June 9, 2009
Just a VERY quick post to give you the links I’m talking about:
Thatsmymouse – Add chat to any webpage…
diigo – delicious on steroids
etherpad.com – collaborative writing…
tineye – reverse find pictures
imagestamper – Keep tabs on your CC pix!
instapaper – Quick and dirty bookmarking!
plagium – plaigiarism checker!
Ask questions via the comments!
June 8, 2009
David Muir of Jordanhill/Strathclyde University has a lot to answer for. Quite apart from the fact that he is a fellow Rush fan, he was also the first person to show me that flickr was more than just a photo sharing site. Ever since then, I’ve felt that I owed him, and tonight I’m hoping to return the favour!
David Muir
It was at one of the very first ever TeachMeets (in Sept 2006) that I saw David demonstrating how to use notes on flickr. I was blown away by the whole TeachMeet concept. A group of teachers sharing real things that they’d tried in the classroom and having a laugh and a chance to socialise and compare notes and exchange URLs as well. The simplicity of the concept has scaled up incredibly well and for many, a TeachMeet is one of the real highlights of any education conference. Tonight, David has organised one for students and probationer teachers and I’ve volunteered to go along and talk about some of the things I do in the classroom.
The whole night has been organised in only 4 weeks… which is something others may wish to think about. If it is possible to get a TeachMeet organised so quickly and so easily (using a wiki to coordinate the whole thing), why is there not something similar attached to other meetings of teachers?
Anyway, I’m looking forward to meeting up with some old friends, and hopefully making some new ones…
May 9, 2009
A general chat with some other English teachers on Twitter last night has lead to the setting up of an English Curriculum for Excellence wiki to look at and discuss the practicalities of implementing Curriculum for Excellence in the classroom. I’ve started the ball rolling with some ideas that my own department are kicking around, which I’ve reproduced here…
We are planning on trying some (for us) new ideas next year. I’ll be posting some of them on the wiki as they become fleshed out, but at the moment here’s a quick general guide to some of the things my own department are investigating and considering. (BTW: You are very welcome — nay, cordially invited — to join the wiki if you’d like to talk about your plans for implementing CfE in the English classroom)
I recently posted some thoughts on reading on my blog. In essence, I’d like to see more time devoted to reading in the classroom. I’m also of the opinion that we shouldn’t have to have a summative assignment after everything we read… or at least, not unless we want to turn every kid into a non-reader! To this end, we are planning on introducing a reading period for all S1 classes. This will involve giving the pupils one period of the week where the sole task will be to read… and the teacher should be modelling good practice by doing the same.
The other ‘innovation’ we are going to try is to give one period a week over to some ‘rich tasks’ in line with Curriculum for Excellence. The idea is to take a period where there is more than one class in the department and allow the teachers and pupils to choose projects they’d like to do (with some kind of literary/literature/reporting bent). We will be allowing pupils to work with whichever teacher/project is on offer at their period.
As well as the obvious ones — Comic Life/Games Based Learning/wiki projects/creative writing (for fun and (possibly!) profit)/Podcasting/creating books for sharing with our associated Primary schools and Fairview — I’m hoping the staff will use some of their expertise in other areas to introduce interesting and rewarding learning opportunities (Off the top of my head, I have a teacher who used to work in publishing, one who lived and worked for the Scottish Tourist Board in London, and another who performs at the MOD — I’m hoping they’ll be able to use this knowledge to create blocks of work).
I’ve been lucky enough in the past to work for Radio Tay, and in many, many theatres across Scotland as a musician and as a fly-man, so of course, I want to put together a block based on The Deadliest Catch — no, seriously, it’s my only ‘must see’ TV programme and it has lots of potential for some form of project.
Other ideas I’m toying around with (at the moment) for projects include:
I know that these are often taught as part of the day to day life of the classroom, but I’m hoping that by taking them out of the ‘normal’, we can make them even more engaging and relevant… but I’m also aware that we could come a cropper! Still, we only learn from our mistakes!
We are only just starting to sort out ideas at the moment, and I know that we’ve lots of work to do, but I’m really glad my department are willing to give it a try. We are all looking for ways to get as much enjoyment for ourselves and our pupils as we can while still making sure we cover all the ‘basics’ of teaching and learning in an English classroom. We hope that we can help make a difference, and we hope that we don’t make too many mistakes, but either way I’ll keep posting our progress on the wiki so that you can share the ideas and hopefully suggest some of your own.
