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Showing posts from 2015

Erosion of Pupils' Digital Skills

It was with interest that I read these articles over the last couple of days: BBC website: "Tablets Eroding Pupil's Digital Skills" The Register: Kids' Tech Skills Go Backwards Thanks To Tablets And Smartmobes" The Conversation: ICT Is Failing In Schools - Here's Why Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority - ICT Literacy Report Shows A Decline In ICT Literacy National Assessment Program ICT Literacy - Yrs 6 & 10 Report 2014 A report just published by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority found that the ICT literacy performance of students in both Years 6 and Years 10 decreased between 2011 - 2014. Their conclusions certainly caught my eye, and that of the press around the world: "The decline does not appear to be a result of changes in the test content, in the way the test was administered or sample obtained. One of the possible interpretations of the decline in ICT literacy is that the incre

Restoring The Balance

In my last post I talked about the balance between coding and digital literacy, and how it was refreshing to read a report from the ECDL saying that perhaps there has recently been too much of a focus on coding at the expense of digital skills.  It was with interest therefore that this morning I read this post - ' Coding and Digital Skills' , from Miles Berry. In it, Miles reflects upon the first year since the introduction of the Computing curriculum in England. He talks about the move from ICT to Computing and about computational thinking, but it's his conclusions that I found most interesting, and in my opinion should be read by all those educators in Wales involved in developing the new curriculum and digital competence frameworks. Let's hope that we do learn from England's experience in changing their curriculum, and in restoring a healthy balance between coding and digital skills/competence. Here is Miles' conclusion in full: I don’t want to give the im

A Balance Between Coding and Digital Literacy

An article from EurActiv.com caught my attention this afternoon. Titled, " Computing and digital literacy education needs a unified approach " and authored by the ECDL Foundation , the piece argues that "education programmes promoting coding need to be balanced with basic technology skills, which are too often lacking - even amongst so-called 'digital natives'." Also highlighting that there was a danger that "this focus on coding risks diminishing the quality of other aspects or computing and digital literacy education." It was quite refreshing to read this article as I thought that I might be the only one who was having some concerns, especially with the media focus on educational technology at the moment is seemingly fixated on coding in schools. In my post from June I wrote about what I saw as 'skewed reporting' of the digital competence framework, from the BBC. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with the introduction of co

Communication Breakdown?

The last couple of months have been an extremely busy time for my consultancy. My ICT scheme seems to have had a very good reception from schools. I have met with headteachers, ICT coordinators, run Inset training days, twilight meetings or courses for well over 100 primary schools from across Wales. The majority of them having the same concerns of what the Successful Futures report might mean for their school, and wanting to 'refocus' again on ICT. For many this means looking at the basic skills pupils need to successfully and efficiently create, store and organise files (word processing, DTP, handling data, video, audio, and graphics). Alongside these basic technology aspects we also look at the elements of online communication and collaboration (through O365 or Google Apps for Edu) , and digital citizenship / esafety. If you look back at my previous posts on digital competence/literacy, you'll see that these are two areas which consistently appear in existing digital c

Web Filtering Recommendations

Good to see the Welsh Government publish this document on web filtering standards for schools. Over the last couple of months I've been working with primary schools from around Wales and it still surprises me the number of local authorities who block access to websites they deem unsuitable. YouTube is still the 'big one' that seems to be blocked by many (along with other video streaming sites), and I'm currently having issues with certain LAs blocking access to Google Apps for Education. The frustration for myself and schools is the inconsistencies with blocking. One LA lets something through for their schools, and the neighbouring LA has it blocked. I wonder how long it'll take before we have consistency in LA filtering across the whole of Wales? It would actually be helpful if we had consistency in filtering across a Consortium!

Skewed BBC Reporting - Surely Not?

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed a pattern emerging in the reporting of digital competence and anything else schools ICT related by the BBC over the last year or so? I've just read this report by the BBC to yesterday's announcement from the Welsh Government of a digital competency framework for schools in Wales. Did you spot the focus? Here are some quotes: "So-called "digital competency" involves being able to code and programme computers and skills need to go beyond IT lessons." "An independent review of IT in schools had earlier said computer science lessons needed to be made more relevant to now and the future ." What is it with BBC's fixation on coding? Did they actually read the Donaldson review? Did they notice that computer science is certainly included, but under a new area of learning and experience called Science and Technology, which was not mentioned by Huw Lewis yesterday? As I've outlined in several of my

Digital Competence Framework - September 2016 Announcement

Yesterday the education minister, Huw Lewis, announced that a new digital competence framework for schools in Wales would be available from September 2016. This announcement comes off the back of the Prof. Donaldson report, Successful Futures , and although he hasn't formally responded to the recommendations in the report, the Welsh Government obviously feel that this is a priority and would like to have it implemented as soon as possible. Traditionally the Welsh Government have implemented curriculum changes or frameworks, 'top down'. That is, subject experts writing the new document, then having it piloted by schools, before being pushed out to all schools. However, the development of this new digital competence framework will be developed locally, as suggested in the Donaldson report. “I will therefore be asking our regional consortia to identify a small group of those schools and practitioners already leading the way on the digital agenda so they can help us to design

"They're Not Making the Case"

This post from Maryland caught my attention this morning. It is a report on a council who are wanting to increase the property tax in their area to fund education improvements. It appears that the majority of the local residents are against the 15% tax increase. One of the County Councilmen commenting that: “My district was number one in terms of housing foreclosures for Prince George’s County,” Patterson said, referring to the 2008 housing market crash. “Residents are saying, ‘We are just barely getting our heads above water and now you want to hit us with a tax increase?’” Among those improvements that would be brought by the 15% tax increase would be more competitive teacher pay, pre-kindergarten expansion, and digital literacy . Now, the report doesn't elaborate on what it means by digital literacy, it seems to be a 'catch all' term at the moment, but another Councilwoman does say this: "(T)he school system has not provided information as to how the money wil

