A few weeks ago, I started looking at this thing called 'Passion for Learning' - quite simply put, I am interested in exploring what makes teachers effective in their roles. I began by exploring my own education and thought about my favourite teachers to think why they were so memorable.  I realised quite quickly that I had only one person that sprang to mind, and when I thought more about his teaching I decided to write an open letter to him. Why? Because for me, he was quite remarkable. Recounting his teaching filled me with joy, but having written this letter with the intention of giving it to him, I discover, alas that he died recently and he shall never get to read it. I was contacted by his wife (also a teacher) and yesterday I gave a copy of this letter to her. Watching her read it, and seeing how happy she was makes me want to say if you know a great teacher, you should really tell them so perhaps they can influence other teachers to be just as great. Dont delay!  Here's my letter.

Dear Mr Fozzard

Teachers, much like nurses, have a tough job. You are only with the people in your care for a short period of time, and you put a great deal of effort in to making sure that they come out ok, but you never truly get so see the difference that you make in their life, long term.

So I am writing this letter to say that you really did. As a teacher that really stood out in my education, you made a difference. And I wanted to say thank you.

As my form tutor, teacher of design and technology and in fact anywhere around school life, you always took the time to get to know the real me. I remember coming home from school one day having had a problem with something all week, but that afternoon you had taken the time to listen to me, understand the issue and guide me through, so when my mother asked how my day had been, all I needed to say was "Well, there was something, but Mr Fozzard fixed it; so it was a really good day!"

You offered me opportunity to shine in the subject I clearly enjoyed with extra activities and opportunities to learn new things. Maybe you weren't the most orthodox in your approach to teaching, but that was what I truly aspired to. You taught me there are many ways to achieve a goal. And you encouraged me to go out there and hunt down even greater goals to beat.

I always remember your strong ethics and how you taught me a sense of dignity and pride in everything that I should chose to accomplish, as you led and taught with such traits yourself. And thinking back further, despite your certain style and manner of seperateness, you were always approachable and I felt that you actually talked to me as a human being, which in our school was such an alien experience to me.

My days at school were not the best, but I write this letter to you because you were the one teacher that truly made a difference, gave me a strength of character and gave me guidance and reassurance when I needed it most. Thank you so much Mr Fozzard for being my great teacher.

Your passion to make us worldly wise, to teach us in fun and interesting ways deserves to be celebrated, which is why I am writing this as an open letter. Thank you Mr Fozzard.

If you haven’t received a letter like this before, I am certain that other past students will agree with what I have written, and they will wish they too had written to you, many years ago.

Today I stumbled upon an amazing piece of new technology that has the potential to take schools by a storm - the Raspberry Pi. 

Costing only $25 this credit card sized box of components transforms a standard TV into a powerful computer, capable of handling the internet, spreadsheets, databases and more importantly a platform called Scratch by MIT for programming. 

Back in the 80's when I was at school I was taught programming on Vic20's, Commodore 64's and ZX81's; these were simple computers you needed to program in order to actually use. You couldn't break them or remove files that would render the computer useless. Launched today, the Raspberry Pi looks set to bring us back to this age but in a wholly modern way and offers a superb experience for every student. 

The Pi has an impressive specification shown on RS components website (which crashed today under the weight of sheer demand)

'The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer board that plugs into a TV and a keyboard. It’s a miniature ARM-based PC which can be used for many of the things that a desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays High-Definition video.'

Features

• Broadcom BCM2835 700MHz ARM1176JZFS processor with FPU and Videocore 4 GPU
• GPU provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
• GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24GFLOPs with texture filtering and DMA infrastructure
• 256MB RAM
• Boots from SD card, running the Fedora version of Linux
• 10/100 BaseT Ethernet socket
• HDMI socket
• USB 2.0 socket
• RCA video socket
• SD card socket
• Powered from microUSB socket 
• 3.5mm audio out jack
• Header footprint for camera connection
• Size: 85.6 x 53.98 x 17mm

This is a significant step forward in providing access to technology for every student, be it for programming, computer based learning or online learning. I just wish the website was up so I could buy one! 

