Wednesday, July 27, 2011

PISA Measuring Student Success Around the World

I've been tracking growth of PISA for a number of years. The system has its uses as a comparator .
But it is not without some flaws and involves some quite serious investment to get a national PISA Score.
This animation from OECD explains what PISA is all about ..

Useful guide for parents , teachers , academics , politicians and especially educational journalists and policy makers.


Friday, June 24, 2011

Islay High School








Islay High School came on to my radar about six years ago. We were working with Adobe to build capacity in to the Scottish Education system to improve the delivery of the fundamentals of web design . We were working  well with Colleges from across Scotland but we were struggling to engage with schools. In the end @islayian turned up for the free weeks training from Anuja Darkhar  Head of Adobe's world education team. 

Interested in our soul teaching representative I was immediately impressed by what I learned about his reasonably remote island school.

Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking at their annual celebration of achievement and finally getting a tour of the school.

This is now not a new story - but I am still really surprised at how few schools have taken Islay's lead. Here is what makes them different.

  • Pupils all are provided with their own ultra mobile PC. They use these in class and at home.
  • The devices have been paid for by removing the school photocopiers and introducing the machines year by year - Islay High is now a paperless school at least on the learning side.
  • Teachers have their own Toshiba laptops with touchscreen functionality.
  • Classrooms have wireless projectors and a white painted wall - rather than whiteboards. As the teachers and learners all have their own devices they can interact through the wireless projector.
  • Beyond the technology they timetable 3rd to 6th year together - which leads to a great community feel in the senior school. This allows for personalised timetables over 3 or 4 years - this gives learners a large range of academic and vocational options and allows some to really stretch themselves - a few 5th years have achieved Advanced Highers.
At the end of yesterday's awards ceremony I met with learners , their parents and local employers . They were all content that sthe chool provided a platform for learners to follow academic careers and/or move into the local employment market.  I was impressed too by this year's school trip. The Headteacher is taking a group of 5th Years on an expedition to Madagascar for four weeks.

All this delivered cheerfully from a school stitched together from buildings from the 30's , 50's and 1970's

I know lots of schools are finding their own way towards a curriculum for excellence,  Islay High is a useful beacon.  Or can it be that island folks are just that liitle bit more resourceful ?




Sunday, June 19, 2011

Piracy , Internet Safety and Identity Theft



On way into work the other morning a well known Glasgow businessman told me that he was having problems with his home Internet account  following a phone call he had from Microsoft.  He believed them as they knew he had a Microsoft operating system and knew he was an AOL Customer -so  he even confirmed his password. By this point he noticed my jaw had dropped.

The Microsoft caller  told him that they were experiencing some problems with AOL Accounts and that he should leave his computer on but not access his AOL account for the next three days.

All bits of his story alarmed me -  I am guessing that his identity had been pinched , computer hijacked and a range of dreadful things were  being perpetrated in his name.

I told him to go home and switch his computer and router off - and use his office  computer to change passwords to banking or other sensitive accounts and then go to the authorities.

Highlights need for everyone to be aware of their on-line security.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

LIfe in A Day


YouTube’s Life in a Day arrived in major cities in the U.K. and the U.S. yesterday.
A great advert for humanity and our ever shrinking world

The film was directed by Oscar-winning Kevin Macdonald, who took over 80,000 submissions and 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries and created a feature-length documentary reflecting people’s lives on the 24th of July, 2010.

Produced from 70,000 hours of user-submitted uploaded video , the team sent 400 cameras out to the developing world to capture 20-30% of the final film.

I can see lots of uses for this in classroom - even the trailer makes me smile.


Hype or Not to Hype

I agree with most of Steve Wheeler's ideas - and there is a lot to be inspired by in this presentation.But it also raises more questions -  I hope learning becomes open , social , personal and mobile too But it is not inevitable and there is some danger that we can be guilty of over hyping the affordances that technology could bring us New Technologies and the Future of Learning
View more presentations from Steve Wheeler

Thursday, June 09, 2011

#showcase2011 Scottish Technology Showcase



All the new things you might imagine -green forms of energy generation and storage, Telehealthcare, Cloud Computing , Data Centres , Innovative uses and users of social software , Web Analytic services, Digital Marketing Agencies,  lean manufacturing techniques and precision engineering ..were all on display at this excellent event. A  great place to see what the workplace of the future will be like and where the skills gaps are in the new economy.   Few ideas too around some qualifications new economy will need.

Great mainly to see a host of thriving innovators , entrepreneurs and exporters driving the Scottish economy onwards .

Would have been good to see some more press coverage of this excellent event.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Lest We Forget

As America starts to build an appropriate national education and skills system . We should reflect on what we take too much for granted in UK and in Scotland.

The aim


for example, a welder would be able to leave a community college with a standard certificate that employers in shipbuilding, computer building or car manufacturing could recognize as a proof of the welder's skill set.
Is one that our system addressed a long tme ago.

There is always room for improvement , we do have a system that encourages transferable skills and life long learning and  export this with a high level of success to both the developed and developing world.
We should do a bit more to celebrate this.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

#teachmeet Five Years of Teachmeets

TeachMeet Logo

Subheading could be five years of teachmeets and the world is a better place but it has not changed.

Five years ago some folks working in Scottish Education discovered a model for something called an "unconference  " - a more spontaneous and crowd sourced way of organising and hosting a gathering of like minds. With a little light branding (see logo above)  and a set of "rules" what started as an an annual event  has almost become a movement.

