dougbelshaw.com/blog

Welcome back!
#uppingyourgame: an educator's guide to productivity is now up to v0.4!
(I'm looking for people to translate it into other languages when finished - if you're interested get in touch!)

I need your input and help. It’s for a good cause. I’m a firm believer that educational innovation is a bottom-up process. Could you help me (and others) prove that?

I’ll try and keep this as brief as possible if you promise to do the background reading and try to contribute in some way.

Introduction

EduCon 2.0 is both a conversation and a conference.
And it is not a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is, hopefully, an innovation conference where we can come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas — from the very practical to the big dreams.

This year’s was 29th-31st of January at the Science Leadership Academy, Philadelphia, USA (which is why I wasn’t there).

Background Reading

Will Richardson blogged about what happened at Educon and the next steps required to turn conversations into action:

• Continuing the Educon conversation
• The Big Questions: Now What?
• The Big Questions: Next Steps
• Time For Action: The Big Questions

Results

Will crowdsourced 10 questions that educators need to answer effectively:

1. What is the purpose of school?
2. What is the changing role of the teacher, and how do we support that new role?
3. How do we help students discover their passions?
4. What is the essential learning that schools impart to students?
5. How do we adapt our curriculum to the technologies that kids are already using?
6. What does an educated person look like today?
7. How do we change policy to support more flexible time and place learning?
8. What are the essential practices of teachers in a system where students are learning outside of school?
9. How do we ensure those without privilege have equal access to quality education and opportunity?
10. How do we evaluate and validate the informal, self-directed learning that happens outside of school?

Actions

The next step was the creation of a wiki - 10fored.wikispaces.com. This is a place to continue the conversation and provide tangible results. Taking a step back but keeping an overview, Will has asked for volunteer moderators for each of the questions.

I volunteered for Question #6: What does an educated person look like today? I’m interested in how it relates to my thesis, the original title of which was ‘What does it mean to be ‘educated’ and ‘digitally literate’ in the 21st century’.

Help me out. Send a tweet to @dajbelshaw with the #10fored hashtag with some ideas. Or, better yet, add your thoughts to the wiki page!

• 10fored.wikispaces.com/educated

Thanks in advance!

(image CC BY CarbonNYC)

Posted: March 4th, 2010
Categories: Education, Thesis
Tags: 21st century, conversation, Education, Educon, questions, transformation, Will Richardson
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Northumberland Church of England Academy’s ICT vision statement, as seen by Wordle

Further to my previous blog post setting out what I was going to do at interview, I’m delighted to report that I was successful! Many thanks to my Twitter network for their support. As of next academic year (September 2009) I shall be ‘Director of E-Learning’ at Northumberland Church of England Academy.

This is a significant promotion for me and, as the Academy comes into existence as I assume the role, means I’ve got (almost) a blank slate with which to work. Hence the need for me to have a clear and coherent plan as to the E-Learning ecosystem I want to create.

I’m embarking on a series of blog posts over the Easter holiday period which, provisionally, I’m going to title:

1. Attendance: what are the pros and cons of SIMS, Serco and Phoenix?
2. Behaviour: what are the e-options for real-time monitoring and tracking of student behaviour?
3. Communication: which tools are available to enable anyone within an organization be able to appropriately communicate and collaborate with anyone else?
4. Design: what are the standards upon which pedagogically-sound learning design can be constructed?
5. Engagement: which technologies lead to confident engagement in learning?

I have perhaps phrased some of the above clumsily so I’d welcome your feedback!

Posted: April 2nd, 2009
Categories: Education, Technology
Tags: e-learning, ecosystem, ICT, network, planning, questions, Twitter, vision, Wordle
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It’s the start of the new academic year and so naturally a time when I start musing on the whys and wherefores of education. By the end of the academic year I’ve almost come to accept the system as normal but now, at the beginning of the year – and fresh from summer holidays – it all seems rather strange…

1. Why do we have a system that trumpets ‘personalised learning’, ‘Every Child Matters‘ and the diversity of society, and then insists that each cohort must do better than the last in public examinations?
2. Can you think of another profession where day-to-day web tools such as Flickr (that have been used unproblematically and without complaint) are suddenly made unavailable by persons unknown (and unaccountable)?
3. If we know that children learn ‘academic’ subjects best in the morning and do better in artistic, athletic and creative activities in the afternoon, why don’t we arrange our lessons accordingly?
4. Why must every intervention and way of teaching lead to ‘better results’ (measured, of course, by examination)?
5. Given that headteachers, colleagues, parents and pupils all know who the very poor teachers are in a school, why is it so difficult to remove them from their extremely important position of responsibility?
6. Why are politicians in control of the majority of what goes on in education?
7. What makes a ‘good’ teacher? Should decent results in public retrospectively justify or condemn the methods employed by teachers?
8. Most private schools do better than state schools. Research shows that this is largely down to smaller class sizes. Why, in a wealthy western world, do we not do something about this?
9. Do students always know what’s best for them? Shouldn’t professionals guide their option choices and advise them based on experience? Has ‘learner voice’ gone too far?

What would YOUR answers to these questions be?

Posted: September 9th, 2008
Categories: Education
Tags: Education2, Flickr, learner voice, questions, schools, State school, students, subjects, teaching
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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!

Posted: March 1st, 2008
Categories: Everything Else
Tags: edte.ch, EdTechRoundup, Education2, educational technology, Google, interview, Kristian Still, podcasts, questions
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I was informed via a pingback of a post by a Chinese educator who had picked up on EdTechRoundup’s upcoming interview with the Google Apps team. He was impressed by the questions on EdTechRoundup’s wiki page that many different educators have submitted, agreeing with at least 10 of them. Two parts of his post stood out for me…

(more…)

Posted: January 25th, 2008
Categories: Education
Tags: China, EdTechRoundup, Google, Google Apps, interview, Jeff Utecht, questions
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EdTechRoundup, the fledgling educational technology podcast show with which I’m involved wants YOUR help! We’re going to be interviewing the Google Apps team in the UK soon.

If you could ask the Google Apps UK team anything, what would it be?

Responses either in the comments section below, or on the ETR wiki here please!

Posted: January 20th, 2008
Categories: Education
Tags: collaboration, EdTechRoundup, Google Apps, podcast, questions, show, UK, wiki
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