Glimpsing The Future : What is Modern Education For?

I have written and spoken many times recently about the concept of preparing students for a future about which we know nothing. It can be a difficult idea to explore because, by its very nature, we know nothing about it. It is a theme that emerges regularly at education conferences in a variety of guises. Sir Ken Robinson emphasises the importance of teaching creativity to allow students to be able to become, and to remain innovative. Sugata Mitra and Ann Knock tell of the importance of developing personal attributes like resilience, determination, collaboration, problem solving and communication, telling us that what ever the future may bring, these will be the keys to success. Some, such as Joel Klein talk of economic changes, saying at the recent London Mayor's Education Conference that we are 'loosing the race between education and technology'

While browsing articles on twitter today, I came across an article published on Wired.com that presented the vision of a Japanese power company to one day build an ambitious solar power station on the moon and return the electricity to earth for the ultimate clean energy source.

It seemed particularly topical as I had spent the morning listening to reports on BBC Radio 4 about the current motions in parliament to try and control energy prices. As we face up to the reality that the planet is running out of resources our children's generation will need to embark upon an industrious new era of ambitious, innovative and bold projects such as this. What struck me as an educator as I read this was how the children in today's classrooms, will be the adults of tomorrow that are faced with challenges such as this.

As the article points out, the difficulties and obstacles to such a project would be daunting. Firstly, and most obviously would be the tremendous engineering challenges that would surely require the sustained and collaborative efforts of the finest engineers int the world. But more than this, the article points out that 'space law' is notoriously difficult to apply in practice. Skilled legal professionals, politicians, civil servants and business people would have to have highly developed academic knowledge as well as refined skills of collaboration, negotiation, resilience and problem solving to have any hope of ever over coming such a challenge.

It is the education system that we build today that will be the determining factor in whether projects like this could ever become a reality. If we teach our children to be consumers to knowledge then they will go into the world as consumers of knowledge. If we teach our children to be resiliently innovative and skilled problem solvers they will go in to the world with the skills to overcome the great challenges that lay ahead of mankind. It is glimpses of the future, such as this, that must been seen as an urgent mandate for building a new kind of education.

Live Blogging from Mayor of London's Education Conference 2013

#LDNeduconf

Final Session - Professor David Hogan University of Queensland Brisbane Australia.

What features of the Singapore pedagogical approach are significant in high achievement?

1) There is a very tight coupling between the textbooks and the curriculum. In Singapore, textbooks are created in house by the educational ministry. This is a key feature of the system. Textbooks are the basis of instruction. Workbooks and worksheets are a basis of instruction.

2) There is a much higher percentage of teachers who give test questions every 2 weeks or more. 39% in Singapore and only 9% in the UK. Assessments require application of knowledge.

In comparison, London's strengths are in 'knowledge building pedagogical structures' as well as assessments that require students to explain, justify and search for patterns and relationships.

However this data does not adequately capture the picture of the Singapore pedagogical structure.

Teachers in Singapore are not choosing between pedagogical structures. They have a hybridity in instructional techniques, and it is within this unique feature that its strength lies.

In addition to this Singapore dedicates an overwhelming majority of time and learning support to procedural learning. Singapore does well because it focuses on factual and procedural knowledge, rather than conceptual understanding and this has to be reconciled to the PIZA success. The conclusion we draw is the importance of rigorous, domain specific knowledge acquisition.

The modal interaction in classroom talk in Singapore is IRE exchanges. Initiate, respond, evaluate answers to closed questions. Only 7% of talk in Singapore classrooms is conceptual and 1% is explanatory.

The focus is on exam preparation and teaching to the test, there is a strong focus on procedural learning and a sense of mastery.

Key features of the Singapore Pedagogy:

1) Curriculum coverage - teachers have to cover the curriculum
2) Teaching to the test, bureaucratic accountability
3) Meritocratic advancement
4) Highly prescriptive national curriculum
5) National high stakes assessment system
6) Extensive curriculum support from ministry of education
7) Pervasive folk pedagogy (beliefs, teaching scripts, interactional genres)
8) An integrated, tightly controlled, coupled systems of popular education that preserves sufficient autonomy at the school level ti ensure responsiveness to local circumstances and the professional judgement of teachers.

