tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11753905991239543952024-03-13T07:14:03.154+00:00The Virtual ExplorerExploring the nexus between pedagogy, psychology and technologyRichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.comBlogger91125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-23931171279283870152019-02-11T15:20:00.002+00:002019-02-11T15:20:37.076+00:00Rethinking education technology from digital tool to digital place: new perspectives, new affordancesJust a quick link to my recent article for the Chartered College of Teaching - some of my thoughts on digital space and digital place, and the implications for teaching and learning:<br />
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<a href="https://impact.chartered.college/article/rethinking-education-technology-digital-tool-digital-place-new-perspectives-affordances/"><img alt="RETHINKING EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY FROM DIGITAL TOOL TO DIGITAL PLACE: NEW PERSPECTIVES, NEW AFFORDANCES" border="0" data-original-height="322" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM_oDMMZSQD6CJVwJs6uiUCWgbcxBMHOwqXFAIoXuINbwTu-mNOrNsX7eCprrbQRJ2qv21Oonx0AChHN1-IAaU8SOO73GBjz43vakXH8NfJ6FV_wVK2gZLlxZlhbaZWDPgo_0IjRrJM-sm/s1600/impact_article.jpg" title="RETHINKING EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY FROM DIGITAL TOOL TO DIGITAL PLACE: NEW PERSPECTIVES, NEW AFFORDANCES" /></a></div>
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Very honoured to have it accepted, and be included amongst so many great thinkers on education and technology.<br />
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<a href="https://impact.chartered.college/article/rethinking-education-technology-digital-tool-digital-place-new-perspectives-affordances/">https://impact.chartered.college/article/rethinking-education-technology-digital-tool-digital-place-new-perspectives-affordances/</a>Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-13660279531353849932018-05-24T12:57:00.001+01:002018-05-24T12:57:32.407+01:00The two different Edtech approaches: And why the AI one will failIf there's one thing that's endlessly recurrent in Edtech discussion, it's the latest thing, the new fad, the must-have shiny. It seems there's always a new kid on the block that will be THE thing to transform education. There was the Ebook and the 3D printer, Augmented Reality or its close cousin Virtual Reality. Who can forget the excitement over tablets, and the iPad in particular. What about gamification, VLEs, mobiles, MOOCs even. I could go on ...<br />
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The one thing that connects all these fads is just that - they were fads. Yes, some of them have become embedded in practice in some niches, but the idea that they were going to transform education more widely has now been forgotten - and now it's on to the next great thing, and it seems the next great thing for the foreseeable future is ... AI. If you believe the hype we're now at a point where computer software can be designed to be clever enough to analyse how well a student grasps a topic, learn from their answers so that it can set more challenging problems, and hence grow their understanding independently of teachers. Effectively, and according to those selling the software at least, the new AI can take what is potentially the most challenging thing a teacher has to do - understand whereabouts a student is within Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development - and scaffold their learning appropriately.<br />
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"[the Zone of Proximal Development is] the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers" </blockquote>
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(Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86).</blockquote>
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So what's this got to do with two different approaches to Edtech? I believe it's about what I tend to refer to as 'embedded cognition', i.e. the ability of an artefact to embed within it some level of human thinking. But let's backtrack a bit, and look at some examples of this idea from other contexts.</div>
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Embedded Cognition and the Industrial Revolution</h2>
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Now I'm not going to start going on about Luddites, after all, there's an awful lot of misconceptions over who they were and why they did what they did, but what I think is not misconstrued is how machines began to take on some basic human tasks during the industrial revolution, and by doing so increased the pressure on an already challenged workforce. What happened, in effect, is that small, repetitive, and basic tasks could be adequately simulated by mechanical machines. The level of cognition required to carry out these tasks was successfully embedded into a combination of rotors, cogs, motors, etc. such that the human was no longer required.</div>
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Now, let's compare that to the AI example in education, above. Is this equivalent? Are the mental processes that a teacher goes through when trying to understand how well a student understands a specific topic, some form of small, repetitive, and basic task that can be adequately replicated by a machine ... even if it is a computer? Is it really completely replicable between individual students, i.e. are individual students merely part of the manufacturing process, something for which education simply needs to be done too? Of course not. This is the industrial model of education, and of Edtech, which has been given a new spin by the wonders of AI. What is, of course, missing from this model is captured in the quote from Vygotsky, above. It's the <i>guidance </i>that is crucial, whether it is coming from an adult or in collaboration with more capable peers. It's that very tricky thing to do, to actually listen to someone else's understanding of a topic, and offer different perspectives and ideas based on your interpretation of that understanding. It's not simply marking an assessment and then delivering new problems to solve - that is not guidance.</div>
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The AI sellers will tell you that their programs intelligently analyse individual students progress over time and that they can understand patterns and deeper understanding, but that's hard enough for an experienced teacher to do let alone a computer. Those companies who have been doing this for a while, or at least trying to do this for a while, are now beginning to admit that they totally <a href="https://news.elearninginside.com/skepticism-personalized-learning-rise/">underestimated the scale of the challenge and the incredible complexity</a> that is involved in any one individual's understanding. Some at least are backing off from the strongest claims, though here in the UK we still seem to be at peak hype.</div>
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So that's one approach to Edtech - teacher replacement via AI (they're still calling it workload reduction for now). I argue it's based on a flawed understanding of teaching and learning that will inevitably fail. So what's the other approach?</div>
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Edtech as Catalyst</h2>
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If Vygotsky is right about the ZPD, and let's face it many people think he knew a thing or two about this, then the key to teaching and learning is working in a specific zone whilst being guided by more capable others. So teachers and students, basically, not Edtech. That breaks down into a number of specific tasks that teachers need to carry out to make that work - preparing content that can be experienced, creating blends of individuals with some more capable than others according to topic, ensuring the strongest and weakest are adequately supported, working out how well individual students have grasped a concept, those sort of things. Everyday teaching, if you like - investigating new content, collaborating with each other, differentiating between individuals, assessing pupils progress, etc. That sort of complexity is very, very hard to simply replace with Edtech, the computer programs would have to know so much about the context of the work taking place, the topics being investigated, the individual personalities of each and every student, the list goes on. However, what computer programs can do is help to <i>catalyse </i>each and every process.</div>
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Forgotten your science lessons? Here's a quick recap. What a catalyst does is to make a reaction happen faster; to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, a catalyst is:</div>
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"A substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change."</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ2-HCs32lrfGROnJD8MX9yAO5M9iIBOWvjMwRxqMxk1aoE01zXXftL7ZdjOFNu7t1unDG3R01gYpwVMSg2yQbKgm-tz5mFQvkAMFZu-bBk3e99AgMbVsdVuTdHN170F_sQhihBtzi-qs_/s1600/catalystReaction.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ2-HCs32lrfGROnJD8MX9yAO5M9iIBOWvjMwRxqMxk1aoE01zXXftL7ZdjOFNu7t1unDG3R01gYpwVMSg2yQbKgm-tz5mFQvkAMFZu-bBk3e99AgMbVsdVuTdHN170F_sQhihBtzi-qs_/s400/catalystReaction.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Learning is about being exposed to different perspectives and creating personal connections between them which build on prior understanding. If you like it's a reaction between a learner and their context, and especially the teacher or other more capable peers. What Edtech can do in that context is accelerate some of the tasks that teachers and students carry out as part of that reaction. It's not going to <i>replace </i>a task like in the AI model above, but instead make it easier to accomplish an existing task.</div>
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Let's take investigating new content, for example, and see how this task might be catalysed in practice. By using services like Google Alerts content can be fed to learners automatically, speeding up the finding of relevant information. Similarly, services like Scoop.it can speed up and simplify the process of organising and curating that information. Collaborating face-to-face is undoubtedly the best way of working together, but not always feasible. Edtech apps like Padlet can extend that collaboration, not only across time but also by allowing more individuals to participate, and hence accelerate what can be learnt from others. Assessment Edtech apps like Socrative and Quizlet can automatically collate, grade and store student responses over time, speeding up the assessment process and allowing the teacher to focus instead on interpreting results. In these examples the embedded cognition in each app is designed to align with a specific teaching and learning need, helping to accelerate and simplify the task in each case.</div>
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So what's it to be: Replacement or Acceleration?</h2>
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So there's my take on AI; I suspect a few too many smoke and mirrors at the moment, promises without much evidence to back them up. As a tech nerd myself, I love the idea that AI can enhance teaching and learning, but there's just not enough evidence to back it up. Just how humans learn, how we turn from wailing babies into the most incredible and complex individuals we all are, is almost certainly THE most difficult thing we have to understand as a species, and something we're still a long way from solving. Yes, we have lots of bits and pieces of the puzzle, but human psychology and development is still a young science with a long way to go. To postulate now that we can simply roll computers into the learning gap and things will be better is naive at best, arrogant at worst.</div>
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If you want to make effective use of digital technologies for teaching and learning then the best model you can apply is Edtech as a catalyst. And it's not just me saying it - to quote Richard Culatta, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education:</div>
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“Tech is an accelerator, if you apply it to bad, ineffective practices, you get faster, bad, ineffective practices. If you apply it to good, high-quality teaching practices you get faster, higher-quality teaching practices.”</blockquote>
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Getting faster, higher-quality teaching practices is, oddly enough, not straightforward (what's that line about free lunches again) - but did I mention I've already developed something to help, and it's free? If this article has peaked your interest, then take a look at my <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a>, digital playing cards in the top trump style designed to help you find the right Edtech to suit your needs. It's a curated list of the best digital technologies available, mapped against the kind of tasks you as a teacher face every day - investigating, collaborating, assessing, etc. I hope you find them useful, and that you'll find something in there to catalyse your own practice.</div>
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Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</div>
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Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-15277787859513289542018-03-07T13:59:00.001+00:002018-03-07T14:16:40.789+00:00The endless rise of the "think different" climate in educationAnother email arrives, and yet another post encouraging us all to "think differently" in order to solve the 'problem' of education. A careful explanation is set-up as to how the modern world is all different now, technology moving so quickly, new challenges that we've never faced before - and the only way we're going to solve these new challenges is to change how we think, work together in different ways which we've never done before. Does any of this sound familiar?<br />
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Maybe it's just me, but at first there just seemed to be a few of these types of posts a month. They weren't that common - and occasionally even added something to the conversation. But lately they seem to be almost continuous; every other pundit has something to share on how we need to change our ways of thinking in order to move forward, Whether it's 21st century thinking, how to embed creativity, or the new importance of innovation, nothing we've been doing so far is good enough. But is there really any truth in all this? I've been reading all the stores, but I'm really struggling to see the evidence.<br />
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Is it true? Take technology ...</h2>
How true is all this? Let's take that "technology is moving so quickly" line, for example, and see if it really is moving that fast.<br />
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Let me take a wild stab at the word processing package you use on a daily basis. Wouldn't be Microsoft Word by any chance, would it? That software package is now 34 years old. And do you know what? <i>The basic functionality hasn't changed in those 34 years.</i> I was teaching someone in their eighties last week how to use some functionality, and it occurred to me just how basic most use actually is. Writing sentences, paragraphs, punctuation, bold, italic, perhaps the odd picture.<br />
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<a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qKkABzt0Zqg/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qKkABzt0Zqg/maxresdefault.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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How about Twitter, you might ask. The 'new kid on the block' will be 12 years old this month - it's practically a teenager. Facebook is 14 years old, Wikipedia is now 17, and the venerable Blogger has reached maturity - had it's 18th birthday last August. It's the same across the board, most technologies aren't changing very fast at all, they've been around for some time, and new ones invariably only offer an interesting tweak on existing practices.<br />
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The bottom line is that the technologies you use on a day to day basis have probably not changed much in the last decade. Believe me, the evidence is clear - technology is not moving half as quick as people make out.<br />
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How about the challenges?</h2>
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Another line that is taken is that the challenges we face in education are different. Let's break that down a little, and first question what it means to educate.</div>
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What is the purpose of education? Some would have you believe that the purpose of education is only about work, about raising children to be <i>productive</i> members of society - as if life is solely about contributing to GDP! I would argue the purpose of education is actually about enculturating the young, i.e. it's about introducing new generations to all that has been discovered so far about life on our world, in a way in which they can integrate all that hard-won knowledge into their own perspective on how the world works, the value of others within it, and what place they wish to take as part of it. Productivity is an element of that, perhaps, but the purpose of education is so much more than that.</div>
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The truth is the way people connect to the world around them hasn't changed much in hundreds of years. True some of the architecture of the world has shifted, the pyramids are a bit smaller, and it's a hell of a lot quicker to get from one place to another, but I am very happy to argue that the basic processes by which we experience and understand objects encountered in the world - including other people - have not changed in thousands of years. The fact of the matter is that evolution (if you believe that, of course) is an incredibly slow process, hence I would argue we are pretty much the same now from a cognitive perspective as the people who built Stonehenge. What made them successful, what gave them the power to overcome such immense challenges in building that wonderful stone monument are precisely the same "21st Century" skills that we're now told are lacking.<br />
