Change bLog

This is the first part of my review of the year, mainly for my benefit. The idea is shamelessly stolen from Ewan McIntosh and will be nowhere near as interesting.

So, 2007 ends and this is the first year for a long time that I have had a lot to reflect on – qualifying as a teacher, getting my first teaching post and my first year as a ‘Mac Man’ are just a few of these things.

Having never gained any qualifications in the world of ICT before starting my degree in Primary Teaching with ICT three years ago, I have found the way we do computers in school quite alien. Until recently I’ve never studied ICT, just discovered things. This anti-education was enough to get me a job as a computer engineer at the age of 19. So the way we plough through the dated curriculum in England and Wales is bizarre. (In fact, an ICT curriculum will be dated as soon as it is printed). I think I probably had an early insight into the way most teens ‘do’ ICT now; practically, in the real world. Because that’s what ICT is now, part of the real, everyday world.

Some time in the early nineties, the geek-bound area of ‘IT’ gained a new letter. This was a reflection of the rise of the internet into the public domain (by the way, the letter was ‘C’ and it stands for communication). Now, about 10 years after the net became commonplace in the average family home, the ‘C’ now stands for a whole lot more. We used to communicate through the internet and mobile phones. Important people could communicate through TV, radio and maybe some other stuff I can’t think of right now. However, we don’t use the internet to communicate now, we use myspace, Bebo, Facebook, Twitter, SMS, video and we use the internet, 3G and bluetooth to access these things. Incidentally, most of these things are blocked and outlawed in school. You could probably pick holes in this statement like ‘SMS should be in the other category because it is a protocol’. I’m sure you understand what I’m getting at though. Most teens aren’t bothered how they get their regular fix of MyFaceBo; mobile phone, iPod touch, PSP, Hacked DS, PDA, PC, TV, Wii, XBox, PS 3; each one is just a tool.

http://www.scroogeyourself.com/?id=1568053464

Well, as good as. The newsletter, video and Rock You slide show had to be taken off because of parental permission for the publication of photos.

What a pain in the neck.

We have taken our first tiny steps towards improve our webspace.  The children have been playing around with the blogging space and were amazed to see all of their comments appear.  Some of our year 10 pupils will be creating ‘Rock You!’ photo slideshows later on too! (hopefully).  Please (if anyone actually reads this!) feel free to comment as the website progresses.  At the moment i’m trying to decide whether we need a traditional website at all or whether we just go all wordpress.  What do you think? Our Headteacher has been very forward thinking on our ICT, as can be seen on his comments on my ‘about me’ page.  He is more concerned with making ICT relevant and beneficial to the children rather than making sure we dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s of the curriculum.  The more of a back seat the school staff can take on this, the better in my opinion.  Let’s get the students running the show. www.delves.derbyshire.sch.uk 

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a question because our county has chosen an expensive contracted supplier and we’re nearly ready to roll.

The thing is, I don’t really understand what all the fuss is about. To me it seems that we are just starting to implement something that has nearly had it’s day. Many of the blogs I have been reading are talking about the popularity of Bebo. Well, most of the young people I know use Facebook, and I used to use myspace but have recently switched. Some people use Flickr for their photos, others use Picassa. Keep this in mind when reading the following quote from Wikipedia:

In ‘Virtually There’ a book and DVD pack distributed freely to schools by the Yorkshire and Humber Grid for Learning Foundation (YHGfL) Professor Stephen Heppell writes in the foreword: “Learning is breaking out of the narrow boxes that it was trapped in during the 20th century; teachers’ professionalism, reflection and ingenuity are leading learning to places that genuinely excite this new generation of connected young school students – and their teachers too. VLEs are helping to make sure that their learning is not confined to a particular building, or restricted to any single location or moment.”

However, it might make sure that their ‘learning’ is confined to a certain, safe, assessable group of web applications. At worst it could just be a place to upload assignments as ‘Blackboard’ was during my degree course. It may well be 21st century, but only just. I can’t help thinking that the money being spent on implementing the VLE could be spent on enabling people to use Google Docs or Flickr. If we learn from the online world of our students, we’ll see that they relish choice and personalisation. I know that we need to have some idea of what our students can do, but I think we are a little obsessed with having control over it.