Jon Hoff's Teaching ICT

The Guardian has offered to try and improve digital literacy in the UK, after a series of news articles stating that the quality of ICT lessons in UK schools is not good enough. I argue it is not the quality of the lessons, but the quality of the material taught, and the total inflexibility of the British curriculum, particularly in secondary schools, that is not good enough.

The thrust of  previous articles has seen a chubby finger pointed accusingly at the fact that we need to teach more programming skills (see Programming should take pride of place in our schools).

I don’t agree. Saying we need to teach 11 year olds programming skills is like saying we need to teach 11 year old English students how to write a novel, or 11 year old scientists about Higgs-Bosom. We don’t. We give them the building blocks of that potential for future use. We teach them about sentence and paragraph structure, about rules of physics and life cycles, and computer fluency.

Programming, in its raw form, should be available for those with the aptitude and interest at 16 to study further, and in my opinion, is for the realms of the university student to become an ace coder. In the most part, those who excel at programming in secondary schools would be teaching their teachers, its something 14 years ‘get in to’ in their bedrooms using the Internet as their resource and playground, not through tapping out a few lines in the classroom next to twenty-four others who really don’t care.

The UK national curriculum for ICT is so archaic, so mind-numbingly boring (and easy) that its no wonder there are complaints about the subject. Here are five points to improve digital literacy in UK schools.

1) Improve the curriculum at Key Stage Three

The current curriculum at Key Stage three takes students in 6 week topic blocks through the tedious humdrum of the Microsoft Office package. Sure, some  schools may allow teachers to use things like Prezi and Scratch, but all must plough through Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access and Publisher. Powerpoint is a useful tool throughout a child’s educational career (or one of its alternatives).

Excel and Access however – they can wait. We should be using KS3 to engage children with technology through ICT and all their other subjects. Video production and editing, audio production and editing, using smartphones and tablets (like they do in real life outside the classroom), digital storytelling, blogging and connecting with classes around the country and the world, digital photography and editing, graphic design, web design, flash and digital citizenship.

2) A Foundation course in essential skills

At the start of secondary school all students can start with a term long foundation course in essential computer skills for learning. That would include a proficiency check in Word and Powerpoint, a study skills course. In doing this, all other Year 7 teachers will know that by the end of term one, all their students should be able to create, save and edit documents and presentations. They should be able to use email to send and receive, download and upload files. They should be able to format a document with name, title, date.

2)  Improve GCSE ICT 

Current GCSE ICT is a very poor course. And I’ve seen kids, even in my short stint teaching it in the UK, struggle with it. And its not because they can’t do it. It’s because their minds are closed after years of the same boring rubbish in their ICT classrooms. All they see when they enter that room full of computers is a long, dull lesson looking at a page of word processing. Revamp the GCSEs. Bring in alternative methods of publishing work. Take out all the MS Office nonsense from KS3 and bring it in here. With an interesting, engaging Key Stage three period, students are more likely to show an interest when undertaking their GCSE studies in ICT, and slightly older students are more likely to be engaged in less interesting things like spreadsheets and databases.

In my experience, the outcomes of an entire KS3 scheme of work taught to Year 7 can be learnt in a couple of lessons by older students. Learning formulas in Excel for example.

3) Involve everyone else 

And by this I mean cross-curricular use of technology. Again, KS3 three is the place to sow the seeds for this. English teachers need to have a class blog. Not just because blogs are great, but because students also indirectly learn technical skills…how to navigate a CMS like WordPress, start new posts, reply to posts, add comments. Of course, digital citizenship. The possibilities are endless across all subjects, and it comes down to training and the willingness of the staff to improve their lessons.

4) Improve Resources

How many schools are using Google Apps for Education? How many schools have a CMS like Moodle or Frog and are getting the best out of them? How many schools see educational technology as key? To change perspectives a fundamental shift in what ICT is all about needs to occur.

5) Improve teacher training

Paradoxically, when I started my PGCE with around 10 other ICT trainees I was concerned that I didn’t have enough technical knowledge. I was expecting a more computer science orientated course. However, the calibre of the trainees really shocked me. Some of them struggled with Internet browsers. Only a couple had heard of RSS, no one blogged. The concept of integration across the curriculum was a novel one. The end result was a course that produced robots trained to teach those units of work and exam courses, but not much else. I’m not convinced many would have the ability to take an opportunity outside of this bleak existence of the British ICT teacher in order to push the boundaries of what is needed for true ‘digital literacy’.  So the quality of teacher training needs to improve too.

I came across this article recently entitled ‘A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute‘ the premise of which is that according to the Waldorf philosophy ‘computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans‘. The article highlights the fact that many parents who work at tech companies like Google, Apple and Yahoo send their kids to this school, including people like Mr Eagles, a man who works in ‘executive communications’ at Google and has a degree in computer science. He says “The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous”. Mr Eagles, I beg to differ. Unfortunately, Mr Eagles was allowed to continue by bragging about how easy technology is to use: “It’s supereasy. It’s like learning to use toothpaste,” Mr. Eagle said. “At Google and all these places, we make technology as brain-dead easy to use as possible. There’s no reason why kids can’t figure it out when they get older.” Projects are highlighted such as darning socks and cutting up food to teach fractions. Revolutionary.

