#SILP2012 Participants discuss low-cost, high impact learning strategies
The Strategic ICT Leadership Programme 2012 kicked-off at the Innovation Centre, Bradford on Friday morning. Over 30 teachers and school leaders shared their ideas about the proposed new curriculum and new Ofsted and Raise Online requirements.
A particular focus was put on the work of the Sutton Trust who have identified some strands of high-impact classroom practice, and teachers discussed in detail how learning technologies could be used to support effective feedback, metacognition, peer-assisted-learning and home learning.
Examples of best practice were provided by SEN, Primary and Secondary colleagues and all participants pledged to contribute to a blog and prepare a piece of action research to share at a dedicated teachmeet event in July.
Dr Andrea Cullen from Bradford University joined our discussions with regard to co-designing some Masters Level modules to reflect teachers’ needs and priorities.
Part two in April will concentrate on how learning technologies might support assessment, enquiry-based learning, and the use of Deep Data for early intervention.
Colleagues, please click through the link in the title of this post, introduce yourselves briefly in the space below, and join in with some of our discussions over coming weeks. See you in April.
Hi folks,
Please introduce yourselves here and tell us what elements of AfL you are focussing on as a result of part one of the course. Thanks loads, Robert
I found the day extremely useful and came away with lots of ideas to introduce into my school. The main ones are listed below:
1. Invite parents in to demonstrate how to use computer systems safely, effectively and know the virtual environment their child is socialing in.
2. Consider using twitter as a tool to communicate with parents
3. Invite Steve Dale and co-workers to deliver a themed day in school to a group of year 8′s using modern technology (ie. Ipads).
4. Twitter for students (in house system so it can be controlled)
5. To develop collaborative planning for the new curriculm
I really like this list of actions Denise. You can arrange theme days direct through Robert and Steve or through the Innovation Centres. We deliver in your school or in the centres – a day out is always engaging.
I does seem like collaborative planning was mentioned by a number of people and perhaps we should set up a local group?
Hi if you are using twitter in school I would suggest using Twiducate http://www.twiducate.com/
I jumped the gun Friday and left a comment on another blog :-{
before I spotted this. I’m a secondary head of ICT in wakefield @mjowchs on twitter.
As well as bashing forward making use of new technologies we have to keep a firm grip on the way we are measured and the changes courtesy of Mr Gove are at best unclear and the muddied waters are somewhat slow in settling to reveal the view. Our school has been successful teaching a skewed lower ability intake to perform just above National average, including Maths and English. OCR Nationals have been the mainstay of ICT and with a near 100% pass rate I will have a tough time convincing SLT that this will not continue under the new regime. Some of the new Specification makes for an interesting time but the exam is going to make many of our students go pale and the results make SLT paler. BTEC has the edge over OCR/Cambridge with no need for the spread sheet or Database unit but what the programming unit will end up looking like in reality I have yet to discover. Any thoughts ?
I think a lot of schools will have a surprise shortly. SLT have been used to getting 4 GCSE equivalents from vocational qualifications and using these to bump up the schools overall points score.
The new specs will be lot more rigorous and we need to start the ball rolling now by telling SLT this as often as possible. We nee to look carefully at the specs of the different boards. For example CIDA and DIDA appear to be around for a while and are submitting new specs http://www.edexcel.com/quals/dida/pages/viewNotice.aspx?notice=2645. Maybe worth a look at?
I am a great fan of Creative iMedia for KS4 and have had great success. It is available at L1,2 and 3 and it will still be available for Key Stage 4 points after 2014. As a course teachers would perhaps have to look at developing expertise- but there is choice and also potential for programming etc in the future.
A very good morning session that woke me to reality! My first CPD induction to moderninity since 2009! Wow- how technology has changed since I last had this leadership role . Now I’ve been given the role of ICT coordinator again I feel like a toddler walking amongst knowledgable, skilled adults.
My school needs hand holding and knowledge of the world around it in order to begin to walk forward( or is that run?) Where do I begin? Well one useful thing I found on the site within 5 minutes was the Big Book. Item number one on my staff CPD_ how to make a Big Book! This needs to be followed by self review framework and CPD support – HELP!