Singapore teachers overwhelmingly believe that their responsibility to ensure that pupils score well on the high stakes national assessment. The system is orientated to performance.

Limits of the pedagogy

1) Aversion to risk and innovation
2) Depth of curriculum
3) Perverse instructional incentives

The results of this is restricted attention to knowledge building and 21st century skills. Limited development between ICT mediated tasks and the integration of technology into instruction. A focus on task infidelity, task implementation rather than task design and finally, limited us of high leverage instructional strategies.

In the UK the debate is about how broad should the curriculum be, in Singapore the debate is over depth. Recently the Singapore curriculum content was cut by 20% to facilitate greater depth.

Blogging Live from the Mayor's Education Conference 2013

#LDNeduconf

Session 2 Q&A with the Mayor of London - Boris Johnson

John Major said recently that too many of our country's leaders went to public schools. In the 1970s London schools were not well thought of. Many families would try and get their children into school sin the home counties. Now families are sending their children to London schools, they are choosing to educate their children here. London now educates 16% of all 3 - 11 year olds in the country. 83% are achieving L4 at KS2 compared to 79% nationally. London has fewer NEETS then elsewhere int eh country, we have the highest number of students going on to university than elsewhere in the country, even though London has 4 of the poorest boroughs in the country.

Boris sees a creative and fresh attitude in teachers and phenomenal leadership, but there remain challenges. 1 in 4 still leave without being ale to read and write well enough and we face a tragic shortage of engineers. We have a long and illustrious history in science yet we do not have the people to build the next generation of nuclear reactors. young people in London are so often ruling themselves out of these opportunities. Boris wants to give us the teachers the skills to inspire our young people.

Young people today have a tremendous energy and confidence and technical savvy, all they need is an extra 'twist of the dial' to be successful.

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Blogging Live from the Mayor of London Education Conference 2013

#LDNeduconf

Session 1 Welcome from Munira Mirza, Deputy Mayor for Education

Wisdom begins with wonder -

How do we prepare children in London to live and work in a global city?

There are more outstanding schools in London than anywhere else in England

What can we learn from the American perspective? Joel Klein CEO of Amplify

London and the U.S are joined by a critical challenge. The greatest issue we face is the growing gap between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. Will the american dream become a memory under our watch?
The best cure for poverty and social mobility is to ensure that we educate all of our children, especially those with the greatest challenge to the highest levels. We must not loose our focus for doing things deeply differently.

In the 1950s 60% of the US workforce were high school dropouts. Now it is only 6%. We are loosing the race between education and technology. The economy we are educating our kids for is vastly different from the one we have today.

Lots of jobs today that used to be done domestically are now done globally. We must educate our children to a different level. UK are spending more than almost any one else but failing to keep pace with Singapore, Korea, Australia, New Zealand etc. This is the nature of the challenge. If we don't, we will find a constant hollowing out of the middle class

Key Challenges

1) Blame Game - Time spent blaming is time wasted

2) Pupils with vast challenges- Different pathways to success. Poverty and family circumstance can never be an excuse for the failure of the school system.

3) We are not being remotely bold enough!

3 bold things that can change the game in education

1) Competition and choice. Competition is nobel, not destructive. We who are fortunate insist on choice. Why isn't this the case for the under privileged. US K-12 schools are never looked at globally because they were a choiceness system. US universities are globally admired because they are built on choice and competition.

2) Professionalisation of teachers. No school system is better than its teachers. We have to move teaching from a trade union model to a true professional model. As long as there are no consequences, as long as the discussion is not about education we are playing a game with who has the power.

3) Innovation in education. Every other sector in our economy has undergone a massive transformation, it is time for K-12 to do the same.
Graduation rate had been stagnant in NYC for over a decade and improved 2+ points per year. Doubled college readiness rate.

If we fail to educate our children for the 21st century we will fail. The future depends on taking our game to a different level. This won't happen with small bore, incremental change. The 21st century won't be nearly as forgiving as the 20th century.