My first reaction to reading this article was a calm panic. I’m I getting it all wrong? However, after taking time to rationalise, I began to understand. It’s total nonsense. And here’s why.

Firstly, some logical oversights in the article. The fact that 75% of the kids have parents working at tech companies is probably related to the fact that, as the title says, the school is in Silicon Valley. I would be more fearful of my profession being a total dunce if the school was populated by the children of Educational Technology specialists with Masters degrees and PHds in child psychology and eduction – who having spent years training themselves in this area suddenly, in a moment of terror, realised it was all just so wrong, and they had to send their kids back to the Victorian days of slate and chalk. This is not the case. These parents may work at a tech company, but they aren’t education professionals.

You’ve got to be an app short of an iphone to not understand what technology brings. It’s not specifically about improving students grades. It’s about enrichment, access to information, and new ways of expression like video, audio, digital storytelling and publishing. Arguing that computers can not provide critical thinking skills is just, well, bizarre. Scratch anyone? And that would be, errm, scratching the surface. An example for Mr Eagles comes from my three year old daughter.

She loves puzzles but she gets bored with them quickly. Her latest 60 piece Winnie the pooh puzzle she has lost interest in. You know how it is with kids. So I downloaded this app onto the iPad for her. It has about 30 picture puzzles pre installed and you can also select any photo from your library to turn into a puzzle. You can select the pieces from 12, 24, 48 and 96, so she started on 12 and has already moved on to 24 pieces with my help. This is an endless supply of differentiated puzzles for $1.99. And Louisa will never get bored of putting puzzles together of mummy, daddy and herself on the beach. In two days, she had already figured out using (say it quietly) critical thinking how to best use the app. Indeed, I was delighted to see her moving pieces she couldn’t fit yet back into the ‘box’ to create more space on the screen for other pieces. Comparing this to the physical puzzle, with missing pieces, chewed pieces, the bordem factor etc. The physical taught the concept, the basic skills – the technology supplemented magnificently.

If you are going to argue that a child’s education is better off without having the ability to use a computer or mobile device, you better give me a sound logical argument and I’m afraid this article doesn’t have one. No chance to use a videocamera and learn how to edit video? No chance to have the satisfaction of seeing someone comment on your blog post from half way around the world? No chance to watch a video of a cat getting stuck in a washing machine on You Tube at break time?! Seriously, where’s the love? I guess learning how to knit socks is more important to Waldorf than creating digitally savvy students who are prepared for a world where we are, like it or not, surrounded by technology. Mr Eagles argument that technology is easy to use and can be learned anytime – my friend – you have spent little time in a technology classroom.

We are into the fifth week of school here at the American School of Vietnam, and I’ve been busy orientating new staff to our Google Apps for Education/Moodle integration, along with Engrade online grade book and much more.  I have also had to administer about 100 new students, creating accounts for them within Moodle/GA and showing them how to use it. It’s been a fun, but hectic few weeks (all talk of school politics banned on this site). I held our first ‘Moodle Monday’ session for staff where we covered how to create courses within categories and how to edit the courses and add activities and resources. One English teacher has already set up an assignment hand-in and used glossaries in an interesting way…satisfying!

Our Mac Lab is here and it looks beautiful:

I’m not sure where to start, since I’ve decided to dust off this blog and really get some momentum going. I think I’ve got some interesting things and perspectives to contribute to the debate, whatever that debate is! Even being totally inactive for months on end, I still have all kinds of interesting people following me on Twitter – ICT people from the UK.

I hope what I have to say might be interesting because:

• I am working internationally with students whom for the vast majority English is a second language.
• I am overseeing the tools we are using for this new international school, still in its first year.
• I am working in an American school which follows the California state standards, but there are no standards for ICT! My strategy has been to use the National Educational Standards for Technology and base many of my Units on the UK schemes of work in KS3 and KS4. However, I also have the ability to be flexible around these units, miss out ones I don’t like or adapt them to be suitable.
• Currently all my classes are participating in the Student Blogging Challenge. See my students blogs all linked up here.
• I’m studying for a Masters in Educational Leadership and Management with Bath University via distance learning.

I hope to post on these issues and more in the near future. Comments welcome!

First a little update: since I started this blog I have passed my PGCE and spent one year at a British International school in Saigon. I have now left that post to become ICT Coordinator at The American School of Vietnam.

It’s an exciting time and we have only four weeks left before teachers arrive.

For school communication, student work and collaboration, we are going to use Google Apps for Education. We are also starting with Moodle, and have integrated the Google Apps module into Moodle. For our SIS we are looking closely at Open SIS. We are all agreed, as much as can be in the cloud should be in the cloud, despite the sometimes unreliable internet connection in Vietnam.

There’s a lot of training to plan and I hope to share some of these experiences over the coming weeks and months.

