updated easily, by anyone anywhere
• something where the kids' uploading can be checked off by a teacher first
• something that helps make links with other people in your cluster, local authority, interest area
• something where uploading large audio or video files is easy - no space problems
• collaboration with other teachers is easy to spot on the horizon
• A snapshot of what is going on in the school at any one time

My job here was going to be easy...

Blogs
Weblogs allow you to do all of this, especially using the system which we will launch in East Lothian this coming month. I showed how quick and easy it is for me to post to this blog - they liked, I think. In later discussions I pointed out that GoogleVideo is a resource we have started to use for short videos and that Veotag might be handy to split up longer clips into something more manageable to view. Using either of these tools gets around the storage space issue, but we also host Typepad blogs which come with generous space if you want to keep video quality higher.

Other than doing what existing school websites do, blogs allow more in-classroom use of the web to compliment student work and make them think harder while they are in - and out of - the classroom. Example: improving writing through paragraph-by-paragraph writing, commenting and rejigging (In this example the student has gone back since her Standard Grades and has started doing more work for her Higher exam, this time using only the support of her blogging community).

Can we work smarter?
I am still convinced that we waste inordinate amounts of time in school. Some of this can be saved by using ICT effectively and making it part of the learning process rather than a glossy end product. The best tool anyone getting into the two technologies mentioned could use would be aggregation - a tool which brings all the information you like to you, instead of you having to go and get it from a million and one websites. Using Bloglines to add 'feeds' (the links contained in those wee orange buttons with 'RSS' written on them) is a great way to do this, but still beyond many novice users likely experience. So, in East Lothian we are starting to aggregate things for people, and making that available, too, in a format which more advanced users can pop into their feed reader. The big ambition - to get more students using RSS feeds in their studies.

In the meantime, just reading one or two blogs once or twice a week might help inspire your classroom practice or give an idea that saves you hours. In this connected world we do have to speculate to accumulate.

East Lothian's web presence launches end-November.

Introduction to new technologies for student teachers

The video/audio of the lecture David and I delivered at Jordanhill, the Education Faculty at the Uni of Strathclyde, is up and his post reveals how we managed the feedback of students. It was nice to meet some of the students afterwards and see how different technologies got different people so excited. I can't wait to see what happens with this group as they head into the world of the classroom.

David's got some of the things we used on a special del.icio.us page that the students (and you) can use to see what we were talking about for yourself. I'm going to forward more of the ones we mentioned there over the next few days to populate it a bit better.

Community required – please enquire within

I’ve just been in Liverpool for the first time ever and had an absolute blast. Next time I have to spend more than 14 hours there. Last night I got in at about ten, before heading out with my sis-in-law, Gaelle, to do the Liverpool-in-an-hour thing. Straight off to Mathew Street and the home of the Beatles, down to the Cavern Pub where a superb if slightly David Brentesque rock band strutted their stuff.

Joe Dale managed to find us and brought my two new Live Web chums, Steph (pictured right marvelling my mini MacBook Pro webcam) and Alex (just pictured being Alex, below). These are two languages teachers from dan saff who are beginning to release the potential of new technologies for their students and, importantly, their colleagues.

Steph was on good form and revealed her podcast toolkit which is due for release in November. The idea is that with the tools and advice in one place anyone can get into podcasting with their Modern Languages class. Another attempt to bring things together under one roof which might just convince some of those lagging to get into gear.

Mr McIntosh Goes To School – the naked conversation
Joe and I eventually delivered our own ‘naked conversation’ to the delegates, in my latest mishmash of principles for Live Web teaching and learning – I’ve managed to get it down from 10 to 3. I enjoyed the challenges of keeping to the clock, keeping to the line of enquiry in the presentation and having a proper conversation with Joe in front of the crowd. He was able to play devil’s advocate and make me s-l-o-w down to explain some of the points the audience might have needed expanding. The result was smiles and gushes – and hopefully some new teaching and learning in the coming months.

Community is so important
What has become apparent, though, in putting together this presentation is how much less of a community exists in England and Wales. Those pioneering are not finding their soul mates as quickly as I did in my journey north of the border. Is this down to the size of Scotland or is there something deeper, lying in the sheer weight of the national curriculum with its high stakes testing.

