On November 29th schools from across the Northern Grid region came together at the launch event of the Northern Grid Leading Schools Network. Only 14 schools had been invited to participate in this network to work with schools which, like them, were doing exciting and innovative things with educational technology.

Northern Grid has been working with schools to provide broadband connections since 1999. Many people don't realise that when it started there was no technical infrastructure in place and our priority wasn't to provide the regional network but to work with teachers and local authority advisors to look at how the technology could be used to support teaching and learning and make a difference in the classroom. This clearly demonstrates that Northern Grid's two priorities were improving teaching and learning and working in partnership with schools. We continue to focus on these priorities and to provide support to all our partner schools.

This support is even more important now than it was when we started. There have been significant changes nationally and locally and much of the support that was previously available from Becta and Local Authorities has disappeared. Increasingly schools are being told that they know best about what is needed and that they should get on with it. While the freedom this gives schools can be welcome many schools don't feel that they have the knowledge they need and they are already strengthening relationships with their local schools so they can work together and learn from each other's successes and challenges. Providing schools with links, contacts that they can call on is the first purpose of the Leading Schools Network.

Northern Grid works to share best practice across our partner schools and the Northern Grid Awards are one of the ways we do this.

Most of the schools invited to be part of the Northern Grid Leading Schools Network have entered and won awards. Schools that haven't or that haven't entered in the last couple of years won't know that the awards have changed and improved. More of the judging takes place in school, with judges going out to talk to teachers and pupils about their projects.

 

Successful schools are invited to the awards ceremony and the best part of this event is the exhibition, all schools are given a stand where they can show their project, they get to talk to teachers, LA advisors, commercial companies and other attendees about the work they've done and it's wonderful to hear confident articulate pupils describing what they've done. Schools also get a chance to visit each other's stands and learn about other uses of technology that they can take back and try in school.

After the event Northern Grid tries to follow up as many of the successful projects as possible by producing case studies but they can never live up to the experience of going in to schools and seeing what is happening first hand. The is the second purpose of the network to identify, capture and present best practice in a way that is of benefit to the members of the group but also for other schools.

We already have a lot of knowledge and expertise to share but we don't have all the answers and the changing nature of technology means that there are always new things to explore so the group will also be able to identify new uses of technology that Northern Grid can support them with.

Northern Grid has expertise in web and multimedia development and can offer support for recording successful projects and is also able to work with schools to develop new resources and support materials

There is a vast amount of excellent practice in the North East region and as well as sharing this practice it is important to recognise and celebrate the success of outstanding teachers and schools. The awards do this very well and a new category in the last couple of years has been the Teacher Award, now renamed as the Practitioner Award as not everyone making a difference with technology in schools is a teacher.

In 2011 four practitioners were recognised as outstanding:

• Claire Hayden from Norham Community Technology College, North Tyneside

• Myris Groom from St Aloysuis Infants, South Tyneside

• Nicola Padgett from Normanby Primary School, Redcar and Cleveland

• Stephen Ainsley from Harton Technology College, South Tyneside

After the Awards Ceremony I tried to identify why these practitioners were outstanding and what they have in common and a list of these attributes is on my Blog (http://cljack.wordpress.com/teaching-and-learning/what-makes-an-outstanding-teacher).

This list is relevant for this group as these characteristics were important in identifying the schools we invited to be part of the Network. We wanted schools that have a clear vision, that are totally dedicated to teaching and learning and focussed on the needs of their pupils now and in the future. Schools that would support colleagues within their own school but also in other schools both inside and outside of the network. Schools that were always looking ahead to see what else they could find that would make a difference to teaching and learning in their school.

Northern Grid will provide schools in the Network with a Leading Schools Logo to recognise their achievements, they will be promoted on our website, through our newsletters and events and through other organisations we work with, including Schools North East. We often get requests from other organisations looking for speakers for regional and national events and will suggest our Leading Schools.

We wanted schools that would try new things and be honest in their feedback about the success, or otherwise, of new technologies. This honesty would also be important for Northern Grid as the fourth purpose of the group would be to work with Northern Grid to set priorities to provide valuable feedback on current services and how to improve them and to identify what we should work on in future. We also hope that when Northern Grid gets things right the group will promote our work to make sure as many schools as possible take up the services and benefit from our support.

The schools selected to be part of the network have all worked with Northern Grid, many have presented at our events, nearly all have won Northern Grid awards with eight of them winning, or being highly commended in, the Overall Excellence Award. The schools are recognised by their Local Authorities and nationally as using technology effectively. We currently have 12 schools in the network and, over time, we hope this network will grow to include other schools.