Check out this video by the BBC to see the Pi in action. It doesnt actually have any 'clothes' yet as it's so new.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17192823 

27% of 11–16 year-old internet users talk about more private things online than face to face.

For some, this is a good thing, right? For others this is a concerning statistic for the safety of children online. The delicate balance of the power and peril that the internet offers young people drove me to Manchester UK last week to participate in CEOP ambassador training.

Protecting children
CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, is committed to preventing the sexual abuse of children, both online and offline. They work alongside colleagues in the criminal justice and child protection agencies in the UK and abroad to provide greater support to professionals working in this area.

Sitting in the room with one hundred other teachers who had also joined the ambassador course gave me an enormous sense of pride in the knowledge that we were all there to help educate more teachers, students, parents and the wider community of the benefits and the pitfalls of using the internet.

It starts with the parents

The greatest challenge unfortunately does seem to be to reaching out to parents effectively. When you look at the statistics it's quite alarming: "Half of parents (48%) with children aged 5-15 who use the internet at home think they know less about the internet than their children do. This rises to 70% of parents of 12-15 year olds."

(https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/Teachers/Back-to-School)

And the result? "Almost half of UK children (49%) go online in their bedroom or another private room and half (52%) at a friend’s house."

Working in an organisation that promotes the use of technology and the internet for enhancing young people’s education both at school and home, it is so important to understand the issues that schools, parents and students face when the internet today is so pervasive. For us, it’s essential that we support and promote the safe use of the internet for all things good.

The same issues
Yet the issue is by no means something new. Talking with a lively young Liverpudlian teacher and child of the 80s, he described his experiences of growing up through his school years surrounded by the internet: “We were free to explore, it was an entirely different sort of education online even then, nobody to stop us or even ask what we were doing, we could watch anything and talk to anyone.”

Making a difference

Becoming an ambassador for CEOP has given everyone on the course an amazing opportunity to make a difference to online awareness for everyone we meet. Learning about why young people take risks online, the latest fads in internet use of social media, how to work with parents and carers of young children, this amazing course opened all of our eyes to the issues surrounding safety online.

Some of the videos shown to us during the course you may have seen, and some are terrifyingly blunt. We have a duty to children everywhere to keep them engaged in healthy online activities and how to avoid the bad.

What can you do?

If you want to get everyone involved in your school, I would wholeheartedly recommend visiting https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/teachers and downloading some of the free resources to get started.

From there you can see how to become a CEOP ambassador yourself, how to run staff presentations and some great tips for getting more parents into school to discuss the issues. There are a few books that are also highly recommended reads:

-          Leonard (2010) "I did what I was asked to do but he didn’t touch me' The Impact of Being a Victim of Internet Offending

-          DCSF (2010) Do We Have Safer Children in a Digital World? A review of progress since the 2008 Byron review.

Myself for now, I will continue to promote the work and research of CEOP and you may even see me at a school assembly or parents evening CEOP presentation session. I really hope you can all join me.

A blog is a personal online account of thoughts, activities, interests and news  that can be shared to many or to few. Any teacher who hasn’t used blogs in class or doesn’t know how to get started, read on.

Blogs in itslearning are there for everyone and can be used by students of all ages. But why blog?  Dan Bunker from UCST ULT recently explained to me how academies under his guidance are drawn to blogging as a way to engage and motivate teachers and students. There are seven clear reasons.

• Blogs in itslearning are completely versatile. A blog can be used by any subject, any topic and can be targeted at specific needs for short periods. For example, a maths teacher could set up a blog specifically to explore the fibonacci principle. The subject can be discussed, and the blog can be concluded within a few weeks to ensure every student has had the chance to participate. 

