The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World's Most Surprising School System

As hype continues around Finland's amazing educational achievemennts cynic in me
suspects that we might be about to get 5 years of Finnish system bashing .

In meantime sit back and enjoy the hype.

New Improved ScotEdublogs

John Johnstone  and  Robert Jones  have once again been  updating the platform that Scotedublogs sits on .They are stars and I was glad that SQA could continue provide some support for this . These guys should get a medal !

News of updated platform here

The SQA make regular use of the RSS Feed on Scotedublogs. It is a fantastic barometer of activity across Scotland – The new Times Ed ;-)

There is still a lot more we could do to promote Scotedublogs as a means to link up bloggers in Schools to those in Further Education and Workbased Learning.

Remember if If you are a Scots Educational blogger you can do your bit to support ScotEduBlogs too:

• Make sure your blog is listed.
• Make sure the tags on your listing describe your blog.
• Link from your blog to ScotEduBlogs (there are some images and help on the wiki).

If you check out my sidebar and you can see ScotEduBlog Logo. If you work in Education in Scotland you should have a look at getting your blog listed.

I Digress Digress.it

What is digress.it and why use it? from University of Lincoln on Vimeo.

I was enjoying looking around the excellent http://jiscpress.org/ and wondered
what made it work.  Wordpress and Digress.it make for a superb combination.
You can see how this could be future for lots of things .. just think a living national curriculum.

Open but Tough

Open but Tough from Commonwealth of Learning on Vimeo.

Here are some very sage words from Sir John Daniels on open education and on
assessment and certification. Some very good thinking driving the creation of the Commonwealth of
Learning's resources

1964 JOHNNY SEVEN OMA TOY GUN COMMERCIAL

Amused friend's kids have finished with antique toy we passed on when we cleared family home and wonders if I want it back. Not sure there will be much left of it.
It was the toy gun to have in ancient times.I inherited it from my cousin at some point in late 1960's .

Times have changed, now we try and discourage our kids from playing with guns. Wonder what they use to "clear bunkers" these days ?

Future of Mobile Learning

Near and far contemplating (nfc)

View more presentations from andyjb.

Here is a great presentation from Andy Black on what is just around the corner for learning. I'm hopeful that Andy gets to keep exploring this territory as he moves from Becta into the corridors of the Westminster Govt.  Hoping too in the austere times ahead we find flexible ways to get our learners in to this creative space.

Time will tell but in meantime lots of food for thought for #ediff and other debates.

Rethinking Education

Guessing I'll see this a lot of times over next few months.

But real question is how are we are using these changes to shift education ?

Do you value the links and connections your learners make ?

Would you trust your learners to contribute responsibly to the sum of human

knowledge ?

How ready are you to support collaborative learning ?

Do you use primary data or real research in your class ?

How authentic are the assessments you set?

Which school , college , university has really changed the way it offers things ?

Scottish Twits Education Weekly

To track my own interests across Scottish Education I get a newspaper format report delivered each Monday morning. The report self publishes and provides a really a simple aggregation of what folk in Scottish Education are discussing on twitter. It is very easy to set up once you have identified your sources.

The newspaper is generated through the aggregation of the Scottish Education Twitter Community.
http://twitter.com/joecar/scottish-education-twits


The content is as interesting as the technique for harvesting data - it also highlights the type of discussion that is going on about Scottish Education and helps highlight some of the  lead opinion formers. Note  those who participate in discussions and move issues on here are not on the whole the usual suspects - education departments of higher education , the national education bodies in a formal capacity , the education trade unions, the education professional bodies, the educational press,  rather it is those who choose to use blogs and tweets and work in the Web2.0 space - A criticism would be that these are  the views of a technically enabled clique rather than that of grassroots teachers opinion  but it presents  a no less valid a view on  some of the challenges facing education.

Have a look at this weeks issue here -
http://paper.li/joecar/scottish-education-twits

How To Create Your Own Paper.li


To create a Paper.li newspaper of your own, sign in with your Twitter or Facebook account and click on “Create a Newspaper”. You can create a paper based on:
a Twitter user , a Twitter tag a Twitter list a Facebook search Or a custom Twitter search.


The custom paper allows you to query Twitter with a more complex search term than just a #tag. You can also restrict the Twitter users that can contribute content to the paper by specifying a Twitter list.

A week and a headfull #LWF11 #EWF11 #ELB2011 #BETT2011

It is really useful to start the year immersed in ideas and that is often what happens around the BETT Conference in January. Here are some reflections and reports on a week among educational policy makers , educators , educational technologists and the business interests that circle education in the UK and globally.

I'll try and capture each event in a few bullets and offer some follow up links.