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Andreas Schleicher

If the UK had seen the change in schools that London has, we wouldn't be worried about the PIZA rankings.

People are at the top end of the skills gap are seeing life's opportunities growing and those at the bottom are seeing opportunities falling away. The world economy doesn't pay you for what you know, but what you do, with what you know.

Spending on student represents less than 20% of the success seen on the PIZA rankings. Quality of teaching is more important than class sizes. Learning must be central.

Modern learning environments are social and collaborative. How good are you at mobilising knowledge and connecting the dots to other areas of learning. High performers support the professional in pedagogical innovation. Teacher in Finland are required to complete a masters level research dissertation, why? Because we want teachers to remain inquisitive. In Sweeden, leaders challenge teachers every day. How do we know that? How do we know what other teachers are doing?

Teachers need to acquire strong technical skills. The Le@rning federation is an excellent example of this.

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Dame Sue John

There remains massive challenges in London. If we don't work together to move educational creativity forward we will not achieve. We have a track record of innovation in London, but we need to be bolder. We must harness the capacity of other sectors, including business, the arts and technology.

The so called soft skills such as resilience, team working and collaboration are in fact hard skills.

There is a need to measure our impact on the world stage. If London is so much further ahead than the rest of the country then we must measure ourselves against the world not the UK.

New Technology in the Classroom; An Extra Tool, or a Whole New Approach?

In the INSET at the beginning of the year, we discussed the way in which technology is influencing our lives and the lives of our pupils. The potential of computers and technology in education is a rhetoric that teachers and parents alike will be familiar with but it is often referred to in vague terms or with the use of cliches such as 'Textbooks are becoming redundant' (The Independent: 12.11.10) or 'Could Miss be Replaced by a Robot?' (The Daily Mail: 8.11.12) It is only natural for teachers, and perhaps parents too to find this type of distortion unsettling.We don't need Vygotsky to remind us of the fundamental importance role of social discourse to know that teachers need those exclusively human characteristics of humanity, compassion, judgement kindness and many more besides.

This type of reporting is an example of some of the misconceptions surrounding new technologies, both among the general public, but also among staff in schools. The plainly ridiculous notion of current technology being able to fully replace a teacher is easy to dismiss especially for those who have watched technology developing in their lifetime. Teachers who do remember life before Google, and can imagine a world with out Facebook, Twitter or a smartphone and did a fantastic job of educating people without any of them.

However, this type of reporting also reveals one of the key conflicts in the role and use of technology in schools. While much hoopla has been made of power of technology and its potential, the general trend is one of adopting technology into existing pedagogical structures and using it to replace something that existed before. An example of this might be using Google instead of a textbook or using an Interactive Whiteboard instead of a traditional whiteboard. While there are advantages to both of these, there are also some glaring disadvantages such as Google being far too unwieldily for most primary age pupils to navigate confidently and safely and for interactive whiteboards to encourage 'chalk and talk', or at least 'e-ink and talk' lessons. It is precisely this that has led some (McLaughlin: 2011) to suggest that the IWB may have had it's day. This sentiment is echoed by the discussions I have posted recently regarding Sir Ken Robinson and Sugata Mitra's call to reframe the curriculum.

For technology to achieve the potential that has been promised it is essential that it is used as a new vehicle for a totally different pedagogical approach. The power of technology lies not in what it can add, but how it enables us to change our approach. One example of this is how it can empower pupils by providing access to people, ideas and content they would never otherwise have access too. It allows pupils to collaborate with each other within the school context but also across the school community and beyond. It allows learners to easily become music producers, film makers, photographers, writers, artists, broadcasters, and gives them a chance to achieve a global audience. Young people have never before had such a voice, and now have as much potential to be heard, influence others and even change the world as any adult. It is this fact that reveals the true potential of technology. It enables pupils to become constructors of their own learning. It hands them both voice and choice in what they learn, how they learn it and how they share it. It allows the work that they undertake to have genuine significance and purpose.

Here I will detail some of the tools that can be used to enable this type of learning.