The current members are:

 For more information about the Northern Grid Leading Schools contact Christine Jack

.

The Northern Grid Annual Report 2010 gives an overview of the services Northern Grid provides to schools and Local Authorities.  It includes reports from the chair of the board, the Northern Grid manager and the learning manager. A summary of achievements in 2010 and priorites for 2011 are also included.

The Learning Platform Network is an ambitious initiative to connect and support schools in their use of learning platforms.

Schools improve when they effectively use their learning platform to support leadership, innovative and appropriate teaching and learning, assessment, data management and communication with all members of the learning community.

The Becta Learning Platform Model was developed by a national group who represent schools, LAs and RBCs and the members are Sally Elding – Cambridgeshire Senior Adviser for ICT (Primary), Stephen Schwartz – Croydon ICT Strategy Manager Department for Children, Young People and Learners, Ian Usher – Buckinghamshire eLearning Co-ordinator, School Improvement Service, Alex Rees – Redbridge School Improvement Adviser, Dennis Wyatt – Dudley DGFL Portal Project Manager, Robin Sutton – Peterborough Senior Adviser 21st Century Development Manager, Alexander Findlay – Stockport VLE Development Consultant, Simon Finch – Northern Grid for learning e-learning officer and Dave Whyley – Wolverhampton Headteacher Consultant Learning Technologies,

In addition to the interactive PDF there is also a range of audio, video and text resources and provide further evidence and case studies of school's implementation of their learning platform to support transformational teaching and learning.

Northern Grid is a founder member of the Learning Platform Network, and will support and nurture a regional learning platform network which will integrate with the wider national and international learning platform networks. It is here on the Northern Grid website that teachers and local authorities will share their experiences and challenges for the wider benefit of the regional and national learning community.

The LPN is platform agnostic and materials and support offered will be appropriate for all schools, irrespective of the commercial or home-grown services they use.

 

 

Add Yourself to the LPN Map

This map will be useful for all schools and teachers who want to share ideas and experiences with others accross the UK and beyond.

Feel free to add your own location to the map so that others may benefit. You will need to be signed in to a Google Account to add your own location.

View The Learning Platform Network in a larger map

 

Resources

 

Research

Institute of Education - School use of learning platforms and associated technologies
Case Study: Primary School 1	Case Study: Secondary School 1
Case Study: Primary School 2	Case Study: Secondary School 2
Case Study: Primary School 3	Case Study: Secondary School 3
Case Study: Primary School 4	Case Study: Secondary School 4 ;
Case Study: Primary School 5	Case Study: Secondary School 5
Case Study: Primary School 6	Case Study: Secondary School 6

Issues - Videos

How do I get started?	What about staff training?
Doesn't it increase staff workload?	What are the main benefits?
How do you afford it?	What challenges might I face?
What about children who don't have home access?	Why should I bother to develop the learning platform?
What about e-safety?

Themes - Videos

Assessment	Personalisation
Collaboration	Pupil Voice
Communication	Transformation
Engaging Parents	Transition
Organisation and Development

Publications

Exploiting ICT to improve parental engagement, moving towards online reporting	Parents as Partners in Learning
Extended Learning Opportunities	Schools and Parents - A New Partnership
"I'm Stuck Can You Help Me?" - A report into parents' involvement in school work at home	Supporting Your Child's Learning

New Resources

20 December 2010

From North Tyneside LA

Shaping Learner Landscapes is a project set up by North Tyneside School Improvement Service to allow schools to explore enquiry based learning over an extended period of time supported by ICT.

Was Evacuation Successful?

From London Grid for Learning

The school Couldn't Run without the MLE

A video recording of the of visionary Headteacher Mark Ducker at Gonville Primary school in Croydon has been made into an LGfL film showing how through strong and clear Leadership Gonville primary school has been transformed by the London MLE.

(A note on copyright and appropriate use of the Becta resources. These materials have been provided on a non-exclusive basis under the new Open Government License and the UK Government Licensing Framework to enable and encourage the free use of government information covered by Crown copyright and database rights. All existing Becta copyright statements are superseded by this provision.)

For further information see:

http://reference.data.gov.uk/id/open-government-licence.

The one exception is any photography or video contained in the material, whilst this can be reproduced in its existing format and for the purpose for which it was designed, it cannot be repurposed in any format or medium.