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Here's one list of these so-called "21st Century" skills from one prominent website, but they pretty much concur with the general rhetoric. Apparently, we need:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Collaboration and teamwork</li>
<li>Creativity and imagination</li>
<li>Critical thinking</li>
<li>Problem-solving</li>
</ul>
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Now, do we really think the builders of Stonehenge <i>didn't have those characteristics</i>? They didn't need to work together, be creative, think critically and solve problems? Fat chance.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbnCiLUh8Dynyqz3JhVizy3SFzuuS9AYAoKmyiWMegeMYhx6TE_NmfCNFL4AQ-GD5rIAHy0QHKfAbtxxqwaxlmYQYK-_yr7D9a74pV46YOXLdY4H3ywRGKIWXz0sq_5c3MwGOISxb47L6f/s1600/Raising_the_Sarsens.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1440" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbnCiLUh8Dynyqz3JhVizy3SFzuuS9AYAoKmyiWMegeMYhx6TE_NmfCNFL4AQ-GD5rIAHy0QHKfAbtxxqwaxlmYQYK-_yr7D9a74pV46YOXLdY4H3ywRGKIWXz0sq_5c3MwGOISxb47L6f/s640/Raising_the_Sarsens.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Again, the bottom line is that the challenges we face today are pretty much the same challenges we've always faced. How to make sense of disparate voices, and make a choice that will work for all. How we can tell what works and what doesn't work in a world of such complex physical and mental relationships. How we can balance conflicting opinions, and ensure mutual respect at the same time and making progress together.</div>
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Less empty rhetoric, more evidence!</h2>
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These "think different" posts are so tempting, but I think we get lured into believing in them partly because it's easier to think all we have to do to progress is to change something, rather than keep working better at what we're already doing. Truth is it's hard to keep plugging away at challenges, incrementally moving things forward, but the reality is that is what actually happens in practice - that's how good things happen.</div>
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And the books and articles I've read on this topic agree; Darwin took years to come up with his theory of natural selection, and it was based on masses of evidence gathered from all over the world, and endless conversations between himself and trusted colleagues. Einstein achieved great things not because he thought about life so differently from all around him, but because he was tenacious, collaborated with others to explore different perspectives, and refused to accept what was apparently impossible. Edison was well known for his ideas factory, he knew full well that the best way of making innovative products was to get lots of clever people in one place and give them time, space and money. They didn't need to think differently, they just needed to think (and, critically, think with each other). Thomas Kuhn, in his famous book which coined the term paradigm shift, argued that any such powerful change in society comes about incrementally and as a result of thousands of conversations amongst the communities of practice involved. Brian Arthur, in his book "The Nature of Technology", showed how technology has simply evolved from one to another, with many so-called revolutions in tech simply being incremental progress.</div>
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Personally, I feel the "think differently" rhetoric is responsible for sucking up time and money, distracting from the voices who have real challenges to solve, and feeding the empty speeches from those leading education within politics. It's no longer a useful concept. Instead, we need to go back to the evidence about what works in education, for example, the strategies from the cognitive sciences, and work together to dream up new ways to apply them. Not so much "think differently" as "think together". Now the evidence for that is pretty clear - by getting the right minds together, we can achieve amazing things!</div>
Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-78453020495282019982018-02-20T13:06:00.000+00:002018-02-20T17:26:14.296+00:00Personalised Learning, Connectivism & AffordancePersonalised learning seems all the rage at the moment, one of the edtech trends for 2018 apparently. Much as I like the idea, though, it does give me the jitters a little. It's not just because people don't seem to be able to agree on <a href="http://www.downes.ca/post/65065">exactly what it is</a>, or the fact that it may be just at the wrong point on the <a href="http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Gartner-hype-cycle">hype cycle</a>, there's something deeper that I've not been able to put my finger on. Until now.<br />
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The problem with Personalised Learning</h2>
It was a post that's been repeated a couple of times in different spaces that got me thinking (thanks to <a href="http://www.downes.ca/post/67789">Stephen Downes</a> for the initial link), which originated in <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2018/02/a_confession_and_a_question_on_personalized_learning.html?cmp=soc-tw-shr&utm_source=EdSurgeLive&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=02-14-18&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWm1WalltWmhaakExWXpFMCIsInQiOiJoR3Fha2F0ekdvOU50TW1rYUxEdzh6VTBrZlpKWjdCRXdySXlWUVZFR3JWcm12VHFMc1hSSnlOUWpFWm56cmMwWHduTFwvYTJzRHM0Q2tOaGdmSHdKQlBqOFwveGVYMHJqanBPeVlMRENKaStZcU5sUm93RVFYaUkrcENWaDVXYlRHIn0%3D">EdWeek</a>. It quotes Larry Berger, CEO of Amplify, in his "confession" about personalized learning:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Until a few years ago, I was a great believer in what might be called the 'engineering' model of personalized learning, which is still what most people mean by personalized learning. The model works as follows: </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ul>
<li>You start with a map of all the things that kids need to learn.</li>
<li>Then you measure the kids so that you can place each kid on the map in just the spot where they know everything behind them, and in front of them is what they should learn next.</li>
<li>Then you assemble a vast library of learning objects and ask an algorithm to sort through it to find the optimal learning object for each kid at that particular moment.</li>
<li>Then you make each kid use the learning object.</li>
<li>Then you measure the kids again. If they have learned what you wanted them to learn, you move them to the next place on the map. If they didn't learn it, you try something simpler.</li>
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</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If the map, the assessments, and the library were used by millions of kids, then the algorithms would get smarter and smarter, and make better, more personalized choices about which things to put in front of which kids.</blockquote>
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I spent a decade believing in this model—the map, the measure, and the library, all powered by big data algorithms.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Here's the problem: The map doesn't exist, the measurement is impossible, and we have, collectively, built only 5% of the library. So we need to move beyond this engineering model. Once we do, we find that many more compelling and more realistic frontiers of personalized learning opening up."</blockquote>
As an educational researcher, and a specialist in digital technologies, I must admit it was a little heartened to read this 'confession'. Like many, I too feel the lure of a technological solution to the challenges of teaching and learning, but at the same time consider this mechanical model of education way out of touch with what we know about how learning takes place. Which brings me on to the subject of Connectivism.<br />
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The power of Connectivism</h2>
What I think is wrong from the "map & measure" model that Larry discusses above, apart from his own observations about the lack of the map, the challenges of measuring, etc., is where the learning actually is. What he is proposing is, of course, a model of teaching and learning where all the information that is required to be known by students simply needs to be transmitted into their heads. It's basically a transmission model of education, but with clever computers rather than teachers. Kind of like this famous image from the 1900s, that tried to predict learning in the year 2000:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjARmyKcodF4m90sSXfeQeegUDLWWyMfMqi52K2qiKndj5fgOpXV_ha7xeZJ29UodUxFAdLgZ4ukGoMbNwSVTME3IapPhEbBekt162u3TKGf1VosiwYbV_ioBVnMZK7gUqo7OslCc49eGv1/s1600/changtalk2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="399" data-original-width="638" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjARmyKcodF4m90sSXfeQeegUDLWWyMfMqi52K2qiKndj5fgOpXV_ha7xeZJ29UodUxFAdLgZ4ukGoMbNwSVTME3IapPhEbBekt162u3TKGf1VosiwYbV_ioBVnMZK7gUqo7OslCc49eGv1/s640/changtalk2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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What the theory of Connectivism proposes is that learning actually resides not in the objects on the map, but in the connections that are made between those objects. What we learn is how objects relate to each other, how they connect to each other, whether that is a connection between two objects in the world, between us and an object in the world, or even in the connection between two concepts that we've already discovered. The map isn't what's learnt, connections are what's learnt.<br />
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As soon as we're born, we start to make connections between objects: hard floor, soft flesh, chewy toys, etc. ... and everything from then on is all connected to those very first experiences. We're just an amazing connector machine!<br />
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The role of Affordance</h2>
So where does affordance fit into all this? Affordance, to quote James Gibson, is what something "provides or furnishes". For example, a knife provides the ability to cut something, a cup provides the ability to hold a liquid, a pair of shoes provides the ability to protect feet from damage. I define it in <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/16637">my doctoral thesis</a> as the "transaction possibilities" provided by objects around us, i.e. what you get back from interacting with objects, be they animate or inanimate. But, crucially, it is a relational concept.<br />
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The affordance of anything in the world depends on you, and what you're doing in the world at any one moment in time. Take the pair of shoes in the example above. The <i>usual </i>affordance of a pair of shoes is to protect your feet, but if there's a scorpion in your room first thing in the morning (and it's happened to me!) what those shoes "provide or furnish" is the ability to destroy a threat without getting damaged. The "transaction possibilities" are different depending on circumstance, on your individual need. Treating affordance as deterministic, i.e. as if something always has the same affordance no matter what the situation, is a common misconception.<br />
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The link here with personalised learning is twofold:<br />
<ol>
<li>The theory of Connectivism suggests that any computer-based system that tries to help children learn through the kind of adaptive learning systems that are so popular today needs to build into its algorithms the ability to link between broader concepts. It's not enough to build isolated silos of knowledge about topics; even if you are (unwittingly, perhaps) scaffolding connections in those narrow silos; broader understanding comes from connections between topics - and that means cross-discipline as well as within your subject.</li>
<li>The theory of Affordance suggests that personal choice is critical. Simply telling a child what they need to learn based on a computer decision completely ignores the state of the individual at that moment in time. Some children will grasp more 'complex' concepts before the (supposedly) easier ones, some may do well on a subject one day and badly the next, some might use knowledge from an experience in a totally different setting to inform the present one. Learning is inherently personal; I'd argue what we actually learn is the affordance of objects in the world, but as those affordances are relative to us then they cannot be simply transmitted. They need to be discovered (constructed) in relation to our existing set of connections.</li>
</ol>
I love what some of these new adaptive learning systems are trying to pull off, and it's easy to imagine how they can make teachers lives easier by automating some of the building blocks of more complex understanding. But at the same time, they can all too easily fall into deterministic approaches to learning that only pay lip service to the needs of individual learners.<br />
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I feel we need to find ways to bring more of the learner back into the process, and let them shape their own learning; stop treating learners like something that education is done to, instead develop systems that can flex according to their needs. I suspect the dream of education by technology is going to be too much for computers for some time yet, but maybe that's not such a bad thing. After all, surely that's what teachers are for. We shouldn't keep pretending that edtech can transform learning, much better to see it as a catalyst for well developed pedagogic approaches.Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-5138153664044244212018-02-09T15:43:00.000+00:002018-02-09T15:43:04.898+00:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: Seesaw - Student driven digital portfoliosLast Friday I was up at BETT 2018, so no Friday Focus that week. It was an interesting show, as ever, but as usual there was an awful lot of hype - mostly about VR. Highlights for me? The people I had a chance to meet and discuss ideas with. Nice to see Mark Anderson (the ICT Evangelist) and Michael Forshaw (Innovate my School), as well as Dr Sarah Younie and her colleagues from De Montfort University. Also made it to the launch of the <a href="https://educate.london/">EDUCATE programme</a>, which promises to "bring together entrepreneurs and innovators, with academics, researchers and educators, to deliver world-class EdTech products and services". High hopes for that programme, might even get involved myself.<br />
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This week it's back to the usual Friday Focus though, and this time around I've decided to talk about an app called Seesaw. It's doing really well in the US, but I think not quite as well known over here in the UK. It's well worth taking a look at if you're interested in student portfolios.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What is <a href="https://web.seesaw.me/">Seesaw</a>?</h2>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHOdJvrj0S5Daw1BQiqfWLcjtENCcGMq4MfseQ7rFwlshR273sqR9ShUn9Tx_NNZ9K3ev9-XS-sJ7gtwsNC2TPGEqe7z5qrb-LSZcLwRZPXVNNAfG8wstM-57miTvt069CPIetRRSa9ylY/s1600/Seesaw.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="481" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHOdJvrj0S5Daw1BQiqfWLcjtENCcGMq4MfseQ7rFwlshR273sqR9ShUn9Tx_NNZ9K3ev9-XS-sJ7gtwsNC2TPGEqe7z5qrb-LSZcLwRZPXVNNAfG8wstM-57miTvt069CPIetRRSa9ylY/s400/Seesaw.png" width="262" /></a>At its heart Seesaw is about allowing students to create digital portfolios. They have their own journal where they can add photos, videos, drawings, files, notes or links. What makes it a bit more special is that it takes advantage of the way in which digital technologies can break the rules of space and time, and hence allow other people to see their work in pretty much real time. That means that you as a teacher can keep an eye on student thinking, but also that content can be shared with parents or other carers, plus it can also be shared with the other students in the class. This can create a vibrant online space, with lots of opportunities for peer feedback, constructive criticism and celebrations of good work.<br />
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In addition to the basic journal teachers can also structure learning directly by adding activities for students to engage in. There are a bunch of them already built into the app, such as "Explain an Idea" or "Sketch your Goals", and the great thing from a teachers perspective is that they come ready to run straight out of the box, with instructions to help children get started. Everything is automated for you, so you get notifications when things have been added, and you can set it up so that content only goes live if you approve it.<br />
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There's lots more under the hood for Seesaw, including private messaging, commenting, folders, and even skill progress monitoring (in the paid version I should add), but the nice thing is it is relatively easy to get something up and running with your class that's effective very quickly, and push on to more advanced use as and when you and your class are ready.</div>
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How can you use it in education?</h2>
