"In class, I have to power down"

I read this article by David Puttnam from the Guardian online website as suggested in our ICT classes. It was published in May 2007 and discusses the current situation for school children in relation to ICT provision. While outside school they are using digital technology at a much higher level and doing more interesting things, this completely changes on entering the classroom. I agree that this is clearly evident in the current experience of primary schools I have. There just appears to be a different culture on views of education compared to the rest of modern society. I was surprised and impressed the first time I saw electronic registration in a school, but when compared with 'the outside world' it is so insignificant with now such commonplace events as online check-in.

Children's use of ICT outside school is often considered by both the children themselves and society at large, as play. The learning that is occurring through such activities as computer games, setting up websites, is ignored. Hence, according to the article, the need and opportunity for schools. The education system can build on this interest and enjoyment experienced by children and develop curriculum and life skills knowledge.

A key issue that struck me was: "How do we maximise the educational benefits of that passion, without, of course, killing it stone dead?" If this question could easily be answered, teaching would become a much more straight forward profession! I feel there is a psyche to overcome that something that is educational is just not fun. I am reminded of reluctant trips to museums with the mentality that it was going to be boring because it was to do with learning. Fortunately I was often proved wrong but I think the negative expectation was still always there.

I think it shows the progress of my ICT education that this article does not seem to say anything new to me - it is merely confirming all I have been hearing and reading on the subject. Puttnam concludes "There have been millions of words spoken and written on the subject over the past decade. But the big leap forward still has not happened." If we are aware of this theory of the benefits of increasing ICT in classes, why isn't it happening. I am led to the same conclusion that it is down to teachers' attitudes. Having been educated in a predominantly pre-computer asystem, they are reluctant to make the changes. But one generation will have to make the change, and of course, that is our job as current PGCE students and the purpose of this ICT course. I best keep working on it then.

My Use of ICT - Part 3: Internet

edit - 14/12/08 - podcasts, amazon, YouTube.

I have decided to try record some more general uses I make of the Internet as a general record which I can refer back to in the future to hopefully note the advances I have made.

• I use a laptop and have a wi-fi hard disk and printer/photocopier/scanner
• I use Mozilla Firefox which I enjoy because of the Bookmarks Toolbar with the drop down RSS feeds and because typing into the address bar (not sure of the lingo) takes you to the first google result (it unreasonably irritates me that i have to type www and remember the address when I am back on Internet explorer.) And I love tabs - i know that's no longer exclusive to Firefox (was it ever?) but I feel it's an essential part of using the Internet.
  
• I check my Gmail emails using Mozilla Thunderbird on my laptop. I like having emails from certain addresses going straight to certain folders. Since getting a Gmail address this summer I have barely used it as a web-based function and so haven't got to grips with the user friendly features I have heard about. Disappointed that I am so far unable to access my Southampton emails using Thunderbird - anyone got any suggestions?!
  
• I often listen to the radio via the Internet as unfortunately my radio is somewhat broken with frequently just one volume level - loud!
• Podcasts. I have only started downloading podcasts since I got my macbook and had iTunes which I had not previously used. The first podcast I subscribed to was Mark Kermode's film reviews. Previously I had listened live or used the listen again facility online. Now that I have an iPhone (see My Use of ICT - Part 4, for more info) I have tried to subscribe to a few more to entertain me when I am out and about.
  
