Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Destination ImagiNation - Leapfrog Institutes Collaboration

These three projects have popped up on my radar a few times over last three years - particularly leapfrog programme - I'm not sure if UK schools are looking at programmes like these - let alone schools in Scotland but I have been impressed by vision and ambition of these projects and they sit well with Curriculum for Excellence.

Monday, June 22, 2009

CCEM Last Post

As a final note and more of a plea to the organisers. This event shaped as it was around developing proposals from across the Commonwealth for Education Ministers would have benefited greatly from the judicious use of Web2 and other tools.

With noble exceptions of -
http://megaterawispanjialam.wordpress.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanieazahari/tags/ccem
http://twitter.com/TimUnwin

CCEM Kuala Lumpur Opening Ceremony


Home and reflecting on all the debate last week both the formal and the invaluable networking that happens at events of this kind. Some of the questions circulating at the conference we in Scotland have found our own answers too.

Most of the discussion was progressive and out on the frontiers of learning that in the main the Scottish education system operates in.

  • most developed systems doing some re-evaluation of school curriculum
  • have moved to QA inspection system based on self evaluation with external audit
  • ICT and on-line learning challenge same in most systems – few have been as bold as GLOW
  • Most countries developing qualification frameworks that embrace academic and vocational pathways for learners.
  • some see education as way to import and export talent and as critical for democratization , civil society, empowering individuals and as a wealth generator
  • transition challenges between primary and secondary and secondary and tertiary in most systems
  • debate on importance of 2-6 year old developmental period - some countries doing more systematic training of nursery teachers and putting curriculum frameworks in place.


Some of the questions suggested a legacy we may have left behind

I was asked if we still have an 11+ exam and without it what do our secondary schools use for selection .Another delegate described why learners sometimes need beaten and was surprised to know that corporal punishment was now banned even in Scottish private schools.

Others were the kind we still get on the home front about why we need National Qualifications – Bologna Process, European Qualifications Framework and Global Standards - is the short hand answer – but it is clear we have way to promote understanding when civil servants don’t understand systems.

Biggest challenge to my thinking is how far the private sector operates in developing countries in running education systems and how much private companies are penetrating even the English system. They offer everything from inspection services to the building and running of schools for governments and local authorities. I think we only have operations like this in the special school sector in Scotland but I am sure they will be looking to sell on services wherever they can. Staffed mainly by ex public sector folk – owned by and profit driven for public or private shareholders and in some cases former educational publishers – will be interesting to see how this manifests itself in our system.

Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia have transformed in 30 years and flying back through Dubai, a city that in 25 years has erupted in a desert – it is nice to know that both places have a thirst and affinity for UK awards. Malaysia wants to be an education hub for all of its neighbours by 2017 and I hope we can do a lot to help them meet their target. I met a lot of customers interested in offering Scottish Vocational Qualifications and lots of customers interested in learning more about the Scottish Education system.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The 17th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers



On one level there is something strange about the diverse group of countries that form the Commonwealth and at least for me a bit uncomfortable when you think of the imperial past.

The Commonwealth is a family of 53 different countries among them 12 on the UN list of least developed countries in the world.

Yet when you meet the learners, teachers, university vice chancellors, Ministers and agencies from all of these countries you can see at once what we have in common and while we all start in different places the aims and ambitions of the Commonwealth for learners you can see at once how our simple common bond can help us work together.

The agenda is a simple yet complex one.

The millennium goals
· Advocating for 2015 to be the year that children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
· Affirming the importance of eliminating gender disparities in education by 2015
· Utilising the technology, facilities and efficiencies afforded by open and distance learning to overcome barriers and combating the digital divide in education.
· Improving quality in education through signalling the importance of the role played by teachers, addressing their status, retention and mobility whilst at the same time advancing the importance of the management, training and development of this critical resource in education.
· Supporting the assurance of education in difficult circumstances through addressing the challenges of education delivery during situations of crisis, conflict, post-conflict and natural disasters and providing guidelines to improve preparedness for emergencies.
· Mitigating the impact of HIV/AIDS on education systems by way of establishing the role and importance of education as a “social vaccine” against HIV/AIDS through professorial chairs for research and advocacy and dissemination of good practices in countries which address head-long the challenge of the pandemic in their populations

Some of the stories from conference are truly humbling –
Village Children in Bangladesh organizing locally to persuade a landowner to give them land to build a school and then selling their blood to a private hospital to raise the funds to build the school – so for first time the villagers have access to a primary school.
Growing evidence from countries stricken by famine that learners arriving in primary school have already been damaged developmentally through malnutrition.