Hi,
My name is Helen Stokes, I am Subject Leader for ICT at Holgate School Sports College, Barnsley.
My school is in slightly odd position that it is merging from September with another local school to become Horizon Community College.
I really enjoyed our first session today and have got some really good ideas of things I want to look in to. One of which is
Our school currently has a big push on learner plans, where pupils are given a grid that shows what they need to do to make good and outstanding progress. The pupils are divided in to a number of groups so that they are differentiated. The idea is that during the mini-plenary/plenary pupils explain their progress, what have they done and how did they get there, what do they need to do next etc.
I’d really like to use Twitter or equivalent to get pupils to “tweet” about their progress throughout the lesson (not just in a mini-plenary/plenary) with it being displayed on the board via Twitter Fountain (or equivalent). My biggest potential barrier is the LA locking down our Internet so we can’t use Twitter. Now from today’s discussion I think I can get it unblocked for staff but pupils might be more problematic. I don’t think generic pupil accounts will help as then I wouldn’t be able to identify the pupils.
So I guess my question is does anyone have a local authority friendly solution?
Sorry that was a little longer than I anticipated!
H
Hi Helen
There other potential solutions such as linoit and Primarywall type resources that allow pupils to post moments to a shared space at any time a bit like virtual sticky notes. The difference with these type of resources is that you can control who sees / contributes to the comments and so it easier to manage and probably easier to get access to through the LA filtering. You can also make these spaces available to view publicly if you want.
Ah great, thanks for that Paul I shall have a look at those
H
Hi Helen
Do you use YHGFL or does Barnsley have its own Internet/ ISP ? YHGFL are slowly rolling out local control of their filtering which may give you more options.
Otherwise do you have a VLE with a discussion board in the courses ?
could you find a school friendly blog site and create a group account where students in a group could add a comment ?
Food for thought and good luck
Hey Everyone,
I’m the ICT Coordinator at Wibsey Primary School.
I had a fantastic time on Friday morning, nice to know that others are confused and unsure of the decisions and path laid ahead of us. What really hit home was the lack of communication and progression from Primary to High School. Would be very useful for teachers, children and parents to have a single assessment that showed progression throughout their school life.
Looking forward to the next meeting.
This would a good idea Hannah. In addition I think both Primary and Secondary Schools could benefit from seeing the wide ranging skills potential Year 7 children develop. Many of them are constantly using Web 2.0 technologies, presentation tools, software such as Photoshop etc, new technologies such as tablets and iPads. More importantly learning is more often than not individualised. Young people may have to adapt rapidly to new teaching and learning environments on transition, with subject choices which eventually will lead to GCSE. Both sectors could benefit from visits and collaborative activities.
Questions from the meeting- What do we spend our money on?
In these austere times it is hard to suggest what to spend money on. However if your infrastructure is sound in school then software can be got on the cheap if not for free. For example Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/) has all the functions of MS Office (Word processor, Spreadsheet and presentation package) for free! There is even one aimed at Primary pupils http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page
Many great education programs are available as Open Source projects and the best place to find them is here http://opensourceschools.org.uk/software-directory.html
There is a huge amount of free web based tools as well and we are gradually compiling a list of them here http://www.innovationcentres.org.uk/index.php?option=com_jreviews&url=apps-and-web-2/apps-and-web-20/apps-and-web-20_c66/&Itemid=127
Questions from the meeting-Are there any issues when we place a class list on an app? Data protection?
It depends on where the data is stored. For example if on a mobile phone or ipad is the device password protected if its lost? If the data is stored in the cloud where is the data kept? Europe, America etc? A simple idea may be to just use forename and initial of surname to store data but i guess it depends on the actual sensitivity oft the data name and grade probably safe Name address email probably not!
Some useful information is available here
http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/LegalAreas/DataProtection.aspx
Questions from the meeting-How do we “join up” primary and secondary ICT especially if there is no program of study?
