Connected Blog

These are the slides I used at TeachMeetPerth Last week. You can see the images on a Flickr set.

I first got the idea for OpensourceCPD from TeachMeet at the Scottish Learning Festival in 2007 [you can see some pictures here]. Ollie Bray is widely quoted as saying that TeachMeet was his best Continuing Professional Development (CPD) experience. This had me thinking about Teachers as providers of CPD. I also talked to Con Morris of LTS’s CPD Scotland team, when he mentioned that reading my blog could be a CPD opportunity for someone!

My favourite learning experiences at conferences and inset have always been the ones presented by teachers. I include in this the more informal TeachMeets and the social continuation in the pub or restaurant afterwards. I’ve also been aware of the open source movement as a great deal of the software I use day-to-day is open source software: this blog, Firefox, Vienna and many more.

This got me wondering if this might be a useful model for distribution of CPD material by teachers, material that is not locked into a Local Authority, business or agency. Teachers as providers and consumers. The CPD material would be freely available and could be used by individuals or presented by a provide, the teachers supplying the material on the wiki could be providers/consultants. Of course, because the material is freely available it can be supplied as CPD by anyone. So the idea came together based on a casual reading of the Open Source Definition

1. Free Redistribution: the software CPD materials can be freely given away or sold. (This was intended to expand sharing and use of the software on a legal basis.)
2. Source Code: the source code must either be included or freely obtainable. (Without source code, making changes or modifications can be impossible.) This might be a little more difficult, hopefully it will not mean that folk would be put off uploading a PDF which is hard to edit, but more the spirit that material shared here is for mashing up.
3. Derived Works: redistribution of modifications must be allowed. (To allow legal sharing and to permit new features or repairs.)

The Open Source Definition has a lot more, but you get the idea. This project will probably follow the Open Content model more closely:

Technically, it is royalty free, share alike and may or may not allow commercial redistribution. Content can be either in the public domain or under an open license like one of the Creative Commons licenses.

but at this time I thought that Open Source CPD was a snappy title, so I have started a wiki OpenSourceCPD to support this idea. I hope it is going to be connected to CPDFind in some way. At the moment the site is sitting on a temporary server and I probably will not get a lot of work done until the spring break. Several Scottish educational bloggers have added Profiles and there seem to be a far bit of approval at TeachMeetPerth. The focus to start with will be Social Media or Web 2.0 in teaching and learning.Nothing is set in stone (it is a wiki) but I’ve begun three main sections:

• CPD Materials A basic outline of various social media tools that can be used in teaching.
• Cpd Opportunities CPD courses for self study or to be used as a skeleton for leading cpd.
• Profiles A list of practitioners that could lead such cpd (this could be on a paid or free, online or face2face basis).

If this idea appeals please get in touch, if you want a password to edit the wiki leave a comment or send me a mail. If you have some material you want hosted on the wiki but have not the time or inclination to edit it get in touch and I’ll be happy to post it for you.

So have a look at OpenSourceCPD.

The Edublog Awards are probably the closest thing we have in the Edublogosphere to an “Oscar” ceremony, but I wonder if I’m the only one thinking that there is something missing? What I want to know is, why there aren’t categories for pupil entries… and is it time to start a separate Awards ceremony for the great work done by pupils?

It’s always an honour to be given recognition for good work. It is a vindication of your efforts, and in the education sphere, it is also an acknowledgement that you are making a genuine and positive difference to the lives of those you are responsible for educating. Events like the Edublogs Award ceremony are a fantastic and worthwhile idea, not least because they introduce you to new people and ideas from the world of education. I really can’t fault the whole process (even though I think that Don or Ewan should have won their category! ) …but…

I was very disappointed to see the lack of representation of student work. If you’re involved in edublogging then you are unlikely to have missed the launch tomorrow of Student2.0. This attempt to give students a genuine forum where they can give an end-users view of Education2.0 is, I hope, the thin end of the wedge. However, it did remind me that the categories in the Edublog Awards are geared to the educators… they highlight the pedagogy and practitioners… they reward the good teachers… they do not praise and celebrate the innovative and incredible work being done by the pupils…

I think we now have enough pupils and students and learners producing blogs and wikis and goodness knows all what to justify having an Awards Ceremony to celebrate their work. I think that we have to realise that the pupils and students deserve to have their work praised and recognised on a national and international scale, and there is no intrinsic reason why this should not be the case… so I have an idea!

Awards2.0

I propose that we should set up an awards ceremony to celebrate and share the great work being done by the people we are educating….
It should be open to any pupil or group of pupils, anywhere, in any language…
The categories could be based on those used in the Edublog Awards, with suitable additions…
The results should be decided by pupil and educator voting…
Students and educators should be allowed to nominate entries, with a final nomination list selected by a panel of suitably qualified judges (made up of students and educators)…
I don’t necessarily think there should be prizes per se, the awards should be a means of recognition rather than an incentive…
I think we should get started on this idea now!