If you publish/make available any Becta documents you must ensure you include the Open Government Licence attribution with the Becta exception on photography. Details on the attribution are here.)

Questions & Queries?

email Simon Finch at simon.finch@northerngrid.org or on Twitter at @simfin

The Learning Platform Network is on Twitter at @the_lpn

Post a comment below

{jcomments on}

 

The following is an overview of the Keynote and breakout sessions attended at NAACE 2010.

By far the most hotly debated topics post NAACE were the response to David Anstead’s OFSTED session, Global problems and the use of the ‘Twitterfall’.

Two of these aspects are looked at in more detail towards the end of this report.

If you want to skip the blurb you could go straight to the Useful References / Blogs etc at the end of this document or the links included throughout.

Full conference videos and presentations can be viewed at www.naace.co.uk/conference2010videos (requires a NAACE membership login).

 

 

---

Keynote

Race Online for 2010 – An ambition to end digital exclusion in the UK

Martha Lane Fox, Digital Inclusion Champion

Martha’s session was well received as it would be considering no one could disagree with the sentiments of her presentation in working to end digital exclusion in the UK.

It is apparent that she has influence when it comes to lobbying parliament re: Digital Inclusion but is finding the process frustrating as far as ‘pushing’ initiatives through in her aim to create better education, health, governmental and social opportunities for the most socially excluded people in the UK.

Martha explained that Race Online 2012 aims to bring people and organisations together to improve the life chances of those 4 million people who have never been online or cannot get access.

Her talk focused on the Race Online priorities in asking for our support in challenging the government, industry and the third sector on programme development and delivery.

She asked for the support of the NAACE delegation in using Race Online 2012 to highlight and promote partner to provide an intelligent hub of information and resources and asked all those involved in ICT / online delivery to join in to leverage new and existing activities in ensuring ‘face to face’ support is available to all socially and digitally excluded adults.

• http://raceonline2012.org/resources
• www.marthalanefox.com
• Martha's Twitter

 

Keynote

Rethinking Educational Futures: Challenges and opportunities over the coming decade

Keri Facer, Professor of Education, Education and Social Research Institute

Starting point of presentation for discussion?
How old will you be in 2025?
How old will the child entering school in September be in 2025?
What do you think the world will be like in 2025?

What are you basing your assumptions about the future on?

Going with the theme of the conference this speaker concentrated on the future and education. Keri examined current consensus and the critical uncertainties in the research field around the social and technological developments over the next decade. Different futures for education were explored taking into account social and technological developments.

‘Shift Happens’ orthodoxy
Massive increases in computer processing speeds
Massive increases in digitised information
Massive population increases in China and India
Demand for highly flexible workforce able to adapt to new economic circumstances

What does this come to mean for education?

Compete or die at the scale of the nation and the scale of the individual …
The function of schools has to be changed to support individuals and nations to compete economically.

• Download Presentation
• Keri Facer's MMU Biography
  
• Beyond Current Horizons - Keri Facer
  
• Keri's Twitter
  

 

Keynote

Increasing Global Problems

Lord Puttnam of Queensgate, C.B.E.

 

Lord Puttnam's presentation hinged on a thought provoking opening film showing that increasing global problems mean that if we don't create a 21st century curriculum quickly - there may be no need for five A*- Cs because there'll be no world to live in.

 

This presentation was inspirational but also shocking and left me with a ‘what can I do about this’ feeling.
Thoughts around the delegation seem to be pretty much in agreement that the global dimension is almost totally lacking in the average classroom. In its place we have restrictions to learning via locked-down systems etc.
Latest OFSTED themed review re: e-safety highlighted by the delegation.

“How can children become the "people we need" when even their teachers can't show them the benefits technology can bring”?

• School praised for less filtered access with good safety training:
• Managed rather than locked down

 

Keynote:

The Challenge for proper education: dare we tackle it?

Karen Price, CEO e-skills UK

Debbie Forster, School Programmes Co-ordinator, e-skills UK

 

This presentation focused on driving economic recovery, accelerating employment growth, enabling the information society and the e-skills manifesto.

• Download PDF of Presentation

 

Keynote

Taking the C out of ICT - The findings from OFSTED’s inspection of ICT in schools

David Anstead, Ofsted’s National Adviser for ICT

 

The situation was most positive in primary schools but a pretty damming report for Secondary schools.

A quite vociferous and ‘hostile’ delegation during question time in which some very pointed questions were posed from members of NAACE who seem to have become disenchanted with Ofsted.