#LWF11 Learning Without Frontiers

The Conference was aimed to be about disruptive education and did it well through informed and engaging speakers who in the main made good use of data to flag up the opportunities that lie ahead for education. David Muir has made a great job of blogging many of the sessions.

• The education service that globally becomes the next facebook will turn up side down education as we know it - this was the underlying thesis.
• Lots of focus on arrival of tablet devices or next generation mobile phones - not much mention of my favourite $100 lap-tops but these are part of solution - one solution a device, built by tech group Raspberry Pi, will provide students with access to a full PC experience. The USB-powered device includes wireless networking, a Linux OS, an ARM processor, an HDMI output. Richard Braben wants to trial the device later in the year radical in that was very low cost.
• Speaker after speaker suggested that games industry and a large education partner may be the place to watch - new consoles and immersive games , growing on-line communities around these and their ever more sophisticated delivery platforms . Stephen Heppell predicts that Education is the next cartell that will be destroyed by people and technology. The argument that the next stage of technological paradigm shifts after hardware, software, databases, search and now social uses, will be learning. 
  
  
  My question would be which cartells move in as we move through period of disruptive changes.

• BBC made announcement that more programming will be available free for education in UK

http://tdalton.co.uk/2011/01/time-for-a-new-ict-qualification/

http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&srchtype=discussedNews&gid=3141501&item=40102829&type=member&trk=EML_anet_mc_pst_ttle

#EWF Education World Forum

In the background the Education World Forum aimed at education ministers from around the world was going on in Westminster. The speaker line up looked remarkably similar to last year's event  - which included technology in the title. Still on look out for best blog post on this event  - there is actually quite a good summary in the press information on events webpage and some good observations on the twitter stream from John Connell and Ollie Bray not sure these will be curated so grab a look soon  Angela Constance Scottish Skills Minister made a good speech..  Here is Michael Gove's speech welcoming large number of  education ministers to UK

#ELB2011 Microsoft Education Leaders Briefing

On Wednesday evening I attended useful session updating on developments coming our way through Microsoft Partners in Learning.  It was good to be joined at this event by colleagues from Learning and Teaching Scotland.

#Bett2011 Awards 

On Wednesday evening too - We brought back a BETT Award for a games based assessment platform for young people on our Skills for Work courses in Retailing, Health Sector, Energy and Uniformed and Emergency Services. Meant that there was a lot of interest on the SQA Stand on Thursday and Friday.

#Bett2011

I can't blog too much on all the meetings I had around exhibition and I think my initial post is fairly accurate reflection of experience. Some good blogs are picking up more from event from a practitioner's viewpoint.

http://olliebray.typepad.com/olliebraycom/bett2011/

http://alessiobernardelli.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/what-a-day-at-bett-2011/

http://helenmyers.blogspot.com/2011/01/bett-2011.html

and looking forward to seeing work of Leon Cynch who seemed to be everywhere capturing coverage of teachmeet and lots more.

#bett11 First Impressions

I've been really lucky and very privileged to attend BETT the British Educatonal Technology Show for last 12 years either in my current role or in previous jobs. The picture above is of the main hall and the interesting thing is if you have a look at shots over last 12 years  ( probably last three here on flickr) remarkably it  has not changed that much both in terms of who is there and in terms of the solutions being peddled to an educational audience. As usual for me it is the side meetings with partners that matter. Anyway first impressions from day one

• The changing of the guard - new government seems to mean much less top down guidance on ICT in education. This may or may not be a good thing - but quite hard to find folk on policy side who can set out direction of travel in England.
• Last year there were shed loads of functional skills materials - this year hardly in evidence - would be interesting to see figures on how much money has been spent on reforms here.That appear to be continually delayed.
• Whiteboards everywhere as usual but this year turned on their sides to make gigantic tablet PCS
• Seems more crowded with stall holders than ever but footfall seems much lighter
• Useful educational focused side programme and more informal teachmeet type content - always better than advertorial and getting better each year.

For those who don't regard education and learning as chiefly a money making enterprise BETT can be pretty harrowing. For a free pen or even a pendrive  there is only so much sales patter you can stomach. Combine lots of people selling stuff with hordes too of home grown or international educational technologists all on the make  and you get a heady brew and has any of it really changed the experience of learners in schools ?

#lwf11 Learning Without Frontiers

Lord Putnam and Jimmy Wales founder of Wikipedia debate in final session at Learning Without Frontiers.