Blogging

Blogging is a platform to share learning across the class, the school community and the world. The use It can create a place for work to be shared and the comments section can be used to attract feedback from anywhere. My favourite blogging platform is Blogger. Like all Google products it is easy to use, and very open. It allows much more content to be embedded than Wordpress. It has many different layouts which allow for a more creative use blogs in the class environment. A good quality mobile version is also available.





Collaboration

One of the most powerful benefits of technology is enabling pupils to collaborate in real time. Creating a platform to respond to a stimulus whilst simultaneously allowing pupils to reflect on the thoughts of the whole of the rest of the learning group or school community creates a good example of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development in action. My favourite tool for this is Voicethread. Teachers can post any electronic stimulus, such as a video, picture, document or sound file and pupils respond to it. The neat thing about Voicethread is that the pupils have a choice about how they respond, either by writing, or recording a short webcam video or audio file. They can annotate the stimulus as they do so and this shows up when their comment is watched. Use the Mess Dudes website to allow children to create their own avatar to personalise their comment.

Another fabulous tools is LinoIt, on online wall where pupils can post sticky notes with anything they choose such as text, pictures, video, documents or audio files. There are many uses for this tool, but it is a great way of brainstorming, gathering ideas and responding to a stimulus, again it can be easily embedded into a blog and the children's learning shared.










Broadcasting

Differentiating by learning style is a powerful strategy that removes barriers for lots of pupils. One of the challenges of this approach is that in a world that demands that learning is evidenced, finding a way of recording verbal work in a meaningful way can be difficult. My favourite tool for this is Audioboo, a super simple, high quality recording device that works right off the inbuilt mic in a computer. The resultant file is easy to share and can be embedded on a blog quickly and easily evidencing learning and sharing it with the world.




Film editing

There are many tools available for film editing, but Windows' own movie maker, which is built right into the operating system and can be found on all the school's computers is a simple and easy way to start. Tutorials will be coming this year during INSET, but the basics are easy to pick up and there are plenty of instructional videos on you tube.







Programming

There has been a huge movement recently into making computer science and programming accessible and easy to learn and take part in online. Here are a selection of tools, ranging in complexity from the most simple, to the most advanced which are all great in the classroom.

Scratch was built specifically for teaching programming to even very young children and is a powerful platform on which you can build animations, games, interactive art and stories. It has good tutorials, is child friendly and can be as simple or as complex as you like. The neat thing about Scratch is that you can look at other people's projects, and import them to your own work and change or modify them. This allows children to have something to start from rather than just a blank page, which can be intimidating.

Appshed is a fantastic web based application that allows users to build apps for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. When created, the apps can be downloaded onto a compatible device, and shared with others. This tool is particularly good at helping children to learn about user interface, as the simple navigational capability of a phone needs a really creative approach, to prevent is becoming and endless list of menus and sub menus.

For the most ambitious teachers, codecademy is a online learning environment that teachers users how to code in a variety of computer languages including java, HTML, and C++, this is a challenge not to be taken lightly but is an ideal platform to stretch the pupils most interested in computer languages and programming. Users can ultimately learn to program anything, but starting with Java allows them to create games within a relatively short time period.






There are literally thousands of amazing applications built for learning. As with everything, they vary in qaulity and I would encourage you to find which ones work well for you, and develop a little portfolio of great toold that fit well into your own style and practice. A great place to find more is Edshelf, where you will find reviews of other teachers, screen shots and videos about apps that are available online, and on portable platforms such as smartphones or tablets.

The New National Curriculum

Today we discussed the new National Curriculum, due to come into effect in September 2014. This is a document that poses us both challenge and tremendous opportunity. How we remain true to a demanding but fundamentally just call to raise standards yet remain true to a constructavist view of education, responding to the radical change in the world around us and keeping education relevant for our students will form the basis of our discussions this year and beyond. I have embedded the presentation from this morning's INSET to jog memories as necessary, and invite you to reflect upon and comment on your responses.

Not Broken, but Obsolete?

Today we discussed the nature of the curriculum in English schools and reflected on whether or not it is fit for purpose in the 21st Century. I borrowed an observation from the video of Sugata Mitra, that asserts that the curriculum in British schools, is not 'broken' as sometimes implied, but obsolete. Producing people for a Victorian, bureaucratic empire, that simply no longer exists.