There are more reactions about this in the OFSTED section within this document.

• Download Presentation
• Reflective Blog

 

Keynote

Becta Update

Tony Richardson, Interim Executive Director, Children's Services and Local Government

Terry Piggott, Executive Director, Strategy & Communications, Becta

 

Tony introduced as having responsibilities within his role that included the RBCs?

Becta making the case for the vital role that technology can play in empowering and not overpowering learning.
They drew on the evidence of progress and impact re: Rose review and primary curriculum.
Talked about the important role local authorities and children services can play in Harnessing technology ECM etc.
Questions focused on what support is needed at national and local level in harnessing technology, improving and enriching learning as well as delivering efficiencies.

• Download Presentation

 

 

---

Breakout Session / Workshops

Building a Social Learning Environment

Jane Hart, Social Learning Consultant, Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies

Apparently a social learning environment integrates a range of social media technologies and provides a place for personal, group and formal learning to take place.
This session was not what I thought it was going to be. Clue was in the title really as Jane went through all the available online tools you could use to create a social learning environment.

I thought she might have referenced to case study materials etc on how these tools are improving learning, perhaps it’s too early to know yet!

 

Parental engagement and online reporting

Simon Shaw, Senior Manager – Parental engagement and online reporting, Becta

Simon talked about 21st Century Parents, 21st Century Schools and exploiting ICT to engage parents.
This was mainly predictable stuff with a little reflection on how technology has accelerated over the past 20 years and a look into the future.
The main focus of the presentation though was the potential impact of parental engagement, usual stuff with how technology can address the problem of hard to reach parents etc.
There was some discussion on what parents want from schools in the way of communication and how parent’s needs are changing.
Majority of the presentation spent on Becta’s priorities re: online reporting / timescales etc and Becta’s Next Generation Learning.

The presentation consisted of 53 very busy slides, too much information to take in at once but some good case study material examples from schools.

• Download Presentation

OFSTED

Thought and opinions from the NAACE membership generated by the Ofsted keynote:

‘What inspection tells us about the current state of ICT in schools and some questions about what future provision might be like.’

To counter the volatile audience and their ‘shoot the messenger approach’ which I found uncomfortable I got the impression that Ofsted are concerned about the quality of the learning in ICT lessons as experienced by too many children and young people.
David Anstead wants to raise the expectations of teachers and a rational debate rather than the emotional reaction experienced within the conference room would have been a better way forward.

One of the more constructive discussions coming from the post presentation questions referred to teachers having to be more than just technology ‘users’.
The argument sorry discussion hinged around as to whether you just need to be a user or you actually need to understand how things work.
To be a "high quality" user and for transfer of skills and knowledge as technology changes you do need to know something about how things work.
Ofsted quoted evidence from learners themselves that this was what they wanted.

There is a global shift that has and is continuing to move off the desktop to the web and from proprietary to open standards. If you really don't understand these fundamentals, how can you make decisions about selection of tools? - and the tools matter.

The delegation was in agreement that teachers and advisers/consultants etc needed to be motivated to learn new contemporary technologies that affect all children's immediate lives and implement them in the curriculum.
A change of culture is required where it is seen as not acceptable for an IT education professional to declare they need no technical knowledge because they are simply IT users.

 

Mike Bostok’s reflective blog

e.g.

Like many, I am concerned that so many members of the teaching profession have become disenchanted with Ofsted.

A lot has changed since the days when HMI visits were the vehicle for monitoring the work of schools; the respect that they commanded, and the great skill that they had of promoting change by asking perceptive questions.Some of this decline is to do with changes that have been made in recent times, but not effectively communicated to schools.

Ofsted has admitted that it has raised its expectations. It has also altered the way that it uses data. It hasn’t really justified this so far beyond a couple of articles in the press. I think there should be more of a debate on these issues so that people don’t think that the principles of school inspection are being made up on the hoof.

As a fundamental consideration, inspection without any accompanying development implies that the sole reason for inspection is accountability, whereas I would argue that the main purpose should be improvement.I like the suggestion that Ofsted should make their evidence base more available as a resource for school development.

 

Another thought:

 

Clearly Ofsted is still counting that which can be counted and nit-picking over whether data-logging is being 'delivered' or not.

In the meantime the world's children are disengaging from education en masse. (If they need datalogging they can pick it up in an hour - and probably most do when they buy some technical Lego or a similar toy).

 

Pro Ofsted (to balance things up!)

