EduDemic » How Social Media Can Help Your First Day Of School – Part 1.

The Commons Education Select Committee reported this week that teachers “need better qualifications” (read the BBC report here), with at least a 2:2 in their first degree. Poor literacy, numeracy, ICT skills and subject knowledge are clearly a worry; and in a bid to raise standards, the bar is being moved higher for entrants to the profession in line with many other graduate entry-level jobs.

At first glance, it sounds reasonable enough that the distinguised minds shaping the country’s future should have come out of university with a decent degree. However, when you consider that between graduation and classroom-qualified there are already a number of hurdles to jump: entry to teacher training course, successful completion of teacher training, passing NQT year, performance management after that…one would hope that these selection procedures would weed out those unable to make the grade. Inspirational teachers aren’t just the cleversocks with the redbrick 2:1s either, and I can think of many colleagues past and present who are outstanding in the classroom but would fall short of this requirement.

On top of this, the GTC; desperate for a proper remit, will end up administering a new ‘license to practise’ for existing staff. They must be rubbing their hands with glee as they see themselves one day having some proper gravitas like their more esteemed neighbours at the General Medical Council, with little concern for the squandering of taxpayers’ money that this will entail. Ignoring existing threshold assessments, annual performance management and good old monitoring and evaluation, the license to teach undermines schools’ capacity to raise the bar themselves. Another flock of posh-looking folders that will sit and gather dust in schools around the country is too close to becoming reality, for no better reason than to make the Westminster folk feel better about the legacy teachers in post for the next forty years. This is a nonsense in my view and if anything, time would be much better spent reviewing and streamlining the performance management and competency procedures properly to ensure that the good teachers stay and flourish and the struggling ones are properly supported with tailored CPD or allowed to move out of the profession with dignity.

I have been working on how to further support staff in school with improving use of ICT in lessons. I run a weekly e-learning clinic where staff can drop in, ask questions and work through problems with support. So far it is going well, and has generated interest from all corners, including experienced confident users who want to move their practice forward (plenty of demand for advanced Excel training, for example) and less confident users who want help with improving the visuals in their presentations. I’ve also been asked to support staff with email management and storage of online documents and files.

What has really been evident is that staff need someone to ask about this stuff, and they tell me that an open-door approach like this is reassuring. I hope that the good news will keep spreading!

What’s the point of Twitter? Why should educators get involved? What difference does using Twitter make?

Here are some answers that you might like to share.

1. Together we’re better

Teaching can be a lonely business. In a school where lessons are long and lunchtimes are short, not enough conversations between teachers I work with are about learning. We simply don’t have time. Twitter can be like a virtual staffroom for me, which I can step into when it suits me: in the queue at the supermarket or waiting for for the kettle to boil. I know that within seconds I can access a stream of links, ideas, opinion and resources from a hand-picked selection of global professionals.

2. Global or local: you choose

Whilst some Twitter users will not tolerate many overtly egotistical self-publicisers (some celebrities have come under fire for using the service just to broadcast banalities to their flocks of fans), there is no doubt that Twitter users have the potential to reach very large international audiences. In educational terms this is a real eye-opener: before using Twitter I had only limited understanding of educational systems and practices in countries like Australia and the US. It’s now possible for me to actively compare what’s happening in schools in my county with others on different continents. GPS-enabled devices like iPhones and the advanced web search facility allow searches which tell you what people are tweeting within a certain distance of a location, so if the other side of the world isn’t your bag, you can stick with your own patch.

3. Self-awareness and reflective practice

Excellent teachers reflect on what they are doing in their schools and look at what is going well in order to maintain and develop it, and what needs improvement in order to make it better. Teachers on Twitter share these reflections and both support and challenge each other. Reading about other educators’ experiences has made me question my own practice on a number of occasions, and whilst the resulting changes may only be incremental they are nonetheless important steps in the journey to improvement.

4. Ideas workshop and sounding board

Twitter is a great medium for sharing ideas and getting instant feedback. Its speed and instanteity means you can gather a range of opinions and constructive criticism within minutes; which can help enormously whether you are planning a learning experience, writing a policy or putting a job application together. Just this week, Doug Belshaw (@dajbelshaw) shared the experience of preparing for a job interview and used Twitter during interview to demonstrate the intellectual and professional clout of his impressive network.

As a further example, I tweeted whilst writing this post:

Within minutes various kind followers had responded with suggestions, including:

Whilst Twitter users do not have to use it synchronously like instant messanging software, the tool does lend itself well to quick responses.

5. Newsroom and innovation showcase

Sitting down with a newspaper is not a luxury I have the time to enjoy every day. Twitter helps me stay up to date on news and current affairs, as well as on the latest developments in my areas of interest:  school leadership, technology and languages. By following leading individuals and organisations, Twitter users can stay right at the bleeding edge of innovation and creativity, and literally be among the first to know when a new product is launched, article is published or opinion is voiced.