May 5, 2009
My recent post about copyright, quality assurance and Glow certainly got the conversation started! Here’s a quick update on what’s been happening since…
CC: Blackbeltjones
As well as getting the most comments I’ve had so far, my post on the potentially crippling impact that restrictive copyright may have on the future of Glow has also given me more food for thought than ever. I have never been happy about the current state of play with regards to copyright, namely, that my employer owns the copyright for any materials I produce, but it is Kenneth McLaughlin’s comment that has really got me thinking. He asks where in the McCrone agreement it says
that your employer has ownership/copyright on the teaching materials you create?
I have been through the McCrone agreement with a microscope, and he’s right… It doesn’t say that. So does that mean that the restriction I thought was in place has gone? I’m not sure anymore. It may be a part of my ‘Terms & Conditions’ agreement that I signed with my Council and I’m checking this at the moment. I’ve also started speaking to my union to see if they can clarify the legal position (at the moment, they aren’t too sure but it’s early days yet).
One thing is coming through loud and clear, the advent of online collaboration and ’sharing’ has happened faster than the existing structures can cope with. Nothing surprising in that, but if we are going to make the real changes we hope are possible, we need to sort this out now.
To do this, I need your help. I need to find out if anyone out there working in Scottish education has a specific mention of copyright in their contract — good or bad. I’m waiting to hear back on my own T&C, and I think I (we?) need to get a clearer picture of where I stand before I make a complete wazzock of myself.
If the employers do indeed hold the copyright in my intellectual property, then I am prepared to put forward a motion to the SNCT or the Unions or the Scottish Government or indeed anyone else that can change this (see my previous post for my thoughts on how the system could work). That’s a task for the future, but at the moment, I need any and all information that you can provide! You can either comment, or you can contact me directly by email at: scottishteacher [at] gmail [dot] com
And finally, thanks to Ewan for suggesting a way of sabotaging (in a constructive way) the materials you produce. By using CC materials in your resources, the CC license becomes an integral part of your ‘new’ materials so, unless your LA are willing to pay for commercial clipart/photos for your worksheet (highly unlikely) they will have to accept the materials as having the same CC license… sneaky!
More to come I’m sure!
May 5, 2009
Sorry for the rampant awfulness of the pun in the title to this post! Having said that, I’ll make it up to you by pointing you in the direction of a great idea…
CC: Ben Templesmith
Whitney Sorrow has started posting Bram Stoker’s Dracula as a blog which you can follow ‘as it happens’. Given that the original takes the form of a series of letters and diary entries, this is a great use of the blog form to help bring a ‘classic’ story to life (sorry). The good news is that it only started last Sunday so you can soon catch up. (I recommend adding it to your RSS reader).
As someone who has still to get round to reading the original, and whose only knowledge of the story comes from Christopher Lee and Gary Oldman, I am looking forward to seeing how the original develops (and no… I don’t want to know what happens!)
It might also be a great way of introducing your pupils to a) an acknowledged and highly influential book, b) RSS feeds, and c) blog commenting — Yes, the comments are open and already they are being used to discuss modern names of the places mentioned. Interactive reading!
You can find the blog at Dracula-Feed… Highly recommended!
Incidentally, I really like Ben Templesmith’s fantastic — in the true sense of the word — illustrations of the story… a real bonus find when I was looking for a suitable picture. Even better, they are available under a CC license — result!
April 8, 2009
A recent conversation about Quality Assurance of materials being produced for Glow ended up becoming a much more open discussion on copyright and ownership of materials. I thought it worthwhile sharing some of what was discussed as I suspect this may be an issue that is a lot more wide-reaching than any of us might think.