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As you can imagine Seesaw is very good for planning, both from your perspective as a teacher but also from the students perspective, as it allows for structuring your content, reminding students of activities, informing large groups simultaneously, and a whole lot more planning type tasks. It's also pretty handy for assessing, as you can keep abreast of a large body of student work with one simple interface, and provide tailored and contextual feedback as appropriate. What it scores highest on though, according to the Tech Trump card above, is Differentiating - so that's what I'm going to talk about here.<br />
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The notion of digital technologies supporting differentiation is all about how they can be 'protean'. Now I know that's a bit of an odd word, but I use it because it's become associated with edtech in the academic literature, and sometimes it's important to use the correct language if you want to transfer the correct meaning. By protean I'm using the definition of being "able to do many different things; versatile". That's important in differentiation because at the heart of differentiating in the classroom is, well, difference! The myriad ways in which students can articulate their thinking, using audio, video, graphics, etc. gives students the flexibility to say things in their own way.<br />
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Now I'm not going to start going on about learning styles, as we all know by now (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles#Criticism">don't we?</a>) that support for that idea is pretty much non-existent, but that doesn't mean that you can't let students use different ways in which to express their knowledge. Not only will their choices support differentiation by process, as they will have to make different decisions based on their media choice on how they will structure and organise thinking, but it will also support differentiation by product, as what students will produce can be widely different depending on how they've gone about the task you set.<br />
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Now I'm aware that this type of differentiated approach can be difficult to assess, but then again - who needs summative assessment? Formative assessment is more powerful, and you can even get the students themselves to use the tools built into Seesaw to evaluate and comment on each other's contributions. You can also use audio commenting, which again can help those who might otherwise shy away from writing to engage with the overall learning process.<br />
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So that's about it for Seesaw - an excellent way of introducing student portfolios into your classroom, and utilising the power of digital technologies as a catalyst for differentiation.</div>
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<i>Do you have any ideas for using Seesaw that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments.</i><br />
<h2>
Get your own set of Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></h2>
Looking for more edtech? Head over to <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">http://techtrumps.co.uk</a> to see Seesaw and a host of other apps for teachers. You can also <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tech-Trumps%C2%AE-Secondary-Education/dp/B077Q2L5MS/">buy your own pack of cards</a> direct from <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tech-Trumps%C2%AE-Trumps-Secondary-Education/dp/B077Q2L5MS/">Amazon.co.uk</a> - and this week I'm having a half term special, so they're only £6.99! With your own pack of cards you can browse at your leisure, or play a game with your colleagues. Have fun, and discover new apps at the same time!<br />
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As ever, if there's anything particular you'd like me to cover please let me know in the comments. Until next Friday ...Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-71898354945858499292018-01-19T17:30:00.001+00:002018-01-19T17:30:18.390+00:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: Pocket - Save and manage useful web resourcesIf there's one thing the web has done for us more than anything else it's provide an endless stream of new information. Suddenly everyone is an author, everyone is a publisher, and all those thoughts and opinions that were tucked up inside peoples heads are now broadcast far and wide across the Internet. It's created a real challenge for educators; previously we had mostly curated sources, libraries chock full of texts that had already been specially filtered for the school that was to become their new home. Now, often the first challenge when investigating a new topic, and being faced with the oceans of information online, is to try and work out which ones are worth reading later and which you can safely ignore. Which brings me neatly to this Fridays app. Once it was called "Read It Later", but now it's simply referred to as "Pocket".<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6bpz64q1onZf4Be6y5hCsxW3OvUIk9X5Mq-V77AomcnRdmhTEG3P_2QnWn5d6p751M1TJX_MTH4LC9VBG7p_DkoZHtrKDXeRgzQJxaKAefUyxtixwGMNoMhbOj5ggP_TY9rKKfdDs8Vz9/s1600/Pocket.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="760" data-original-width="515" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6bpz64q1onZf4Be6y5hCsxW3OvUIk9X5Mq-V77AomcnRdmhTEG3P_2QnWn5d6p751M1TJX_MTH4LC9VBG7p_DkoZHtrKDXeRgzQJxaKAefUyxtixwGMNoMhbOj5ggP_TY9rKKfdDs8Vz9/s400/Pocket.png" width="270" /></a></div>
What is <a href="https://getpocket.com/">Pocket</a>?</h2>
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Pocket's original name, "Read It Later", was (I thought) fantastically simple and descriptive. For once you didn't have an app that tried to make a pronounceable word from far too few vowels (<a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/?techtrump=Quizizz">Quizziz</a>, I'm looking at you), or manage to murder a perfectly innocent part of the English language by mashing it into something unrecognisable (Hello, <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/?techtrump=Todoist">Todoist</a>), instead the apps name captured perfectly what it actually did. An app that allowed you to save something online, so you could Read ... It ... Later. Still, Pocket's a nice enough name for it too.<br />
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Pocket is a web service for storing and curating information online. Basically, you install a button on your browser, or an app on your phone, and then whenever you come across something on the web that you'd like to pay more attention to, but don't perhaps have enough time to dedicate to it right away, Pocket will allow you to save it and ... wait for it ... read it later (you can see why I liked that name now :-).<br />
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Articles are added to your own personal webspace, and what's more most of the extra web stuff that you don't need, e.g. adverts, navigation buttons, comment sections, etc., are stripped out, leaving you just the article you wanted to read, free from distractions. It'll work for text articles, videos and images, and what's more you can tag anything you save with your own set of free form tags, helping you to create your own personal <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy">folksonomy </a>of curated information. All the articles you save will be synced to whatever digital places you use Pocket in, and the key ones automatically downloaded for you so you can read them on that long tedious flight to that conference you need to attend.</div>
<h2>
How can you use it in education?</h2>
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As you'll see from the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> card above, Pocket is particularly strong on <i>Investigating</i>, so let's look at that aspect in particular.<br />
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As I said in the intro to this blog, a key challenge for educators today is to make sense of the wealth of information available out there. Much as learning is about expressing ideas and exploring different perspectives between individuals, and old fashioned ideas of simply transmitting information directly into the heads of students are (quite rightly) widely frowned upon, there's no getting away from the fact that at some point you need new context to explore together. I think it's fair to say that all (formal) education can be seen as something of a triangle relationship, with the three points being the teacher, the student, and some content.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoT8pP0_zYmxmdUJbPyLInjnm0y21M5YozJJ2HJx-UY5fDAb04f2lehAEztpFC00Q5Hmb_FsKpoCdIZCywWP8P951a8S0edoYh19liZFjh9ApEHwaqR4P12de-j2U65trtJlquuFxDlpg0/s1600/00002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="839" data-original-width="926" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoT8pP0_zYmxmdUJbPyLInjnm0y21M5YozJJ2HJx-UY5fDAb04f2lehAEztpFC00Q5Hmb_FsKpoCdIZCywWP8P951a8S0edoYh19liZFjh9ApEHwaqR4P12de-j2U65trtJlquuFxDlpg0/s320/00002.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
With that in mind, Pocket can be a valuable way of gathering that content, and using the tagging system to organise it to suit your needs. You might do that on a subject basis, for example, perhaps using terms from your discipline such as photosynthesis, catalysts or motion (I'm a Science teacher - can you tell?). Alternatively, you might choose to do it by class, e.g. 8XB or 9X1. Or combine the two, whatever works for you is the key. Once saved you can come back to them whenever you want, archive them if they're no longer needed, or share them with your class or colleagues using inbuilt sharing tools.<br />
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Of course, it's not just you as a teacher who needs to organise and curate information, but also your students. Pocket can be a handy tool for them too, either allowing them a space to curate information they find online over an extended period of time, perhaps building a library of resources for revision, or for one off projects. The way Pocket strips out extra rubbish, focusing on just the content, can help to focus students attention. It's ability to sync across devices means they can save something on a desktop, which is often an uncomfortable interface to read on, and then come back to the article later on a tablet device in comfort.<br />
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Finally, Pocket can be a useful way to actually explore information relevant to what you've already gathered. Like many apps today, it uses algorithms to find new content for you based on what you've already found, and then adds them to an extra "Recommended" page on your personal dashboard for you to explore at your leisure. This comes with the caveat that you might find yourself exploring in something of a hole of your own making, but nonetheless can be a useful way of extending existing searches automatically. In research we often use the literature review from one paper to find new papers to read, and the Pocket "Recommended" page works in much the same way.<br />
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So that's about it for Pocket - it's a simple tool, but it does what it does extremely well ... even if it no longer says quite so much on the tin.<br />
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<i>Do you have any ideas for using Pocket that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments.</i><br />
<h2>
Get your own set of Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></h2>
Looking for more edtech? Head over to <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">http://techtrumps.co.uk</a> to see Pocket and a host of other apps for teachers. You can also <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tech-Trumps%C2%AE-Secondary-Education/dp/B077Q2L5MS/">buy your own pack of cards for only £8.99</a> (plus postage) direct from <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tech-Trumps%C2%AE-Trumps-Secondary-Education/dp/B077Q2L5MS/">Amazon.co.uk</a> (also on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tech-Trumps%C2%AE-Trumps-Secondary-Education/dp/B077Q2L5MS/">Amazon.com</a> for my US readers). With your own pack of cards you can browse at your leisure, or play a game with your colleagues. Have fun, and discover new apps at the same time!<br />
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As ever, if there's anything in particular you'd like me to cover here please let me know in the comments. Until next Friday ...Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-76863343121236393462018-01-12T14:41:00.003+00:002018-01-12T14:46:29.531+00:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: Kahoot! - Create, play and share fun learning gamesJanuary can be a tricky month, with all the festive fun over and another year stretching out ahead of us - not to mention <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Monday_(date)">Blue Monday</a> lurking around the corner, allegedly the worst day of the year! With that in mind, I thought I'd share a fun app this Friday, one that hopefully will bring some laughter back into your classroom, for both you and your students; I don't think I've ever managed to use this app without it ending in hilarity. This week it's time for (the almost legendary) Kahoot!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBtjmPPIbq3j2NM-wqble5COiaIAgaRncUKeT4LuhzsVtuYcunJm2Ob9rg61CMaijKRlavqzkEzDTZ1uqXWzuy4vIFvWB2L-ebTuQWjGD68jcPhjwFj8EIRxmCHsnMFTdSk4jLn4CteEIv/s1600/Kahoot%2521.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="481" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBtjmPPIbq3j2NM-wqble5COiaIAgaRncUKeT4LuhzsVtuYcunJm2Ob9rg61CMaijKRlavqzkEzDTZ1uqXWzuy4vIFvWB2L-ebTuQWjGD68jcPhjwFj8EIRxmCHsnMFTdSk4jLn4CteEIv/s320/Kahoot%2521.png" width="210" /></a>What is <a href="https://kahoot.com/">Kahoot!</a>?</h2>
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First off let me just clarify something - I've not forgotten how to use grammar, Kahoot! does indeed have an exclamation mark after its name (!).</div>
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Kahoot! is basically a quiz game, you set-up a quiz on the whiteboard and students use mobile devices such as laptops, tablets or mobiles to answer the questions. Questions have four answers, and students simply press the colour button that matches their answer as shown on the whiteboard.</div>
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The trick to it, and what keeps people coming back for more, is that the faster you answer then the more points you get. This can be incredibly motivating for students. Oh, and there's the music too. Kahoot! has a fantastic repeating musical refrain which is very catchy, and very memorable. Check it out below ...</div>
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<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="158" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8YGlzSl6cxU?rel=0" width="280"></iframe>
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There are other game modes available, such as discussion or survey, but quiz is by far the most popular. Students can answer individually or work together as groups, and you have lots of customisations available, e.g. randomising questions, automating timing, generating nicknames automatically (useful for classes who might choose something inappropriate), celebrating 1st, 2nd and 3rd places, etc.</div>
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How can you use it in education?</h2>
<div>
As you'll see from the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> card above, Kahoot! is particularly strong on <i>Investigating</i>, <i>Motivating </i>and <i>Assessing</i>, so let's look at those aspects in particular.<br />
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Kahoot! might not initially seem a good choice for <i>Investigating</i>, i.e. finding and curating information about a topic. After all it is just a quiz game. But thanks to their open policy there are thousands upon thousands of games available for you to choose from, all nicely organised and collected into subjects to make them easy to browse. What's more you can duplicate those that you find, and then customise them to suit your own needs. Bear in mind that you can also get your students to create quizzes, which encourages them to evaluate what they know, and contrast that with what they do not know, in order to create suitable questions.<br />
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From a <i>Motivating </i>perspective I think it's fair to say that Kahoot! is probably the most motivating app I've ever come across. The way the app gamifies quizzes, by using time and peer pressure, really helps to get students engaged with the questions. There is some debate whether or not this merely gets students engaged, as opposed to actually learning, but provided you integrate a Kahoot! quiz into your lessons as part of a well-structured series of learning about a topic then this shouldn't be a problem. Kahoot! themselves have also released new game modes (e.g. Jumble) and different options that can downplay some of the excitement and increase the need for reflection from students as opposed to simply speed.<br />
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As you can imagine, Kahoot! can also be a powerful tool for <i>Assessing </i>your students' knowledge. Though it may perhaps lack some of the underlying data that you can get from apps like <a href="http://thevirtualexplorer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/tech-trumps-friday-focus-socrative-in.html">Socrative</a>, students themselves can both see and download how well they've performed, and you can gauge how well students understand the topic of your quiz from their answers during the class. A useful trick is to set the quiz to run itself, automatically proceeding from question to question, so you can move around the classroom and pay attention to the types of answers students are giving. That way you can focus on your students, rather than have to worry about triggering the next question.<br />
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So that's about it for Kahoot! - probably the most fun you can have in the classroom, and still get some learning done at the same time.<br />
