Passing the technology baton… to grassroots networks.

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

Naace, Email & Blogs.

As a member of Naace, I am a part of the email discussion lists. Naace members send emails to the list and they are distributed to all the other members who have subscribed and they have a discussion of issues, bouncing emails back and forth. Some clearly get annoyed by the amount of emails they receive from the list but I actually love dipping into the views and expertise that regularly drops into my inbox.

I can’t link though to any of this brilliant commentary and vision from the educational ICT world in the UK because it happens behind closed doors without hyperlinks. I find it hard to get involved myself in the discussions because it seems somehow seems a waste to allow the records of these interactions to disappear into email inboxes, never to see the light of day again. You would not believe the extent of knowledge and discussion that is demonstrated for but a fleeting moment. Don’t try and look it up on Google. It is not there. It is at the bottom of an email box somewhere.

I genuinely don’t understand why these same members who expend so much energy and evident brainpower in writing about important issues, don’t just post it to their own blog and get people to comment or respond. That way they would have a lasting record of their ideas and interactions. Furthermore, the world at large could benefit from their knowledge and expertise. For me, this dovetails with the description of Naace on their website.

Naace is the professional association for those concerned with advancing education through the appropriate use of information and communications technology (ICT).

NaaceBlogs is open for Naace members to create their own blogs and let the open conversations begin. The debate about the future of ICT as a subject, or the value of touch-typing has recently produced some great debate behind closed doors. Unfortunately, that’s probably where it will stay.

Kids talking about blogs…

I’ve been busy over at my NaaceBlog gathering ideas for my blogging session at the 2006 Naace Conference. I thought I would ask my eight- and ten-year-old sons about their blogging and what they thought about moderation and other such issues.
The interview can be downloaded below. It’s about 2 MB and 12 minutes long and features me at my most inarticulate. It was impromtu after all. They make some interesting points though. It is interesting that my ten year is more worried about giving out his personal details for fear of receiving junk email rather than cyber-stalkers. I like his views on dealing with naughtiness on blogs – namely talking to the criminal about how they can learn from the naughty things they have done on their blog – as well as severely punishing them

Kids Blogging Interview

Naace Blogger

I forgot to mention that we already have our first proper NaaceBlogs blogger. Its my old mate Gareth Davies. According to James Farmer:

Excellent new edublog, …lots of interesting stuff ranging from Jam to “Stop the excuses: Children’s ICT Charter”

I wouldn’t disagree and will continue to heap on the pressure to ensure that he continues blogging

Naace Conference

Naace is the professional association for those concerned with advancing education through the appropriate use of information and communications technology (ICT). The association was established in 1984 and has become the key influential professional association for those working in ICT in Education. (Naace Website)

I am speaking at this year’s Naace conference that takes place at the beginning of March in Torquay. I always enjoy waxing lyrical about the potential of blogs but it will be especially interesting to see what the cream of the educational ICT professionals in the UK have to say about them. With that in mind, James and I have set up NaaceBlogs to give all the members of Naace a chance to create a blog and use it before, during and after the conference. A conference blog will hopefully be updated during the event and delegates will have the opportunity to email photos to a photo blog using their mobile phone cameras or laptops.

A number of Naace members are already blogging but exactly how many I do not know. Perhaps this conference will be an opportunity to quantify already existing Naace bloggers and glue together some feeds from their blogs. All in all I am very excited by this opportunity. I have created my own NaaceBlog to prepare and document the whole experience from preparation to post-mortem Feel free to offer your pearls of wisdom.

All this happens against the backdrop of Terry Freedman’s extremely interesting article ‘Why British teachers won’t blog’. Terry is Vice Chair of the Naace Executive Committee and right on the money with his sober analysis. However all is not lost as he ‘is hoping to be instrumental in spreading good practice and inspiring teachers to “have a go” with these new tools through the medium of a booklet..’

If anyone can then Terry can! I just hope he is as good at mobilising the Naace Bloggers