I agree that the transition between primary and secondary is very important. This year I intend to visit our feeder schools to deliver a leveled lesson. This will hopefully give us some indication of what our young learners understand before starting with us in Sept. It might also be a good idea if the schools (primary & secondary) delivered a programme of study during the final term using collaborative planning, therefore the students having the continuity in ICT between year 6 & 7.
We, secondary, have a teacher who goes into our primary feeders and they visit us on a rolling progrmme, this started as a part of our Specialist schools commitment to the community but now is integral to our induction program, The primary staff benefit in a number of ways as well as the Year 5 and 6 pupils we work with
I would like Secondary Schools to consider the Digital Leaders programme so that DLs can visit Primary Schools to teach and peer-mentor young learners, but also pollinate best practice in Primary Schools back to Secondaries who could benefit greatly from it.
Excellent idea, digital leaders are doing a fantastic job in our school. They help and inspire good practise from all pupils and all staff. If secondary’s did this they could help bridge the gap between primary and secondary.
Questions from the meeting-In a primary school in which we are many years behind the times where do we begin with CPD and Assessment?
My first bit of advice would be to use the FREE NAACE self review tool to see where you are at. (http://www.naace.co.uk/ictmark/srf). The Self-review Framework (SRF) provides a structure for reviewing your school’s use of ICT and its impact on school improvement.
It is designed to help you review your use of technology in a structured way, which will in turn help inform your overall school improvement strategy and plans. Additionally, because the Self-review Framework complements the Self Evaluation Framework (SEF), its use can provide compelling evidence in support of your school’s SEF.
The framework is designed to support all schools, and all of the aspects are equally relevant to infant schools, special schools and early years settings as to mainstream primary or secondary schools.
Secondarily I would suggest using your LA consultants to come to the school and conduct a strategic overview and need analysis of your school with a member of SMT
I would also suggest talking to schools within your LAP to see if there is any help/support they can give you.
Totally agree with comments above. I think next step after SRF is with some of the priorities as stated on your School Development Plan. It may be wise to try to ensure that your SDP, Financial Planning, CPD programmes and Performance Management systems are all aligned. This way any tech purchases or CPD can be targeted and costed against your particular priorities and you increase your chances of persuading Heads and Govs etc of the need for additional learning tools.
The Sutton Trust article on high-impact classroom strategies is a good place to start for AfL and on course two we will be investigating some of the ways in which we can best support assessment in cost-effective ways. See you there.
Questions from the meeting-What ICT qualifications would be counted in the eBACC?
ICT is not mentioned in eBACC yet (as of 26 January 2012) but I supect when list of qualification come out later it may be there
http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/qualifications/englishbac/a0075975/theenglishbaccalaureate
You can bet that The Cambridge IGCSE will be in the EBacc. They wouldn’t risk losing all of that international business.
Questions from the meeting-How do we cater for the re-training of staff re computer skills as well as funding as there doesn’t seem to be any!
I would suggest using the combined brains of your LAP and this will keep costs down. Every schools will have someone who has a “specialty” act and this can be used to disseminate to to other schools and colleagues
Questions from the meeting-How do we move from Vocational ICT to GCSEs?
Questions from the meeting-Need more information re coding and emulation
Hi everyone – I’m the Associate Dean (Employer Engagement) and Senior Lecturer at the University of Bradford, School of Computing Informatics and Media (SCIM).
What a great event. I thoroughly enjoyed getting more of an insight into some of the many challenges you face in the coming months, it was a real eye opener! I look forward to working with everybody at the Innovation Centres to see how we can provide some real and practical support. We are a huge local resource and I am more than happy to discuss any suggestions or ideas for working more collaboratively.
As John says, we are currently working together on co-designing some Masters modules for teachers and it would be great to get some input into the kinds of subjects you find most challenging in the classroom so we can really address your needs.
We also organise lots of activities for students to come along: sample lectures; join in in lab based activities; and have a general tour around the facilities here at the University. I’d be happy to sort something for those who are interested. I’m also happy to bring a few colleagues along to visit in school too – let me know. Have a look here to see what we do http://scim.brad.ac.uk/
Hope to see you soon!