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<i>Do you have any ideas for using Kahoot! that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments.</i><br />
<h2>
Get your own set of Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></h2>
Looking for more edtech? Head over to <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">http://techtrumps.co.uk</a> to see Kahoot! and a host of other apps for teachers. You can also <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tech-Trumps%C2%AE-Secondary-Education/dp/B077Q2L5MS/">buy your own pack of cards for only £8.99</a> (plus P&P) direct from <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tech-Trumps%C2%AE-Trumps-Secondary-Education/dp/B077Q2L5MS/">Amazon.co.uk</a> (also on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tech-Trumps%C2%AE-Trumps-Secondary-Education/dp/B077Q2L5MS/">Amazon.com</a> for my US readers). With your own pack of cards you can browse at your leisure, or play a game with your colleagues. Have fun, and discover new apps at the same time.<br />
<br />
As ever, if there's anything in particular you'd like me to cover here please let me know in the comments. Until next Friday!Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-47797114060203288092018-01-10T15:30:00.003+00:002018-02-08T10:39:53.178+00:00The Tech Trumps®: 3 steps to see what they can do for your teachingMy Tech Trumps® are a funny beast, they seem very popular with teachers but I think sometimes people miss the point behind them, and the research that led to them ... so I thought I'd write a quick post to clarify their history and purpose.<br />
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<i>In a hurry? <a href="#3steps">Skip to the 3 steps</a>.</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxgf-JCn5XtOst_yhp9kXAM6AYWl5U_oSq2y5M0VTcuR79hDEW6h_6lFOzbElW9KVtbcpnWcUPw6KUfecfhTsgoG1k-WjCXxunoEG4Af4OgXpXtJH-avUOufu0qsroeJAB287ju77WwLfc/s1600/Tech+Trumps+-+Plickers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxgf-JCn5XtOst_yhp9kXAM6AYWl5U_oSq2y5M0VTcuR79hDEW6h_6lFOzbElW9KVtbcpnWcUPw6KUfecfhTsgoG1k-WjCXxunoEG4Af4OgXpXtJH-avUOufu0qsroeJAB287ju77WwLfc/s320/Tech+Trumps+-+Plickers.jpg" width="284" /></a>The background: Ecological Psychology and Affordance</h2>
The Tech Trumps® are derived from my research in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_psychology">ecological psychology</a>, perhaps not the most well-known branch of that discipline, but a very important one nonetheless. Ecological psychology considers the wider system that humans exist within, and treats cognition as something that exists not only within the individual but also as something that extends into the world. Humans are not separate from the world, detached entities that can always maintain a controlled and isolated existence, but are much more deeply integrated and affected by what happens around them in and across time. I like to think of it as a sibling to the theory of <a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism">connectivism</a> (or maybe even it's father?).<br />
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Think of that for a moment from an educators perspective, and a learners perspective. It reinforces all we know about the importance of context, of the importance of others, and the problems of transference within learning. An ecological perspective can be a powerful lens through which to reflect on different learning interactions, such as teacher-learner, learner-learner, or learner-object, and how those interactions impact the individuals concerned in and across time. Are they fixed moments of transmission or ongoing exchanges of perspective? When does 'learning' actually take place, at a precise moment or gradually over time? What has actually been 'learnt' - a piece of data, or a connection between something that is known and something that is unknown? For me, the ecological perspective brings back a certain fuzziness to pedagogy - but I would argue that's no bad thing. The bare truth of the matter is that teaching and learning IS a complex and somewhat chaotic process, and people who try and tell you otherwise are either ignorant of that complexity ... or perhaps trying to sell you something!<br />
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Within ecological psychology there's a specific concept called '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance">affordance</a>'. Basically, this is what something in the world "provides or furnishes" us, the value that it has for us. It's a relative term, relative not only to specific individuals but also what they're trying to achieve at any one point in time. Traditionally it has been defined as the 'interaction possibilities' provided by an object in the world, but my own work challenges that and suggests that a more accurate definition is the 'transaction possibilities' that are provided. If you'd like to know more about that, I'd recommend you have a look at <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/16637">my doctoral thesis</a> (in particular the concluding chapter).<br />
<h2>
The link with digital technologies</h2>
So what does all this have to do with the Tech Trumps®? Well, the challenge that I've always found with digital technologies is that they just seem so opaque to people with no experience of them - especially with all their odd names! If I rattled off a few names at random, for example, let's say Kahoot!, Nuzzell and SeeSaw, most people would be absolutely none the wiser what on earth they might do for you - i.e. what their affordance is. They're just odd names, easy to ignore, and hence very hard to integrate into teaching and learning.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie_ViHmTtJmruTqKb51b9pBVc2oQcJhcMiuKbbaSFNilNROoHB206xIxjc2-Eff4L5OfJHcLgz2KAfpFL2rNCaN-X71PPBEpyBCxxGecuDjwDNGrEfA14AoUT8i8qocqpTRIImEZ4H2usZ/s1600/App+confusion.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="388" data-original-width="484" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie_ViHmTtJmruTqKb51b9pBVc2oQcJhcMiuKbbaSFNilNROoHB206xIxjc2-Eff4L5OfJHcLgz2KAfpFL2rNCaN-X71PPBEpyBCxxGecuDjwDNGrEfA14AoUT8i8qocqpTRIImEZ4H2usZ/s400/App+confusion.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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I've been exploring this problem for over 15 years now, and I've seen it again and again in education, whether at University level, Secondary or Primary. The problem is always the same: there are loads of great apps out there, and lots of teachers that could take advantage of them to catalyse their teaching, but it's that last connection that fails - app and teacher (or, more to the point, RIGHT app and RIGHT teacher). Yes, other barriers to effective use do exist - badly set-up wifi, missing policies and practices, out of date hardware, etc. - but often those are relatively simple to fix. What's missing is the final part of the jigsaw, the part that links an individual's needs with the digital technologies most able to support those needs.<br />
<h2>
The APT methodology</h2>
That's where my tools and techniques come in, and the Tech Trumps® in particular. They provide a proven process that allows individuals with little experience using digital technologies to discover the affordances of specific apps in their own contexts. It's something I call the APT methodology, short for the Alignment of People and Technology. By following my process educators can rapidly see how a particular tool has the potential to support what they're trying to achieve in the classroom.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj60AZ3s7CUW6tAcwckOGrjD13h62H3x3YlLBAhZra7JWBtL-ploKfqXin2Azs4dJZwZIIVpx0JEY0M3HTqQCd1Kh1elRPch1Qk8tNpX6lWvso5dUI4UpeFSNKiCPME-c3KdCAV19aFF_bv/s1600/thumbnail.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="792" data-original-width="580" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj60AZ3s7CUW6tAcwckOGrjD13h62H3x3YlLBAhZra7JWBtL-ploKfqXin2Azs4dJZwZIIVpx0JEY0M3HTqQCd1Kh1elRPch1Qk8tNpX6lWvso5dUI4UpeFSNKiCPME-c3KdCAV19aFF_bv/s320/thumbnail.png" width="233" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">TPK model</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But don't just take what I'm saying for granted - try it for yourself! A quick 3 step process is all it takes, and the value of specific digital technologies in your context should start to become clearer:<br />
<h3 id="3steps">3 steps to find the right tech for you</h3>
<ul>
<li>Step 1: Take the <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/survey/">TPK quiz</a> to get your Technological Pedagogical Knowledge score across six dimensions of teaching with technology.</li>
<li>Step 2: Add the scores from your TPK quiz to a <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/downloads/TPK_model.pdf">TPK model</a> and use it to identify your development needs.</li>
<li>Step 3: Use the free <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps® browser</a> to select digital technologies that match your needs. Read their descriptions and their video links - and pick one to integrate into your lessons.</li>
</ul>
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And all for free! I do provide consultancy for schools, including analyses of existing practices, design and development workshops, and implementation support, but at the same time much of what I've developed is available for free. As an education researcher I'm committed to exploring ways of improving and developing on these tools and techniques, so would love to hear back from anyone trying them in practice, and am very interested in developing professional relationships that would see them tried in more contexts.</div>
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If you'd like to know more about these ideas, or fancy a deeper chat about what I can do you and your school, please <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/contact.php">get in touch</a>.</div>
<br />Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-84470179991736684292018-01-05T16:37:00.003+00:002018-01-05T16:37:38.659+00:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: Trello - Visual collaboration toolNew year, new blogging. I had some great sessions in schools last year, and feedback from my CPD workshops suggested that teachers really appreciated a bit more depth on each of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a>. With that in mind I'm resurrecting my Friday Focus series, and this week I've gone for the powerful, collaborative and beautifully designed Trello. What better way to start the new year than with a planning tool!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNfbhhCHQKQ6OasBVz1EOsWJoYF82LMd8IWIfOMb8SPHQLyPNmrg-SO2BK21sfPCN8L-2jOMmQ3XZUQnMWYoi-rE1aQMm46JQ2ZjWYED_Agl24p4XozdBIz5VMk7REgg4tGim0RuIke4IF/s1600/Trello.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="753" data-original-width="502" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNfbhhCHQKQ6OasBVz1EOsWJoYF82LMd8IWIfOMb8SPHQLyPNmrg-SO2BK21sfPCN8L-2jOMmQ3XZUQnMWYoi-rE1aQMm46JQ2ZjWYED_Agl24p4XozdBIz5VMk7REgg4tGim0RuIke4IF/s320/Trello.png" width="213" /></a></div>
What is <a href="https://trello.com/">Trello</a>?</h2>
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Trello bills itself as a visual collaboration tool, and what that means in practice is that you use three visual tools in the form of boards, lists and cards (in that order) to manage your tasks. There are lots of formating and display options, and it's also super easy to collaborate with others.<br />
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Boards are the top level, think of them as a kind of online whiteboard. Next down are lists, and you can have several of these on each board. Finally you get individual cards on each list - this is where you put the tasks you're working on. Boards can be personal, team based or public, and individual cards can be assigned to specific people and given deadlines, labels and other aspects to help you manage them. Everything can be commented on, which can be great for feedback and assessment, and all activity is tracked and displayed so you keep on top of progress.</div>
<h2>
How can you use it in education?</h2>
<div>
Trello is particularly strong on <i>Collaborating </i>and <i>Planning</i>, so let's look at those two aspects in particular.<br />
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The collaboration side of Trello is very powerful, and you'll undoubtedly use it as some point with colleagues, but personally I'd recommend it primarily for your students rather than for you. After all, we know that getting students to work with each other is a powerful way of helping them to see other perspectives and develop a deeper understanding of a topic. Collaboration can be challenging though in terms of some pupils not pulling their weight, and leaving the bulk of the tasks to others. Trello can help here by not only scaffolding the completion of tasks, so removing the barriers that might hold some students back, but also by revealing individual contributions to a group project over time, and hence catalysing peers to motivate each other.<br />
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From a planning perspective Trello would be an excellent tool for problem based learning, as the challenge of organising themselves in these scenarios can be too much for some students, but personally I would recommend it as more of a personal planning tool. It can be excellent in helping you map out your own plans for teaching in multiple time frames. You might set up a board for a weeks or a fortnights teaching, for example, sketching out what you intend for each day for each class in a simple to use format, and perhaps sharing that with other teachers you work with, teaching assistants or other school staff who need to know what you have in mind. Alternatively, you could create a board for a wider curriculum you're working on, adding in different ideas as and when you come across interesting and useful new material, perhaps sharing with other colleagues from your department in order to create a diverse set of resources.<br />
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So that's about it for Trello - an intuitive and simple way of managing tasks, both individual and collaborative, easy to use but with powerful tools to ensure that tasks are progressed and individual activities are easy to perceive.<br />
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<i>Do you have any ideas for using Trello that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!</i><br />
<h2>
Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup>?</h2>
Do head over to the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to see Trello and a host of other apps, all rated against the key challenges you're focused on as a teacher. There's an interactive version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to explore - or you can go old school, and <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tech-Trumps%C2%AE-Secondary-Education/dp/B077Q2L5MS/">buy a physical pack of cards for only £8.99</a> plus postage, which I'll whisk off to you first class in the next available post.<br />
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As ever, if there's anything in particular you'd like me to cover here please let me know in the comments. See you next Friday!Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-83799030794140162332017-11-02T11:12:00.002+00:002017-11-02T14:04:29.009+00:00Why the deterministic view of EdTech is wrong: Affordance is the keyI always take a global view on EdTech, and hence read a lot about what's happening in the US and in particular in the K-12 arena. This morning it was some new guidance related to EdTech research, and the challenge that ESSA - the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Student_Succeeds_Act">Every Student Succeeds Act</a> - has laid out for companies who offer EdTech products and services (disclaimer - like <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/">mine</a>!). The bottom line is that they've outlined four different levels of evidence that providers should be exploring to support their offerings, with the strongest evidence receiving the best funding. Makes a lot of sense, and I'm glad to see that they appreciate that evidence is not just black and white, but comes in different standards.<br />
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That said though, I still think this smacks of a deterministic approach to EdTech procurement for schools. By that I mean that this kind of view of EdTech suggests that it can have an effect on practice regardless of context, that it is independently deterministic - the EdTech will <i>determine </i>what happens when it is applied to a scenario, regardless of what that scenario is.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"... a deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system. A deterministic model will thus always produce the same output from a given starting condition or initial state."</blockquote>
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Wikipedia</div>
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I guess this is deep in our nature, we're always searching for the things in our lives which don't change when we experience them, i.e. what's invariant in the world. We like predictability, we want to know before we're tried something that it's actually going to work as we expect it too. But what if that doesn't work in EdTech research? What if we need a different approach, one which places context as important as the EdTech itself? What about a relativistic approach?<br />
