A few weeks ago Lisa Phillips, a Masters student at the University of Oxford, asked for my help in scoping ‘rebellious approaches to educational technology’. I found the questions she asked so provocative and appealing I invited readers of this blog to complete her brief questionnaire.

Lisa followed up that questionnaire by interviewing me yesterday. With her permission, I recorded the conversation and have made it available below (it’s also here).

This study is an exploration of how innovation is defined within the educational technology field: what values and conceptions are ascribed to innovation, how and why programs and ideas get named as innovative, and whether or how we form a shared definition of innovation.

It’s quite long, but I’d love to hear any feedback!

(note that my views aren’t those of JISC, etc.)

However, earlier this week I was approached by Josh Johnson, someone with whom I’ve never interacted save a couple of comments he’s left on this blog. He asked for my help in such a friendly, unassuming and genuine way that I could hardly say no! What follows is a brief email interview I undertook with him.

1. Hi Josh, you got in touch after reading ProBlogger’s ’31 Days to Build a Better Blog’. Could you tell us a little more about that?

I’m currently in the process of reading ’31 Days…’ and I’ve been stuck on Day 15 for quite some time. The task was to find a blog partner – somebody to share ideas with, chat with, and help out.

I’ve been keeping my eye out for a friendly blogger that focuses on productivity or design. When I hit one of your recent articles – Getting back on the productivity wagon – I decided to jump in the comments discussion. You responded very quickly with some great additional input, so I decided to get in touch.

As for the book overall – it’s been a great resource into breaking past a few barriers and establishing a regular post schedule. I would recommend it to any blogger, old or new.

2. What does your blog focus on?

My wife and I have been trying to write articles that help designers and clients create harmonious relationships with each other. This ended up splitting our blog into two topics – Client education and designer productivity.

We believe that if clients can understand designers, and designers are able to deliver more to their clients in a timely manner, everybody stays happy.

3. You mentioned to me (via email) that ‘Creatives tend to be unorganized’. How are you trying to help with that?

Creatives tend to be visual thinkers, emotional, and intuitive – right brain thinkers. Unfortunately, they also tend to be unorganized and unable to prioritize.

By introducing easy-to-use productivity systems and “life hacks” to designers, we hope to make a positive (productive) impact on the creative community as a whole.

4. What are your plans for the future?

I have a few personal “sprint” plans that involve an ebook, building up a community on the blog, and a bit of travel by the end of the year. Marathon plans usually burn me out, so taking short-term wins is a goal now.

Also, I would like build a platform for designers and clients to openly discuss methods to improve their working relationships.

5. Finally, if you could recommend five things that you find indispensable, what would they be?

That’s surprisingly easy.

1. A dot grid notebook. It’s graph paper, lined paper, and blank(ish) paper all-in-one.
2. An unlined Moleskine notebook. For when dots get in the way.
3. A mechanical pencil. Because you can’t erase ink.
4. A laptop (with Evernote and Dropbox). Great for typing, organizing, and easy web browsing.
5. A smartphone (with Evernote and Dropbox). Portable device to capture ideas and get them into a system.

I keep those 5 things packed with me at all times. I think I may have cheated by including software, but I take those programs for granted now.

Josh’s website: nascentstudio.com

Josh got in touch with me via the Email me! at dougbelshaw.com. Feel free to do the same!

In the spirit of owning my own data and keeping everyone up-to-date with when stuff is published elsewhere, this is a heads-up that Andy Stewart, co-kickstarter of Purpos/ed and I were interviewed by the Ed Tech Crew recently. We covered everything from Purpos/ed itself to my doctoral thesis and productivity.

Give it a listen! (Running time: 1 hour 25 mins. Size: 61.9 MB)

I’ve got a backup copy saved locally and have uploaded another to the Internet Archive for safekeeping (in case the link above goes down).

Mobile devices in e-Learning : Doug Belshaw, JISC InfoNet from NLIAH Leaders on Vimeo.