Wow, well I get home from a hard days slog at the gulag (well, observing Year 10s and Year 7s mainly) only to find my humble delicious slideshow is being shared around the interweb by some of the UKs premier ICT bloggers! Happy days…a basement room presentation to 15 people one day, a world wide web phenomenon the next day.

How did this happen I hear you ask?

Well, it’s a perfect example of the learning and sharing environment that Web 2.0 can provide for us. After writing the post below which explains the context for the presentation. I then posted the link to the blog to my twitter network, still a modest 40 followers. I got a comment from John Sutton of Creative ICT fame (an excellent blog). He read it, good enough I think. John then sees Mr Doug Belshaw post onto Twitter that he is doing an elearnr session on delicious. My slideshow gets thrown into the bargin. Thanks to the power of Slideshare Mr Belshaw can then embed my presentation into his presentation on elearnr. Slideshare tells me that so far 77 people have viewed my slideshow, 3 have favourited it and 2 have downloaded it. So, I am thinking to myself, it must be useful…

All this is not for the sake of showing off. It is an example of Web 2.0 POWER! Blog. Twitter. Share presentations with slideshare, embed, blog again. You love it don’t you. I do…

Thanks John and Doug.

As a part of the PGCE IT we each had to present a five minute microlesson on a topic of our choice. I chose delicious. I had a hard time narrowing it down to be honest, I had in mind teaching some beginners CSS, using WordPress as a content mangement system, using Photoshop as an educational tool, using RSS and news readers, the possibilities of Flickr….here is the presentation I ended up doing. Presentation is a little lazy.

I started using delicious years ago as a way to catagorise my old blogspot site. Having started my PGCE course, delicious has come into its own. I am spearheading an effort to get our department its own delicious account, and I may be introducing it to the year 10s at my first placement school.

To see what a PGCE IT trainee gets up to you could check out my course site. This site was adapted from a combination of three column and CSS nav bar templates I found on the web. I love messing around with that kind of thing! Check out the directed activities page to see the work done so far including a presentation on Baud, Bit Rate and Bandwidth and tutorials on using Adobe Photoshop for staff training and student tutition.

Here’s a poster I used as a focused discussion for Year 10′s studying for their OCR nationals ICT option. It was meant to be a starter but ended up being an hour long activity.

After a feedback session students wrote their own ICT acceptable use policies for the school. Some sensible ideas arose about the issues of having useful educational resources such as You Tube banned in school. It is certianly a subject that got them talking on topic.

Home from the first day of my first placement on the PGCE ICT.

It was an interesting day. Certainly I enjoyed the biting humour in the staff room at lunch time, the fantastic tongue-in-cheek cynicism that weathered secondary school teachers acquire (and need) to survive. The school is an all boys that has around a 50% A-C GCSE pass rate. Fairly typical. I am really going to have to impose on the classroom, drawing on all my experience of keeping rowdy classes of teenagers in order. However, the nature of these students is slightly different to what I have taught before. They are English. This may require new strategies. I am fearful as well that a trainee teacher is forever in his or her mentors shadow and never able or feeling able to break entirely free and flex their teaching styles as they wish to.

I have decided to do my Microlesson (a five minute expose to be presented to peeps at Uni) on delicious, in other words, social bookmarking. I’ve already been booked in to present this to two Year Ten classes who have just looked at bookmarks in browsers on their OCR course. My cross curricular presentation on the potential support ICT can provide in Geography is also nearly finished, I’ll embed it here ASAP. I have used sliderocket for this one, and have had a mixed experience. For a while I was trying to screencast a tour of Google Earth and then embed it in the presentation. My machine just does not have those kind of capabilities! GE Pro has a movie making facility but I am not paying $400 for the pleasure. I’ll just do a live tour of the software. I need that one trillion bit connection to be available through Virgin sooner rather than later…

Are there any other PGCE trainees ICT or otherwise out there? How is your course going so far?

This week I’ve been to a number of lectures, including e-safety, behaviour management, ECM (every child matters) and the new national curriculum. 

During a ‘Where have we been with the National Curriculum and where are we going’? lecture, in reply to the question ‘Skills and processes for what?’ we watched the following show:

During an afternoon discussion, I bought up with my table the fact that this showed just how important ICT was in schools today. I was met with, I think, a reluctant acceptance. One voiced an opinion that students would always need the ability to research from books and physical sources. The justification was, for example, a History trainee who would glean most of their ‘data’ from books. Me? I remained steadfast, the future is digital. All books will be available (or released in some form) online. Is (or will) the skill of researching physical sources (still be) essential? 

I’d hate to teach someone how to find something in a book using the index just to look in the index of a book and find something. Especially considering that forward thinking world institutions are already digitising their paper collections. The Library of Congress is just one example.  Meaning that rare sources contained soley within their building in a physical presence can be accessed and searched by anyone with a connection.

Teaching kids to connect, how to access online tools, how to search and evaluate information, and how to share and collaborate is the key to unlocking their future success in a digital world.