Brian Coates, our Becta Regional Advisor, visited the HT team in Northampton today to encourage us to extract the maximum benefit from the remaining time of Becta’s remit to ’inspire and lead the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning’. It was uplifting to see how Becta really are focused on making the most of their notice period.

We will be running a development event for Northamptonshire schools in September to help them to make the most of ICT within the new Ofsted framework. The Self Review Framework – wherever it ends up – will continue to provide a useful means of benchmarking the effective use of ICT while planning a path towards further progress. Combining these two elements, with Brian’s input, will equip schools to plan and implement better learning using technologies – with the resulting positive side-effect of better Ofsted inspection outcomes.

In what is probably a first in the history of Northamptonshire County Council Continuing Professional Development (CPD), the event will also be streamed live to interested staff in schools, and recorded for later reference, review and discussion. Our Better Learning using Technologies (BLT) Network will also interact with Brian via video-conference early in September. Making the cultural shift to exploit these types of communication and collaboration technologies is no longer an optional luxury. It seems to me that this sort of flexibility and expectation of sustainable value and impact should become the norm in this climate of providing ‘more for less’. In fact, higher expectations of CPD should always have been the norm!

Meetings and discussions around ICT policy and learning technologies have an air of a wake about them at the moment. The conversation ebbs and flows between memories of the achievements, missed opportunities, present realities and future challenges. The climate around ICT in education has undoubted changed but has anyone or anything really ‘died’? The unwavering faith in government circles of the importance of ICT for learning, borne out in past budgetary spending, has petered out for now. Becta and the LA support mechanisms are being dismantled with responsibility for life, the universe and practically everything being devolved in the direction of schools.

However, the remit to ‘inspire and lead the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning’ will not be a blanket novation to schools. The baton will instead be picked up more informally by many grassroots networks of educators, forward-thinking schools that share, and other interested groups and organisations that are able to facilitate, embrace and reflect the decentralised nature of what is to come.

Yesterday’s brilliant Teachmeet in Milton Keynes, the building of the BLT- and IT Managers‘ Networks in Northamptonshire, the forthcoming Naace Think Tanks on the future of ICT in education, and the launch of eduLAIT are all recent examples on my radar that  point to ongoing future vitality in the effective and innovative use of  technology for better learning. Despite recent government announcements to the contrary, the future of technologies for learning is bright – and finally in our own hands!

Image Credit – Shenghung Lin

Learning Platforms in Northamptonshire

The learning platform landscape has been changing for a number of months across Northamptonshire’s school landscape. The provision of a countywide solution by the Local Authority on behalf of schools comes to an end in August 2010. From that time onwards, the strategic and financial management for learning platform procurement and adoption returns to the decision-making mechanisms of individual schools.

By devolving grant funding back to Local Authority, schools have actually been paying for their platform provision over the life of the centrally-procured contract. However, it was the quote for next year’s provision physically dropping into the heads’ inbox a few months ago that finally drove school leadership teams to crystallize their thinking in this area and to nail their colours to the learning platform mast.

Some schools have decided to ‘stick’ and continue to build on their experience with the present provider while others are desperate to ’twist’, hopefully seizing the opportunity to choose another platform flavour to complement the implementation of their strategic school vision and aims.

A significant third group, however, does not have a clear idea whether to ‘twist’ or ‘stick’. Having not really engaged meaningfully with the learning platform agenda over the last years, some schools feel they have neither the strategic framework nor user experience to be able to make effective decisions about a learning platform in time for the new academic year.

The arrival en masse on the Northamptonshire learnscape of potential new platform providers offers choice for some schools. For the undecided however, an even thicker collective fog of information and disinformation descends with every aspirational sales-pitch.

Schools finding themselves in the valley of learning platform indecision have another option – to strategically delay making a choice. Strategic waiting is neither the same as avoiding the agenda altogether, nor is it jumping on a bandwagon for the sake of it. Learning platforms are simply tools – not a panacea for every learning and teaching challenge known to man. As such, any learning platform decision needs to be placed firmly within a school-wide vision and strategy for using technologies to make learning better. This is not an optional step. Without it, the decision to ‘stick’ or ‘twist’ learning platforms will undoubtedly lead to ‘bust’ in terms of sustainable outcomes for better learning.