The clip above is one of six available here:

1. Mobile Devices in e-Learning
2. Enabling Content creators in e-Learning
3. VLEs v Ease of Virtual Learning
4. Justifying a VLE
5. Quality of e-Learning Resources
6. Adding Value to e-Learning materials

The videos are for The National Leadership and Innovation Agency for Healthcare (NLIAH).

A few weeks ago I posted extracts from an interview with Tim Bradburn of Connected Teaching, the continuing professional development network. Tim’s taken our hour-long chat (whilst I was still Director of E-Learning) and boiled it down into a manageable, focused 11 minutes.

What do you think? Do you agree with what I have to say?

The ideas I discuss in this interview feature in #uppingyourgame: an educator’s guide to productivity

Last week my wife successfully interviewed for a new teaching job. She had to teach a lesson and asked me for advice as to how to make sure she would definitely have the interactive whiteboard resources to hand. That made me think about the lengths I’ve heard some people go to in order to ensure they have the slidedeck for their presentation…

I give you: The Ultra-Paranoid Guide to Ensuring You’ve Got Your Presentation Slides

Slightly paranoid

• Export slides to images
• Email to self
• Put on USB flash drive

Very paranoid

• Export slides to images and PDF
• Email to self
• Put on two USB flash drives

Ultra paranoid

• Export slides to images, PDF, and every version of PowerPoint/Keynote/OpenOffice.org Impress
• Email to self (two separate accounts)
• Add to Dropbox
• Put on two USB flash drives (in separate places)
• Print out large copies to stick to wall if all else fails

What have I missed? :-p

Image CC BY Rennett Stowe

In the extracts below (taken from the interview) I explain my belief that productivity is a learned behaviour based upon serenity, reliability and focus.

(if you’re reading this via email or in a feed reader you may need to click through!)

Many, many thanks to in my Twitter network who replied to me during my presentation for the ‘Director of E-Learning’ position. I received over 100 replies in total and the panel seemed impressed at the ‘power of the network’!

The graphic that I’ll be referring to in the presentation.

The three arrows pointing towards the centre relate to the three strands that shall permeate the Academy’s curriculum.

Background

I’ve an interview today for a position entitled Director of E-Learning. It’s a position at the Academy that is to replace the schools that I attended growing up, so it’s especially important to me. I was asked to present on the impact E-Learning should make in the Academy in terms of raising achievement – and how I would go about achieving this. It’s a school that has a catchment including fairly high levels of deprivation and standards are improving, but academic results still low.

My 15-minute presentation

Mulling over in my mind the type of person they want for the role, I decided to make a bold statement and not to use technology to present to them. Hopefully this will have the effect of reinforcing my point that it’s all about the appropriate use of technology in education. I am, however, going to show them the power of my Twitter network. How? By a 3-step process:

1. Explain how I’ve been using Twitter for the last two years to establish connections with learners worldwide. I’m going to use the map of my Twitter follwers at TwitterAnalyzer to illustrate this.
2. I’m then going to show the type of people (currently numbering around 1,100) following my updates by creating a tag cloud of the words in their Twitter mini-biographies. I’ll be using TwitterSheep to do this.
3. Finally, I’m going to direct my Twitter network towards this blog post and ask them to comment on it during my presentation/interview. Their responses will appear on the screen for the interview panel to see courtesy of Twitterfall.

Whilst that’s going on, I’ll be referring to the diagram at the top of this blog post. It’s something I put together to illustrate my (hopefully) clear and straightforward way in which results can improve. That graphic, with my name, a photo of me teaching, my online avatar, and links to where to find me online will be on a sheet of A4 paper in front of each member of the panel.

I’m going to take each of the points in turn – Attendance, Behaviour, Communication, Design, Engagement – and discuss the role E-Learning can play in it. Obviously, there’s some points (e.g. Communication and Engagement) that I’ll spend longer talking about than others (e.g. Attendance). I’ve got each word with a relevant image printed on a sheet of A4 paper. I’m going to stick these on the walls of the interview room at various places as I talk about them.