Glowing, Glowing, Gone? (Image by Mrs W)
A central tenet of Glow , the national schools intranet for Scotland, is the sharing of materials between teachers, yet there appears to be a danger that local authorities are going to put a stop to the sharing before we’ve even had a chance to get started. They are threatening to do this under the guise of ‘Quality Assurance’ though it might be fairer to say that it will be copyright issues that will have the final say in what gets published. No matter what the reasons are, the simple fact is that without open and equitable sharing of resources, Glow will not achieve even a fraction of its potential…
I first became aware of the Glow QA ‘issue’ during a fantastic twitter exchange between Jaye Richards (who has already blogged on this) Robert Hill, Mr MacKenzie and myself with some honourable mentions from a number of other twitteratti over the course of an evening a week or so ago, Bob Hill made us aware of the problem and we all became more aggrieved and annoyed at the implications of it. The net result was that Bob has set up a wiki to start thrashing out some of the details. In essence, there are two main strands to the discussion, namely Quality Assurance and Copyright/Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) issues. For ease, I’m going to address these as separate points, but hopefully you will appreciate that they are interlinked…
I believe there is a strong argument to be made for not having any formal quality assurance mechanism before materials are loaded up to Glow. To cut a long story short, poor quality materials will simply be ignored, especially if there is the facility for rating resources and leaving comments on them (Think iTunes or Amazon). Also, no teacher is going to use any resource without first looking through it and adapting it to suit. This is a point that Alan Stewart made really well on the wiki:
Any teaching resource, without the originator’s insight will be, by definition, incomplete. As such it will be modified by new users for their, and not the originator’s, purpose.
As he went on to say:
Anyone arrogant enough to believe that something they post will be used in an undistilled way must understand that it’s ideas that they are sharing not actual property.
I love this because he gets to the heart of what sharing is all about. It means taking someone else’s ideas and making them their own… I think it is what we are trying to teach the kids to do as part of Curriculum for Excellence! It’s certainly an integral part of the development of human achievement.
Also, I have to be honest that I feel slightly uneasy about having someone who is probably not a subject specialist making decisions on the value of materials that I produce. Let’s put it this way, I would have no idea whether a Maths worksheet or unit was good bad or indifferent… that’s what the maths teachers are for — and I couldn’t begin to assess the worth of materials produced for the primary sector… but I do trust other English teachers to make informed decisions on whether the materials I produce are worthwhile, after all, they and their pupils are the intended audience, not an arbitrary QA committee! There is no good reason not to let me post them and let those who might use them make the decisions. Of course, there may be one valid reason for checking the materials before they are uploaded to Glow: IPR.
Many authorities will no doubt be worried about teachers breaking copyright laws when they produce materials and upload them to Glow, and after all, they’ve probably got good reason because they claim to hold the copyright in all the materials a teacher produces.
Yes, you read that right. It is one of the quirks of a Scottish teacher’s contract that all worksheets produced by a teacher are the property of the employer/local authority. This is no longer sustainable and has to change because if it doesn’t then Glow may as well be dead in the water.
I don’t know where the idea came from in the first place, but I would guess that the thinking behind this was to make it possible for a Local Authority to take a teacher’s worksheets and supply them to all the other schools in their control without having to worry about paying the teacher who produced them. I would genuinely be interested to know how this state of affairs came to pass so please comment if you can shed some light on it.
Here’s why this is a problem. A long time ago, I worked for the long-since demised Central Regional Council. While there, I started to produce a unit on World War One Poetry… so technically, Central Region hold the copyright on it. I moved schools, and when Central was disbanded, I found myself working for Falkirk Council… and using the unit I’d created as a Central teacher. I revised and updated the unit… so I wonder if the copyright passed to Falkirk, or if they’d have to ask the non-existent Central Region for permission for me to use the unit I created? Of course, it’s a moot point because I now work for Perth & Kinross. If I am going to use the unit then I suppose, technically, they need to ask Falkirk and/or Central for permission for me to use my unit…
This is farcical and unworkable and it will be the death of sharing on Glow unless we make some really profound changes. Here’s what I think we need to do to get out of this potential impasse…
When a teacher creates a new resource for school, he or she will own the copyright on the materials produced. Full stop. No argument. No fudging. However… their employer will be automatically granted the rights to use those resources in their schools as they see fit. In addition, this right will be granted for the life of the units (rather than a ‘copyright-style’ 50 years… after all, how many 50 year old resources are you using?).
Resources uploaded to Glow must be done under a Creative Commons License, most likely Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland. This will allow sharing in an open and appropriate manner and allow people to take and adapt the work (as mentioned above) without having to make a big deal about it.