Whilst very innovative folk, teachers equally spend far too much time reinventing the wheel. Twitter helps me to be smarter about my work by sharing resources, ideas, training materials and policies with other schools. Just this week I am putting together a policy recommendation for staff at my school about ensuring their personal details on Facebook are secure. Several colleagues (including Alex Blagona @blagona and Sacha Van Straten @svanstraten) have been kind enough to share work they had already done in this area. I no longer have to start from scratch and will share my finished policy with any educators who would like it. It’s a bit like the principle of  ’paying it forward’ on a big scale.

6. Professional development and critical friends

One of the best things about training days is the break out time between sessions, when teachers can get together to talk about what they are working on or struggling with. Twitter enables me to have that kind of powerful networking capacity with me all the time. It’s just a matter of finding the right people to follow. As @melaniemcbride said:

“Following smart people on Twitter is like a mental shot of expresso”

Since cash for cover is not always readily available, days out on expensive courses can’t be a regular thing for most teachers. I love to have access to learning on tap through Twitter as it doesn’t require large chunks of my day, or any financial outlay in order to have an impact. Twitter is also a source of healthy debate, and I have learned that if I am going to make a point I can’t be halfhearted about it; as there will be people who disagree! I have grown in confidence when it comes to my own convictions, and now take that back with me into school.

7. Quality-assured searching

I trust the people I follow. I hone and develop the list of people whose insights I value. Drew Buddie (@digitalmaverick) has mentioned several times that he believes his network to be more powerful than Google, and I am beginning to see why. Once your Twitter network grows past a critical mass, you can ask them detailed questions and get higher quality information back than a bog-standard Google search would generally provide, with the inbuilt assurance that it is a respected member of your network providing the information. On a broader scale, Twitter searching provides information about time-linked trending topics that Google cannot.

8. Communicate, communicate, communicate

Expressing yourself in 140 characters is a great discipline. I have become better at saying what needs to be said in my professional communications with less waffle and padding, and I refuse as far as possible to use txtspk. I previously read somewhere that every professional email could in theory be written in just five sentences. That seems luxuriously long!

9. Getting with the times has never been so easy!

There is no good reason why teachers shouldn’t stick with the times, engage with the technology and keep up with the kids. We need to be able to speak the same language and inhabit the same communities (both real and virtual) as our students in order to motivate them and relate to them. Twitter is anything but complicated! You simply visit Twitter.com and create your account. A little light searching using key words for your areas of interest will soon yield a list of interesting people to follow. There are plenty of websites offering advice on getting started and how to avoid a few common beginners’ faux-pas.

Remember, your experience on Twitter is only as high quality as the people who you follow and the information you share.

Your biggest challenge is likely to be getting the twitter.com unblocked on your school network if your main usage will be at school. Personally I find that having Twitter on my iPhone is enough most of the time. I then forward interesting links to my email inbox to look at in detail from my desk.

I hope this piece helps get more teachers involved in using Twitter. Do send it to your teams at school and all those people who don’t quite understand what it’s all about yet. I’m increasingly passionnate about it: Twitter is a very simple tool that allows me to connect with an amazingly clever, resourceful and innovative bunch of people who never fail to inspire and motivate me. Thanks guys!

I have been gathering thoughts on marking. There is nothing new here, and that is part of the problem! In my school we need to review and refresh our lapsed marking policy, and as part of the process I have drafted the following memo for SLT as an overview of my thoughts and practice/policies I have gathered. What is bothering me is that I don’t think it’s very good. I know that there is loads of innovative work going on with marking and assessment, and 10 years down the line after AFL first appeared there must be a better way. Can you help?

Core Purposes of marking

1. To acknowledge and assess the students’ learning
2. To guide the students in their next steps
3. To inform teacher planning, resourcing and support
4. To share feedback on progress with students and parents/carers/interested others

 They key issues then are:

1. What to mark

A common theme is managing expectations here (particularly parents). Do we mark all student work? Selected parts? What about work which doesn’t appear in the exercise book? An enlightened approach would perhaps be to mark selected pieces in-depth. Other work may simply be acknowledged in a more ’light touch’ way. The appropriateness and frequency of spelling correction / error correction may depend on the subject. Whilst English for example may want to identify all spelling errors, science may prefer to correct spellings of specialist terms only. As long as students (and staff and parents) know what the expectations are it doesn’t seem to be necessary to have a one-size-fits-all approach.

2. How to mark

Marking in a different colour from the student writing clearly matters but opinion varies on what is best. Red seems to be out of favour and green or purple are sometimes used. Some schools (especially primary) seem to use a two colour system – green ticks for good stuff, orange highlighter for parts that need improving or developing, for example.