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That is exactly the argument that I explored in <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/16637">my own doctoral research</a>, as the evidence I gathered then suggested that making EdTech effective in practice was a <i>relativistic </i>problem, i.e. it was a problem that existed between an educator, the EdTech and their students. It was the alignment of the needs of educators and the affordances of a specific EdTech that mattered - EdTech couldn't have an effect independently of an educator and their individual context, as teaching is a very personal and dynamic affair based on individual contexts. The deterministic model of EdTech fails because too many components of the education system - teachers, students, etc. - are massively variable between contexts, so it's impossible to accurately predict how the EdTech will impact in each and every case.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQT5-x6ITnodT6RWeCxFihwTRWKPjUe3Vsn0cmgdyJg_XRJjUPdAo3QZrMSqufOGFCsM0RzgbtE_pgV2tl_pyufqstWWtlO8Jb0NV2gjn7ZzGQlNX-JrQNM7veZeDRWDHyu9arTsw7wUg/s1600/double-blind.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="245" data-original-width="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQT5-x6ITnodT6RWeCxFihwTRWKPjUe3Vsn0cmgdyJg_XRJjUPdAo3QZrMSqufOGFCsM0RzgbtE_pgV2tl_pyufqstWWtlO8Jb0NV2gjn7ZzGQlNX-JrQNM7veZeDRWDHyu9arTsw7wUg/s1600/double-blind.jpg" /></a>People argue that the RCT - the randomised control trial - is the gold standard, and I admit that I too was once enamored with this approach as I come from a very scientific and quantitative background. But as I've learned more about qualitative research techniques I've come to appreciate their value, especially in education. The strength of the RCT is in fields such as medicine, where new drugs are trialed and evaluated. but the big difference here - the crucial difference that most people miss - is that in these trials the <i>contexts are the same</i>. You don't trial a new cancer drug on patients with knee injuries, neither do you test new cognitive therapies on people with hernias. The contexts for these trials are kept constant in order to accurately predict efficacy in these contexts for those interventions. In education keeping contexts the same is nigh on impossible - and even when we do manage this well, the dreaded issue of transferability appears, i.e. often all we end up doing is proving that something works, but only in a very specific set of circumstances. The conclusions are <i>not transferable</i> to other contexts.</div>
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I strongly believe now that the concept of affordance is the way forward, as this is a relativistic concept, i.e. it exists between an educator and a specific EdTech. Neither the EdTech not the educator is taken as a given, but meaning and value arises between them. There's a problem though; affordance in it's most popular form - that of 'interaction possibilities' - doesn't work. My new definition of affordance as 'transaction possibilities' opens up the concept, and at the same time brings it back to where I believe <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._Gibson">Gibson</a> originally intended it to be - as nothing less than the prime way in which humans derive meaning in their worlds. It's at the core of meaning, and hence should be at the core of teaching and learning. When we learn an affordance, i.e. what an object, person or place actually provides for us, what sort of transactions we can expect from interactions with that object, person or place, then we have truly discovered meaning.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"When understood as transaction possibilities, affordance becomes a hypothesis for the consequences of action, tested in everyday experience, and a potential hinge on which learning is predicated."</blockquote>
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Osborne (2015)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEzIehIZ826C9Gu7kmS_45hiYCaVzvENaWwlmzF7w8MjkSvhCC9FKly-kQ6jZtvSq6P5R8HWiWSyVLBjAsYFSlrtCJtpW8E2ellJaNW1EqZcmzKSokR7NC3jSlUCLTZfvPrZlkhTG9W_o/s1600/chasing-rainbows.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="253" data-original-width="320" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEzIehIZ826C9Gu7kmS_45hiYCaVzvENaWwlmzF7w8MjkSvhCC9FKly-kQ6jZtvSq6P5R8HWiWSyVLBjAsYFSlrtCJtpW8E2ellJaNW1EqZcmzKSokR7NC3jSlUCLTZfvPrZlkhTG9W_o/s200/chasing-rainbows.jpg" width="200" /></a>My research suggested that trying to find a definitive answer for precisely what effect a specific EdTech will have in the classroom is like trying to find the end of the rainbow. It's intangible; you're always going to get tripped up by flexibility in contexts or by the challenge of transferability. By backing off, and taking a slightly more 'fuzzy' view - or what I refer to as an ecological approach, an approach that appreciates the variability of contexts - you're much more likely to discover the true value of EdTech to you as an individual. Affordance is the key.<br />
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Like to know more? The tools and techniques I developed based on these ideas can help educators explore their own practice, and reveal their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to integrating EdTech into their teaching and learning. By following my design process the affordance of specific EdTech tools emerges, and - lightbulb moment! - you get the meaning, the value that something can provide for you. Next step - improved learning outcomes for your students :-)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuLV4d1wWARwV9vP-ioS6ZTeWr9-ExVwYsCp9w8lZTKxYQN2vpL21KVCIur5g_XUResFjfETiGFWrOmOMS0RbkNgkw82L-DHl01Jm3Bi9jfXi2R0aRlj3Qf8e46mHjgWO8TcB-0IeBxTk/s1600/download.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="231" data-original-width="218" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuLV4d1wWARwV9vP-ioS6ZTeWr9-ExVwYsCp9w8lZTKxYQN2vpL21KVCIur5g_XUResFjfETiGFWrOmOMS0RbkNgkw82L-DHl01Jm3Bi9jfXi2R0aRlj3Qf8e46mHjgWO8TcB-0IeBxTk/s200/download.png" width="187" /></a></div>
Try these 3 steps to discover the affordance of EdTech in your context:<br />
<ol>
<li>Complete the free <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/survey/">Technological Pedagogical Knowledge Quiz</a> to get a personal measure of your EdTech expertise. </li>
<li>Plot the results of the TPK Quiz on a TPK Model (<a href="mailto:rich@catalysed.co.uk">email me</a> and I'll send you one you can print off) to visualise your personal diagnostic.</li>
<li>Use the free online version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> to find an EdTech tool that matches your needs.</li>
</ol>
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<br />Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-29211820942685522602017-07-21T14:44:00.005+01:002018-01-05T14:31:54.339+00:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: Milanote - Visually research, think and planHappy end of term! I know most schools are finishing now, so congrats for another great year - and enjoy the holidays; no one needs recharging more than a teacher. In honour of the end of the summer term I'm choosing something that you might like to explore out of the classroom as well as when you're back next September. For my <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> Friday Focus this week I've gone for the beautiful, intuitive, and very collaborative Milanote.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz3kE05k6HpA3w1Vl18024rIW9uMZmL_LJqYlyDU0l1Nj_vE8ngmv0w-tRHdM1leli0XnFTOEfFIE7wrr3uoPFGVm2oWnolElAY2hghTXHlFIbLUh7yfwlLlMFzEwQhyphenhyphen-9k6snzqFl5daS/s1600/Milanote.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="829" data-original-width="550" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz3kE05k6HpA3w1Vl18024rIW9uMZmL_LJqYlyDU0l1Nj_vE8ngmv0w-tRHdM1leli0XnFTOEfFIE7wrr3uoPFGVm2oWnolElAY2hghTXHlFIbLUh7yfwlLlMFzEwQhyphenhyphen-9k6snzqFl5daS/s320/Milanote.png" width="212" /></a>What is <a class="" href="https://milanote.com/">Milanote</a>?</h2>
<div>
Milanote is an online board where you can write notes, upload images and add links, and connect them together in any way you please using lines. Basically it's a visualisation tool, which allows you to express something using visual layout with text and images. There are quite a few tools out there like it, but personally I find Milanote one of the best because it's just so lovely to look at, and easy to use. It's rare to have something quite so easy to get started with.</div>
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Whilst it looks very simple, it also has some depth. Notes can be formatted quite well, with all the usual bold, italic, bulleting etc., images can be captioned, pretty everything can be coloured, and lines can be augmented with arrow heads or curved if you wish. Once things have been connected with lines they stay connected, so you can move things about without losing those connections.</div>
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Want more? Well, you can add columns to your board - vertical collections of linked items - or even nest new boards within other boards, creating something which appears simple but with lots of depth. And did I mention it's collaborative? Simply add someone else by email and they'll be able to edit it as well. Finally you can export your board in multiple ways, so it won't stay locked into the website if you don't want it to.</div>
<h2>
How can you use it in education?</h2>
<div>
Milanote is particularly strong on <i>Collaborating </i>and <i>Planning</i>, so let's look at those two aspects.<br />
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Learning by yourself is all well and good, but every good educator knows that the best way to learn is by experiencing the thinking of others. It's only by exposure to other perspectives that we begin to challenge our own thinking and develop new ideas. Sometimes this might be through reading a book, perhaps through watching a film even, but the trouble with those passive experiences is that they lack <b>response to thinking</b>, they lack that challenge. At the heart of social constructivism<i> </i>you find that zone of proximal development, that special area where students are beyond what they can learn by themselves, but not yet stretched so far that they lose comprehension - you find challenge, and nothing helps that develop better than <i>Collaborating </i>with others on a task. Milanote can support that process by allowing groups to co-create a visualisation on a topic. In a straightforward writing project tasks can be broken up and assigned to individuals; these tasks are then typically completed independently and hence the whole benefit of working collaboratively is lost. It's co-operative rather than collaborative. With Milanote on the other hand students have to work together, they have to discuss how to shape a board because it works as a whole entity rather than as a group of disparate pieces of work - and through that group discussion they will develop their thinking.<br />
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<i>Planning </i>is, of course, a big part of teaching. Even for experienced teachers who have moved beyond detailed lesson plans for every class, there's still a need to be looking at the broader picture, and making sure what whatever you have lined up for the days, weeks and months ahead makes sense as a whole. The type of constructive alignment that is recommended does not necessarily come easily. Visualisation tools like Milanote might not be everyone's favourite way of exploring planning, but there is something in the challenge (there's that word again!) of visualisation that can help you see connections, and identify possible weaknesses, that otherwise might remain hidden. Plus the ability to move something into a visual form means that it can then be shared with others and help them understand the complexity of your thinking. When used as a team Milanote can provide a great scaffold for collective thinking, for example when working on new schemes of work for a specific department. On one level you can use notes and arrows to show progression and links between content, and on another level you can use nested boards to show complexity and depth of work.<br />
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So that's about it for Milanote - a wonderfully designed web app, elegant and simple to use, ideal for supporting student collaboration or for helping you to plan out your thinking visually.<br />
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<i>Do you have any ideas for using Milanote that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!</i><br />
<h2>
Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup>?</h2>
Do head over to the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to see Milanote and a host of other apps, all rated against the key challenges you're focused on as a teacher. There's an interactive version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to explore, plus a PDF download version for offline use - or you can go old school, and <a href="https://techtrumps.co.uk/shop/">buy a physical pack of cards for only £8.99</a> plus postage which I'll whisk off to you first class in the next available post :-)<br />
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P.S. This will be my last Tech Trumps® Friday Focus for a few weeks, as we're now entering the school holidays. I'll be back in September with some more apps, and ideas how to make the best use of them in education, so stay tuned - and if there's anything in particular you'd like covered please let me know in the comments.Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-81657240082274725542017-07-14T16:12:00.003+01:002018-01-05T14:32:07.770+00:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: Edpuzzle - Engage your students with videosFor my <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> Friday Focus this week I've chosen a digital technology that's ideally suited to the popular technique of "flipping the classroom", where students are encouraged to engage with content outside of the normal lesson, so that valuable time within the classroom can be spent in productive discussion and engagement. This week I'm talking about Edpuzzle.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvrhHUMTwwv-LxNjgMV4sw6cuYD01XqJWXGmKSMMuRJy7jYrok4MMV39qhGn9BcwBgNFp0ZP2sEVx7TiuTw2OQ-VPpoEEwTa9xagEWusboAm34-o_3YqTbF-u1BwoE1UfEbACUxWze2pwj/s1600/Edpuzzle.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="831" data-original-width="544" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvrhHUMTwwv-LxNjgMV4sw6cuYD01XqJWXGmKSMMuRJy7jYrok4MMV39qhGn9BcwBgNFp0ZP2sEVx7TiuTw2OQ-VPpoEEwTa9xagEWusboAm34-o_3YqTbF-u1BwoE1UfEbACUxWze2pwj/s320/Edpuzzle.png" width="209" /></a>What is <a href="https://edpuzzle.com/">Edpuzzle</a>?</h2>
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Edpuzzle is all about video, but instead of simply watching video it's about engaging with the content of the video in real time. You can select a video from one of the most popular video sharing sites, e.g. Youtube or Vimeo (Edpuzzle supports lots, and the list is growing), or upload your own video, and then add various items to enrich it and turn it into an active experience for your students instead of a passive one. For example:<br />
<ul>
<li>You can trim the video start and end, so you just get the important information you want students to focus on.</li>
<li>You can add your own audio track, or add audio notes along the way, to help explain or challenge the students.</li>
<li>You can add quizzes, either open ended or multiple choice, to get students reflecting on the video.</li>
<li>You can add comments, which can be useful to add what you expect from students or give additional instructions.</li>
</ul>
As Edpuzzle supports classes you can then assign your finished video to a class, stop them skipping through it if you like, and set a due date. Once they start engaging with the video you can track their responses and how much time they've spent engaging with the content.</div>
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How can you use it in education?</h2>
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Whilst Edpuzzle can be used quite successfully in the classroom, and that's certainly something I've done many times before, it's also ideal for flipping the classroom - i.e. setting your class content to engage with before your lesson, so that they can spend lesson time itself in richer discussion about that content. This has become a very popular technique in education, though perhaps a bit over hyped in some cases. If you're as <strike>old</strike> young as me then you probably remember being asked to read a specific text before the lesson next day so that it could be discussed in class (and the chill feeling down your spine when you're asked a question about that text, but didn't quite get round to doing the reading after all ...) but I don't seem to remember it being called flipped learning back then! Nevertheless, new technologies do now have something extra to add to that process, and one of them is, of course, Edpuzzle.<br />
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As you'll see from the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> card above Edpuzzle is particularly strong on <i>Motivating</i>, <i>Differentiating</i> and <i>Assessing</i>, so let's take each of those in turn and explore what that means in practice.<br />
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Video is often described as a useful way of <i>Motivating </i>students, but that said one of the key things I remember clearly from my own teacher training was that when you use video in the classroom you need to be very clear what you're expecting from your students ahead of time. There's no point simply sticking them in front of a video and expecting them to learn - they need to be given context and challenge in order to actively think about the content they're consuming, and be prepared to respond to questions about it. And that's precisely what Edpuzzle will do for you. By embedding challenge all the way through, and using comments to clarify what you expect from students, you'll not only motivate your students with your video but also challenge them to learn.<br />
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And then there's <i>Assessing</i>. Your students need to sign up for Edpuzzle, and of course that means you can track their interactions with your videos. Whilst from a very basic perspective this can help you ensure that they are bothering to engage with the task you've set, from a more useful perspective it can also help you assess whether or not they're understanding what you've set them, and hence adapt your teaching - either adding extra support or challenge as appropriate. Assessment for Learning, as opposed to Assessment of Learning.<br />