I had a productive two days at Learning Without Frontiers and well done Graham and team for organising an event with a difference in a useful calendar slot before the purgatory of BETT.  The speakers were awesome , entertaining and informative and looking forward already to watching them be re-streamed and appearing on i-tunes and YouTube soon ( guess announcement will appear here)
I had some prejudices before I came - this was a relatively expensive event - and a free/discounted  i-pad was on offer if I signed some dotted line ( I'd love too but as attending is as part of my normal day job I can't pick up technology like this) . While I am slightly covetous I still can't figure out how owning one will help my day job. Did appear to be bigger version of i-phone for too wealthy short sighted guys ( guess they haven't worked out that it can't phone yet) sort of techno porn for geeks.
I did enjoy the best wifi I have had at a conference out with trips to States ..and so did everyone else - there is a fairly impressive twitter stream #lwf11 and was great too to find some friends picking up video feed from conference as it went out live.
So how could it be made better - event needs more back channels - a live twitter stream behind and beside presenters. - needs some more unconference stuff - there were some really great people in audience a few five minute slots from a few of them would have been really good. The event was about disruptive education - still not disruptive enough - one or two presentations were corporate advertorial.  Would have been interesting to have some input from open educational resource producers. A hook up somewhere with JISC in UK too would be really constructive - slight danger that it becomes schools silo.
Special tribute to David Muir who managed to do a blog posting on every session he attended.

Post 2011

It is the time of the year to make a prediction or two. This year I think more than any other you can feel and see the growth of services like facebook , twitter , linkedin . I've had a few conversations with folks in last six months who I know still have problems with keyboards and e-mails - yes they are still out there - but even some of these hardcore laggards are at least beginning to think about Web2.0. Must be mainstream now there is Social Network the movie!

• I predict that the massive .. really seismic cuts that are happening in education and the disappearance of some national agencies  across UK will drive users to make more inventive use of social software.

I am on my way to a Learning Without Frontiers Conference .. interesting agenda ..but I'll judge value for money over next three days and then my usual round of meetings around  BETT11. Will be interesting BETT with a void left on the disappearance of BECTA and other national agencies. I wonder where drivers for change on adoption of open educational resources , on-line assessment , digital inclusion, quality of ICT at local school and local authority level and a host of issues move forward. 

• I think now up to  ALT , JISC and membership organisations to fill void and see how much change can be driven at grassroots level when there is little money for grand national or regional schemes. Good to see lots of teachmeets happening.  Prediction two membership organisations take greater role in driving change.

Hoping too to get more of a grip on Scottish Government Technologies for Learning Strategy.
I didn't get an invitation this year to what was the Learning and Technology World Forum it has been renamed the Education World Forum  I am guessing that  leaders from around the world will be discussing how to meet their population's educational aspirations with a smaller resource. Shame they dropped the technology bit from the title .. the answer is technology but this still seems too tantalising for policy makers.

• Prediction three more interest in global standards and on Open Educational Resources

Whatever I think 2011 will be a challenging year for learners and for all those who work in life long learning.

Happy New Year

I did a bit of a spring clean around this blog including moving over to a new template. One day I'll spend some more time and set up a wordpress account . In the meantime I probably need to do a bit more hacking around with this blogger template to get the utility I'd like from it but it is starting to get there.

When I returned to blogging in 2006 I thought I'd probably blog about once a week - the reality is that with the arrival of twitter my posting rate is well down on this.

• ►  2010 (31)

• ►  2009 (68)

• ►  2008 (80)

• ►  2007 (31)

• ►  2006 (1)

Hit rates are down too on previous years. The posts that attracted most traffic are mostly all from the end of year 

• A summary of Scottish Government Technolgies for Learning Discussion
• An account of Donald Clark's excellent presentation at the ALT-C Conference
• A posting on Open Educational Resources 

Should add my favorite post of the year ..first post last January tracking our amazing adventures in the Phillippines  http://www.joewilsons.net/2010/01/happy-new-year.html

• 
  

New and Emerging Learning Technologies

In education too often the wave is over our heads before we realise. We really don't have any excuse now - here is a superb presentation from  Steve Wheeler on the shape of some things to come - should be enough to put  any educational leaders on to the front foot or poised to surf the next wave.

eXtending the Web - New and Emerging Learning Technologies

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

Maths and more Game Apps on iStore

Lots of meetings in last few weeks and playing catch up. I spent some time with Euan Mackenzie the CEO of  3MRT ltd who was pleased to let me know that they have released a number of game playing aps designed to support SQA Maths Candidates and he thinks as he would that he has achieved a few  firsts-

We have our first Scottish based apps on the iStore and the first press

reviews are universally positive.

You can jump off to the apps here: http://apps.inquizitor.com/

Save on Travel Desk Top Webconference

Just did one of those quick and dirty surveys of what staff are using to communicate with range of stakeholders across UK - worth sharing as it probably gives quite a good picture of desktop web conferencing systems being used accross UK Education. Remember focus here is on desk-top systems not Video Conferencing Suites.