• You don’t need to write a single thing. When your students are nose deep in text books and handwriting, provide them with other ways to engage with a subject. Use your blog as a podcast diary, embed video and audio, make the blog as interesting as you need with pictures, links to recommended web pages and curriculum content.
• Using blogs is as easy as making a bulletin in itslearning, but you also get the addition of interaction with your students with the comments feature. Anyone who has access to your blog can comment on your posts. Encourage participation in your blog through comments, and give feedback in the same way using comments yourself. This gives every student equal standing in taking part, and provides an excellent opportunity for peer collaboration
• Teach smarter. A blog can encompass many subjects at the same time, and give greater insight into a number of courses in itslearning across many subjects. Why not try blogging combining the history of Fibonacci with the theory, application and awareness of natural occurrences? 

• Collaborate and do something different. Tired of watching another student presentation in Powerpoint? Use student blogs as a presentation tool. With the breadth of possibilities with multimedia and a personally styled blog this makes a superb way of changing the way presentations are done. A blog doesn’t have to stand alone – reference and link to other relevant blogs to prove your point and expand your reasoning.
• For your eyes only. Blogging in itslearning is completely safe from the 'outside world'. You can chose who has access, and if you want to allow comments. 
• Tools for Assessment for Learning. As a teacher, you can also use itslearning blogs for assessment, giving the opportunity to allow your students to complete activities in blog form , not just as assignment or test. Blogs can be linked back into a course to allow reflection not only by the student, but by the class or wider audience too. 

Go forth and blogify! 

Are you using blogs to great effect in itslearning? we'd love to hear from you! 

Yesterday I had the pleasure of accompanying Steve Orwin and other 'its' (oops! remember - no more apostrophes please!) colleagues to deliver a Wakefield Local Authority CPD whole day session on sharing best practice with a focus on elearning. I was amazed at how much breadth and depth of experience these secondary schools in Wakefield brought to showcase.
Recently we wrote an article "Ten Principles for Successful E-learning" which we shared with schools around the world, which struck a chord with many. Airedale Academy in Wakefield not only adopted these strategies when they took on itslearning last year, but have adapted it to their own needs which I am compelled to share with you today. Seven steps is a LOT. One step at a time! 

With Kind permission of Karen Elliott and Airedale Academy, Wakefield, Yorkshire.

1. Create interactive peer-to-peer tests

Ask each student in a class to write a summary question at the end of a topic. Students can then upload their question to itslearning. Once you've checked over the test and activated it, students can take the test themselves

Students are likely to use the full range of question types and incorporate video & images to make the test more engaging.

This works as an excellent revision tool for students as they get to revise in a way that they want to and it means that as a teacher you build a fabulous bank of questions to use over and over again.

2. Record Performances Using a WebCam

Record students in a class using a webcam and upload the performances to itslearning. Students can view the performances and comment on them using a discussion forum

It is really easy to record webcam footage using a 'content block'. Students will enjoy being able to look over their performances and you can lock the content so only they can see it.

The discussion forum is an excellent way for students to peer assess as everyone has a go and students can see who is giving what feedback. The teacher can also use this to provide less rushed feedback

3. Create a Quiz Based on a Video Clip

Uploading video clips from 'Clip Bank' is really straightforward. You could show students a clip to introduce a topic and then ask them to complete an interactive quiz to test their knowledge on what they've learnt.

The test can be given a time limit so they have to use their memory & can't keep looking at the clip. Alternatively you can give them unlimited time and instruct them that they have to keep watching the clip to find the answers.

Using video will make the test more interesting & it enables the test function to be used at the start of a topic as well as to recall information at the end.

4. Have a Homepage & Keep it up to date 

Engage students with the VLE by including the following on your 'Subject' or 'Year Manager' home page:

• Pictures of students
• links to key websites
• RSS feeds
• Information about upcoming events
• A key dates calendar
• Topical Votes
• Announcements
• A Discussion Forum

Give Students a reason to keep looking at itslearning by regularly updating your homepage. Students will continuously engage with  new content.