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Finally, there's <i>Differentiating</i>. The argument with digital technologies and differentiation is that digital technologies have the capacity to be protean, to be malleable, to support variation in engagement. This can be a useful affordance if you're exploring differentiation by product or process; by having different expectations for your students you can then match the engagement you see through your videos with those expectations. Whether it's process, i.e. how much you expect individual students to engage with your content overall, or product, i.e. the level at which you expect individual students to respond to your questions within your video, Edpuzzle has you covered. You can also easily create differentiation by content as well, using the same base video but adding different levels of challenge according to different students - but that is a bit more time consuming - whether it's necessary for your context is up to you.<br />
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So that's about it for Edpuzzle - a very targeted tech, and one which does require you to have permission to use, and access to, video; but a tech that can be a great addition to your digital portfolio, especially for "flipping the classroom".<br />
<br />
<i>Do you have any ideas for using Edpuzzle that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!</i><br />
<h2>
Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup>?</h2>
Do head over to the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to see Edpuzzle and a host of other apps, all rated against the key challenges you're focused on as a teacher. There's an interactive version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to explore, plus a PDF download version for offline use - or you can go old school, and <a href="https://techtrumps.co.uk/shop/">buy a physical pack of cards for only £8.99</a> plus postage which I'll whisk off to you first class in the next available post :-)Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-12711236985617243522017-07-07T15:33:00.004+01:002018-01-05T14:32:19.646+00:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: Flickr - On-line photo managementFor my <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> Friday Focus this week I'm going to talk about an app that's not usually associated with the classroom. This app is more often associated with photographers, holidays and hobbies than teaching and learning, though that said plenty of innovative educators have adapted it for their needs. This week it's the turn of one of the grand daddies of all web apps, and at 13 years old an app that questions the idea that tech is always changing - this week it's the turn of <a href="https://www.flickr.com/">Flickr</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK_MNxfIkR3OW5iWDr3-GzMyIzR9PFXvzDaT_k9Cg9dE7N9QP2-hygvWwEFQgYArdGukkOc0SLy6GaRgQvpgcTmyD3QV0Z7EeGkC3ipVMKfb3Yi2mE3Lrcvi0y6Ur78tWMbJe3Zx_i4QM4/s1600/Flickr.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="822" data-original-width="543" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK_MNxfIkR3OW5iWDr3-GzMyIzR9PFXvzDaT_k9Cg9dE7N9QP2-hygvWwEFQgYArdGukkOc0SLy6GaRgQvpgcTmyD3QV0Z7EeGkC3ipVMKfb3Yi2mE3Lrcvi0y6Ur78tWMbJe3Zx_i4QM4/s320/Flickr.png" width="211" /></a>What is <a href="https://www.flickr.com/">Flickr</a>?</h2>
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That Flickr strap line - "On-line photo management" - doesn't really do the service much justice. Yes it is a place to store, organise and share photos, but as an app that's been around for so long it's been honing its offering until it's now one of the most complete and easy to use photo management apps available. Let's take a brief look at just what it can do.</div>
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First off you can of course upload photos, and organise them into albums. You can then share those albums with others, either privately or publicly. You can edit your photos, add descriptions, add tags, locate them on a map, comment on photos, add people to photos, set the safety level, add a note to describe a specific area of a photo, change the rights of a photo - pretty much anything you want to do with a photo, you can do with a photo. Oh, and there's Groups as well - you can work in public groups or private groups, so have all the functionality above but in a collaborative set-up instead. And as for storage, Flickr offers a huge one terabyte for free! Talk about generous.</div>
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Flickr's depth of well designed functionality is a good example of why I favour mature apps for my Tech Trumps®, as generally speaking apps that have been around for a while have solved all their interface problems and designed in all the options users might want after many years of iteration and development. I'm always excited when I hear about a new app, and look forward to exploring what they can do, but at the same time I'm well aware that there is a certain myth about technology that it is changing all the time. As someone who's been working with computers for getting on for 35 years now I can safely say that an awful lot about computers hasn't really changed much at all! </div>
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How can you use it in education?</h2>
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The Tech Trump® card above shows just how strong Flickr is across the board on lots of different dimensions. In fact it's one of my top ten Tech Trumps®: when I add all the scores together to get an aggregate score of an apps power, Flickr comes in at number 8. But I'm just going to focus here on a couple of Flickr's strengths - <i>Investigating </i>and <i>Collaborating</i>.<br />
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The <i>Investigating </i>dimension is all about "finding and evaluating information relevant to your topic". Most people agree that this is something of a key skill these days; as the internet and the world wide web have brought so much information to our fingertips, so the need to be able to not only find successfully but also analyse and evaluate what you find has grown and grown. It's all very well certain people talking about fake news, but how do we actually work out what's fake and what's not? Through practicing our information gathering and evaluation skills in real contexts. Flickr supports this type of activity very well, albeit with the caveat that you are searching for imagery, though most often imagery with annotations. Say you're doing a research piece on birds of the British isles, and how they've evolved and adapted to fill different niches. By searching for images on Flickr and picking-out key characteristics, and annotating them using Flickr's ability to highlight and note on a specific part of a photo, students can rapidly build mini-portfolios explaining their own interpretation of the topic. By searching and looking for 'invariants' across imagery, i.e. things that do not change no matter who took the photo, students can develop their ability to discriminate, and demonstrate their understanding.<br />
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Then there's the <i>Collaboration </i>side of things as well, "Harnessing peer knowledge to enhance learning". One of the most powerful aspects of digital technologies in general is that they provide the ability for people to come together in ways which would not be possible in real life - but, crucially, this kind of functionality has to be built it, and it's easy to break this affordance rather than allow it to flourish. Thankfully Flickr supports <i>Collaboration </i>very well, allowing you multiple different ways to work together. In the bird example above you could very easily set students to work in pairs or small groups on the task, gathering photos and annotating them collectively rather than individually. This has the added benefit pedagogically that they're being exposed to other thinking during the learning process, rather than after they've completed the task - think of it like ongoing formative feedback, only from peers rather than from the teacher. Alternatively you could structure the task in multiple stages with individual work followed by peer feedback, followed by more individual work; again helping to develop students thinking by exposing them to more perspectives than they would otherwise experience.<br />
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So that gives you a brief insight into Flickr, and what it can do for you - from on perspective just a great place to store, organise and share photos, but from another perspective a powerful way to engage your learners with content in new and challenging ways. I think Flickr in particular demonstrates why I like to think of digital technologies as catalysts for learning, rather than just tools. Flickr provides a strong framework, which does not change - just as a catalyst in a chemical reaction doesn't change. Used well it can facilitate just the right kind of connections between you, your learners, and your content - that together has real potential to accelerate learning.<br />
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<i>Do you have any ideas for using Flickr that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!</i><br />
<h2>
Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup>?</h2>
Do head over to the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to see Flickr and a host of other apps, all rated against the key challenges you're focused on as a teacher. There's an interactive version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to explore, plus a PDF download version for offline use - or you can go old school, and <a href="https://techtrumps.co.uk/shop/">buy a physical pack of cards for only £8.99</a> plus postage which I'll whisk off to you first class in the next available post :-)Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-90032712556978048722017-06-30T12:13:00.001+01:002017-06-30T12:13:21.283+01:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: Remind - reach students and parents where they areLast week BESA, the British Educational Suppliers Association, published a report on <a href="https://www.besa.org.uk/news/impact-edtech-currently-measured-classroom-besa-report/">how the impact of edtech is currently measured in the classroom</a>. It contains some interesting reading, for example that teachers are the most valued source when it comes to edtech recommendations, but one thing that struck me was a finding from primary school teachers that the edtech solution most in demand was parental communications. With that in mind, and thinking of my own plans to create a set of <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> for primary school teachers, I thought I'd focus this Friday on an app designed to help with just this problem - Remind.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSMihyphenhyphenvSeIdSCi9y34xXAAM_0YBSuKQ1nEtJYanPnmkfwC8x9cWEz0f8Mxek2o_OwvBxffiZk4wk6qZOG1DFC-BP0BKPSyBPan66z73OGXUVV-ZXDLjvBDKN1_NUzeNxiGnTqu-ec5jo5H/s1600/Remind.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="830" data-original-width="553" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSMihyphenhyphenvSeIdSCi9y34xXAAM_0YBSuKQ1nEtJYanPnmkfwC8x9cWEz0f8Mxek2o_OwvBxffiZk4wk6qZOG1DFC-BP0BKPSyBPan66z73OGXUVV-ZXDLjvBDKN1_NUzeNxiGnTqu-ec5jo5H/s320/Remind.png" width="213" /></a></div>
<h2>
What is <a href="https://www.remind.com/">Remind</a>?</h2>
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Remind has been created with one thing and one thing alone in mind - to help teachers better communicate with students and parents. It's designed for the US market, and when used there includes free text messaging, but here in the UK you need to use the app or a web browser to access it.</div>
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You can create classes within it to organise yourself, and then add students either individually using email, by sharing a special class code, or even with pre-prepared PDFs that you can print out and send - or put into children's bags to take home for their parents. A neat way of getting around that problem of trying to find out parents email addresses - using the PDFs mean they can enter their emails themselves.</div>
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Once you've got your classes sorted, it's super easy to send a message either to an individual or to a class, and both the app and the web browser version can set up notifications so you never miss a message. Messages themselves are very simple with no formatting options, but you can add photos, video and files if you like, or even an audio recording if you're using the app. The conversations themselves allow you to add simple emojis as well - which I guess is a bit of a must have feature these days.</div>
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One more feature which is a bit special - you can get the app to translate your messages into other languages! Could be very handy if you're working with a multi-cultural class, and some of the parents grasp of English is a little on the weak wide.</div>
<h2>
How can you use it in education?</h2>
<div>
Remind has been built specially for education, so unlike some apps hopefully it's use is pretty clear. With it's high score of 8 for <i>Planning</i>, it's most effective when used to create structure for your teaching and keep all those who are involved in a childs learning up to speed on what's going on. That said it's perhaps worth pointing out the key strengths of Remind from a pedagogical perspective:</div>
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It can help engagement with your students, keeping them on track with what you want them to study. Like all digital technologies it has the unique affordance of breaking down physical barriers, allowing you to communicate with students at a time and place where you otherwise wouldn't be able to. Used well this can help extend the learning process outside the classroom, and hence improve learning outcomes simply by having your students spend more time learning.</div>
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It's two way communication, so not only can it help you engage with your students, but it can also help them engage with you. This has the potential to reduce the impact of misconceptions, as they can very easily check with you simple questions and you can just as easily answer. Less cumbersome than emails, though of course free access to you needs to be carefully balanced with free time for you - everybody needs a break now and again!</div>
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Finally it can be used to connect with parents, which of course is why I choose it today, as primary teachers in particular are apparently looking out for apps like this. There's <a href="https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/our-work/projects/texting-parents/">emerging research that suggests this type of connection using digital technologies can have small but positive impacts</a>, and considering the costs of implementation are so low that makes using services like Remind very tempting indeed.</div>
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So that's about it for Remind - a dedicated app for connecting with students and parents, that research suggests can have a positive impact on learning outcomes for your students.<br />
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<i>Do you have any ideas for using Remind that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!</i><br />
<h2>
Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup>?</h2>
Do head over to the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to see Remind and a host of other apps, all rated against the key challenges you're focused on as a teacher. There's an interactive version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to explore, plus a PDF download version for offline use - or you can go old school, and <a href="https://techtrumps.co.uk/shop/">buy a physical pack of cards for only £4.99</a> plus postage which I'll whisk off to you first class in the next available post :-)Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-12024739047445113292017-06-23T12:32:00.000+01:002017-06-23T12:35:32.148+01:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: Socrative - In class web-based student response systemThis Friday I'm returning to an old favourite of mine that I've used extensively in both higher and secondary education. It's an app that has been designed from the ground up to assist educators with one of the most important things they can do in a classroom - formative assessment. This week it's the turn of Socrative.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKN1j_9ybUZlZZ-g7hUOLnNwczpzuaAgJ_TkBkonn7LQavkGS06EOfHl7KnuK524Dy69xn_Sj5778xldLramWxlUSTCAG2U_wna332guapbK3DmJsVBDB3JR-pLv0fdmx7wKu63cerM0Kj/s1600/Socrative.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="541" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKN1j_9ybUZlZZ-g7hUOLnNwczpzuaAgJ_TkBkonn7LQavkGS06EOfHl7KnuK524Dy69xn_Sj5778xldLramWxlUSTCAG2U_wna332guapbK3DmJsVBDB3JR-pLv0fdmx7wKu63cerM0Kj/s320/Socrative.png" width="211" /></a></div>
<h2>
What is <a href="https://www.socrative.com/">Socrative</a>?</h2>
Socrative is one of the many apps available now that allows teachers to ask a question, and students to answer that question using a digital device. It's actually been around for many years - I remember meeting the original designer at a conference, long before it became famous, and having some very excitable conversations about its potential!<br />
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There are three types of quiz: a standard question by question, a space race game where students work in teams to outperform each other and an pre-made exit ticket with 3 short questions. When you first start you're given a room name - this will always be the same, so it's a good idea to print if off in large type and add it to your classroom so students can type it in when needed.<br />