This asks us, as professionals, to take a radical look at what we do, and ask ourselves, what could we do better? What pedagogical structures and curriculum content can we adopt to ensure that what our students experience in school isn't obsolete, but prepares them for a world that is changing in unimaginable ways and at a plainly exponential rate?

 I have collected here, 6 videos that raise this issue and make suggestions about how we might answer the call for change. Take some time to watch one or more of the videos and reflect on their message and how it impacts upon you in the classroom, in whatever role it is that you fulfil. I invite you all to leave comments that can contribute to this discussion as we move forward in our journey together at Upland.

Meet The New Deputy

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Facebook - Are We Creating a Lord of the Flies?

There seems to be a great deal of discussion currently, around the censored vs open internet access arrangements in places of education. Many people are discussing the issues around professional judgements of the suitability of content. There have been surveys done in the US showing that nearly three quarters of high school students see the censorship of content in places of education as their greatest barrier to using new technology in the pursuit of learning.

As important as these conversations are, they seem to skirt somewhat around the a much deeper issue of the way we prepare young people for an age where the internet, and specifically, an open access, open content internet is all pervasive. My colleague Tom Barrett posted an interesting discussion recently on his edte.ch blog that summerised Google’s recent introduction of a ‘YouTube for schools’ as a ‘sticking plaster mentality’ to dealing with the issues that open internet access brings. A lazy, ‘get out of jail free’ card that avoids the difficult and responsibility-burdened decision of whether a teacher is qualified to make a professional judgement about the suitability of content, or to what risk we expose our pupils if YouTube is open within the school environment. But why stop at YouTube?

Most open content, social media and social networking websites are blocked in schools. Yet we are only fooling ourselves if we believe that young people do not access them in their open format everywhere outside of the school, and quite possibly within school on mobile devices connected through a 3G network. Schools are becoming bizarre isolated islands, cutting themselves off from the utterly embedded nature of social web content in the society that they serve. The result is that websites like Facebook and Twitter are becoming 21st century, living examples, of the island on which William Goulding marooned a small group of boys in his 1954 novel, ‘The Lord of the Flies. Young people grouped together in self built, private networks of contemporaries that are totally without adult guidance or scrutiny.

Sadly, it is my experience that like the boys on the island, this isolation from adult support often results in the descent into savagery. Ferocious bullying, the posting of inappropriate violent or sexual material or worse still, connections to entirely unsuitable individuals. This world that explodes into the classroom every so often, after a particularly unpleasant evening on Facebook chat for example, is destructive to real world relationships and learning. In every other aspect of children’s lives adults set boundaries and educate them about social relationships and real world dangers. We discuss bullying in our classrooms but not social media. We talk about stranger danger but not social networking. We talk about the way we treat one another and what to do when you see something that upsets you but not social networking, and yet the online world is as real, if not more real than the school environment. ‘What is to be done?’ ask anxious policy makers, about cyberbullying and online predators, how can we screw social media down into tighter and tighter controls to protect our children? The answer, of course, is that we can’t. No more can anyone control social media than control society at large and nor should we want to. From social media has come, possibly the most exciting surge of creativity in the history of mankind, empowered by collaboration that was never possible before. Our role and responsibility as educators is to teach our children how to navigate the pitfalls of the web. By bringing social media and social networking into the classroom we can open it up to adult guidance and scrutiny. By shining a bright, positive light on it we drive out the darkness within that its current, hidden status provides. Failing to do this promises a future not dissimilar

Web censorship in schools creates dangerous isolation

to the future that Goulding suggests for the boys on his island, had the Navel Officer not arrived just in time. We must become social media’s ‘naval officer’ and do so now because quite simply, the time is upon us.

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School Logo for App Building

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Fencing

As part of our sports week we had a taster session for fencing. We learned to stand en guard, step forward and back, lunge and even 'double duck' Search #ccbsportsweek on twitter for more!