5. Use Audio to Test Understanding

Ask students to work in groups to prepare an audio performance related to the topic that you are covering. The dialogue might just be a review of the work covered, a radio report or a Q&A session

Students then need to use a mic to work collaboratively before submitting the piece to the teacher via itslearning.
Students will enjoy working in groups & will be able to listen to their performances & conduct self evaluation of the audio. They could use the performance as a form of revision before exams, or as a way of evaluating a lesson.

6. Make Interactive Tests More Fun!

Whilst students state that they enjoy the interactive quizzes in itslearning & find the immediate feedback useful, endless multiple choice questions are fairly boring!
To live up your tests, use 'Hot Spots' questions. Inserting an image & asking students to answer a given question by selecting the correct place on the image can be much more fun. 
If the same image is used for every question, this can reduce the time it takes to make the quiz.

7. Encourage Students to Create an itslearning 'Learning Log'

After each lesson students could be asked to construct a short paragraph to explain what they have learnt in the lesson. This could take place in itslearning as a discussion forum, as an assignment or students could simply message the learning log to the teacher.

Students are given the opportunity to showcase their knowledge & understanding which will identify any areas needing further help. 
Not only does this help you as a teacher to measure student progress, but it helps to inform your planning too.

Huge thanks to :

Laura Reader, Karen Elliott, Kate Dixon, Emma Ward, Seb Le Gall, Claire Shillito & Airedale ICT Advocates. 

Go forth and itslearnify! 

It took months of prep and planning, and I never thought it would come around so fast, but here I find myself at ISTE 11, one of the largest ICT in education conferences here in Philadelphia, PA.

ISTE 11 is a conference that draws over 20,000 attendees from around the US and beyond which has a rich program of keynotes, showcases and opportunities for networking from the early hours (I mean early) to the late evening over 5 days in June.

I was delighted to be asked to participate in the un-conference with itslearning today, to talk as a panelist about my experience working with schools around the UK and beyond, and was so happy to be in the company of such experienced educationalists and educational technologists:
Grace Magley, Millis Public School
Justin Reich, Co-director of EdTechTeacher
Ann Michaelson, English High School Teacher in Oslo, Norway
Gideon Sanders, Mckinley Tech, Washington
Phillip Kaspersen , ICT advisor Kristiansand, Norwayr

With such a broad range of countries and experience at the table, this promised to be an interesting discussion on variance in concept and delivery of elearning and ICT in the curriculum. One vital part of the unconference was the opportunity for everyone to participate and questions soon started to fly, from panelists and audience alike.
Some of the subjects we discussed were:
Structure for a 1 to 1 program in Norway with Ann Michelsen
Areas of best practice and how to capitalize the minority to force the majority
Meaningful use of ICT in blended learning
Challenges facing schools to maintain creativity and innovation without leadership

The breadth of experience was truly inspirational, with Gideon talking about how his school came from blackboard to itslearning to find it a much better fit in technology which incredibly helped leapfrog their digital divide, raising standards in English and Math 30% in a short space of time.

Grace Magley gave a highly valuable insight into her tireless work of 6 years to evaluate out how to transform the classroom, concluding the optimal student centred environment for learning is blended style. With itslearning Grace found her teachers able to focus on the teaching and learning, not the tools.

Justin Reich leveraged discussion around Web 2.0 in classroom anthropology, asking what does quality look like? How can we use online trails of data in our environments?

Country perspectives from each of the panelists gave enormous insight into the influence of government as the vehicle for transformation, issues around funding, attitudes and best practice examples from each of the panelists.
Cultural change dominated the conversations, stimulating numerous statements and questions from the audience which lead to a really successful, and short unconference session. I hope that next time we do this at ISTE Conference the coordinators will afford us a greater time slot as there was so much more to discuss!