Another aspect I’ve found interesting is the blatant enthusiasm from these language college teachers countered by a strong feeling that school management will just not “get it” and block it all. There are two things here I would suggest.

First – do it, try things out, play and find the holes that need filling before the management do (that might mean not telling them, although its best to get their support from the start in case things do go awry).

Second – get hold of some of the videos on the East Lothian Glow page. The one, two, three videos from the Head of Education there, Don Ledingham, will provide ample targeted ammunition to speak on their terms with their interests at heart, with a horse’s mouth who is there doing it now.

The links for the talk can be found in a post I made a day or so ago.

SSAT Liverpool: Modern Languages and Social Media introduction

Tomorrow I am speaking at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust annual conference in Liverpool. If there had been internet freely available things would be a lot easier (I've never taken so many screen dumps in my life) but the following links will at least give those present the chance to play around when they get home.

• The edublogscom wiki holds some of the modern languages related blog, podcast and wiki examples from North and South of the border which were used to explain the current varied uses for social media in the classroom. Thanks to Joe Dale for sourcing some English examples.
• The MFLE carries god information on getting started with new technologies in MFL. Take a look under the Creative Teaching section. Currently, a lot of the support offered on the forums and the free blogs we give to teachers on Typepad.com, which enables easy podcasting, are only for Scottish teachers due to the nature of Glow, the national intranet.
• For very easy web-based podcast creation, file storage and publication nip over to Odeo.com.
• CommunityWalk.com is great for getting students to use what they have done on school trips and share it with other learners. Take a look at Ewan's photo tour of Paris (well, the Eiffel Tower at least) and the video examples from this year's SETT Learning Festival.
• If you use Flickr.com to share your photos as a class you can add them to a map within Flickr. Some cities, though, appear less well here than in Google Maps / Google Earth / CommunityWalk.com. The wadvantage with Flickr is that students can label photos with their own notes: see an arty example from the LTS Flickr pages.
• For geotagging photos and linking them into a "fly-in" on Google Earth the links I made for these Highland teachers will be of use.

There will almost certainly be other links I post in coming days in follow-up to questions or requests. Likewise, leave a comment here if you think I'm missing things out that MFL teachers might appreciate knowing.

Nous habitons tous dans un yellow submarine... or two men needing talking help

I'll shortly be en route to Liverpool for the first time to speak at Wednesday's Specialist Schools and Academies Trust modern languages event. It's also the first time that I'm doing a talk that I've only ever done before solo (Mr McIntosh goes to school) with a partner, blog friend and colleague, Joe Dale. Talk about collaborative learning in action ;-)

I'm quite nervous about it, tbh. He's blogged about the conference outline but our preparation has taken place over a wiki. If it were something completely new presentation-wise I think it would be easier to prepare but having been asked by the conference organisers to prepare one thing and then asked to co-present after the fact we've been left with a great opportunity to have some naked conversations, as it were. The only problem is that I don't know Joe as well as Shel knows Robert, but I'm worried that over-preparation will lead to staleness in whatever repartie we muster.

Any last minute advice on how to get the most out of this presentation/conversation/workshoppy thang?

Tonners of wikis

Sharon Tonner is a class act from the High School of Dundee who has seriously got into using wikis and blogs to motivate her students and improve their communication with each other. The RadioHigh wiki is just a perfect example of how one social software (the wiki) plays into the production of another (a podcast) by the students. That wiki is just stuffed with student opinion and scripting, clearly produced both during and outside the school day. Talk about breaking down the barriers of the classroom!

The juniors at the High School have created the first science example I've seen of wiki use (I know there must be others, but I haven't spotted them - tell me about them here in the comments).

But the pièce de resistance is the teacher-student dialogues taking place over on the RadioHigh blog. Mrs Tonner takes questions from the students and asks her own, plays with the tools in front of her class (virtually) before they do the same. Best of all, she publicises her work with emails to her friends and through promotional blog posts, written by the kids (this one has 11 comments, including students' ideas for what comes in the next show).

This is one of the best examples I've seen in a while - why not take a look and leave a comment yourself?

* For anyone unaware of the Scots tongue, we can say 'hunners' for 'hundreds' and therefore, for the purposes of this blog, 'tonners' for 'thousands'. A bit of bloggers' licence never hurt anyone...