Bamzooki - Creators Not Consumers

I spent some time over the weekend playing around with one of my favourite pieces of software - Bamzooki. Originally created for the CBBC TV programme of the same name, the Bamzooki software allows a user to create 'Zooks'. These are digital 3D creatures that are built using a variety of blocks which can be modelled to your specification and then tested for speed, strength and agile in a variety of simulations. In my opinion an excellent tool for supporting the area of the ICT curriculum focussed on modelling and simulation. So many opportunities for a teacher to ask the "What if...?" questions, changing of variables in the model, and challenging pupils to solve problems. For instance, several years ago when I ran the "Bamzooki Challenge" across the local authority, the challenge for the pupils involved was to create a 'Zook' with certain constraints  - mustn't be heavier than this, have more parts than this, etc. The pupils then created their m

Defining Digital Competence

In a couple of previous posts I looked at what was meant by the term digital literacy and what this could mean in the Welsh education context. These were written in response to a recommendation from the ICT Steering Group report , proposing a new statutory Digital Literacy Framework for schools. I attempted to define what digital literacy meant using definitions from groups such as The Royal Society, Becta, Futurelab , Jisc and Common Sense Media. It was very difficult to pin down exactly what it meant but there were certainly commonalities between all of them. This week however, Prof. Graham Donaldson published his report on the curriculum and assessment in Wales, "Successful Futures" , and in it referred not to digital literacy , but to digital competence (which is a term I'm far happier using).  I therefore feel it's important for me to try in this post to understand what is meant by this term, look at some definitions and find out if there are any differences

Successful Futures

I woke up this morning to the news that there is to be a " radical national curriculum overhaul proposed for Wales ". Professor Graham Donaldson today published his report titled ' Successful Futures ', the result of almost a year long review into the curriculum and assessment in Wales. A lot of radical and exciting changes recommended, with much for educators in Wales to mull over and discuss in the coming months during a period being called, 'the great debate'. I've only really just scanned over the 124 page document, but here are some of the headlines I've picked out: - Six new areas of learning and experience from 3 to 16: Expressive Arts Health and Well Being Humanities Languages, Literacy and Communication Mathematics and Numeracy Science and Technology - The current separation of the curriculum into phases and key stages should be removed. Statutory schooling should be seen as a coherent and progressive whole, including the move

Alignment of Reports

Last Tuesday (17th February) a House of Lords Digital Skills Committee produced their report titled "Make or Break: The UK's Digital Future". The report is a call for action to the new incoming Government in May 2015 in the following areas: The economy - millions of jobs are at risk of automation Skills - the UK population needs to learn the right skills for the future Schools - make digital literacy a third core subject Inclusion - realise the benefits of universal digital access Women - realise the economic potential of more women in digital careers I haven't been through all the 144 pages of the full report yet, but I have had a chance to go through the summary of conclusions and recommendations of the committee, and it does provide plenty of food for thought for those involved in education and for the whole of society. The thrust of the report is that digital technologies permeate all areas of our lives and that the " UK cannot afford to miss th

Ah, I Remember What I Liked About BETT!

Blogging is a strange thing. If you know me, then you'll know I do tend to say things as I see them. My blogs are often a reflection of how I feel about something and tend to 'ramble' somewhat as I commit these to the screen. Therefore writing these things down and publishing them to the public, does sometimes leave me feeling a little exposed. In my last blog, I mentioned how I personally felt that the BETT show, since moving to Excel had become very 'corporate' and that it didn't have the noise, hustle and bustle and dare I say the heart, that was so very much part of BETT when it was at Olympia. Was this just me, or did anyone else feel the same? Unless someone comments on a blog post I don't really know how people are reacting to what I've have written. Are they indifferent, whole heartedly agree or really upset with the things I write? Interestingly that last post did generate some feedback from people who read it. They generally seemed to agree wit

A Place To Stay 'Fresh'

Another year, another BETT Show begins and I'm going to be travelling up to Excel London tomorrow (Friday) to attend. I first visited as a classroom teacher and ICT coordinator in about 1999. An early morning Friday start, on a coach arranged by the local authority, full of excited teachers, happy to have escaped their school for the day. A four hour trip (if we were lucky and there were no hold ups) down the M4 to Olympia, London. Since then I think I've attended every single BETT event, first at Olympia and more recently at its new home at the Excel in London's Docklands. In about 2009 I even gave a presentation at BETT on the use of the CBBC Bamzooki software in classroom to support ICT modelling. However, I've noticed that over the last couple of years I don't get the same sense of excitement about attending. During the last couple of days I've been thinking about why I feel like this. I am actually looking forward to meeting some colleagues that I work wit

Downloading YouTube Videos

I haven't blogged for a while but I've just seen something I thought was really neat and I thought I should share it. At one time I used to do a lot of work with schools on using film trailers. One activity we used to do with classes was using a recent trailer in iMovie, strip off the audio track and get the children to rebuild the trailer using original music they've created from Garageband, adding sound effects, and a new narration track. Some great opportunities for literacy work and the creative use of audio. I used to use Zamzar to help me download the video, however several years ago this feature was removed. However, I've just seen a very useful tweet that showed me how to download Youtube videos very easily. Basically between the www. and the youtube.com just add ss - eg. https://www. ss youtube.com/watch?v=t-C..... You then get taken to a page where you can download the video to your computer. Simples! REMEMBER - Think about copyright and don't be tempted