Here’s an overview of what I’m going to be saying:

Attendance

Little in the way of worthwhile learning is likely to place if learners are not ‘present’. But what does ‘present’ mean? You can be physically present whilst being emotionally and psychologically ‘somewhere else’. This feeds into issues surrounding engagement that I’ll discuss later.

In addition, learners can be somewhat self-directed by using a Managed Learning Environment (MLE) to access resources and materials to help develop their skills. This links in closely to the ‘Design’ element that I shall also be discussing later. This will feed into the concept of an ‘e-Extended School’ programme, where learning does not stop at the school bell, but continues either on the Academy sites or at home.

Do learners need to be present in a traditional classroom to learn if they are ‘in school’? Probably not. Whilst it shouldn’t be a free-for-all, leaners should be able to take control of their learning so they are more self-directed and can ‘attend’ in various ways.

Behaviour

Closely related to the ‘Attendance’ element is the issue of learners’ behaviour. This has improved in the existing High school over recent years, but still has a way to go in order to bring about a happy, positive environment conducive to learning.

Behaviour management is a huge field for research, but the findings are clear: learners who are aware of what they need to do in order to improve and who have a meaningful towards which to aim, are much likely to be well-behaved. Technology has a role to play in improving behaviour in three main ways:

• Enabling data to be shared and made accessible to Academy staff, parents and learners themselves on how their behaviour is affecting their own learning and that of others.
• Providing a way in which learners can publish their work and results of their learning to a real-world audience.
• Creating an exciting, immersive environment in which to learn.

Without appropriate attendance and behaviour, other efforts to raise achievement are less likely to be effective. Getting these right means greater likelihood of employability which is central to the ‘Investing in my Future’ strand.

Communication

For any organization to be successful it must have a steady flow of relevant and timely information between those who make up its members. At a basic level, communication about attendance, behaviour and attainment can be shared using a shared interface.

But technology can do much more than that. In an Academy that is currently spread over 10 sites and is to end up as 5 sites, it can enable cohesion and informed decisions to be made. Communication using technology doesn’t have to be real-time: it can be asynchronous or a blend of synchronous and asynchronous. Updates and messages in a Web 2.0 world can be as real-time as you want them to be. This enables busy teachers and administrators to be flexible in their working whilst being responsive.

There is also no need for either learners, educators or administrators to be tied to a single physical space. With mobile technologies, e-portfolios and Internet access should be available anywhere. Year 9 learners at the current High school have individual netbooks and 3G broadband dongles. These, and their successors, if available for all learners should enable ‘anywhere, anytime’ learning – either individually or collaboratively. Both educators and learners should feel ‘digitally connected’.

It’s also important to have a dialogue with the local community, including churches and businesses. To truly promote the ‘Investing in my Community’ strand, the school must be confident enough in its internal communications to be able to face outwardly to the community and world-at-large. A large part of this is equipping learners with the literacy and oracy skills to articulate their view of the world and how they want the future to be.

Design

All staff at the current High school are expected to use the current Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for their planning and interactions with learners. This is a good start, but does not guarantee that the VLE is suitable for pedagogically-sound learning design. We need to move from a one-size-fits-all approach to a much more personalized one. Staff will need training on how to use the introduced MLE as a base to bring in relevant and targetted resources to use with learners.

In my role as E-Learning Staff Tutor I have experience of persuading staff to voluntarily give up their time to embark upon Continuous Professional Development (CPD) relating to E-Learning. I would build upon this experience at the Academy, seeking to not only accreditize their professional development, but contexualize it and build a constituency of those willing and eager to try new and innovative E-Learning strategies.