• I haven't really used BBC iplayer or the like much yet. Last year at college the Internet usage agreement didn't allow it. This term in Southampton I just haven't got into the habit yet. Although I watch a lot of TV at home, I have never had one at university, and don't appear to miss it too much (DVD box sets manage to occupy my time sufficiently!)
• iGoogle - I was introduced to this last year on an ICT course at university and I did set my own one up, and although I would look at it occasionally, I did not use it much and now not at all. I found my bookmarks toolbar had everything I needed to get at quickly enough.
• Wikipedia - this is a website i absolutely love and can spend a long time getting distracted on! It is my first place to look for any bit of information I might be after and of course then I find out so much I never knew I never knew by following the many many hyper-links! I went to a talk earlier in the year by Jimmy Wales, co-/founder of Wikipedia. It was an interesting insight into the whole wikimedia organisation. I was one of the few people in the room who had not edited a wikipedia page - and I still never have. Maybe someday soon I will reach that milestone!
• amazon - very useful! I bought the PGCE course books from there using the 'buy used' facility. I also recently bought ink cartridges through amazon and frustratingly what arrived was not what i ordered. But I did find the return system efficient and the correct one arrived pretty quickly.
• YouTube - not a huge user. Think i have uploaded one video onto there, before I learn about facebook's ability to do videos. I will use it if there is a song I want to listen to that i don't own. I have been impressed how often it has been used in our university classes, and I am excited by the prospect of doing similar in my classroom. also, something I would like to get to know - TeacherTube.
• I have been doing Internet banking for quite a few years.
  

Future Internet use: there are a few aspects of the Internet that I hope to start using.

• delicious - we were introduced to this in an ICT class. I really like the idea of it and hope to start using it soon - just need to practice and get into the habit I think.
• skype - phoning people using computers? I don't fully understand yet but I know friends around the world who use it and it would be great to be in touch with them!
  

Well, those are my initial thoughts - I will come back to this post in time as I think of more.

My Use of ICT - Part 2: Photos

I was given my first digital camera for my 21st birthday and I have been snappy happy ever since. I love taking photos to have memories of all the happy times and with a digital camera I see no reason to limit the number... until I see the annoyed looks from my friends. I have been influenced by my Mum, who has kept fantastically labelled photo albums right from when we were born; they are lined up in our study and often looked through when we have friends round or reminisce about certain happenings. My friend M, from university, introduced me to a more artistic way of taking photos. We were walking on the hills together and she was stopping to take photos of trees from all angles in various lights. I don't pretend to be anywhere close to her yet, but my iphoto albums now contain numerous photos of the same flowers, rivers, hills and trees.

I am still a big believer in printing out my digital photos. I don't find it satisfying enough just to have them on the computer. Probably 2-3 times a year I have a printing session. I spend several hours usually in front of the tv looking through the albums and putting the photos to print into a nice separate folder. I then take a memory stick down to boots and get them printed in 24 hours - usually a little over 150 photos. I haven't really investigated any online printing sources yet - think i would need a lot of personal recommendation before I took the plunge there.

If I take a fair few photos at an event with several friends, I tend to put the photos up on facebook. That was my main use of facebook for the first three years, though over the last few months I have been using it more to keep in touch with friends. I was wondering about doing a facebook post, but really, that's said it all!

The real purpose of this posting is to talk about flickr. We were introduced to this in our first IT session at uni. I had only really come across it once before when someone at a friend's party put her pictures from the event up on it. Although I had set up my account during the session, it wasn't until tonight that I attempted to get photos on. I think it is going to take me a while to get the hang of this and as often with ICT the more you use, the more you get out of it.

I am still very unsure about how others get to see my photos. I like the idea of my family being able to look at the photos I have taken - I have taken to posting (the snail mail way) memory sticks back and forth with my mum to share our photos. I thought there must be a better way to manage it and this might just be the answer! I am a little concerned currently that people will have to create a yahoo account to be able to view them and I don't believe my Mum or grandparents will be willing to do that. I wonder if that depends on my privacy settings. I know I have looked at friends photos on picassa online without having to have password. Something else I am interested in is whether I can publish photos on something web-based straight from iphoto. Hmmmm, more research and practice needed indeed!

Here are some things I have learnt tonight which will help me keep track of my flickr progress:

• Leave plenty of time while my photos are uploading.
• Choose which ones i want to upload beforehand - it can be hard to tell from the thumbnails.
• Descriptions can be easily added at any point from 'my photostream page'.
• The same tags can be added to all photos added, or can be individualised.
• Having read through Creative Commons I set up the copyright as 'Attribution-ShareAlike'.
• Privacy is set as only friends and family can see this photo.
• EDIT i changed the settings on 6 photos to 'anyone can see this photo' as a test.
  