Made me reflect on newspaper headline as I left that 1 in 9 learners in Glasgow come from family with addiction issues.

While we worry about changes in our own internal systems - we need to be aware of the challenges that educators face around the world. How can we leverage curriculum investment in Scotland to support the rest of the world ?

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Sports 4 Life Moves Onwards and Upwards

Sitting using the free wifi at Dubai Airport - and time to stick up this letter that went out a week ago up on the blog. Sports4life a game based on running a sportstore to teach basic business skills is moving on.


It was great fun pulling it together - a big thanks to all the teachers who helped in the pilot, including the intrepid bunch we sent to NZ, the football clubs who finally gave us their logos and the team at the Small Business Company in Christchurch New Zealand who were prepared to blaze a trail with a National Awarding Body on the other side of the world. Thanks too to Microsoft who gave us some funds to push the envelope a bit through Partners in Learning. Bob McGonigle in Scotland and Kirsten Weartherby at headquarters then - and now at Reading.


Over the last three years we have developed, supported and successfully piloted access to http://www.sport4life.biz/ the on-line business game for schools. The launch and pilot has been supported through funding from Microsoft Partners in Learning. This letter is to inform you that from August 2009 the Game will move to a subscription model to ensure its long term sustainability and ongoing development.

Earlier this week a communication went out to all SQA Co-ordinators and Heads of Centre, I had hoped to find a national sponsor for the game but in the current financial climate this proved too challenging.

The pilot has been an outstanding success. In the last year 380 Scottish secondary schools had registered for the Game, 639 teachers were using it with their classes and 35,000 students played 135,000 Games and gratifyingly the game has been picked up and adapted for use around the world.

In other parts of the UK schools already pay to use the Small Business Game (Sport4Life) £400+VAT per school for an annual licence. However, recognising that Scottish schools have taken part in the successful pilot at no charge, the Game will continue to be part-subsidised by The Small Business Company for the 12 month period commencing 1 September 2009. The cost for your school to use the Game is now at the discounted price of £200 + VAT for the year commencing September 2009.

Access will allow you to offer the Game and all its benefits to up to 1,000 students and teachers in your school, and the school will still be able to participate in the competitions that will run within the Game through the year.

To ensure your school continues to get full use of the Small Business Game beyond August 2009 please email Andy Coughlin ( andy@tsbc.co.uk ) requesting a licence for the Game.

Monday, June 08, 2009

How Twitter will Change the way we live

Evan Williams and Biz Stone of Twitter
Evan Williams and Biz Stone of Twitter

I have always been a sucker for new ways of communicating - but I do think there is something in this - It was great to attend an e-learning alliance conference today showing lots of ways that web2 social software is being used in College and University Classrooms - great to be able to tweet about it and great too that Theo Kuechel was able to confirm before I got back to the office that Voice Thread was worth another look

Practice is changing ..and it is wonderful to see - a great article on Twitter from Time Magazine
and a great antidote to today's awful election results.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009

Now if we could only get our stakeholders to cope with this - we could develop new curriculum in quick time and collaborate with educationalists and learners as we do it ..mmm

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Web2rights.mp4

Picked up this neat JISC video from Joan Walker in the latest Scottish JISC Regional Support Centre News Letter. There is a lot school sector could pick up from this monthly publication and from great work that JISC do all across UK. A lot of concerns around copyright and IPR have been addressed in FE and HE sectors.

Need to persuade them to add feed to Scotedublogs

It was great news that GLOW picked up an award and it is good to see too that Scotland won another prize at the IMS Global Learning Consortium for AccessApps and in addition that JISC UK Scooped a number of awards at the ceremony.

It easy to forget how much Scotland and the UK are pushing frontiers in on-line learning.






Sunday, May 24, 2009

Glasgow & About

Enjoying my pal Alasdair's Flickr Stream of Photos from around Glasgow - but pictures of Paisley Road tonight would have been interesting. Celebrations and Drowning of Sorrows at end of football season - fought out to last game by Glasgow's Old Firm - lots of very public drunkeness - shades of old hard industrial Glasgow and lots of police on the streets.