Would be great to work on the transition through to university – we have done some early research into this here
I am the ICT coordintor at Shipley CE Primary School.
I really enjoyed the first part of the course on Friday.
We are about to develop the use of mobile technology in our school.
We are going to be using netbooks in Key Stage 2 initially. I need to update our esafety policy and I hope that our newly appointed digital leaders will be helping me to share all the fantastic resources that we have with everyone in our school.
Great day! I have already started downloading the different sites you suggested. My class are really excited to start making their own games.
Thanks again!
Liz
Hi All,
I started my career as a Computer Programmer and Web Developer, although there are many challenges in the Computer Programming world but I believe they are not as challenging as teaching and the reward I get just from the fact that someone else learnt something from my knowledge. I have been teaching for 8 years, and I never; not even one day regretted my decision to change my career to teaching. I am a secondary school ICT teacher and I teach KS3, KS4 and KS5 (Sixth Form) students, and I am taking the lead in the KS5 simply because of my previous career knowledge.
It was nice to meet everyone, and I believe these kinds of training sessions are needed to share good practice ideas, and I have to say I never met many people as enthusiastic about teaching as the people I met on Friday the 3rd of Feb 2012, especially those who come from a different background than teaching.
It has been a while since I attended any training sessions, and I forgot how useful these training sessions are, and I have learnt a lot and took many ideas with me which I already planned and tested one of them.
From the training session I planned the five following ideas to be applied within the school I work at:
1) Lead on “ICT Courses for Parent” (Parental Engagement) on using the Internet and Basic MS Office so parent could help their children at home in completing their home/coursework.
2) Create and lead on “ICT Ambassadors Group” (Five Students minimum), to be in charge of a number of ICT events, such as a monthly ICT Newsletter, open evenings and other ICT events.
3) Create and lead on an on line/internal “Blogging System” that will unable students to put their comments (as a plenary) towards the end of an ICT lesson regarding what they have learnt in the lesson.
4) Lead on “Programming Courses” to comply with the new White paper for ICT to be more of Computer Science (Digital Literacy).
a) I already started on a programming course using Kodu Game Lab. The first lesson plan was created last week and the lesson has been delivered and was a success. This might lead to an after school “Games Design Club” as the demand for it was very high.
b) I also would like to introduce HTML 5 as one of the programming courses, to create good quality websites and games using Construct 2.
c) There are two other programming programs that I would like to explore for the programming courses and they are Scrach and Alice.
5) To lead as a “Digital Leader” for Primary and Secondary ICT Transitions; this would be done by contacting the feeder schools and to set a plan between schools (primary & secondary) to set specific days for me to go and teach a levelled ICT lesson for their.
I already proposed these ideas formally to my line manager and I am awaiting the reply after half term.
Just a question to Robert Bashfort, is the presentation and all its lovely ideas we had during the training session on line?
A reminder to Steve Dale:
We already had a chat regarding getting involved in any projects to develop new curriculum in ICT that will involve programming and web developing, I will interested.
If any of you would like me to get involved in any project to help with primary, secondary or even University then please get in touch with me, my email address is “naeem_alalawi@hotmail.com”
Many thanks,
Naeem.
Hi Naeem
I work in Wakefield secondary and am interestred in sharing thoughts with you, Steve and others on a KS3 curriculum and your ideas for KS4 examinations I am favouring BTEC with the full edexel GCSE or Nationals with OCR GCSE computing for the most able.
We have based our KS3 on the ICT4Life books and have used YoYo Gamemaker for 3 years. we are now introducing scratch to Y8 for programming and will, having abandoned OCR Nats in Y9, have a look at Scratch followed by BYOB after easter. Along with a mix of Fireworks and Flash cemented with some project structure research, planning and development.
Have you heard of Learning Without Frontiers ? An annual conference looking at moving education forward, I am just watching Mitch Resnick’s talk, he wrote Scratch at MIT, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDPssJedOJ4 there are loads of these talks on the Utube LWF channel
I have also asked Robert for the powerpoint but so far in vain !
mjowett@wakefieldcityacademy.com if you want to work directly all welcome
enjoy the hols
The LWF conferences are very good.