• Photos can be edited quite a bit when on flickr using picnik though this is not something I tested tonight.
• Photostream seems to be the general home place of all photos i have uploaded.
  
• I have set up my photostream to show medium and sets.
• Sets seem to be like individual albums. I put all my QE2 photos into one set.
• Can map the location of the photos.
  

This blog really has been a record of my learning on flickr in action. I shall hope to write a follow up blog at some point stating my success at using flickr to share my photos. Hopefully then I shall have a better idea of how it can be a useful tool for the children in my class and to have our own flickr account of class photos. A current concern is still the privacy issues surrounding photos of children.

Note - an hour and a half for this post and that's before the spell checking and rereading - must become more efficient at blogging!

EDIT 20th November: I thought of one other photo related thing to write about. Earlier this year I used one true media to make a couple of photo collages as birthday gifts. I got to know about one true media through seeing it used on various blogs and decided to have a go myself, as i was, as there slogan says 'wowed'! I really enjoyed making them - though as always with such things, spent ages on them, tweaking timings, orders, transitions etc. A few years previously my sister and I used PowerPoint to make a presentation of photos for my Mum's birthday. We scanned in photos from throughout our lives. We spent weeks on it and I think the presentation lasted about 15 minutes!

Here's a new test for me. I am going to try post one of the one true media montages into this blog!

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Wow, I wasn't sure what was going to happen there, but I think it has worked. I just had to copy and paste a code into this writing and although it looks like some very complicated load of writing - when i click preview it appears to be there. So, fingers crossed! I think children in school would get a lot out of making montages like this from the photos from their school year. It's something that they can really personalise and be as creative as they can. A good project to tackle.

My Use of ICT - Part 1: Blogging

A sensible place to start an ICT blog, but still valid as a 6th post I feel. While mentally preparing this entry, I realised just how much ICT there is in my life and so this will become a several part blog entry.

I have never blogged before till this trainee teacher blog, but I am not a complete newby to this world. I follow quite a few blogs here and there and like having the RSS feeds up on my firefox page so I can procrastinate while working to see if any have been added to. Most of the blogs I follow are of people recording about their daily lives, but who are experiencing some out of the ordinary life event which gives a reason for blogging, often medically related or temporary travel experiences. These blogs are usually written to get the latest news across as soon as possible and/or in a conversational tone. I 'blame' this for the casual tone of my blog; I have my chatty diary writing brain in gear as opposed to a work related mentality and hence don't spend as long planning or reviewing what I have written. (Although there must be a fair bit thinking and editing, or else why are these taking me such a long time!!) I feel I should maybe start reading some more 'intellectual big issue' blogs before I begin typing here.

There are a few specific blogs that I would like to mention with a slight link to education. Sarah Outen is a friend I met at my undergraduate university (hers was the first blog I was able to follow of someone I personally knew!). She is a fantastic and crazy person who will be rowing solo across the Indian Ocean next year. She is keeping a blog of her training and preparations for the row and intends to keep the blog updated while she is on the ocean. She has an education section on her site and I do hope to be able to get the class I am teaching to follow along with her journey. Plenty of cross-curricular links available: geography, biology, English, PE.

The second blog I mention is both the record of an individual's health journey and a well thought through resource for strangers to refer to. Baldy's Blog was started by Adrian Sudbury, a reporter for the Huddersfield Examiner, near the start of his journey with leukemia. He recorded the effects of the treatment he received and I particularly remember the detail he gave on his experiences with Graft Vs Host Disease for those who may suffer similarly too. He later started a campaign to make blood, bone marrow, and organ donation education compulsory for sixth formers. I have been very moved by Adrian's determination and this is a cause I feel very passionately about. I am currently thinking of ways I may be able to use my future position as a Primary School teacher to help with this great work. This is possibly the only instance when being a secondary teacher seems appealing to me!