This also gets rid of the potentially embarrassing situation where a teacher, working on an educational resource during their own time, cannot then sell it to a publisher because technically the employer owns the copyright. By allowing the teacher to retain the copyright, but allowing the authority a non-exclusive license to use the materials, everyone benefits.
I am not a legal expert, and my knowledge of IPR and the like is basic to say the least, so I’d really appreciate any thoughts you might have. Is my solution too simplistic, or could it work? What would you suggest as a way forward? And is this just a Scottish problem? Somehow I doubt it… please let on how things are in your neck of the woods.
And finally, start kicking up a fuss about the issue of Quality Assurance and IPR because if you don’t you’re going to be sadly disappointed at the lack of resources to share on Glow. This is one that the teachers and not the bureaucrats need to win…
Please get involved here, or on the wiki!
April 5, 2009
Pic from LTS Website
There’s a great Scottish (or maybe just Perth) expression, “Billy Nae-Mates” meaning ‘one who is on his or her own, someone without friends‘. Anyway, when it comes to discussing the newly published Literacy across Learning document, that’s exactly how I feel so I’ve been a wee bit busy and would like to invite you all to join in the conversation.
I wonder if there’s anything in the timing of the publication of the Curriculum for Excellence Principles and Practice and Experiences and Outcomes documents. By making them available just before the Easter break I hope the powers that be aren’t trying to ‘bury bad news‘… I like to think it is more to allow us the holiday to read and digest all the information they contain… but most likely, it is just the first opportunity LTS had to get them published.
Whatever the reasons for the timing, the documents themselves are going to be poured over in great detail, and so they should be. After all, they are going to affect Scottish education for the foreseeable future. They will affect every person involved in Scottish education (from pupils to parents to businesses to teachers), and so we need to be clear what they are saying. To this end, I’ve started a wiki to discuss them.
Click Image to Visit the Wiki
Initially, I set out to put the Literacy documents online so I could use diigo to annotate them. Of course, diigo will allow others to see and comment on my thoughts, and more importantly, will allow others to make their own points on the documents.To further facilitate this, there is a diigo group which people are welcome to join at: http://groups.diigo.com/groups/cfe-literacy.
Finally, I’ve also added “That’s My Mouse” to the pages so anyone can have instant messaging with anyone else on the page.
The documents are important and they do raise plenty of talking points, so I hope you’ll take the time to join up and join in… that way we can all benefit! Oh, and I’ll not be quite as ‘Billied‘ as I feel at the moment!
[STOP PRESS: I'm delighted to say that Ian Stuart from Islay High School has now joined in and has posted the Technologies docs on the wiki. This makes great sense as one of the central tenets of CfE is the cross-curricular nature of learning. All we need to do now is get all the other subjects/areas on board, and also get some primary teachers, parents, librarians and even pupils involved in the discussions!]
April 2, 2009
The experiences and outcomes for Literacy have been published today as part of the move to introduce a Curriculum for Excellence and they are going to need some very careful consideration. This is just the start of my posts on the outcomes, and I expect to be returning to them quite a few times over the coming weeks and months… so where to start?
For Bill Boyd, the outcomes might just be seen as a landmark in Scottish Education. Not least because of the definition of what constitutes a text, namely:
“A text is the medium through which ideas, experiences, opinions and information can be communicated.”
There are other discussions kicking off as well, and not just about the Literacy document. Krysia has started a discussion on the Education2020 wiki and this might be a great place for you to get involved and have your say. She has asked the real question that we will have to come to terms with in the future, namely: What do we teach?
From my point of view, one of the first things I did with the Experiences and Outcomes document for Literacy was to upload the text to Wordle to see what the language of the document might tell me (You can click the picture to see the full Wordle).
There is one word that leaps out at me: different. I know that this is partly because of the wording of the document, but I also hope it demonstrates a true commitment to see change happen. I can already hear the naysayers lining up, but they are wrong. Change is needed and will happen, or we will be doing a great disservice to our children.
The pieces are all falling into place and I relish the challenge. We have set out to overhaul Scottish education and to try and make it (in the words of the accompanying Literacy and English: Principles and Practice document), “broad and future proof”.
