Thanks Gareth

I’ve just picked this up from Gareth, who has always been a delight to work with. Thank you so much for your encouragement and I look forward to seeing you at Silverstone soon. I knew there was a poet somewhere inside that ICT guru! I dare you to perform it;-)

His blog remains a must-read!

What do consultants REALLY make?

Terry asks whether a passionate poet like Taylor Mali performing ‘What Teachers Make’ can

… make a difference, to anyone or anything? I’m inclined to think not, especially for a UK audience, where we tend to understate everything.

That’s just the point. Here in the UK we understate everything including the excellence in our classrooms and schools. That is not something of which we should be proud or a status quo that we should want to maintain. A bloody window into a bit more grassroots passion might just be the transformative antidote to the insipid reputation of teaching among the general population as a whole.

This is not a rant about Terry -far from it – he is one of the good guys

The post just resonates with me because I have spent three years making extensive use of the Taylor Mali poem to try and get teachers to realise how crucial they are to the whole process of transforming education in 21st century.

Mali has made a difference to 160 people so far, inspiring them to teach. I wonder how many of the educational advice or consultancy community can boast that kind of influence? My personal answer to that question is why I am returning to teaching – a place where I feel I really can make a difference.

Josie Fraser – Consultant!

I could probably count on one two hands the number of blog/web2.0 consultant-types that I think would effect positive change within the realities of educational settings. That is not to say that there are not many more competent and effective consultants out there. I just have not had the pleasure of meeting and working with them yet

To my list I can add Josie Fraser who is definitely one of the good guys (or gals!) All the very best Josie on you foray into independent consultancy

Josie’s consultancy site is over at www.josiefraser.com and her new blog is here.

Freakonomics

‘Freakonomics’ by the economist Steven Levitt and the journalist Stephen Dubner is proving an enthralling read. It’s a book that asks questions and uses the information in the world about us to get at the heart of what’s happening under the surface of everyday life. The questions are engaging in themselves. For example:

What do estate agents and the Ku Klux Klan have in common?

Why do dugs dealers live with their mothers?

The Freakonomics Blog is a treat too, complete with downloadable teacher- and study guide.

The explanation of information asymmetries and the effect of the internet on them is enlightening. There are applications in there to be gleaned by educational consultants/advisors, and teachers for that matter. Many consultants still rely on an information asymetry that the Web 2.0 internet world is making more and more difficult to maintain.

What then is the role of the consultant/advisor? The future is a ‘consultancy 2.0′ and it is slowly beginning to take shape in my own mind. Many will not want to go there. Of that you can be sure!

I recognise that people much more talented than me have been grappling with these issues but this ramble is a marker for me to start gathering my own thoughts on the subject. It is also the only time I’ve found myself first in a google search – Consultancy 2.0. Perhaps I’m about to coin a phrase You heard it here first

Digital Doodling

During my keynote yesterday at the Portsmouth Virtual Learning – Future ICT Conference. I handed out my camera and encouraged folks to take photos of whatever took their fancy, passing the camera along the rows while I was speaking. The results of this ‘digital doodling’ were really interesting and give another take on proceedings. I later uploaded the results to Flickr which demonstrated nicely the relationship between creativity and Web 2.0 tools.

Delegates were also encouraged to take photos with their cameraphones and post them to the conference blog.

Click on the photo to view the whole set as a slideshow.

The Age of Unreason.

Terry Freedman writes a thought-provoking and challenging article which bemoans the lack of educational evaluation of the latest innovations.

...if you call yourself an educationalist, you have to go a step or two further than just mentioning some great new “tool”: you have a responsibility, in my opinion, to evaluate it from the point of view of how it will actually work in practice

For me the problem lies not in the evaluation of the latest software innovations but in the lack of real implementation at the chalkface. Most consultants, researchers, lecturers and other educational folks that make up the ‘educationalists’ category tend to be great on the cutting-edge ideas but weak on their concrete application at the chalkface. This is something that I struggle with all the time as an independent consultant and is what ultimately drives me back into the classroom on a regular basis.

The real antidote to falling into the ‘trap’ that Terry outlines is to ensure that teachers are at the heart of grassroots innovation rather than always being the recipients of top-down advice in a sort of web 2.0 deficiency model. The complementary consultancy to this approach involves educationalists with their cutting-edge ideas resolving to put their ‘money where their mouth is’, trying out their offerings within the realities of the classroom. That would give most something to evaluate. Forget Web 2.0 – this is Consultancy 2.0