EDIT: well, that was embarrassing (good job I spell-checked as had only put one r in there which would have doubled the embaRRassment!), though only for myself as no one else reads my blog. I just went back to look at this post and found out the Baldy's Blog link took me to the Sarah Outen website. Must investigate if there is a way to check the links before actually publishing.

ICT in SBT1 School - Serial Week

So, having spent a very enjoyable first week in my first school based training school, I feel it's about time to get some of my ICT reflections down on paper... in a manner of speaking!

First off, I should say that this was not a normal week at this school in terms of ICT. I believe usually each class in the school has two hours of ICT a week by a specialist ICT teacher, while the class teacher has PPA time. During the week I was in school, there were a large number of teachers absent on various courses, and so the ICT teacher understandably stood in as a class supply teacher.

The school has a separate ICT suite which I did get to go in for a Spanish lesson. The Spanish teacher used a powerpoint display on the interactive white board (IWB) and the children had space to dance to a song they were learning. There were also two computers in the entrance area/art area/tray area/general-outside-of-classroom-area to the year one classrooms but I didn't see these switched on during the week I was there.

Sadly I didn't get to see the interactive white board used in the class I was observing in. 'My' class teacher was only in the first two days, and when one external supply teacher tried to link up the teacher laptop to the IWB to use some Guy Fawkes related website, she, the TA and I all tried but failed! One of the pitfalls of technology: not knowing which wires to connect where! This is something I will be asking the class teacher about on my next serial days. I was able to look on the websites on the teacher's laptop to find some of the answers to the questions the children were asking about Guy Fawkes. I guess ideally we would be getting the children to do this research, rather than myself, but I expect the reading would be above the level of year 1 children.

One consideration of IWB use was brought to my attention during the week. A step/bench/seat was constructed in the Year 1 and Reception classrooms below the IWB as the boards had previously been placed too high for the children to reach to use them effectively in an interactive capacity!

I saw the teacher laptop used in two other instances during the week. The register was taken morning and afternoon via the computer. I didn't investigate this and will add it to the list for my next days in school.

The other use of the laptop was for playing music. The class had a 'tidy up song'. The children knew when the teacher started playing this song on the laptop, it was time to start clearing away and to be sitting down on the carpet by the time the song finished. Also, the laptop was always used to play the songs during the THRASS (teaching handwriting, reading and spelling skills) lesson. The children (and I!) loved dancing to these songs, each based around one phoneme (a demo of the /j/ sound we were doing last week; i often found myself singing this song!). I hadn't previously seen laptops used for playing music in other schools; it has always been with CD players. My initial reaction was that a CD player was the natural thing to use to play music in school. But reflecting on my own life, I haven't had a CD player for probably about 6 years; any CDs get copied straight onto the computer. I will have to start adjusting my thoughts on what is 'natural' for schools, to make the adjustments from how school was when I was a pupil to the potential that is out there now in all aspects of teaching and learning.

Each class at the school has a digital camera. In a couple of instances during the week the teaching assistant got the camera out to photograph the class in action. She is keeping a book record of the year in the class and has been printing the photos out. The book is kept at the entrance to the classroom and the parents are able to see it when they drop off or collect the children. I think this is a great idea and as I am a keen photo album keeper, I would like to do this in any class I may have in the future too. I will try have the flickr (or the like) collection of photos as well, but i still think it's nice to have the hand held evidence to look through as well.

The final use of ICT I can think of to record, was a special computer that had recently been purchased for an SEN child with Global Development Delay. It had a touch screen which has apparently been a fantastic step forward as he was unable to use the mouse. I often saw him sitting at the computer tapping on the screen when appropriate. Apparently he has been enjoying it so much that they are having to find ways to restrict the time he spends on it or he would do nothing else!

For what I had felt was a very limited view of ICT last week, I seem to have managed to spend a long time writing about it. Overall, I would say I experienced a very adult lead use of ICT but I anticipate seeing more child-centred activities once in school at a 'normal' time.