If you’d like to keep up to date with the thoughts of the panelists, you can find them all on twitter or email:

Email: Justin@edtechteacher.org
Twitterers:
@mths_dopi
@gmagley
@phillipka
@its_alastair
@Annmic

I first heard about this fantastic idea a couple of days ago from a dear teaching friend in Devon and cannot wait any longer to share it with you. This is a story of monsters! Children! and only the best imagination prevails!

As you all know, a great story starts at the beginning. So let’s begin with exactly what year 6 students said:

“We made a story following the blueprint of 'overcoming the monster'. Secondly, we planned our story and shared it with our reading partners. Then we wrote it in neat copy on an A3 page and drew illustrations. After that, we laminated them and they were complete! We were then going to take them down and read them to the [Foundation] children. However, finally we videoed ourselves reading them for the Foundation.”
K. & H. in year 6

(It’s actually a cracking example of just how Foundation students are deeply embracing literacy through ICT, via numerous types of technology and online tools)

Despite already being a fantastic project in itself, the story was soon to be taken along a new path by the Head of ICT with far-reaching benefits:

“I spoke with the class teacher (Mrs. Langdon) who told me the children were going to write some stories with Foundation as their target audience. These were stories around the traditional format of Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, etc. but with their own cast and storyline. Stories are a mainstay of bedtime and I thought how wonderful it would be to have these Year 6 children reading their own stories and showing the graphics to Foundation children. The learning platform seemed to be the perfect place to facilitate this. Our youngest children now have their friends reading bedtime stories to them. It has been so popular that we are now considering a sing-a-long of nursery rhymes! -Sue Parker

I hope you enjoyed their story, please do share yours with us, too.
Sweet dreams!

Becoming a Global Citizen is a fundamental criteria for the success and achievement of every young person. To provide life skills and competencies for personal development and for future employment, I see a world of possibilities for learning about global cultural diversity and for students to celebrate their experiences through the on-line environment.

Working with some schools recently, I was posed with an all too frequently asked question by an Assistant Headteacher in the UK:

"We would like to link up with a class like ours through itslearning, to allow us to compare environments/habitats/locality information, but don't know where to find them!"

Within minutes of putting a request for participants from schools on Facebook (where it seems an awful lot of teachers reside in their spare time!) I was contacted by three schools all offering to take part. 

I know there are many more schools that are looking for international collaboration partner schools, and for this reason there is now an area for any school to register their interest. 

If your school wants to engage their students through a fascinating journey of international discovery all from their own desk, then click on the image below to get started. If you're already using itslearning you can also find the project in the Course Catalogue.

Click me to take part:

For the uninitiated, BETT is quite possibly the largest Educational ICT event on the planet. Every year itslearning beats a path to it's doors and this year was no exception! If you are a teacher, BETT is an ideal place to meet ICT suppliers in one (BIG!) room and to do it properly will mean you'll need all four days of the exhibition.

Innovation and best practice was our theme for this year, and last week we saw the largest number of our fantastic schools, academies and colleges all showcasing a variety of new ideas in itslearning at our stand.

I'd like to thank (in no particular order) the following brilliant and brave presenters who committed their time, energy and even their schoolchildren to itslearning at BETT:

Lia Yau from Bedminster Down Secondary School, Bristol

Dan Bunker from ULT Academies

Alec Laing from Burnt Mill Secondary School, Harlow, Essex

Kasia Worland from Potton Lower School, Bedfordshire

Javier Gonzalez Abia from Guildford High School

Steve Brown from Horsmonden Primary School, Kent

Sue Parker from Manor Primary School, Devon

Lyndsey Dudaniec from Accrington Academy

Phil Badham from ULT Academies.

Ivan Nieves from Sotogrande International School, Spain

Ahmed Marikar from William Hulme Grammar School

Rupert Fowke from Thornlow Prep School

See them all in action in our facebook hall of fame! http://www.facebook.com/itslearning

It was a real pleasure to have you all with us, and thank you for your excellent presentations, commitment and hard work. If you would like to be with us next year at the BETT show contact me alastair@itslearning.com