I often catch up with influential speakers via the TED talks site and app. If you Re on twitter @GrahamBM is worth following with regard to LWF.
Hi Martin,
Thank a lot for getting in touch with me, and I am sorry for taking this long for getting back to you, I just been too busy with work. I am really interested in introducing scratch for next year Y8s. I had a look at what is out there for this topic but most seems to be courses to go on rather than lessons.
I am not sure of how you would feel in sharing anything you already planned for this topic, or if you could let me where I could find any.
Many thanks,
Naeem.
Hi
The five areas I intend to focus on are:
I am the ICT Coordinator at Barugh Green Primary School. I attended the first part of the course yesterday and thought it was a brilliant day. I came away with lots of ideas that I intend to take back and develop and use in school. As most people probably found I discovered a lot of areas that I intend to work on but as suggested I intend to do one (or maybe two) at a time to avoid overload. A few of the ideas we have already started in our school and so it was also a reassurance of ‘doing the right thing’. I look forward to the next part of the course and I hope it is as good as yesterday
1) ICT mark renewal-I am currently in the process of doing this and see its value and use to the school. I aim to finish it soon although appreciate it is not a job to be rushed!
2) Parental workshops- this idea was already in the early stages before I attended the course but its mention on the course proved its use, effectiveness and need in school. I aim to do one hour workshops, probably after school in the summer term covering the basics: word etc, PowerPoint, internet use and develop these when appropriate. I am planning to conduct a parent survey before planning the lessons in full in order to determine parental need.
3) Create a blog- although I was initially wary of this as I felt it could possibly become a forum for complaints I can now see that by being introduced and launched in the correct way it can actually be an extremely effective tool and is inline with what we are currently working on at school at the moment- increasing parental involvement in the work that is actually going on in school and increasing their awareness of this. At the moment we are doing this through Purple Mash which allows the parents to see examples of work and (when launched) the Learning Platfrom.
4) To look at the ‘big books’ links mentionned in the blog above and to use ‘Alice,’ ‘Scratch,’ ‘Pixton,’ etc to inspire pupils and keep their enthusiasm for ICT high. I thought these were excellent tools and I am looking forward to sharing them with staff at the next staff meeting.
5) To create a new and improved school website. We are currently in the process of looking for a suitable website and I had some great suggestions from people on the course yesterday- thank you! We are looking for one that all staff could use easily in order to keep it up to date. It will of course now also include a blog!
I think that should all keep me entertained until the next course!
Thank you again
Laura Broomhead
Morning all
We are searching for innovative ideas using technology during parents evening, I liked the idea of parents having the facility to tweet during the evening. Has this been tried and tested by any school or any fresh ideas to share information with parents through technology during parents evening would be much appreciated.
I learnt so much from the morning at Holgate. I am in the process of setting up a blog for my class using Edmodo. This is a great idea! I am also looking at recording learning on the ipads in school.
There is nothing really new in this article but just more evidence and support for the technology arguement. Thought it was worth sharing.
http://www.nationalcollege.org.uk/index/leadershiplibrary/ldr-magazine/ldr-latest-articles/empowering-learners-through-technology.htm
Moira
I am ICT Coordinator at Cawthorne Primary School. Enjoyed the first session and found it thought provoking. The following time in school has been spent:
a) seeing our computer suite fitted with new equipment
b) applying for the Next Generation Naace Mark
c) embarking on a new approach to teaching ICT throughout school to improve the capabilities of pupils and staff
d)mproving the school website
e)conducting a parental survey
f)setting up a KS2 blog on our VLE
Now looking forward to Session 2 to see where it will lead us!
I really enjoyed the morning today. Being able to chat with people in similar situations to ourselves and a reassurance that we are generally doing the right thing. Also being able to share ideas about useful programs and resources people are finding are working has given us some food for thought about developoing our new scheme further. Looking forward to the next one.