School Computers – A Scarce Resource

Once again, this time on twitter, there has been a flutter around the subject of school computers.  In most Scottish schools the overwhelming majority of computers are concentrated in three departments and while as a computing teacher I used to enjoy having 20 computers in my room, with the increase in ICT in schools, there has to be a case for computers being available when needed.  That implies all departments being housed away from computer labs and booking them as required with a senior member of staff to hold the coats when there are disputes. There is also a case for a few laptops in every lab which are available for nearby classrooms when not needed by the department booked into the computer lab.

I know that Islay High School and Ian Stuart have made a very good case for a device for every pupil I do not honestly see that coming to fruition in the foreseeable future.  My solution however unsatisfactory in some respects is at least better than the status wo.

robthill1 wants you to see a photo

Gourdon, …

Trying this conjunction of Yahoo Mail, Flickr sets and posterous

Reflections on the Scottish Learning Festival 2009

I am back from the Scottish Learning Festival (SLF09) and now have had time for some reflections.  I was amazed to see it was a tenth anniversary for this and its predecessor SETT.  That means I must have been coming to Glasgow in September for that number of years near enough so it is perhaps time to take stock.

A cursory search of the internet failed to find any direct reference to the start but there were acknowledgements of its existence in the last century.  This recent excerpt from the Times Educational Supplement bears witness to its importance and all those who have worked for it over the years should take the credit.

This show is one of the most valuable opportunities available to anyone in education who wishes to improve their understanding of what information and communications technology can do for them in their jobs.

The formula has not changed radically although it has evolved.  The basic ingredient of a showcase for what is going on in Scottish schools alongside a trade fair has worked well. There are now several keynote and spotlight speeches and a myriad of seminars to go to.  For me it is also a time to meet colleagues from far and wide.  It is an intensely stimulating two days.

For a few years now I have tended to go to seminars whose titles take my fancy as I glance through the list. This can be a bit hit or miss but I have had far more hits than pure chance would suggest, indicating the high quality and surprising magic of many of the presentations.

This year in particular I infiltrated a full seminar entitled “Making Glow and the Curriculum for Excellence Work Together” – a totally clear and unambiguous description.  It was very nearly full but within minutes about a quarter of the participants had left claiming that they had been misled as to the seminar’s content.  To me this was a deep embarrassment for the whole of the Scottish teaching profession; teachers unable to comprehend a straightforward title and so rude as to walk out!  The presenters from Argyll and Bute proceeded to do “what it said on the tin”.  I have been concerned for a while about the development in parallel tracks of CfE and Glow, but here was a presenter who had not only a very simple way of joining the two but who was offering us the very considerable fruits of her labours free, gratis and for nothing.  Serendipity indeed!  So much so that I am going to leave the rest of the festival for others to write about or view online at the Learning and Teaching Scotland website.

 

Keynote Question and Answer Session – Fiona Hyslop

From Bob Hill:-

This was recorded on an HTC Touch Diamond so you may or may not hear anything very much; but it was done in the spirit of “let’s give it a go”!

  
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Online Shopping – the Good and the Bad

In the space of 24 hours I have had a really bad online shopping experience and something rather good.

Outback make excellent BBQs but when I needed another grill plate to replace one of two where the enamel had flaked I started by emailing them about the exact part I would need.  I should have been warned by the fact that it took them three days to reply.  On their own site the price was £44 plus £7 p&p.  OK, it seemed a lot of money for a simple piece of enamelled cast iron but then when I had completed all my details and put in my credit card the final amount before submitting the order had raised the p&p to £25, more than 50 percent of the value of the goods. This happened a second time so I rang Outback’s contact number to ask if I could place an order.  The woman who answered grudgingly agreed that I could and then quoted £12 for p&p.  Why? Because Arbroath has suddenly moved to the Highlands.  Their own despatch terms quote UK Mainland and I was not aware that the Caledonian Canal counted as sea.  Challenged she flatly stated that that’s what it said.  She then repeated doggedly the fact that they only charge what it costs them to ship items; this was really not very believable having had figures from £7 to £25 in half an hour.  We do a lot of online shopping and even next day delivery rarely costs more than £10 and always puts Arbroath firmly on the UK Mainland. Asking to speak to her supervisor she told me she was the customer service manager and there was nobody more senior. Needless to say I will not be replacing the grill and will not be buying another Outback BBQ.
Separately I ordered a stand alone awning from World of Camping at a very competitve price.  I needed to phone them with a query.  The website warned that there were likely to be delays in August but I was prepared to wait.  However very quickly I was invited to leave my name and number and they would get back to me.  Subsequently I received a call from a very cheerful young lady who was most helpful and when not sure went off to get a second opinion.  And what is more a whole tent is only costing p&p of £4.99

