New Year Reflections and Predictions

thanks to  littleperson1832 for image

Last year's predictions were among others that  that "flipped classroom" would become the bullshit bingo word of the year Well I think it came to pass .

I heard it used by number of  touring educational gurus , senior educational managers and academics usually from the lectern or from the stage during  keynotes where no effort was really made to engage the audience. It would be good to get  a greater sense of a flipped classroom at some of the big keynote events like BETT in England or SLF in Scotland. There is still too an attitude that change and innovation comes from above and not from within organisations. Gurus should be setting audiences challenges not coming along with their own stock answers ..I think this was apparent this year in the political domain too across the UK but enough said on that.

It was the year too of the tablet - and they are marvellous and miraculous devices for consuming things . I think they are still challenged when it comes to creating and producing things.

So what to look forward too

1. I think Mozilla Badges and the impact of smaller chunks of assessment. particularly in the computing and coding areas will really support both staff development and learners. It works well in areas like webdesign as the infrastructure is there to support learners.  Have a look at the Mozilla Webmaker tools and badges

We are well positioned to support these in schools , colleges and work-based learning. Our policy in terms of accreditation of prior learning is well developed. I am hoping this helps speed up the adoption of initiatives like this across Scottish education and beyond.  I look forward to pushing this on with Sunny Lee and Doug Belshaw  (Check out Doug's badges on his blog)

2. Is a MOOC a Massive Open On-line Course or a Massively Optimistic Over-Hyped Course ? - Time will tell.   I believe that where the providers of MOOCS make their content open rather use  these as marketing windows or discounted ways to gain accreditation then they will become game changers - as folks will use the content in other useful ways. If the content was open then learners could really see what was involved in a particular course before signing up to it . School teachers could use chunks of learning for their own development and  use these with their students. School students could engage with open material directly. In many workplaces they will  become part of continuous professional development.

I like the optimism and the sense of discovery that surround these programmes.

It is easy to forget that learning is all about a sense of optimism and discovery - it is what spurs learning on.

It also needs to be valued and nurtured - whether it is  happening in a nursery class or with adult and community learners. However humble the learning - the sense of discovery is magical.

3. Open Content is the way ahead . It has been great to share the journey of JORUM over the last 10 years ( If it's inception is taken as the early discussions at the JISC Joint Committee for the Information Environment ) We have a real opportunity to push this on in Scotland through Scotland's Colleges Resource and I hope through the future iteration of GLOW. Ubiquitous and available learning is an important part of the Scottish learning tradition and we need to embrace OER. 

But we do need more policy drivers in this space and I hope through working with the Association for Learning Technology in Scotland we can get these. It would be great if this was the year that the Scottish Government , The Scottish Funding Council and all the educational agencies in Scotland , including my own  could make a commitment to Open Educational Resources. This would support College Regionalisation  break down the local authority silos in schools and almost above all encourage Higher Education to stop pontificating on what happens in schools ,  colleges and work-based learning and encourage them to contribute by sharing  more learning materials.

4. Will Higher Education in Scotland start working with rest of the education system ?  I have high hopes that this might be the year. We've done the right thing in giving HE some more resource over last few years and they occupy a position envied by many in rest of UK . If they opened up a bit more Universities could really support learning across Scotland and beyond. I think a special mention to Edinburgh University for leading charge on joining Coursera but these on-line courses don't come with open educational resources.

Hope that is enough food for thought and may you have a happy and prosperous 2013 when it arrives.

Gun Law - Better to Shoot with Words

I don't often use my blog to tell stories. I hope one day my gun mad six year old son reads this. 

At the moment he is with the Arizona gun lobby who wish to arm teachers discretely and at a discount so they can fight back when their schools are attacked.

Ideally, he would like the six year olds to have guns too.

In around 1990 I spent my first holiday in Washington DC.  I had a great trip but while I was there two 14 year old boys shot each other in a school changing room. It was all over the local media but such a frequent occurrence it was not picked up by the national media. It was a school in a poor predominantly black area where gun crime and gang fighting was endemic, apparently. The media focus was on the school janitors and their lax use of the school metal detectors which had allowed the two boys to bring hand guns into the school. The school district and the janitors looked like they were going to be sued for negligence.

All this was very alien to me. .and I'd been teaching for five years in Glasgow.

It happened that evening I was meeting some distant relatives who were the offspring of my grandfather's wee sister who moved over to the states from Ibrox at the end of WW1. They were a really nice, socially aware, academic couple, proud of their Scottish heritage, who had done well and were running impressive chunks of the Smithsonian. In lots of ways they seemed the same as me, further on in their careers but battling away in that middling educational way to make the world a better place.