So if your school is undecided about learning platforms, why not invest some time now to evaluate where ICT fits in to your vision for teaching and learning? A school community with a common strategic vision for technologies, is a school well positioned to decide for itself what is required to make it a platform for great learning.

Leaving Silverstone Study Centre for pastures new was a difficult decision. In so many ways, managing and teaching there has been the best post of my career, rewarding and challenging in equal measure.

However, the opportunity arose to develop and manage Northamptonshire County Council’s Harnessing Technologies (HT) strategy as it relates to schools and school improvement. The prospect fired up my imagination and whet my creative appetite to see the Northamptonshire schools landscape, with all its formal and informal facets, transformed into networks where all children and young people make effective and appropriate use of technologies to learn better – for themselves, their families and their communities.

The Dream HT Team

On 1st September I was appointed Harnessing Technologies Manager (Schools) to work alongside three other managers, each with a slightly different focus and function in the development and implementation of the HT strategy in Northamptonshire.

Tony Sheppard, of Grumbledook fame, is the HT Technical Manager (Technical) and has written his own take on his ‘technical’ role in the team on his blog. I first came across Tony back in 2006 and have always been impressed by his ability and enthusiasm at translating technical ‘geek-speak’ into something that can be understood and – most importantly –  put into action by other educators. His wide network of on- and offline contacts across a wide range of fields make him an effective channel for new ideas and approaches. Some people have said that Twitter is their personal Google. For me, Tony Sheppard is my personal search engine of choice.

Brenda Scoble, the HT Manager (CYP), is pulling together the strategy for the Children’s and Young People’s Directorate and its related agencies within the local authority. She has a wealth of experience within Northamptonshire, knows and is liked by everyone, and has a keen handle of how the political (with a small ‘p’) mechanisms work within the county. Her ability to assimilate complex data and strategic information into documents and reports that inspire ‘vision’ is quite beyond me. She has, however, promised to teach me how it is done!

Stan Davies completes the team as HT Manager (Contracts). Our team manages the provision for schools of broadband connectivity and of our county-wide learning platform solution. Stan never looks pressured as he deals with the management of these and other enormously complicated and time-consuming contracts and projects. His ability to tie the crucial business processes to the overall vision of the team ensures that there is an overall coherence to the strategy.

The BLT Challenge

Despite the clear talents and abilities of the folks mentioned above, the Harnessing Technologies Team will never be able to produce on its own the desired transformational outcomes for young people. A specific technology or software will not automagically make learning better either. Our broadband connectivity in Northants is very effective on the whole, as is our county-wide enable learning platform that provides the potential for schools to engage parents, make more effective use of staff time, support management and leadership, and motivate, enthuse and excite children and young people to continue their learning wherever they are.

However, the potential of these and of the many other technologies that could improve the Northants learnscape will only be fulfilled for all learners through the development of networks and communities of learning, made up of people – lifelong learners – willing to share their knowledge, experiences and ideas of Better Learning using Technologies. BLT networks – without the bacon, lettuce or tomato – will be the key drivers for change and need to feature prominently in our HT strategy. Areas that work in ‘silos’ or as ‘islands’ may produce better learning using technologies for some in the short term but as the rapid pace of technological change continues unabated, only a wider network possesses the capacity to harness – and the agility to embrace – technological opportunities to make learning better for all.

Learnscapes

Jay Cross and others have coined  ’learnscaping’ to describe the nurture of  a complex environment conducive to informal learning in the world of business. I think that it has implications and application in educational settings for all types of learning with technologies, formal or otherwise.  Learnscaping is summed up in the following diagram.

With apologies to Cross, these are my priorities for improving the learnscape using technologies in Northamptonshire schools and beyond:

• removing obstacles to using technologies for better learning;
• seeding communities of learning using technologies;
• increasing effective use of bandwidth;
• engaging conversations;
• growing BLT (Better Learning using Technologies) networks.

Each of the above will be the subject of separate blog posts but one thing is certain – learnscapes are indeed complex. Northamptonshire is no different in that respect but as a ‘node’ in emerging networks, the Harnessing Technologies team is already beginning to connect and build relationships across a variety of spheres of influence. Tony Sheppard’s Technical Champions‘ network is an effective example of this progress. A major step for me as HT Manager (Schools) is to begin to build a grass-roots BLT network of educators and other stakeholders interested in making learning better using technologies. Let the learnscaping begin!