One last unrelated thing. Received an email today about using hyperlinks. Thought I should try this again, as I got a bit confused doing this on the group wiki. So fingers crossed here's a nice elegant link to the blackboard.

Posting a pictue

Now attempting to get some photos onto this post. Decided to add some that I took at my introductory school placement in Worcestershire in September giving a snapshot of ICT in the classroom.


I like the juxtaposition of the old and the new in this year three classroom. The blackboard next to the interactive white board with the mobile whiteboard in front.


The teacher's desk in a Year 1 classroom. I saw her using ict a lot: looking things up during break, using the IWB for various things in lessons, and using the cd player at times.

Well, that was harder than i was expecting - I'm clearly not as competent with computers as I'd hoped. Took me quite a few minutes to get the photos in the right place. At least I hope they're in the right place. The preview feature didn't show the same as how it came out for my last post, so fingers crossed!

As a little teaser for what's coming up soon: reflections on the use of ICT (or lack thereof) at my SBT1 school during this observation week; thoughts on my own use of ICT.

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

These are my reflections for our first directed activity reading two articles by Marc Prensky. (lost the formatting when copying and pasting, only added a little back in. Something to contemplate - maybe that has shown my digital immigrant credentials!)

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

These two articles by Marc Prensky discuss the difference in thinking and learning experienced by those growing up immersed in the digital age (digital natives) and those who have had to learn to use digital technology later in life (digital immigrants). Below are highlighted quotes from the article summarizing the message, with some comments.

Prensky implies the view that you are either one of the other, native or immigrant, and yet I feel confused as to which I am. I was born in 1984 and fully remember a time before mobile phones, when you had to carefully arrange a time and place to meet in advance. I also remember going from looking up facts in our children’s encyclopedia at home, to looking up on Encarta on the home computer and then on to google, wikipedia… We never had a games console at home but I did become rather addicted to lemmings and tetris and would fall asleep with images of playing cards on the computer going round my brain during exam time from playing free cell or spider solitaire too often as a revision distraction. Overall I suppose I would assign myself as a digital native given the majority of my life has been immersed in this technology.

Overall I found the implications of the articles worrying. I support the general view that children today need to be taught in new ways that will engage the minds of these digital natives. But having been through an education system implemented by digital immigrants, I fear I will feel a conflict with the ‘proper’ (traditional) ways of teaching I have experienced, and am at a loss as to what new approaches can be implemented. Reflecting logically though, for there to be a change, one generation educated in a digital immigrant system will have to become the teachers in a digital native manner, and this course this year is to give me the direction for this style of teaching. It does strike me as an exciting time to be entering the education profession; hopefully we shall be ideally situated to implement this change.

This being said, in some senses I do feel I may have a slight advantage compared to others of my age. My father works for RM, according to their website: ‘the leading supplier of ICT to UK Education’. He would often bring new software home for us to try out and play on. I am not sure whether I saw this as education tool or a playtime tool, probably somewhere in the middle, which I guess it was.

One immediate concern that stems from these readings is the implication that all pupils today will have had access to and be fully immersed in digital technology. This cannot be true and will we be disadvantaging pupils from certain socio-economic backgrounds by teaching to digital natives. This indicates the importance of ICT lessons in and of themselves for Primary Children as well as implementing ICT into all subjects.

I do take a sense that the articles are an attempt at the justification for playing computer games. I also dislike the inference that certain digital immigrant practices are ‘wrong’. Just as the need to print off documents to read or edit them. Is there no consideration made for the effect on the eyes of staring at a computer screen?


Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants
From On the Horizon (MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001)
© 2001 Marc Prensky

Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.

the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century.

Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.

today‟s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.

Digital Natives. Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.

Those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology are, and always will be compared to them, Digital Immigrants.

our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.

Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to
parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when
networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to “serious” work. (Does any of this sound familiar?)

But Digital Immigrants typically have very little appreciation for these new skills that the Natives have acquired and perfected through years of interaction and practice.

First, our methodology. Today‟s teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students.