Let change begin…
March 30, 2009
Why does everything we do have to have a purpose, and what message is this giving to our children? I ask this because I’ve realised that in recent weeks I’ve been so focussed on getting my pupils ready for their various folios and exams that I’ve forgotten why I was able to become a teacher in the first place. I love reading.
CC: bunchofpants: BY-NC-SA
We’re striving to change the face of Scottish Education at the moment, and in this respect, we are the same as just about everyone else in the world. I read lots from bloggers around the world about the need for change and wondering what shape the change will take, but in all of this I am getting a sense that what we are really looking for is a new way of assessing our children. Don’t get me wrong, I know the need for some formal recognition of a pupil’s abilities as well as anyone, but I can’t help but think that we’re taking a lot of the fun out of our education systems in the process.
Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence has identified four capacities and I think they are a worthwhile step in the right direction. Even better, there is a sense that the change should be lead by the teachers. For the first time that I have been aware, it is teachers who are being asked to come up with the new ideas… but I’m also finding that this is causing disquiet amongst teachers and managers alike. Actually, I’m not sure that it is disquiet so much as insecurity. Put simply, we’ve been given the chance to do something new and different and exciting, and we’re standing around like caged birds who’ve suddenly found that the doors of the cage have gone.
The reason for this is fairly easy to find. Teachers are waiting to find out how the new system will be assessed. In short, we are waiting for the destination so we can plan how to get there. To me, this suggests that we are doing no more than teaching to the test.
If I think about some of the things I teach in my classroom, it becomes even more self-evident that I always have one eye on the finishing line. If I give my class a poem to read, I’m thinking about the essay they’re going to write while they are trying to work out what a simile means. If I give them a play to read, I’m looking for a saved essay plan while they laugh at their attempts to speak with an American accent. If I give them a novel to read, I’m writing character notes while they’re writing on the books. This is not good enough.
I was lucky when growing up because my family has always read. I used to save my pocket money until I could afford to buy another Enid Blyton or W E Johns novel. Then I’d curl up and be unmovable until I’d finished it, more often than not in one sitting. I read because it was fun. I read because it was an escape. I read because it was something I was allowed to do. I’m only now appreciating how important that was to me, not least because I rarely get the chance to read for pleasure nowadays… and that’s wrong.
Of course, the problem of obsessing with grades and assignments and marks and comments and folios and tests is that one begins to associate reading with assessment, writing is done for grades, not fun, and talking becomes something to be hated because it gets a mark rather than a response. What makes it worse is that pupils have completely bought into this idea.
I’ve only once had a pupil come and ask me how to make her writing better, all the rest wanted to know how to make their grades better. And no wonder pupils today hate being given a novel… they know it means writing an essay. But maybe it’s time we changed that a little.
Maybe it’s time that we concentrated on reading rather than on writing about reading. I wonder what would happen if I were to read a novel with a class and then gather the books in and not set them an essay at the end of it. I wonder what would happen if we were to read through a handful of poems and then move on without killing them with ‘analysis’. I know one thing — we’d have time to read a lot more literature, and that’s got to be good.
Would Scottish Education crumble and fall if we didn’t have to force kids to write an essay after everything they read? I doubt it. Would I have some pupils who begin to learn how much fun reading can be when it’s not tied to the pain of writing an essay? Possibly. And do I have the courage to try it? Mmm….
So tell me what you think. Would you be upset if your kids came home after reading a novel and, instead of writing an essay on it, they were encouraged to start another for themselves? Would you be offended if they read a dozen Shakespeare sonnets but only wrote about one of them? Or would you like to go back to a time where you were encouraged to read because it was fun?
March 20, 2009
Sometimes we are so busy looking for the complicated answers that we forget that simple is sometimes best. I have been completely blown away by the story of 4 students and their teacher taking the most amazing photgraphs of the upper atmosphere using nothing more than a cheap digital camera and a balloon (albeit a weather ballon!)…
Even better, the whole thing has been posted on flickr, and there’s lots of info to support what they did (albeit in Spanish so I’ve no idea what they’re saying…my loss).
I have also managed to find the Google Earth KML file of the flight…
All in all, a truly inspiring project and one that is crying out to be looked at in schools. Now, I wonder what the planet looks like 100,000 feet above Scotland?
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