I wonder which online shopping experience I preferred!

website http://robthill.wordpress.com

Education 2020 on Islay

Islay Education 2020 Unconference

It’s just over a fortnight since the unconference but it has given me time for some reflection and to put it into context. Andy Wallis and Ian Stewart of Islay High School made a magnificent job of the organisation; it is not every conference that has a help yourself bar with malt whisky.  The barbecue to accompany the evening session and the tour of Bowmore distillery and not least the beauty of Islay the island made for a memorable stay.

So what of the unconference itself?  Islay High School is a very appropriate venue for a look into the future.  They are already heading  that way with an innovative curriculum and timetable and very good use of ICT.  The S3-S6 timetable is a pick and mix of academic and vocational courses designed to give pupils a real choice, even to including some Open University courses.  The vocational courses provide realistic experiences through the Social Enterprise firms such as the Catering which tenders for outside contracts. Then there is the Samsung Q1 UMPC for every pupil loaded with one of the best Microsoft programs, namely OneNote.  Combine this with tablet PCs for teachers linked to wireless projectors in the classrooms and wireless printers and there is a flexibility and freedom from hardware constraints which shows the way it should be with present technologies.

2020 is not that far away and the world of education and technology is changing so fast that there will barely be time to plan for it.  So did the unconference point the way?  Expectations for this gathering ran exceedingly high beforehand and it is fair to say that when that happens the reality of outcomes will often disappoint.  If we could arrive at a blueprint in the course of an evening, even with the huge talent and enthusiasm from a considerable cross-section of informed educators present, we could all perhaps have stayed at home and sent in our answers.  We are talking about a hugely complicated subject which affects the whole population and there is probably no single solution to satisfy everyone.  This is not to be deplored as a sense of dissatisfaction can help innovation.

An unconference is a democratic being and the delegates at this one chose the topics we would discuss – Assessment, Learning Spaces and Relevance of Skills.  By the time we got to this last one, the word relevance was not thoroughly addressed and we tended just to catalogue our favourites.  However, I would suggest that the most relevant skills were certainly mentioned and are perhaps the building blocks for more specialised skills.  Literacy and numeracy are fundamental.  We should today define literacy as an ability to interpret whatever is presented to us, so text, music or sound, audio and visual in all its forms must be included.  Interpret is not perhaps the best word as I see it as both active and passive, e.g. writing and reading.  Numeracy is almost a sub-division if we call it the interpretation and manipulation of numbers and mathematical concepts.  These skills are relevant in that we cannot make any progress without them.  That is not to say that the whole population is equalled adept at the whole range or that uniformity is even desirable.  Because uniformity too often in practice means dumbing down.  If Mozart had been reduced to my level of musical literacy the world would be a dreadfully cacophonous place.  I think I might define a skill as something to be acquired by practice.  It is not something to be arrived at by independent thought or logic.  One learns the rules of arithmetic rather than trying to re-invent them.  Alphabets are a set of rules as words are a set of definitions.

Assessment proved to be as expected a contentious subject and I think we did well to highlight the ends of the spectrum, external summative tests of knowledge and internal unmoderated judgements of teachers.  Assessment, evaluation, validation were all bandied about.  We reached no conclusions but did spotlight the mountains to be climbed to reach a new consensus.  Neither extreme is wholly right but all have elements of value.  The extreme of summative tests of knowledge are frankly unreasonable when one percentage mark can change a grade and therefore a person’s future.  On the other hand the nice young lady who works hard and writes neatly is bound to have an advantage over the ill-mannered lout without a pen in at least some teachers’ subconscious.  Of course it could be argued that an assessment of the whole person should include manners but should not perhaps determine a pass or fail in Mathematics. If this same discussion were to take place when more of the Curriculum for Excellence is in place, there would almost certainly be major revisions of opinion.