How…

My initial thought is to aim to hold the award ceremony in September during the Scottish Learning Festival. This is one of the best education conferences anywhere in the world, and has a strong history of focussing on education rather than being a trade show. It has a superb and dedicated ‘Education Village’ which illustrates the work being done in Scotland, but the SLF has always had a very strong international flavour. As such, I think it would be a superb venue to have a ‘real’ awards ceremony which would also be shared live online using a variety of tools such as Second Life, uStream and GLOW….

What do you think?

I know this is no more than an idea at the moment, but it is one which I believe has merit and which should be developed. I am willing to coordinate the idea if you think it has potential, and I already have a few ideas for potential support. I’d love to know what you think, and would appreciate it if you could leave any comments and ideas here at the moment. Similarly, I’d appreciate it if you could pass this post on to anyone you think might be interested in the idea.

What next?

Initially, I want to see if there is enough interest in the idea, but I’ll move to a wiki to start hammering out the details later… so, please give this some thought, and use the comments to make your suggestions about any aspect of the idea… and please take the time to talk about this with your students and pupils…. after all, we know they have something worth saying so isn’t it about time we started listening and recognising this?

After a false start earlier this year, there will definitely be at least one TeachMeet outside the Central Belt in 2008! Make space in your February for some top class CPD in Perth!

I think the technical term is ‘mug’, but I’ve started organising a TeachMeet technology and teaching professional development ‘unconference’ to be held in Dewar’s Ice Rink, Perth on February 19th, 2008. The evening will start at about 6:30pm and go on until about 9ish, followed by a meal in one of Perth’s many excellent eateries (waiting to see which is willing to host a group of enthusiastic and knowledgeable teachers).

Arrangements are a bit sketchy at the moment, but Perth & Kinross Council Education have agreed to give us Dewar’s Ice Rink and free wifi for the night so ‘Yay!’ to Chris Webb and his team!

I’ll see about getting the wiki and all the other details sorted out a.s.a.p. In the meantime, put February 19th in your diary and start working out what you are going to talk about for 7 or 2 minutes!

(PS: If anyone knows of someone willing to sponsor the other essential elements of a TeachMeet, drop me a line!)

Ewan McIntosh, National Advisor for Learning and Technology Futures, chats about why he attended SLF07, what he gained from the event and his hopes for the progression of Scottish Education over the next five years.

See more about this podcast or listen to other shows on Connected Live’s podcast page. Or, you can listen by clicking the play button below.

If you’re reading this, the chances are you’re already pretty sold on the potential of new web technologies in education. But how did that happen?

At last week’s Scottish Learning Festival I enjoyed hearing from John Johnston, at his talk Audience, Purpose and Conversation: the World Wide Display Wall, about how he got hooked. His engagement with new web tools led to the Sandaig Primary blog, now one of the best primary sites.

Sandaig has the longest running primary pupil blog in Scotland and is recognised nationally and internationally as an example of good practice. link

He described how, after getting every child in the school to write a 3-line poem for a competition, he’d decided to try publishing the poems on the web. There wasn’t a grand plan behind it, it was simply an experiment.

It was when the comments started to come in that things really took off. He told us how the students received a comment from the States, in which the authors were asked if they’d mind a play being made from the poems. That then led to the play being performed, and the school being sent some of the materials to enable them to stage it – a huge dose of positive feedback.

There were similar stories at TeachMeet07, where teachers like Lee Carson implored people visiting school blogs to leave comments.

We know that hearing stories like this at the Scottish Learning Festival can inspire individual teachers to try these things. But for the full benefits to be realised we need to find ways of making it possible for the much larger numbers who couldn’t attend to have other opportunities to be inspired.

At last night’s eduBuzz Open Meeting in East Lothian there was some lively discussion on this. We’ve learned that often teachers can be initially enthusiastic about web publishing when they see how easy it is, but that doesn’t mean they’ll build it into their classroom practice in the long term. Sometimes technical glitches can be off-putting, for example, or lack of support.

What do you think? Leave a comment and let us know where we could all take things.

You might also be interested in Katie Farrell’s take on the Learning Festival and TeachMeet07: how can we stop preaching to the converted?

After a really hectic week at the Scottish Learning Festival, C4 In The Wild and TeachMeet07, and having had barely a moment to catch up over the weekend, it’s with some trepidation that I enter tonight into Second Life to host a quick general discussion around the event. If you missed the F2F event and want to find out what people thought were the hits and misses, this is the place to come.

Head over to the SLF07 Island at 7pm British Summer Time tonight (late afternoon in North America East, lunchtime on the West, early morning in New Zealand and Australasia) for a 30 minute banter about what the highlights were for you, and what the consequences might be for your teaching and learning. Later this month we’ll start hosting regular, pre-planned discussions on more precise elements of the Festival, based on some of the video and audio coverage we’ll post in world.

To join in just download Second Life for free to your computer and use this weblink to find the action.

In the meantime, you can catch up with the continuing Festival coverage, with videos, podcasts and blog posts, over the next few weeks here on Connected Live.

Well, where to start! Although I was only able to attend the Scottish Learning Festival for one day, I managed to get along to a number of fantastic seminars and the brilliant TeachMeet07. I think others have pretty much summed it up!