Cluttering up the student work with information and commentary everywhere seems to make students switch off or become disheartened. Using shorthand or accessible codes makes it quick for teachers to mark and doesn’t cover the page in difficult –to-read feedback.

I would favour a system which separates out organisational and learning-related feedback, so that issues to do with presentation, using rulers, doodles etc didn’t get muddled in with moving to the next national curriculum level. Whilst in some subjects using a ruler correctly makes a difference, you can get level 7 in French without even picking one up. How much time should I spend on writing ‘use a ruler’ in exercise books?

Students should expect a combination of feedback then, including a level or grade, a comment and a target or guidance on how to improve. Having level / grade descriptors available in books is obviously going to help with student understanding here.

3. How often to mark

If marking is to inform planning and progress, it should be regular enough to provide feedback that will make a difference. Having a minimum expectation is helpful for FLs and staff, as long as there is enough flexibility to demonstrate feedback in all skill areas. In creative arts subjects or PE it may be appropriate to gather evidence of student progress within the same timeframes, although the format will obviously need to be different.

4. Record-keeping

Marking using AFL can be difficult to track and it is hard to create data showing small incremental change using NC levels. Using coded Faculty targets can be helpful for this.

5. Homework

 

Some schools make a big point of homework being clearly indicated in books / files. However, if SLT want evidence that homework is being done, then a homework log in books which includes work done outside of the book might be helpful.

6. Final thoughts

Exercise books can be used by students and staff in a number of ways in different subjects. Sometimes they are rough jotters where students draft work, sometimes they are a place for notes and classwork exercises to be done. Other times they might be more like a portfolio or display of complete work. There is increasing evidence that the exercise book in itself is a pretty outdated concept that is being rapidly taken over in other schools by e-portfolios through school VLEs. Whilst the exercise book provides evidence of work to parents, it can’t be considered in isolation as evidence of the quality of teaching and learning. As I put at the top, marking is in part about feedback to parents and carers, so it would be helpful to them to know what to expect, perhaps by a page in the planner or a letter home. As we already discussed, marking can also be a very time-consuming use of teacher resource (that is not going into lesson planning or resource creation) so whatever we decide must be both quick and effective!

Ed Balls says great school leaders must be backed – 16 Mar 09 | Teachers TV.

YouTube – No Future Left Behind.

Swift Kick Central.

 

What an amazing collection of inspirational EdTech material!

 

Thanks to Christine Morris for sharing it.

Our schools need a tough reformer (Sunday Times 15.3.09)

They certainly do! We can’t blame all of the current mess on Tony Crosland for ditching grammar schools, as the system he reformed was not fit for purpose either. But despite an increased spend per pupil of 55% in real terms since 1997 (the year I left school), we have not seen the increase in social mobility that was promised. Instead of revelling in the success of increasingly high examination results in the comprehensive sector, GCSEs and AS/A2 are accused of being dumbed down to the point where some of the schools educating the nation’s brightest sparks are rejecting these qualifications altogether. IGCSE, Internation Baccalaureate… these pupils need something more substantial to get their teeth into, and to differentiate them from the increasing number of students achieving 3 As at A2. The new starred A at KS5 will help to differentiate the most able, but will it be enough?

At the other end of the spectrum, a plethora of lower standard Level 2 and 3 courses mean that many can stay in education who previously would not have met the standards required, but do we have enough proof that it is doing young people any good? There are still worrying numbers of students at 16 for whom a C-grade at standard GCSE is unattainable. In order to get them the magic 5 or more A*-C, schools have to enter students for all kinds of alternative courses that have GCSE equivalence. Many students sit BTECs and other vocational qualifications which bump up the A*-C numbers, (apologies to Ken Boston from the QCA but I am not convinced by your statement about equivalence),  and by extension we should expect more students to go on to further training and employment as a result of these additional qualifications. However, numbers of NEETs have not descreased as hoped but look like they are increasing more than ever.

It’s pretty obvious that the current system is failing the students both at the top end and the bottom. There are also thousands of children in communities across the UK who through no fault of their own are educated in schools which are unsatisfactory in both maintained and independent schools (see OFSTED’s annual report) Ofsted pointed out that:

“The gap between the performance of the best and the weakest schools is unacceptable.”

I still feel strongly that the system we currently have needs big reform from a tough reformer. Could Conservative Michael Gove be the next man for the job? The Times calls him a “worthy antagonist for [Ed] Balls”  and explains that:

“the opposition really does have a reforming agenda. It proposes to build on Tony Blair’s belated public service reform programme, especially his plans to provide more variety and excellence in state schools, of which the city academies are a shining example. Parents, charities and private companies will also be encouraged to set up their own schools under the state’s umbrella.”

It sounds very grass roots and community-led: a massive shift away from the control-driven, initiative-loaded system we currently wrestle with. Could it just work, or will it be a swift leap from frying pan to fire?