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For the standard quiz and the space race you can set either multiple choice, true/false or short answer questions, and students can answer either through a web browser or through a dedicated student app. You can even print out a quiz as a pre-prepared PDF and students can fill that in too - I always used to have a few print outs just in case, as you never know when technology will let you down. You can also add explanations to give students instant feedback on their answers.<br />
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In terms of actually running the quiz, you can either let students go at their own pace or manage it yourself, plus lots of other options such as requiring names, shuffle questions, show feedback and show final score. The data from the quiz is displayed in real time, which you can choose to share if you like (either with names or anonymously), and is also stored online for later analysis.<br />
<h2>
How can you use it in education?</h2>
Obviously the big benefit with using Socrative in your classroom is in <i>Assessing</i>, specifically to support formative assessment. It's an excellent way to get detailed and personalised feedback on exactly how well your class understands the topic in question. Unlike the typical walk around technique, where you're trying to assess individual students understanding as your move around your classroom, you can be sure with Socrative that you're getting precise and personal data for every student. You can also use the questions to get a more complete picture than simple hands up, post-it notes or similar techniques, e.g. you can add many more potential answers or even use short answer questions to provoke a deeper response from your students. The space race element is also useful for <i>Motivating </i>your students, as the extra competition element gamifies the experience.<br />
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Another really big benefit of Socrative is that is stores the results online, and will email you an Excel spreadsheet with the answers once the quiz has finished. By combining this with individual student names, and using conditional formatting on the Excel (e.g. colour coding depending on answer) you can very rapidly produce an overview of both individual students understanding and the overall class strengths and weaknesses, and tailor your teaching accordingly.<br />
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So that's Socrative, a great tool for finding out whether your students really understood what you wanted them to learn. On the outside it may look like yet another student response app, but it has a long pedigree and I think that shows in just how well it can serve your needs as a teacher.<br />
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<i>Do you have any ideas for using Socrative that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!</i><br />
<h2>
Would you like your own set of <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a>?</h2>
Do head over to the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to see Socrative and a host of other apps, all rated against the key challenges you're focused on as a teacher. There's an interactive version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to explore, plus a PDF download version for offline use - or you can go old school, and <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/shop/">buy a physical pack of cards for only £4.99</a> plus postage which I'll whisk off to you first class in the next available post :-)<br />
<br />Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-80842648407567079722017-06-16T10:43:00.000+01:002017-06-16T10:43:21.457+01:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: Popplet - capture and organize your ideasThis Friday I'm focusing on a lesser known digital technology, one that seems simple but is perhaps deceptively powerful when used well. It's also one which I think might be particularly interesting for primary teachers (I'm currently working on a primary pack of Tech Trumps - more of that later, <a href="mailto:rich@catalysed.co.uk">email me</a> if interested). This week it's the turn of Popplet.<br />
<h2>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizeTf62TcRNooMPnCSUv4DEjnOpANUza4HSIMXakbyJnHU8ysAbMYT8nqWxOJ8AQ9YjB1nz6uVI40NLB_-COh8I8MYbXntRv18PyyI8_sYkG_n0Otunuu7mzvKgeJKh3jDLNCIgwF3zehl/s1600/Popplet.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="827" data-original-width="552" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizeTf62TcRNooMPnCSUv4DEjnOpANUza4HSIMXakbyJnHU8ysAbMYT8nqWxOJ8AQ9YjB1nz6uVI40NLB_-COh8I8MYbXntRv18PyyI8_sYkG_n0Otunuu7mzvKgeJKh3jDLNCIgwF3zehl/s320/Popplet.png" width="213" /></a></div>
What is <a href="http://popplet.com/">Popplet</a>?</h2>
Popplet is a visual organisation tool, a type of mind mapper if you like where you can create objects containing thinking or imagery, and then link these together to create a web of interconnected objects. It is in this linking that the real power of Popplet shines out, as it gives you the ability to represent thinking using a visual layout rather than long hand text.<br />
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You can use colour to bring more structure and variation to your individual "popples", videos from popular services Vimeo and YouTube, images from your computer, and also free form drawings if you like - ideal for younger children.<br />
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Popplet only has an iPad version, so no luck for Android or Windows mobile users out there, but it does have a fully featured web version which I'd recommend over the app anyway. It also supports real time collaboration, and commenting, so is ideal for working with others.<br />
<h2>
How can you use it in education?</h2>
As you can see from the Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup> card above, Popplet is pretty good across the board - but it's particularly strong on <i>Investigating </i>and <i>Collaborating</i>.<br />
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Popplet may not be that well known, but is fairly well used. Simply click on "<a href="http://popplet.com/app/#/public">public popplets</a>" and you can find a wealth of visualisations already created, with plenty of ideas from others on a myriad of topics. However, one of the key issues when <i>Investigating </i>a new topic with your students is not simply finding information, it's about organising that information. It's no good just creating a simple list, what you're really looking to develop in your students is an ability to analyse information, evaluate it, and ultimately synthesise it into new forms which give it extra meaning. It's only through this synthesis, this reinterpretation of information by an individual student, that true deep learning actually takes place. Popplet is an ideal way for them to practice this task, as it's so flexible in the way in which you can visualise information. By using not only the flexible canvas itself, but also the ability to colour code, add imagery, and draw free form, popplet provides students with a wide range of abilities to express their unique synthesis of a topic.<br />
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Of course these ideas about analysis, evaluating and synthesis are even better when done as a group. If there's one clear thing that research into learning has shown, it's that we learn best with others - in fact, arguably, we learn everything through others, though it's fair to say that the 'others' in some cases may be artefacts produced by other humans, as opposed to live people themselves. Learning may be unique to each individual, certainly if you agree that learning is connecting new experiences to those that have already been internalised, but that process of change in the individual is something that is immeasurably enhanced by working with others. Popplet can help here by supporting <i>Collaborating </i>with others in real time, so you can experience diversity in thinking as you work. Being exposed to other ideas and having your own thinking challenged is a great way to develop new perspectives. On top of that Popplet includes a clever commenting system where comments can be added on a separate hidden layer alongside the main map. This could be used by peers themselves, but also could be used by the teacher as an assessment layer for later marking and feedback.<br />
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So that's about it for Popplet - a simple mind mapping tool from one perspective, but a powerful investigation tool that can help to scaffold peer collaboration from another.<br />
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<i>Do you have any ideas for using Popplet that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!</i><br />
<h2>
Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup>?</h2>
Do head over to the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to see Popplet and a host of other apps, all rated against the key challenges you're focused on as a teacher. There's an interactive version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to explore, plus a PDF download version for offline use - or you can go old school, and <a href="https://techtrumps.co.uk/shop/">buy a physical pack of cards for only £4.99</a> plus postage which I'll whisk off to you first class in the next available post :-)Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-64699512294293732892017-06-09T15:12:00.003+01:002017-06-09T15:18:32.491+01:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: Prezi - presentations that move and inspireFor this weeks <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> Friday Focus I'm going to talk about an app that is more usually associated with business presentations as opposed to teaching classrooms - and of course making people feel dizzy and slightly sick. The infamous Prezi, particularly useful for <i>Differentiating </i>and <i>Collaborating</i>. Why infamous? Read on ...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj82LpX3ev-0sbFVtpbXXjL4S4ECvVyPyu1l5Skg0RKPqZibBtXv3sGOOdVgmntuIkHUQlM-OPVW8RTp8RwDmhYNwCeh6-ZmuOzpyaN3FBu4fDIkyWV0sCQTPlIpeASotchV64uE-DWQtmh/s1600/Prezi.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="823" data-original-width="549" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj82LpX3ev-0sbFVtpbXXjL4S4ECvVyPyu1l5Skg0RKPqZibBtXv3sGOOdVgmntuIkHUQlM-OPVW8RTp8RwDmhYNwCeh6-ZmuOzpyaN3FBu4fDIkyWV0sCQTPlIpeASotchV64uE-DWQtmh/s320/Prezi.png" width="213" /></a></div>
<h2>
What is <a href="http://prezi.com/prezi-for-education/">Prezi</a>?</h2>
Prezi is basically a replacement for presentation software such as PowerPoint or Keynote, but it offers something of a twist - actually it offers lots of twists, quite a few zooms, and some rapid pans as well. Instead of being limited to an A4 type box to present slide after slide you get an infinite canvas to place your content on, one which you can also zoom in to and out of at will.<br />
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It takes advantage of a unique quality that virtual space has - that it has no fixed dimensions - and using this property of virtual space it allows you to scale and hence contrast topics using size and perspective in a way which no other presentation package can do. Slight downside - if you're not careful you can make your audience nauseous, hence the infamous bit - but just don't overdo the transitions (good advice for any presentation, let's face it) and you should be fine.<br />
<h2>
How can you use it in education?</h2>
There are two key ways to use Prezi in education: either as a replacement for your usual presentation tool to structure the didactic part of your lessons, or for your students to create their own presentations to summarise the topic you're teaching. In either case, the unique strength of Prezi is in its ability to contrast objects using space and time.<br />
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Virtual space, i.e. the world wide web that we're now so familiar with, is often used just to replicate the real world. For example, presentation packages such as PowerPoint and Keynote simply replicate the old acetate and OHP (Overhead Projector) system that people of a certain age (let's face it, my age) will be familiar with. They don't necessarily add anything new, but they do perhaps make it a little easier to create, edit and run a presentation. This replication is not such a bad thing, after all the real world is a pretty familiar place, so by replicating it with digital tools people don't have to spend too much time learning how to do things online. That said, models of technology use such as the RAT and SAMR models <a href="http://thevirtualexplorer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/how-rat-model-can-help-you-think-about.html">I've talked about before</a> do place this kind of use of technology right at the bottom of the clever ladder when it comes to making the most of digital technologies - but Prezi is different.<br />
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Prezi breaks this mold by allowing you to create movement between objects in three dimensions, and by doing so enhances your ability to demonstrate contrast. It still uses a frame by frame approach to presentation, but those frames are very fluid in terms of their placement and size, and hence it allows you to demonstrate your understanding of how disparate objects are related to each other.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KK/2015_images/150721/kk150721-08.1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="414" data-original-width="546" height="302" src="https://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KK/2015_images/150721/kk150721-08.1.gif" width="400" /></a>Let's take an example - say you're a science teacher trying to show how objects within a leaf structure are related, and how they work both individually and as a system. You could start with a large scale image of sunlight shining on a leaf, and use that frame to discuss how sunlight falls in different ways on different surfaces of the leaf. You could then zoom into the cuticles and the stoma to show how these are working on a more microscopic level in a much more detailed frame. You could even bring in a YouTube video showing gas diffusion in real time, all on the same Prezi. You could then move about the leaf structure, still at the microscopic level, illustrating how other parts of the leaf structure relate to these stoma. Finally you could share this with your students - using Prezi's ability to make a copy of your presentation they could start their own assignment based on your Prezi, with the task of adding extra detail about the leaf structure in pre-prepared blank areas (a good example of scaffolding) - and even do this as a group task, as Prezi supports real time collaboration.<br />
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So that's about it for Prezi - it's quite a sophisticated tool, and it might take a few goes to get your head around the different way of working, but it has the potential to transform how you and your students visualise and conceptualise relationships within topics.<br />
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<i>Do you have any ideas for using Prezi that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!</i><br />
<h2>
Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps?</h2>
Do head over to the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> to see Prezi and a host of other apps, all rated against the key challenges you're focused on as a teacher. There's an interactive version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> to explore, plus a PDF download version for offline use - or you can go old school, and <a href="https://techtrumps.co.uk/shop/">buy a physical pack of cards for only £4.99</a> plus postage which I'll whisk off to you first class in the next available post :-)Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-1256989731268931582017-05-26T12:00:00.003+01:002017-05-26T12:00:45.767+01:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: Google Alerts - Monitor the web for interesting new contentLast weeks <a href="http://thevirtualexplorer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/tech-trumps-friday-focus-web-whiteboard.html">Tech Trumps® Friday Focus was all about AWW (A Web Whiteboard)</a>, a great app for collaborating and differentiating, but not exactly strong on investigating - scoring only 2 out of 10. This week I'm switching focus and talking about Google Alerts, a great web service from Google that can help both you and your students when <i>Investigating </i>a topic.<br />
<h2>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtnlkqYUOq06DoVECIrFacj61SOP-wqpF50557GY9qVKrvEA4L_XVfhnKqrRsCBv9Up2EFJBR5ZXCxjYdpHdw9KjfUi86G1yCysAIM5wN2GyvW0XD6qr2LtgERAPM9FnJctTx0gp1Dx5LE/s1600/Google+Alerts.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="826" data-original-width="549" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtnlkqYUOq06DoVECIrFacj61SOP-wqpF50557GY9qVKrvEA4L_XVfhnKqrRsCBv9Up2EFJBR5ZXCxjYdpHdw9KjfUi86G1yCysAIM5wN2GyvW0XD6qr2LtgERAPM9FnJctTx0gp1Dx5LE/s320/Google+Alerts.png" width="212" /></a>What is <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/alerts">Google Alerts</a>?</h2>
<div>
Google Alerts is a free web service from Google that allows you to automate the process of searching for information on a topic. Instead of having to go to Google and search for information yourself, you can enter in specific keywords that you're interested in researching and then Google will automatically send you results every day when it finds something that matches.</div>
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Google Alerts supports the usual advanced search tools, so you can use wildcards, quotes and other special syntax to fine tune your automated search if you need to. You can also choose various options that are specific to Google Alerts, for example how often you get results, whether to just focus on books, videos, news, blogs, finance,, etc., whereabouts in the world you want to search in.</div>