Scotlands Colleges have been using http://www.elluminate.com/  for last two years - though they sometimes also use  http://www.netviewer.com/ 


GLOW ( in the area branded GLOW Meeting ) was using the Marratech System and is now going to make use of Adobe Connect http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.html So most mainstream Scottish Schools will have access to this.

There is also an active community across Education using the hosted Open University Flash Meeting service http://flashmeeting.open.ac.uk/index.html  . This is a free service which allows you to set up meetings as well as attend meetings - the Open University offers this service for free to the world wide education community.
It is used to record and broadcast quite a lot of events as well as for hosting meetings.

Finally there is a growth in wholly on-line conferences to get a flavour of these would be well worth signing up for JISC's  Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference http://www.jisc.ac.uk/elpconference10

The Best of EdTech Web 2010 #ediff

Resources like these are arriving every day and they can change education
as we know it.. thought this was a great set of new tools..

Best of the EdTech Web 2010 - With Links

View more presentations from Richard Byrne.

Useful Perhaps Observation from Across the Water #ediff

Thought this graphic gives nice picture of how a larger economy is struggling with #ediff
challenges.

Useful graphic from http://www.onlinecollegesanduniversities.net/technology-in-the-classroom/
was taken down last night.  The graphic presented  the challenges in integrating technology into American Classrooms. Where internet access in schools is much lower than Scotland.

Via: Online Colleges and Universities

Scottish Government Technologies for Learning Strategy #ediff

A few folks have aleady had a go at summarising discussions around Friday's event.
Neil Winton ,  Fearghal Kelly ,  Andrea Reid  and I'm sure more will follow.

The focus was on what schools and learners  (think nursery, primary and secondary schools ) should have access to and how a government with limited resources can support the necessary initiatives and investment to support this access.

The best bits.. that there is still broad support for the vision of a Scottish Schools Intranet and the notion that institutions, learners and teachers need to be trusted much more and have greater access to the internet. Expressed as a dimmer switch that could be turned up or down to protect learners as they progress through education. ( this has been aired lots of times and  in lots of ways  before)

This was a gathering of like minds from the Scottish educational  blogosphere. We can like all educators fight over the number of angels that can dance on the end of a pin ..but we didn't have to do too much justification on whether more technology is good for learning and learners.Yes we agree that play is central to learning and that there is a place for games based learning in schools ( and beyond serious games happening more and more in workbased learning)

What we didn't have time to do but I hope will be done was strip the  discussion down to the things that need to be in place

• Without reliable broad band access across all schools vision cannot happen.  There should be guidelines on what learners should have access to in nursery, primary and secondary across Scotland.
• Without guidelines on "the dimmer switch" most local authorities will opt for the standardised web filtering policies that keep most learners and teachers in the dark
• A minimum national intranet should allow interaction between teachers, learners and relevant agencies at a national level 
• It wasn't said in this way but one of my own - If Starbucks can do wifi why can't Scotland's schools - learners should be able to use their own devices to access their school platform.

 The outputs of what was a full day stimulating debate - not short on big words - and big ideas from Pat Kane @theplayethic  are captured in David Gilmour's photographs of the  flipcharts.

We didn't touch much on the support available through the internet itself - there are offerings from Microsoft, Intel , Cisco, Oracle, Google and more aimed at building up the digital literacy of teaching staff and learners and we only began to consider the growing open educational resource movement. Nor did we spend much time talking about what assets the learner takes in this domain from primary into secondary or the eportfolio they could usefully take into College or workbased learning.

Most of this audience have at some stage or continue to take a professional risk in blogging , adopting twitter or more modestly asking for some webservice or other to be unblocked. I think the education hackers or edupunks are live and well in Scottish education but need more encouragement. They are still a challengingly small minority of voices - echoing , re-blogging and tweeting each other. There needs to be a cultural shift and more support from the agencies that look after standards of access and the teaching standards in Scotland.

I hope this debate moves on at pace. We are not being ambitious enough for our learners in this space. The savvy ones can already do a lot of their own learning in their own time on their own devices in a place and time that suits them. The debate is not about schools staying technologically relevant it is really about the continiuing relevance of our education system.

Open Education #ediff

Some folks in Scotland will know the amazing work done by Brigham Young University in widening access and playing a major role in changing American Society. It is great to see this institution leading from the front in the Open Education debate here is David Wiley's presentation from last week's Educause Conference . Hope it helps some folk understand what I was getting at when I suggested that more and more learning resources would be free and accessible in the futureEducause 2010 - Openness, Data, and a Sustainable Future for Education

View more presentations from David Wiley.