Half way through a highly enjoyable meal I asked why no-one in the media had really queried why it was illegal but easy for fourteen year olds to access firearms.

Politely, the gulf in our two cultures suddenly opened up.

Guns were important for protection. I came from a more peaceful part of the world and did not appreciate this. I struggled when I was told that they had a lot of guns and the  licences for them. Indeed, as we sat in the smart diner on the Potomac I was told that they had a piece in her pocket book to deter muggers and at home in a posh suburb of Washington they had among their arsenal an assault rifle which was needed, as it could shoot through the engine block of a truck. The assault rifle was protection against domestic ram raiding which had recently reached epidemic proportions.

The conversation moved on. 

As I moved unarmed back to my digs in Georgetown along the streets that seemed a bit meaner I thought these really nice folk were under siege . The ready availability of guns which they prized as a symbol of their freedom did not seem to give them or their children the liberty they sought.

I hope following this weekend's events it gets harder to access firearms in the USA and no more six year olds need to die.

Inventing the Future of Learning

Sit down and take time to look at this if you are a parent , teacher , policy maker or have an interest in Education - this maps out the short term future of learning very well and the immediate challenges that the system faces. Video comes from http://www.tel.ac.uk/ project site

ALT-Scotland SIG Update for ALT Newsletter

I think more folks who are interested in Educational Technology in Scotland should become members of the Association for Learning Technology - with thanks to Linda Creanor who composed recent newsletter below

Here is what we are  up to at the moment ...

The ALT-Scotland SIG was officially launched at ALT-C in September 2012 where there was a good attendance and much enthusiasm at the inaugural meeting.  ALT-Scotland is a national SIG for practitioners and researchers in learning technology who are based in Scotland and it provides a forum to –

·         further the aims of ALT in Scotland

·         promote the technology agenda in all sectors of Scottish education

·         encourage sharing of expertise, resources and best practice in learning technology within the context of Scottish education

·         influence relevant policy and strategy

·         develop constructive relationships with related organisations and committees

The original ALT-Scotland group had been established in 2009 to support ALT institutional representatives and Scotland-based committee members, however at a meeting on the 14^th June 2012, it was agreed that we should seek to formalise the group by proposing it as a national SIG. This would allow the group to expand its membership to ALT members throughout Scotland and become a more inclusive and influential forum with greater potential to influence the strategic direction of learning technology in Scottish education.  The SIG application was approved by the Membership Services Committee in early September 2012.

The first meeting of the ALT-Scotland steering committee took place at GCU on the 11th October and we agreed a series of actions to move things forward.  As well as a JISC mail list for members, we will host a face-to- face meeting in June each year to which we will invite representatives of the Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Qualifications Authority and key Scottish Government contacts to discuss priority issues for learning technology.  In addition, we intend to present occasional webinars for members over the year and are already contacting potential speakers.

We will also gather information on OER use and strategy across the Scottish education sectors and submit a short report to the Scottish Government to inform policy and practice. Through this, we hope to encourage a Scottish response to the UNESCO OER declaration published earlier this year.

If you are a Scottish-based ALT Individual,  Associate or Organisational member and would like to get involved, you can join the ALT-Scotland JISC mail list by following the link on the ALT-Scotland SIG web page at http://www.alt.ac.uk/node/625.   To find out more or to make suggestions on areas of interest we might address, please contact any of the SIG officers listed below.

Prof Linda Creanor, GCU, l.creanor@gcu.ac.uk (Co-Chair)

Joe Wilson, SQA,  Joe.Wilson@sqa.org.uk (Co-Chair)

Celeste McLaughlin, JISC RSC Scotland, celeste.mclaughlin@rsc-scotland.ac.uk

Lorna Campbell, JISC CETIS, Strathclyde University, lorna.m.campbell@icloud.com

Dr Lesley Diack, Robert Gordon University, h.l.diack@rgu.ac.uk

Martin Hawksey, JISC CETIS, Strathclyde University, m.hawksey@gmail.com

#ETNA Scottish JISC Regional Support Centre ICT Training Needs Analysis Survey 2012

In 2001 I worked to create the first ever Training Needs Analysis for the Scottish Further Education Sector - we used this to drive up skills across the sector.
 
The survey now happens about every  three years and tracks the ability of teachers , admin support ,  learner support staff and senior managers to use technology effectively in the delivery of services - it is worth a look - it shows you skills that are expected from all levels of staff in the FE sector when it comes to using ICT to deliver their services including those needed by senior managers for strategic planning.