Second, our content. “Legacy” content and “Future” content. “Legacy” content includes reading, writing, arithmetic, logical thinking, understanding the writings and ideas of the past, etc – all of our “traditional” curriculum. “Future” content is to a large extent, not surprisingly, digital and technological. But while it includes software, hardware, robotics, nanotechnology, genomics, etc. it also includes the ethics, politics, sociology, languages and other things that go with them.

As educators, we need to be thinking about how to teach both Legacy and Future content in the language of the Digital Natives

Adapting materials to the language of Digital Natives has already been done successfully. My own preference for teaching Digital Natives is to invent computer games to do the job, even for the most serious content.

Although most attempts at “edutainment” to date have essentially failed from both the education and entertainment perspective, we can – and will, I predict – do much better.

We need to invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all levels, using our students to guide us. The process has already begun – I know college professors inventing games for teaching subjects ranging from math to engineering to the Spanish Inquisition. We need to find ways of publicizing and spreading their successes.

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II:
Do They Really Think Differently?

From On the Horizon (MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 6, December 2001) © 2001 Marc Prensky


over 10,000 hours playing videogames, over 200,000 emails and instant messages sent and received; over 10,000 hours talking on digital cell phones; over 20,000 hours watching TV (a high percentage fast speed MTV), over 500,000 commercials seen—all before the kids leave college.

neuroplasticity. Based on the latest research in neurobiology, there is no longer any question that stimulation of various kinds actually changes brain structures and affects the way people think, and that these transformations go on throughout life.
This concurs with the small amount of reading I have previously done on the subject: ‘The Brain’s Behind It’, Alistair Smith.

people who grow up in different cultures do not just think about different things, they actually think differently. The environment and culture in which people are raised affects and even determines many of their thought processes.

And while we haven’t yet directly observed Digital Natives’ brains to see whether
they are physically different (such as musicians’ appear to be) the indirect evidence for this is extremely strong.

“Linear thought processes that dominate educational systems now can actually retard learning for brains developed through game and Web surfing processes on the computer.” 22

Their attention spans are not short for games, for example, or for anything else that actually interests them. As a result of their experiences Digital Natives crave interactivity—an immediate response to their each and every action. Traditional schooling provides very little of this compared to the rest of their world

Research done for Sesame Street reveals that children do not actually watch television continuously, but “in bursts.” They tune in just enough to get the gist and be sure it makes sense. In one key experiment, half the children were shown the program in a room filled with toys. As expected, the group with toys was distracted and watched the show only about 47 percent of the time as opposed to 87 percent in the group without toys. But when the children were tested for how much of the show they remembered and understood, the scores were exactly the same. “We were led to the conclusion that the 5-year-olds in the toys group were attending quite strategically, distributing their attention between toy play and viewing so that they looked at what was for them the most informative part of the program. The strategy was so effective that the children could gain no more from increased attention.” 27
Fascinating – does that mean we should no longer tell children off for fidgeting and appearing not to pay attention to the teacher? What about distracting other pupils – is that also not a problem. When I was in a KS3 classroom, a teacher kept two children after class and explained that she was happy for them to doodle quietly at the back of their books during lessons, rather than distract the rest of the class by talking. I found this very strange but the teacher said she understood the need to be doing something if that would help them concentrate more. The pupils were very surprised too and couldn’t really believe the teacher was allowing them to do this – new to their way of learning too.

In our twitch-speed world, there is less and less time and opportunity for reflection, and this development concerns many people.

Digital Natives accustomed to the twitch-speed, multitasking, random-access, graphics-first, active, connected, fun, fantasy, quick-payoff world of their video games, MTV, and Internet are bored by most of today’s education, well meaning as it may be. But worse, the many skills that new technologies have actually enhanced (e.g., parallel processing, graphics awareness, and random access)—which have profound implications for their learning—are almost totally ignored by educators.

The trick, though, is to make the learning games compelling enough to actually be used in their place. They must be real games, not just drill with eye-candy, combined creatively with real content.