Ofsted do produce some very good publications.
Twelve outstanding secondary schools – Excelling against the odds
Sets out the characteristics of schools in which you will find our very best teachers and very best school leaders. Forget what league tables say.

 

And finally:

The debate about the use of the Twitterfall brought some interesting comments and observations to surface.

The comments and observations in general ranged from:

I've always believed that those in the Naace community, whatever the jobs we do, can only understand how to 'advance education through ICT' is we model practice. After all this is fundamental to the learning business. Unless we explore advances in technologies, how can we form a view on how they might be used to better those we teach?

With regard to Twitter at conferences, Naace is probably on the same 'learning curve' as others organising such events and we are not the only ones discussing such issues. There has definitely been a trend over the last six of so months at events in which tensions arise until we all learn how to manage the disruptive nature of technology. So for example, speakers, even those in tune and well versed in adopting technology feel threatened by the power of the back channel.

Twitter came of age this year. Real chatter going on throughout the conference. However, we need to look at what that chatter was, and not just criticise or dismiss it. That's would be "block" reflex so beloved of educators and not typical of Naace.
OK, so it's new. So it won't be perfect yet. And yes, a couple of comments were inappropriate - but I don't honestly believe they did anyone any harm. No worse than the comments we might pass to the person next to us; it's just that they were public!

In Twitters absence, I believe we are a 20th century audience, listening passively. But with it, we are participating in an active manner.

 

To:

It seems to me that this is yet another proliferation of the 'sound bite' - I guess this is a criticism of Twitter generally. A presentation is usually a reflective summary of some piece of more extensive work. To then comment publicly - without reflection - seems to me is almost a kind of heckling. As one who was brought up to listen attentively (and it is after all what we expect of students in class), making notes and interacting at the end of a presentation seems intuitively more constructive.

Just because technology makes it possible it doesn't mean that it's useful or desirable.
To make a terrible rehash of a well known saying:
A paragraph, reflected upon, must be worth a thousand tweets!

I found the twitter wall a bit of a distraction rather than adding to the conference. After all, those wanting to read the twitter feeds could do on their personal device or away from conference (where it was probably of more use?).

I felt that the whole experience of chattering whilst the speaker was presenting was rude and childish. - Rather like passing notes round in class on the assumption that the teacher is not aware of what is going on! None of the tweets that I saw actually helped my understanding of what was being presented.

Yes, the tweets were great fun during the Gala Dinner but far too distracting for me during the conference sessions!

 

Types of Tweets sent during Keynotes and breakout presentations

 

1. Description of what was happening type:
   e.g. "just waiting for X to start", and "the speaker is now saying this".
2. Comment/reaction/opinion type of tweet.
   e.g. "I really agree/disagree with what the speaker is saying" and "I do not believe that the speaker is correct here" (to which someone else might respond).
3. Flippant type such as "so that's learning gone, then".

 

The main conference hall had two large presentation screens set up at the front. One screen for the presenter and the other screen used for the Twitterfall. No-one was compelled to read the Twitterfall, I personally found it compelling and therefore sometimes a distraction from the main presentation. Others may not have experienced this. The speaker couldn’t see the Twitterfall which was an issue in my opinion as responses and murmurs / titters were going around the audience in response to the Twitterfall and not the presenter.

I think that if there is going to be a live twitter feed that can be seen by the audience it needs to be managed so that the speaker can be given the opportunity to respond to what is being said. If the speaker knows the source the presenter can choose to ignore it join or respond as appropriate.

For me this shows that both speakers and particularly the conference organisers still need to think carefully about how to make best use of this technology. Some speakers responded well to the Twitterfall some didn’t and some were outwardly critical. Perhaps the speakers should have been given the choice of having the feed visible to the audience or not. Although this was obviously an experiment at Naace into the use of the technology I think if you are to 'add value' to the event by using it then it needs to be used appropriately.

 

Other Useful References / Blogs etc

 

Naace Conference Blog

 

Twitter Hash Tags:
#naace2010, #naace

 

Twitterfall as a backchannel

Chris Smith (@shamblesguru) describes it well and identifies a number of tools, some of which may be far better than Twitter for the purpose.

Carol Rainbow (@carolrb) uses a backchannel in the Internet Safety Courses she and Nick Speller described in the NAACE Teachmeet session. The Teachmeet session was hosted by Drew Buddie and Leon Cych

 

Scott Berkun on alternative strategies

Theo's

 

Recorded webinar by Cliff Atkinson

"The Backchannel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever

 

eBook on "how to present with Twitter and other backchannels"