It is vitally important to have a whole-Academy overview and plan for this. As Director of E-Learning, therefore, I would aim, after making sure data management and communication issues had been ironed out, to head a group of educators and learners focusing on using E-Learning to raise achievement. This would be on a voluntary basis, but attendees would have specific time set aside for related development work.

Using a metaphor of the National Grid, the school should build up enough innovation to sustain itself, but then feedback into the national picture, much as the most sustainable and efficient buildings sell electricity back to the National Grid.

As the Academy’s specialism is in ‘Design and the Built Environment’, modelling best practice in all elements of design is essential. Learners need to have examples of well thought-out methods of presenting information and expressing ideas on which to draw. A properly-managed and crafted blended learning environment can go a long way to help make this happen.

Engagement

When ICT or E-Learning is mentioned in terms of impact on achievement and attainment, ‘Engagment’ is usually the first thing that people think of. Yet, it’s something I’m addressing last in my presentation. Why?

Whilst I’ve nothing against the ‘wow’ factor – it’s important to have those moments in learning – only aiming for these when using E-Learning strategies and resources is not a recipe for success. After all, to do so would be to pit Academy-centred learning experiences against entertainment experiences on games consoles. If learners get bored playing the same game that has an initial ‘wow’ factor – despite its richly-immersive environment and compelling storyline, how much more quickly will that happen with E-Learning?

Instead, we should be using innovative technologies to provide a sense of achievement. The confidence that comes from many small successes and the positive feedback is what gets game-players going back for more, long after the ‘wow’ factor wears off. Engagement should come with well-designed and professionally-produced resources and activities that are provided for learners. They should be available ‘anywhere’ and ‘anytime’ and be immersive enough for a learner to ‘lose’ themself in them for a period of time.

Conclusion

I’ll be wrapping up my presentation by referring back to the Twitter replies to this blog post that (hopefully!) appear on the screen. I’ll talk about my connections to educators worldwide, about my ability to tap into this and other networks (EdTechRoundup, Becta, Mirandanet, etc.), about my Ed.D. on the concept of ‘digital literacy’, about events I have and shall speak at, and my CV in general.

After that, all I’ve got then are the interview questions…

What do you think? Anything controversial in there? What would YOU change?

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As regular readers will know, I’m part of a group of educators who come together under the banner of EdTechRoundup. We’re producing a series of podcasts, the third of which features myself and Kristian Still and will be released in the next few days. Over at edtechroundup.com we’re posting 15 days of Google answers. These are responses by the Google UK team to questions posted on our wiki a few weeks back.

At the time of writing this there are three days worth of questions and answers posted:

Day 1 – Do Google anticipate launching a UK Educators program as Google currently organise the US?

Day 2 – Will Google be incorporating Jot wikis into their Google Apps packages anytime soon? (it would seem the real answer, despite their response was ‘yes’ – check out my recent Google Sites post)

Day 3 – Are there plans to bring other Google services into the Apps for Education package (notebook would be particularly useful)?

Your thoughts and comments over at edtechroundup.com are very welcome – please add to the conversation!

First of all, we’ve got it easy in the UK:

After reading questions, i have the sense that my colleagues in U.K. are far more fortunate than those in China, since they can appreciate the operation of google’s phisophy without needing to worry some of the google services can not be accessed, which is exactly what’s taking place in China.

I get the feeling that our Chinese friend (who I presume is called Wu He Ping from his del.icio.us account) wants to also say that the political situation in China is very different. Students in the UK can say pretty much anything they like, through Google Apps and suchlike. That’s not the case in China.

Wu He Ping finishes with the following question, which could perhaps be asked by the EdTechRoundup interviewers on his behalf:

How can google improve its public relation with chinese government so that more people will appreciate the services that google provides for educators?

In other words, how can Google avoid another PR disaster like when they agreed to censor the search results Chinese citizens obtained from their service. I agree that Google need to improve their position first. Perhaps International and American schools in China using Google services (such as the sterling work being done by educators such as Jeff Utecht) can lead the way…