Don't think real life features in media enough

Friday, May 15, 2009

Silver Surfers Day

With thanks to my friends at Digital Unite I promised to pass on this message

Watch Silver Surfers’ TV to find out, and see what Angela Rippon and Joan Bakewell have to say about the digital revolution in this video supported by Ofcom's work to promote media literacy.
Today is Silver Surfers’ Day, a day when older people across the UK are encouraged to try out computers and learn about life online.
Organised by Digital Unite, there are over 750 events across the UK aimed at helping thousands of older people get online and discover how computers can change their lives. Go to the Digital Unite website to find out about events near you.
There’s also a new initiative called Schools for Silver Surfers, which plans to link the UK's vast school network with older people not yet online. The project aims to help older people learn about new media and younger people learn about local history.
The Digital Unite website has something for everyone – including a co-operative Flickr album and a ‘Tell us a Joke’ blog.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Making the Case for Social Networks in Organizational Settings

Thanks to comment from Andy Bright on my last posting I found this neat Slideshare on why organisations need social networking. Loved comment below from Olga How

The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Blogging and Web2

As a follow up to my last post. I attended an excellent session led by ex Scottish First Minister Henry McLeish in last two weeks. Henry is going to be an ambassador for Scottish Colleges International. The presentation and discussion highlighted for me the importance of more folk in public and private sectors doing more through social networking.
  • 1. From 2011 public fund will contract in real terms. We probably needed a 10% reduction in public sector before now economic squeeze will enforce this.
  • 2.Everyone needs to be clear about value every pound spent in public sector brings and be prepared for even greater scrutiny
  • 3. There is scope for much more service and data sharing at all levels of government and society and this should drive improved services and cost cutting across public sector.
  • 4.Devolution is likely to grow regardless of government in Scotland or UK and will not lead invetiably to independence but will lead to greater local accountability.
  • 5.Colleges will need to look outside of Scotland for funding and customers - the world market, UK and England all offer opportunities.
I am grateful for my colleagues in SQA and LTScotland who blog and share along with those across Education who share. We are still in a tiny minority it would be good to see more NDPB bloggers and more voices from different bits of those who provide these critical social support services.

Blogging 2

I attended the Scottish Government Cross Party Skills Committee this week and as meeting broke up I had an interesting discussion with a senior manager from another government agency about "how I got away with blogging"

I don't view blogging in this way - but for the cautious here is a quick guide.I would like to see many more folk in public sector blogging.

1. Make it clear that this is an unofficial blog it does not reflect the views of your employer - say as much in header or footer.
2. I am posting this on a Sunday morning - postings are usually made out with working hours
3.It is a reflection of my working day but also life in general. But it can never be warts and all - It is not an on-line diary. If Samuel Pepys had blogged he'd have been divorced and beheaded. This on only the domestic front.
4.I do have an internal SQA and external audience for the blog and I have found it a useful way to move learning agenda on. You do need to be tactful and sensible about how you get your message across.
5.The Blog has been an excellent touch down point for my existing business contacts and for expanding this network. Among highlights this year have been an invitation to SQA to participate in a global education conference in Singapore.
6. Take full responsibility for any typos - spelling - grammatical errors - in other walks of life we have editors - blogging is untidier and all the better for that.

Finally note I have been blogging in one way or another since 2000 and before that had a number of public facing websites when I worked in the College sector from the early 1990s. In all of this time no-one has attempted to silence me and I can't think of a better way to share and work with rest of world. Globally Learners, Teachers, Public Servants and Politicians are all wrestling with same challenges in education - it is great to share solutions.

Blogging and Thoughts

Last two months have been quiet on blogging front. Thought I'd reflect on this.

1. My new job involves New Ventures which means exploring new and unchartered waters. Most of the meetings I have are exploratory and sometimes sensitive for both my internal and external audiences. I still share what I can.
2. My activities are reflected in the short-hand of my twitter stream @joecar and I am getting more feedback from a wider network this way.

I'm going to post a follow up on work with web 2.0

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

New Ventures Team


New Ventures Team
Originally uploaded by joecar80
Open for Business - It's taken a month or so longer than planned but today we finally launched the New Ventures Team. I will still be riding two horses as Head of Business Information Systems too until we fill this position.
Head of New Ventures is in some ways a big change from from my previous role at SQA. But it builds on earlier work and the remit offers huge potential.

  • To develop new partnerships with publishers, broadcasters, industry and providers of learning materials.
  • To develop new partnerships with other organisations and awarding bodies that benefit the learners of Scotland
  • To explore new ways of working in Scotland and Internationally that add value to our portfolio of services.

We hope to link engaging learning content to new dynamic ways of assessment and quality assurance and makes this I think one of the more exciting jobs in Scottish Education.
We already have a number of projects with a range of partners underway - but we are happy to explore opportunities for partnership in Scotland, UK or Overseas.
I am lucky to too have experienced support in Liam and Joan we are going to have a lot of fun as we take SQA into new places and Scottish education to new heights.