But there are a few bits that need ironed out -

  • Organisers need to keep looking at ways that the unconference model has progressed - the model and rules need to continually evolve.
  • A model has not really been worked out around  the custodianship of the teachmeet model .
  • There is not a place or guidelines on how you might archive or share the goodies that are uncovered at your teachmeet
  • Some purists stiill struggle in balancing the spontaneity of the model with any form of sponsorship or a sponsored slot

With these caveats anyone organising a gathering of educators in any sector - should try and incorporate a teachmeet section in the proceedings - would be a perfect session to include in any staff development day too.

Monday, May 23, 2011

The Case for Open Educational Resources and Open Books

I would like to see Scottish Colleges and Schools plugged in more actively to the growing open educational resource movement. I have made the case a few times before. This info graphic says a lot more than words.
Article is great too.


Talking Dog



This week we've watched this clip every night - it cracks my kids up.
We want to know where we can buy a talking dog ?
We'd like to send him some bacon too !

Saturday, May 21, 2011

#open4ed Open for Education and RSC North and East Last Post



Attribution:

Image: 'One more from the Storr'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59562171@N00/88904665 and with thanks to Carol Walker for tour of http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net


Spent a useful day at Open for Education in Edinburgh . Presented with a smorgasbord of practical ideas for delivering in the classroom.  From the selection I attended I was as ever impressed by Craig Mill's work on opening up access for IT ,  Colin Maxwell's enthusiasm  and Carol Walker's ideas on digital story telling . The keynotes featured Google Aps , an over view of open source solutions from Miles Berry and a view on OER from Frank Rennie of Lews Castle College.

The audience lapped it up and it was good to see  folk from schools , colleges and Higher Education in audience. Good too to see SQA E-Learning and Assessment folk joining in too. Twitter stream #open4ed
picks up lots of goodies from a rewarding day

Sad that this is last event to be organised by the team at RSC North and East Scotland. Over the last ten years they have proven an innovative bunch and delivered for the North East , Scotland and for UK and beyond.

Lots of achievements for the team to be proud of and a lot for RSC Scotland,  the successor organisation,  to take forward . Still some distance to go before teaching profession in HE, FE and Schools get all of this but great legacy to build on.

 Standing on the shoulders of giants indeed !

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Technologies for Learning Strategy #ediff #TforL



Now the election is over it is great to see some things starting to move quite quickly again. One area is that of technologies for learning and the whole possible reprocurement of GLOW. Spotted today that the Technologies for Learning Website sprang back into life. All three of the new papers are worthy of discussion. I spotted too that Lesley Riddoch is asking well intentioned questions about what is needed in this space.

The debate starting here is worth a look - here is Lesley crowd sourcing her next Hootsman feature.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Amusing Guide to Making Folks Feel Old


Battleship Potemkin is off the scale then ..

Typing Shop Abu Dhabi

Typing Shop by joecar80
Typing Shop, a photo by joecar80 on Flickr.
I'm sure they will move on to other devices - but worth a pause for thought. These shops feature all around the world and help folks with form filling , reading and translation ..I'm not sure what the UK equivalent would be.. an internet cafe ? not sure they are quite as community orientated.


Today, the last type writer manufacturer shuts up shop http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/861749-worlds-last-typewriter-factory-ends-production .

In 1985 I was the envy of the staff room as a proud owner of an electric typewriter,  it even had an auto correct white ribbon. By1987 I was programming wordstar or some other package to get better results out of a personal computer. I don't miss inky fingers - but they were really clever bits of engineering.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Five Big Mistakes in Virtual Education

Liked this as a presentation and for way it handles some challenges.Still not certain there is enough learning around this being shared between workplace, HE , FE and Schools The 5 big mistakes in virtual education
View more presentations from guiramirez

Monday, April 11, 2011

Get Thinking through Images

Just thought this was such a wonderful animated gif from Dr Strangelove.
I found this and lots of other images that are food for thought at http://ffffound.com/ A great place to feed your head.  Guessing most graphics and media teachers will be steeped in this site but you never know.
Would make a great image for a caption competition.

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

ELearning Alliance



Spent this morning with old and new friends at the E-Learning Alliance having a look at ;  their mission, the support they provide to members  and their website ( which is about to be radically updated). I can't believe it has been around since 2002 originally pump primed with Scottish Enterprise money.  They now have an established membership base and their events make for a handy gathering spot for those involved in e-learning across the public and private sectors.

I've always found it a productive place to build bridges between developers in the public and private sector and a place to hear about where delivery is being made on a large scale across organisations.  A local focus point where I can learn from private sector and world of work on implementation of e-learning programmes.

Looking forward to new website and tools including neat web conferencing tool supplied by http://www.bigbluebutton.org/

Monday, April 04, 2011

The Role of New Media in Vocational Education

I spend a lot of the time trying to explain things that George Siemens seems to have developed a knack for.  Link above links to two really useful presentations.Sharing is an essential part of a globalised learning community too.The map of use of on-line communities is particularly  interesting as Linked-in  became  a community of 100 million users last week .What strikes me most is that these communities and ways of working still exist in a parallel universe to much of the corporate culture in both the public and private sectors.

View more presentations from gsiemens

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Meta Data in Music and everything else


3D Data from Decibel on Vimeo.

I am not sure how this arrived on my desktop this morning - but it is a great example of how metadata changes both the means of production and the means of consumption .

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Scottish Parliament Dissolution

The Scottish Parliament election takes place on 5th May 2011, and the formal election period begins on 23 March following dissolution of Parliament. While I  do not write directly about Government policy within Scotland, I currently work for a non departmental public body and as such I must remain neutral during this time.
I expect my blogging and twitter activity  be lower over the next 45 days.