I think it is a great model both for measuring progress,  devising training to fill the skills gaps and just raising general awareness of the ICT skillset that staff need at all levels in education.
www.rsc-scotland.ac.uk/etna 

#Pedagoo #TMSLF12 #slfFringe New Ventures

I am really lucky as working in new ventures means looking at and sometimes doing  new things,  that  challenge the organisation and my colleagues, in a good way .

Like lots of organisations we spend quite a lot of time looking at future trends . A couple of months  ago I pulled this together from a range of sources to move on  our own organisational debate abou the changes that are happening in global education.

We are always looking for better and more effective ways to support learner journeys.

I used bits of this in my sessions at  #tmslf12  and #slfringe  . The predictions here are sourced mainly from work being done in HE sector Horizons Report  , but also from work by  OU , BBC , LearnDirect in UK and Ofcom.

In one session I was asked why blogging and wikis were not included in current year's trends .
Blogging has been about now for more than  ten years and editable webpages for a similar period.

We need to think about how we make the most of what is in front of us as well as what we have already.

Looking forward from joecar

#GCSE and General Standards Debate

I doubt the GCSE debate will end well for anyone. But in amongst all the debate around the dumbing down of assessments or in some accounts of  the amazing performances by teachers contributing to raised grades and finally the acknowledgement that years of market driven offerings may have contributed to inflationary conditions.We are forgetting about those who do the graft and need the grades to progress into further education or employment.

 In all of this it is too easy to lose sight of the learner and the learning that is taking place and we are doing learners a dis-service in not recognising that more effort goes into studying for formal qualification now than probably at any other time.ever across the UK.

Learning has already changed for learners . No not in the classroom where most useful things are  blocked but in informal learning.

There is now enormously rich  learning content if you know where to find it. I think young people are now more motivated than ever to learn . I'll not provide links as  , as motivated learners you will quickly find these learning resources. . But if you wanted help and lots of practice with any of the following you would get it quickly on the web - you could enrol on a free course or join an informal peer support network too

Teaching an American novel
Solving quadratic equations
Studying chemical reaction
Learning a language

The posh kid may once have had access to a tutor or " Coles " notes or some other additional support ,  now those with access to the Internet can get almost infinite information on most topics.. But not just information they can get tailored learning support , practice and feedback.

This  must this be impacting on grades. . If you want to learn how to do something or get access to documentary evidence better than your modern studies or history class offer,  then YouTube is a great place to start..

What we should be thinking about is how we harness these resources and how we close any digital divide.
We should be thinking too,  as we are in Scotland, of  how to combine the best bits of flexible internal continuous assessment with appropriate amounts of external assessment.

We should be looking beyond the exam hall at what comes next to support individual learner journeys.

#EATP European Association of Test Providers Conference September 2012

Once a year the commercial testing industry gathers in Europe.

If there was an underlying theme of the conference it was one of challenging and changing market conditions for the big global test providers. The market is still dominated by Pearson Vue and Prometric.  In Europe in the domain of national standards testing CITO powers many of the OECD initiatives.

The market for on-line testing is still growing exponentially, but is becoming more sophisticated, moving from traditional multiple choice items delivered in on-line in proctored environments towards more agile and mobile forms of assessment.  The market leaders are being challenged by new technologies and by new entrants who can now quickly build the same global reach..

A quote from one of of the speakers I think highlights dilemma

“ Test publishers are struggling to find and maintain investment in new ways of testing. The old regulatory model used to be “shut up, sit down and take the test” . The new models mean that learners and employers are looking for more just in time testing  and knowledge building approaches that include more authentic forms of assessment and more sophisticated assessments"

It was good to see under the bonnet of a few testing systems and good too to hear about developments across Europe and this year there was some good input from Australia .

Some of the underlying themes have not changed since last time I spoke at this conference.

Great to see Gavin Cooney and Learnosity winning business down under..

Samuel L. Jackson: 'Wake Up' for Obama

A very direct appeal to voters .

#Glasgow2014 Commonwealth Games Scotland 2014

Following the Olympics excitement is really building about Glasgow 2014.  There is already a real buzz about the City of Glasgow  as the new building projects reach completion.

There are already opportunities to register for

Employment  http://www.glasgow2014.com/about_us/work_for_us.aspx
Volunteers http://www.glasgow2014.com/the_games/getting_involved/public.aspx
Tickets  http://www.glasgow2014.com/fb/mobile-tickets.aspx