I have just been reading through the contributions to this weblog and I can see that it is developing very fast. In addition to reading the magazine, it is great to be able to contribute and share views and experiences through ‘Connected Live’. I will also be keeping a close eye on the Consolarium weblog (the LTS weblog for discussing the developments of using gaming to enhance learning)

Well done to all involved with the organisation of the Festival, these weblogs and the TeachMeet.

The second day of the Scottish Learning Festival is over and I’ve had another great day.

I started at the Islay High: School of Ambition talk which Andrew Brown blogged: Ambition – island style.. An inspiring presentation the school sounds as if it is a great environment for learning.

Next I spent some time on the show floor, not so much looking at the products, but chatting to various folk. First I had coffee with David and talked TeachMeet07, mobiles and GPS. Then I met Marlyn and Morag and talked iPod recorders, online games and swapped links. These sort of chats really make coming to the Scottish Learning Festival worthwhile.

Next I had a Glow person on the Glow stand take me through the portal, I am still thinking about where Glow stands with what I already do online. Another person watching with me suggested that Glow will do away with the need for school websites!
I was also interested to see a YouTube video in the portal example. I wonder how many LAs this would get past?

After lunch I watched Pete Liddle talk about Neverwinter Nights at the LTS stand. Pete had video of his pupils and the game making is a good fit with aCfE.
Pete is one of the coders behind ScotEduBlogs.
Among the pile of interesting stuff Pete mentioned was that the children asked him to stop giving them new stuff as they practised and learned at their own rate, class experts appeared and helped others, the project seems to have become children led.

I sprinted up to and arrived at Sharon Tonner’s Mobile Phones – Constructive Not Destructive a little late. she and her pupils taking the audience through a series of mobile exercises with her pupils providing technical support. I hope Sharon will put notes on all the exercises on her TecnoTeach blog.

I followed this with more time on the floor checking some handheld technology and falling for the iPod touch. By the end of the day Mark Pentleton at the Apple stand showed me the new iMovie 08 which, counter to some stuff I’ve read, looks like it would be very useful in the primary classroom, better for the simple stuff, and I find the simple stuff is what I do in the classroom.

So by the end of the day, I’d missed all the keynotes but learned a Festival’s worth of information. A great day, thanks to everyone who talked to me.

…after a thoroughly stimulating day and a long drive home. To be honest the “live blogging” didn’t really get going since between journeys between the SECC and the Science Centre events were pretty much back-to-back.

It was nice to put a face to some names I’ve known for a while and also to see East Lothian so actively represented. In addition to the usual eduBuzz suspects, I bumped into members of staff from four of the five schools I visit. I don’t know if it’s simply coincidence but geographers seemed to outnumber every other subject. I should have asked a few of them for directions as I never seem to get out of Glasgow without some difficulty or other.

I had a great day yesterday between the Learning Festival and the ‘unconference’ fringe events in the Glasgow Science Centre. I started off blogging Ewan’s We?re Adopting! An Adoption Strategy for Social Media in Education, which I really enjoyed. Hearing how East Lothian have brought together technology to let teachers and students share makes it very tempting to move through for the support of David Gilmour and the great blogging community he and colleagues have put together.After that I chatted to a few folk and walked around nervously before my spot. I actually sort of enjoyed myself and the audience seemed happy enough, I posted a few links and hope I’ll put the presentation up at the weekend.

At 6:00pm we dashed back across to the science centre for TeachMeet07. Previous events have been described as “My best continuing professional development” by Ollie Bray.

This time we had a huge space in the Science Centre and the biggest ever crowd, about 120 in all throughout the night.
About 25 people had volunteered to present, most offering seven minute micropresentations and some two minute nano-presentations. This time Ewan had organised a virtual lottery to choose the next presenter and explained that folk should fell free to chat if the presentations did not interest them (it is an un-conference). He had also organised some excellent audio so even in the huge space everyone was clearly heard.
I was delighted to be pulled out the virtual hat first and raced through a quick intro and guide to scotedublogs.org.uk, trying both to explain what it is good for and to get the bloggers in the room to link to scotedublogs.org.uk (this might mean you). It seemed to go down well, the audience was very friendly and encouraging. Maybe because I only took five of my seven minutes.

After that it really was the best CPD in the world, speaker after speaker producing wonderful ideas, the audience cheering and ‘wooting’. Before you knew it it was 8:30. One or two folk did not get to present, but we managed to here most of the list. I could not pick out anyone particular, but was sorry Ian Stuart and Theo Kuechel were not heard. I had an idea about what they would be talking about and it sounded great.

The atmosphere in the room was amazing, teachers are not always the most cheerful of folk when they are getting after hours training. I do not think I have been in such an open and friendly crowd.

After that it was off to Khublai Khan’s for some food and more excellent CPD. A vote of thanks to Softease who sponsored the weird and wonderful menu of crocodile, zebra and ostrich.
I probably got more teaching tips and great links and ideas yesterday evening than in the rest of my year’s CPD put together. The links will end up in my del.icio.us tumble when I get some time.

I have no idea how this event could have been improved but I am really looking forward to the next one.