I am hoping we can contribute and make use of the growing Open Educational Resource movement and drive developments that benefit Scottish Learners and the global learning community.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Stop Motion with Wolf and Pig.

Have a few things to Blog about but coudn't resist. Expect to see advert made like this in next six months

Friday, April 03, 2009

Networked Student



I picked this up from @courosa on twitter part of my own personal learning network.
It is a super example of the way that learning and teaching will never be the same and how the world of work should be changing too

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

JISC Goodies








This could be coming to a school or college near you soon . BoB National is a shared off-air recording and media archive service which is available to BUFVC members holding an ERA+ license. This tv scheduling service allows your institution's staff and students to record programmes scheduled to be broadcast over the next seven days as well as retrieving programmes from the last seven days of recorded channels. Users may also search thousands of programmes stored in the growing archive.

The requester will receive the programme after broadcast as a Flash Video file they can watch in a web page – in the same way as i-player. BoB National stores the recorded TV and Radio programmes in the archive and they are held indefinitely for all users to access.

The archive currently offers thousands of TV and radio programmes covering all genres and that number is set to grow as more educational institutions join BoB National.

If you would like regular updates on JISC and the services available in Scotland you should subscribe to Newsfeed from the two Scottish Regional Support Centres in Scotland.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

JISC09 Last Post Open Learning Resources

Another subject close to my heart..organisations and teachers need to get out there and share publically all your learning materials. Learners don't come to you for your notes they come to you for the human service experience. Let's give knowledge away free. If you open your resources you open your doors to new forms of partnership and working with communities locally and globally. JISC have mapped out a way forward on this.

JISC is about to publish a range of open learning materials . See JISC Open Educational Content:Pilot Phase for details. There are already a number of global initiatives.

Open University (UK) Open Content Initiative
Rice Connexions
Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
UNESCO Open Training Platform
MIT OCW
National Repository of Online Courses

The JISC materials will be released through JORUM (national repository). These will be open access learning materials in open formats with open licences. You can re-mix , re-edit and use in ways you need them.

I am about to do whole presentation . They are all available at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/03/jiscconference09/programme.aspx . I was ambushed by Mike Coulter at end of day .. academics have been looking at elearning for a very long time statement haunts me a bit .. but there is some briliant global practice that needs to be adopted outside HE.

UK Scholarly Publishing and Open Access JISC09

This is close to my heart. The shorter the gap between real research and learning and teaching or any other endeavour the faster we can drive change. Most of these resources are too expensive for Colleges and schools at moment and if truth be told even some of the smaller HE establishments in UK -Academics are now looking at alternative publishing models that will open up resources for HE in more cost effective way - but will also open up resources to learners in other sectors.(maybe even to those who drive public policy too - in my experience few NDPBs or Gov Departments have direct access to this research) Social Returns of publically funded Resarch and Development are huge. 1.6 Billion spent through research in UK each year.

Commercial sector will benefit enormously from this too as they will get more direct access to the Science.

However institutions need to mandate self archiving and publising if this is to happen meaningfully - where it exists needs to be up to the researcher a local repository may not be meaningful for some research which is done at national or global level.

Charles Oppenheim
Academic publishing is an industry..created..peer reviewed..available through commercial journals .. subscription model for institutions. Institutions deal with managing these. Big cost savings in moving to new models of publishing.
There are different models.. worked through economic models
Toll Access, Open Access Publishing, Self Archiving
OA and SA models offer huge financial savings to system (order of 200 million)and wider social returns ( harder to quantify) There is now a JISC Report setting out benefits for system and for HEIs in moving to new model.

Hector MacQueen University of Edinburgh
Copyright is not a barrier to Open Access Publishing - google book settlement is shaping into a universal open access repoistory. Project Gutenberg, European Digital Libray, Amazon look inside service , Music and Art next ...

Gabriel

Theatre History. example. The Romans left britain and only 1100 years later were amphitheatres built again in London and professional theatre companies appeared. Theatre historians have difficulty in finding evidence of these early players and their tours around UK. Data was in very expensive books - data was in local authority records - researchers have been gathering this for last 40 years - now Somerset has been able to digitise this and make this and databases available free over the internet. Boom now in books about early english drama fed by this data set now being available (400 years later) There is also a database of early English play titles ( DEEP) . Most other collections are still subscription only and many researcher don't have access to these resources like EBO.