Your Future, Your Ambition Event at The Emirates Stadium

Today we visited the Emirates Stadium to take part in the Your Future, Your Ambition event. Lots of science and technology companies laid on activities for us to take part in. We tested how clean our hands were, used a microscope to look at our skin up close, saw an augmented reality program that is used to trial new products, conducted experiments with electricity, and even controlled a Scaletrix car with our minds!! Search #ccbtrip #yourfutureyourambition on twitter to see more. 

 

Parent and Child Pizza making

This week Parents and their Children have been making pizzas from scratch.

Shaun's Writing on the Theme of Setting

Monday 24^th June 2013

Lo: I am learning to use excellent examples of vocabulary, technique and description, to write a description of a setting that makes my reader feel like they are there.

One beautiful and fresh day Charlie was going of to the park as he opened the squeaky and rusty gate he could see the dogs chasing the wooden stick. The babies on the swings back, and forward, Middle aged kids kicking the football high in the ocean blue sky like a rocket taking of.

Charlie could feel the fresh summer breeze gently on his arm. As he was running he slithered his finger tip across swing chain. Beneath the swings was a rough bag inside the bag was a pile of craggy dog eared books for the book sale in the old run  down charity shop with infuriating sculptures and knick – knacks.

As he was strolling down something attract his eye it was shiny and it led under the ground. He wanted to follow it but it seemed like his eyes was written   “GET OUT” and with no seconds he rushed out and sprinted home with nothing In his way…

 

Isaiah's Writing on the Theme of Setting

Monday 24^th June 2013

LO: I am learning to use excellent examples of vocabulary, technique and description to write a description of a setting that makes my reader feel like they are there.

The block door was cold. As I went to open it the metal sucked all the warmth out of my hand. I arrived at my green, glossed front door and dried my soaked to the bone feet. The doors whirred open after I jerked my key about in the lock. I entered and I brushed my rough, large fingers along the old, rundown wooden shoe rack. I strolled casually into my living room and sat down on the black leather chairs. Next to the chairs, stood a silver Sony TV with Sky+. Above the chair, was a desktop computer. It whirred and clogged as I switched it on. I glanced at all the photos in my living room and  I was so amazed. I twirled the TV control about in between my fingers for a second and I felt the tingling sensation. 

Kevin's Writing on the Theme of Setting

I walked on to the dry dusty sand my feet made distinct footsteps. I went up to the red smooth door. There was a never ending corridor and on the right there was an amazing beautiful room with a wide screen TV and leather silver sofas. There are blue sparkly cretins with a long pole. I sat on the soft sofa and relaxed and next to there was a table with giant wonderful flowers the flowers smells like fruity delight and bursting with relaxing smell. Underneath there was a piece of carpet. Behind it there was biggest TV in the world. Above the TV there was a sparkly yellow light blob. Beside the light blob there was a six eyed black spider.               

Jack`s writing on the Theme of Setting

Tommy strolled slowly down Robin Good-Fellows Road to an amazing party. The sun beamed into the conservatory, music was blaring out of the bungalow. Tommy knocked on the wooden front door. Charlie opened the door.
"The party is ready!" He shouted over the music.
Charlie and Tommy were brothers. In a flash people came, crowds and crowds. They partied all night. Time flew by and the next day came. The house was a absolute mess, rubbish everywhere and people still laying on the floor from last night. The house was wrecked.
Long, colourful party streamers hung from the fan, plastic cups layered the floor. Beside the cups was cake printed into what used to be a blue, lovely carpet, the prints lead to the kitchen door. Tommy`s eyes followed the heavy prints, and ominous smell drifted into Tommy`s nostrils. He slowly and nervously walked into the kitchen. Party hats hung from the cupboards, the smell of stale beer floated in the air past the cupboard door that was missing a hinge. In the hall, cake was sprinkled up the walls. Beyond the hall the toilet was clogged with toilet roll.

Year 5 Potatoes Doing Well!

The potatoes that we planted earlier in the year have flowered and are almost ready to harvest! What can you see on the flower? What is it doing and why? Comment below! 

The Big Sing

Last week we took part in a Gospel singing concert, led by the one and only Karen Gibson at St Gabriel's College. Check put our photos and video, we'd love to hear what you think!!