Learning Spaces produced some interesting points of view as John Connell has already drawn attention to.  There were valiant contributions making the point that a learning space is no longer a clean dry school building with superior toilets.  Bearing in mind the state of the nation’s economy, the provision of large numbers of new schools may become an ever more distant prospect over the next few years and the idea of “the world is my oyster” through the medium of the internet may take on more significance.  The world of the imagination is also a relatively inexpensive learning space.  While the unconference was at times a bit chaotic there were many salient points made by a wide range of contributors which showed that there is change in the air and a significant minority who are going for it.

One unconference is like a swallow; it is not in itself a summer.  However this unconference did make it clear to me that there is a movement or groundswell which is questioning orthodoxy, pushing for debate and ready to embrace new methods and experiment with alternatives to our somewhat tired teaching customs.

Quite apart from the intensity of debate is was good to meet existing friends and put faces to cyber colleagues.  Anybody who thinks that social networks in cyberspace reduce real life relations should bear in mind that for many of us the outcome of virtual meetings is real life friendships with people from distant places who we would never otherwise meet and who enrich our lives as we hope to impact on theirs.  I mention but a few, Ollie, Tessa, Theo, Alan, Andrew, David, Jaye, Katie, Stephanie, Stuart, Alan  and a good many others.

website http://robthill.wordpress.com

Constitutional Change

A fixed term parliament of  say four years would remove some manipulative power from  the executive. However, a government elected by a minority of voters might become highly unpopular long before the end of the fixed term.  In the event of such a situation  there should be a power of recall  by a percentage of the voters.   As well as the usual parties listed on ballot papers there should be a “None of the above” choice.   In the event of this choice being the  winner, the most popular party should form the government but be required to hold a further election at the end of two years rather than the full term of four  years. This system would return a lot of  power to voters but also hopefully  increase the power of parliament itself.   There would then be no need for us to dabble with any PR type of  electoral system. website http://robthill.wordpress.com

MPs’ Expenses

What I find so depressing about the Telegraph revelations is in the words of the Times, I think, how tawdry and squalid the sight of a number of politicians hellbent on milking the system and doing it so badly is.  In almost any other country we would be talking millions, not 98 pence for a bath plug.  Even an ex-colonial thug like Mugabe can teach them a thing or two about corruption.

We never win the World Cup; we lose regularly at cricket, and now our politicians can’t even milk their expenses properly.  The UK is truly sinking now.

 
website http://robthill.wordpress.com

The Budget

There are factors which neither Alistair Darling nor any other major politicians have highlighted this week. A return to growth as forecast in the Budget does not take account of the fact that in future the financial services sector will inevitably be a lot smaller and therefore produce less tax revenue assuming that it is to be better regulated and not allowed to gamble quite so recklessly in the future as it has done in the past.  To balance the country’s books according to this Budget will require a similar size of GDP and yet there is no strategy to replace the gap in the financial sector with something meaningful like manufacturing.

The government and particularly Gordon Brown are hellbent on fudging and spinning the facts of this recession and the length of time it will take us to get anywhere near a balanced budget.  Everything possible has been done to delay the nasty medicine of a permanently poorer nation until after the next election.  At that time it will be necessary to decide what we can afford as a nation and not what we think we need.  This will mean major cutbacks.  If education, health and benefits are to be maintained at anything like the present levels it could mean cutting back on the armed services, on road programmes and other equally unpalatable areas.

It would be ironic if this delaying strategy were to let Gordon Brown win the 2010 election.  He should think of John Major’s win in 1992 and how that effectlively put the Tories out of office for a decade and more.

website http://robthill.wordpress.com

PM Clement Attlee and Secrets

I have just been listening to Nick Robinson’s The Prime Ministers on Radio 4.  Attlee was probably the last Bristish Prime Minister to actually change the world as opposed to announcing it.
But what caught my attention was the fact that he was involved in two decisions, to continue with the atomic bomb and to devalue the pound, neither of which were leaked to the press.  On the contrary they were kept secret for some months according to the programme. It was then implied that this was not possible today because of the intrusive media and 24/7 news.  That is nonsense. It was only possible in Attlee’s time because his political colleagues and the Civil Service were loyal and honourable and knew how to keep a secret.  It is the politicians themselves who are to blame for today’s culture of leaking to the press.  By Attlee’s cabinet standards they are corrupt and self-seeking minnows of men.  Contrast the relationship between Ernie Bevin and Attlee and that between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.  When it was suggested to Bevin that he should replace Attlee the programme quoted him as saying “I am sticking to little Clem”.  To my mind that says it all.

 

website http://robthill.wordpress.com