Web 2.0 booklet

In a recent address called 'What is education for?' to the Royal Society of Arts, Michael Gove bemoaned the fact that there is no government department in the UK whose sole remit is the pursuit of educational standards.

According to Gove, education is not regarded as a good enough end in itself, but as something which can help to achieve some other goal.

In his exposition of his views in favour of liberal education, he used the term 'the tyranny of relevance'. Although he wasn’t talking about Information and Communications Technology (ICT), this phrase did strike a chord with me. In the continuing debate over whether ICT should be taught as a subject in its own right, is there perhaps too much store set by 'relevance'?

"Them things just don't like me."

The woman at the end of the accusing finger pointing at my laptop edged cautiously towards the pub door, giving me a wide berth -- presumably in case the "thing" lashed out at her.

"I've tried, but they hate me, they do!"

Easy to dismiss such talk as the incoherent prattle of someone slightly unhinged. And yet, a part of me wonders whether she is not, on some level, quite right?

The Independent Review of ICT User Skills of Britain’s population has just been published. It makes for some interesting reading.

E Talbert has asked me to make some comments on effective feedback for the Terry's Two Minute Tips series. So here is my response, with some useful links for further reading.

You cannot avoid risk, so you have to manage it. Whether you’re considering installing a new computer system, or trying out a new teaching approach, how can you manage the risk sensibly and effectively?

Miller (left) is a teenager living in the USA. It's always interesting to hear what young people think about educational technology, so I was delighted when Miller agreed to have a go at answering questions about it.

The questions below are all genuine, ie they have been submitted by real people, not just made up by me (although I can assure that I am a real person!).

Equally, Miller's answers are genuine too, which is to say she didn't receive any prompting or assistance from either her teacher, Vicki Davis, or me.

Today, Miller answers these questions:

 
1. How have you been made aware of e-safety (internet safety) issues - did your school have e-safety lessons or e-safety awareness programs. Did the school have an "Acceptable Use Policy" (a set of rules for the use of computers / the internet). is e-safety an issue for American teenagers (thinking of computers, hand held devices, cell phones etc)
 
2. As a young person what do you think would be most helpful to protect young people online?
 
3. Do you think it's necessary for schools to block social networking sites like Twitter & Facebook? Do you see any benefits that students can receive from this channels of technology?
 
4. How do you feel that your use of Web 2.0 apps will change over the next couple of years?

I was contacted by the Guardian yesterday for my views on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plans to do away with printed textbooks and move over to textbooks online.

Here’s my response.

Miller (left) is a teenager living in the USA. It's always interesting to hear what young people think about educational technology, so I was delighted when Miller agreed to have a go at answering questions about it.

The questions below are all genuine, ie they have been submitted by real people, not just made up by me (although I can assure that I am a real person!).

Equally, Miller's answers are genuine too, which is to say she didn't receive any prompting or assistance from either her teacher, Vicki Davis, or me.

Today, Miller answers these questions:

 
1. Do you do think that technology in teaching is better than face-to-face teaching?
 
2. Do you ever use virtual worlds to socialize, like ‘Second Life’?
 
3. What mobile devices are students in America using, and what are they used for?

As the title suggests, this book is concerned with helping you improve your blog. Written by Darren Rowse, founder of Problogger, it started life as a series of daily blog posts and, latterly, a daily email task if you signed up to the course.

So, how good is it, and does it represent value for money – especially if you have already read all the posts?

It’s an unfortunate fact that the issues I raised in my book ‘Go on, bore ‘em: how to make ICT lessons excruciatingly dull’ are still relevant today.

This has been clearly demonstrated in  our interview with Edith, a 14 year-old, recently, and it’s also apparent from emails and other messages I receive. So what can be done about it?

We take it as axiomatic that we need to attend shows like the Education Show or the BETT show in order to find out what’s new in technology. But are we unduly limiting ourselves?

Can eBay teach us anything about assessment? At a recent conference, John Davitt made an interesting point.

Drilling holes? What’s that got to do with ICT? Possibly quite a bit….

In the UK the government is keen to get rid of, or at least reduce, the digital divide. For this reason it introduced a home access programme, the aim of which is to help the poorest families acquire a computer and an internet connection.

But what if this were a food relief programme?

According to David Anstead of Ofsted, there are 4 systemic problems in the provision of ICT, these being the use of assessment, some qualifications, value for money, and getting ICT to the learning. At the Naace 2009 Conference he discussed each of these. Here are my notes from that session.

Assuming that we think e-enablement is a worthy goal (definitions vary, but one of the most popular is that a school is said to be e-enabled if it could not function without its technology; I’m not sure that’s a good position to be in, but I get the point), how do we achieve it?

Or, to be somewhat more accurate, how do we achieve it faster? In the UK we’ve had a massive investment in technology in schools over the past decade, but many schools are still not e-enabled. (Figures vary, but the percentage of schools said to be e-enabled seems to be somewhere between 11 and 20%.)

Perhaps this is an illustration of seeing a half-full glass as half-empty. I certainly don’t wish to come across as a pessimist – I think there have been huge achievements. Nevertheless, I think it would be an incredible feat of self-imposed blindness to not wonder how come we haven’t achieved even more. At the Naace09 Conference, Niel McLean had a few suggestions.

I was struck by this expression of John Davitt’s, at the recent Naace Conference. This and a couple of other expressions make interesting potential starting points for discussion.