<h2>
How can you use it in education?</h2>
Google Alerts is great for staying on top of a subject, ensuring that you're always up to date with what others are discussing and thinking. There are two main ways you can use in it education - for yourself as a teacher, in order to stay up to date with your own areas of interest, or for your students to help them complete an ongoing project based task.<br />
<h3>
For Teachers - keeping in touch with your areas of interest</h3>
Everyone knows that time is in pretty short supply for teachers, and when time is short some things have to get cut out - and one of those things is often personal development. You simply don't have a chance to stay in touch with the latest developments in your field when you're juggling a full timetable, extra-curricular activities, the inevitable marking workload - and quite possibly some semblance of family life as well.<br />
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Google Alerts can help by filling you in with the latest news in your field every day automatically, so you don't have to worry about falling behind. Simply set up the alert once, then Google will pick the most best search results and email the top 10 or so to you at a time of your choosing every day. You can then quickly scan through them, investigating some further if they seem particularly relevant, and then delete the email knowing you're back on top of things.<br />
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Personally I have 17 alerts running at the moment, on a wide range of topics that are both personal and professional. These help me stay in touch with general news in my field of educational technology - and through Google Alerts sister service of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_alerts?view_op=list_alerts&hl=en#">Google Scholar Alerts</a> I also stay in touch with the academic research in my field.<br />
<h3>
For students - supporting ongoing project work</h3>
I think by now most people are aware that there are no digital natives - that argument was promising and seemed intuitive, but unfortunately <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00793.x/full">the research evidence is against it</a>. In fact young people can be particularly bad users of digital technologies in some cases, and nowhere perhaps as much as when they're searching for information online to support their thinking. They have a tendency to use weak search criteria, and believe the first thing they find with very little cross referencing - or as we call it in academic research "triangulation".<br />
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Google Alerts can support them by broadening the types of information they are receiving, and by providing a continuous flow of information which they then need to analyse and synthesise into new thinking - working at the higher end of Bloom's taxonomy. By showing them how to create very focused alerts you can help your students with specific projects, some examples might be:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Creating alerts on the tech companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft, but focusing only on finance news in the United States, to support an economics project on Silicon Valley and its wider impact on the US economy.</li>
<li>Creating an alert on ISIS, using only news results within countries such as Iran, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, to support a citizenship project exploring different perspectives on terrorism.</li>
<li>Creating an alert on festivals - or "festivales" even - but focus on results only in Spanish, and only in Spain, to support an MFL project exploring how the Spanish celebrate differently to the English.</li>
</ul>
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So that's about it for Google Alerts - doesn't do much, but very good at what it does do, and when aligned with your learning goals it can be a very powerful <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> indeed.<br />
<br />
<i>Do you have any ideas for using Google Alerts that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!</i><br />
<h2>
Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps?</h2>
Do head over to the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> to see AWW and a host of other apps, all rated against the key challenges you're focused on as teachers. There's an interactive version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> to explore, plus a PDF download version for offline use - or you can go old school, and <a href="https://techtrumps.co.uk/shop/">buy a physical pack of cards for only £4.99</a> plus postage which I'll whisk off to you first class in the next available post :-)<br />
<br />
P.S. Enjoy the half term!Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-66965869128724964662017-05-19T15:30:00.001+01:002017-05-22T13:45:20.459+01:00Tech Trumps® Friday Focus: AWW - touch-friendly online whiteboard appMy focus this Friday is on the app known as AWW - no, not an expression of sentiment when watching the latest Disney cartoon, but instead shorthand for "A Web Whiteboard". It's one of many of my <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> that are particularly well suited for <i>Collaborating </i>and <i>Differentiating,</i> so if you're interested in those topics read on ...<br />
<h2>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc68RmXr-H2JM6JpyQCOytvzWU6Uf4C4fpjBLc08WSMb0LOtjlSeFYB966Im7wdFNNk6wbUNJRGliEAGzgmMcJswEQH8kxyi-WsKZ2H9miz5ds_U1ndvRr9QmzayydkKFTM4pMer-Wpvrq/s1600/AWW.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc68RmXr-H2JM6JpyQCOytvzWU6Uf4C4fpjBLc08WSMb0LOtjlSeFYB966Im7wdFNNk6wbUNJRGliEAGzgmMcJswEQH8kxyi-WsKZ2H9miz5ds_U1ndvRr9QmzayydkKFTM4pMer-Wpvrq/s320/AWW.png" style="cursor: move;" width="210" /></a></div>
What is <a href="https://awwapp.com/">AWW</a>?</h2>
<div>
At it's heart AWW, or to give it it's full name A Web Whiteboard, is exactly what it says on the tin - it's a way of creating an interactive whiteboard simply by using a web browser. Imagine you end up in a teaching room with a just a projector and a laptop, with a click of a button AWW allows you to use your web browser as a replacement interactive whiteboard with so sign up required, no logging in, no fee - it's that simple.<br />
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As it's also touch-friendly, if you're lucky enough to have a touch enabled computer then the only difference is that you'll be drawing on your laptop screen rather than the whiteboard - which potentially means you're actually facing your students rather than having your back to them, not necessarily a bad thing with some classes!<br />
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<div style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal;">
As like all my <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> AWW is free to use, but can also can be enhanced on a paid plan specially designed for teachers.</div>
</h3>
<h2>
How can you use it in education?</h2>
Apart from its obvious value in allowing you to use an interactive whiteboard even if there isn't one in the classroom you've been allocated, AWW is also strong on <i>Collaborating </i>and <i>Differentiating.</i><br />
<h3>
Collaborating</h3>
From a collaboration perspective AWW can help because the interactive whiteboard you are now using can be shared instantly, and even anonymously, with anyone else. This means that whatever information you are sharing with your students can also be annotated by them if you wish - AWW even provides a QR code generator so that students can scan the code and be automatically directed to the right whiteboard.<br />
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Say for example you're displaying an image on the whiteboard that you've found online, perhaps the water cycle, or a map of the western front of the first world war - something easily done with AWW. You could ask students to pair up and annotate the board based on the topic you're discussing, perhaps add arrows for the water cycle or key battles for the western front, and use their responses as part of an ongoing discussion. You could then clear responses and repeat the exercise after students have had a chance to explore their previous answers, which should - according to theory - help them to perform better.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZjIp4VMK1IFs3PKtfZdnca37hfHQ24-ps_NDUtCAPm6BlG81wxtaEHVoCAhMimx9hIJHuRq04XLsNZY06wgJHZd4a6m4-LNWJM2kFDhausT17mF1pOuYZ8eyFY1UoTryqbpbD02_6DktF/s1600/snip_20170519152719.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZjIp4VMK1IFs3PKtfZdnca37hfHQ24-ps_NDUtCAPm6BlG81wxtaEHVoCAhMimx9hIJHuRq04XLsNZY06wgJHZd4a6m4-LNWJM2kFDhausT17mF1pOuYZ8eyFY1UoTryqbpbD02_6DktF/s640/snip_20170519152719.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A hand annotated AWW</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>
Differentiating</h3>
Digital technologies can often help support differentiation in your classroom by allowing different students to engage with a challenge at different levels simultaneously. It's an aspect to digital technologies that has been referred to as their 'protean' nature, which wikipedia describes as:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"with the general meaning of "versatile", "mutable", "capable of assuming many forms". "Protean" has positive connotations of flexibility, versatility and adaptability"</blockquote>
From a differentiation point of view this is valuable as different students can work at their own level, and you can then assess their competence on the task in hand based on your knowledge of how well they normally perform - a sort of formative / ipsative assessment.<br />
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AWW is quite a simple tool, but nonetheless can be used in quite complex ways by using combinations of text, pen thickness, colour and uploaded digital imagery. As students work on their boards you can differentiate as you roam the room, for example by exploring with those who are making good progress ways in which to combine more complex representations of their thinking. Not all digital technologies are flexible enough in their design to allow this, but AWW is a good example of one that is.<br />
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So that's about it for AWW - a simple application, but one that fits a tidy niche amongst my <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> .<br />
<h3>
<div style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal;">
<i>Do you have any ideas for using AWW that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!</i></div>
</h3>
<h2>
Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps?</h2>
Do head over to the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to see AWW and a host of other apps, all rated against the key challenges you're focused on as teachers. There's an interactive version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> to explore, plus a PDF download version for offline use - or you can go old school, and <a href="https://techtrumps.co.uk/shop/">buy a physical pack of cards</a> for only £4.99 plus postage, which I'll whisk off to you by cow carrier as soon as the farmer has finished milking. Or alternatively first class in the next available post :-)</div>
Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-52754706661043353722017-05-16T17:43:00.001+01:002017-05-16T17:43:27.482+01:00How the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) can help you understand digital practice in your schoolAs a doctor of education I might be forgiven a tiny bit of obsession with academic research - it has been a massive part of my life for over 10 years now, after all. Not all evidence is created equal, though, and you need to be careful just how robust what you're reading actually is. Strong effect size? Oh, hang on, that study was with only 19 students in a totally different culture ...<br />
<br />
There are some pretty robust bits of evidence out there though for those interested in how to use digital technologies effectively in education. One of the parts of research which underlies my work as <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/">Catalysed </a>is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_acceptance_model">Technology Acceptance Model</a>, or the TAM as it's often referred to. I'm glad to say that here is a robust and proven way of understanding why someone in your organisation may or may not actually use some new bit of technology that you've acquired for your business. Yes the model has its critics, but it has weathered them and remained, and even developed. Research is ongoing, and it still appears to be a useful way of analysing educators' use of tech, e.g. <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10494821003714632">Teo (2012)</a>.<br />
<h2>
What is the TAM?</h2>
Effectively the TAM is a flowchart, with your goal - "Actual System Use" - at one end, and various barriers/drivers building up to it. The diagram below shows how they interrelate:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEAt812Wi18RqwIMrex72Cia2LzCLvYt8HG1EW0SD6vX3yAuuH2n28AEkHYi2tETnNrJZok7HpVqEB__CO5DWIgnt1GywbAyP28PsK9vxZ6CWOJyspokASuCgcWzyhmJEdbhNN7f6GKnux/s1600/1200px-Technology_Acceptance_Model.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEAt812Wi18RqwIMrex72Cia2LzCLvYt8HG1EW0SD6vX3yAuuH2n28AEkHYi2tETnNrJZok7HpVqEB__CO5DWIgnt1GywbAyP28PsK9vxZ6CWOJyspokASuCgcWzyhmJEdbhNN7f6GKnux/s640/1200px-Technology_Acceptance_Model.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Technology Acceptance Model</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Personally I interpret the model as saying there are two main reasons why people use a new system: (1) it looks like it's relatively simple to use, i.e. the interface is clear and easy to understand (E) and (2) it looks like it will help with a specific problem or goal that the teacher is currently trying to meet (U). On top of these two reasons for use, the model also highlights the barriers to edtech use - external variables. I interpret those as anything that might put the dampers on for an individual - out dated tech, for example, or bad wifi, confusing policies, etc.<br />
<h2>
How can the TAM help you?</h2>
<div>
Used well the TAM can help you to identify the barriers to use that you may inadvertently have put in place, methods to encourage better use of the techs you do have, or new techs that you might bring in.</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/images/hierarchy_of_needs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://catalysed.co.uk/images/hierarchy_of_needs.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hierarchy of pedagogical digital needs</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>
External variables</h3>
<div>
The external variables side of the TAM may sound like it's out of your control, but in a school these are often areas which you are directly in charge of. For <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/">Catalysed</a> I developed the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10494821003714632">hierarchy of pedagogical digital needs</a> to try and frame up potential barriers, which classically tend to cluster around out of date hardware, poor wifi availability, or even confusing or conflicting policies and practices from senior leadership.<br />
<br />
I've been in schools with brilliant policies to include student mobiles in the learning process, for example, but where the wifi for students was purposefully restricted so that they didn't use too much bandwidth. Result? Frustrated teachers and students. Similarly I know of places where policies are so confusing that half the school thinks they should be using mobiles in class and the other half thinks they're banned! My own analysis tools can help you think about your school is addressing external variables - try my <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeX6LVdyShC08Lz0DWfR9LTXcgyD_3kog-ijcwQBGpXAm2GmQ/viewform?c=0&w=1">free Survey of Pedagogical Digital Needs to get started</a>.</div>
<div>
<h3>
Perceived ease of use (E)</h3>
<div>
How easy a new bit of tech is to use can also be a big barrier. Think of the very first time you ever saw SIMS, for example, a daunting prospect I'm sure, but one that all teachers have to master eventually. There is a great deal of evidence to show that people will judge a new tech very quickly on how easy they think it is to use, and run a mile - if they can - if they perceive it as difficult.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I get around this in <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/">Catalysed</a> by only selecting mature, well designed digital technologies to be part of my <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/tech_trumps.html">Tech Trumps®</a>. These digital playing cards were first conceived when I worked in higher education, but have come a long way from there and have now evolved to be a completely different beast. They include over 50 well known and established technologies, some designed for education but most not, but all very easy to use and all free for teachers.</div>
<h3>
Perceived usefulness (U)</h3>
<div>
At the heart of my own <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/apt_methodology.html">APT methodology</a> is the notion of affordance, and that to all intents and purposes boils down to perceived usefulness. The heart of the theory of affordance is that we go through life surrounded by a myriad of wonderfully interesting things and people, with countless uses and ways in which they might be useful for us - the vast majority of which we completely fail to notice! What we actually notice in our environment as we move within it are things that we perceive to be useful <i>at any one point in time</i>. We exist in a relative state with the world, with our own intentions ands needs governing what we attend to and notice.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/images/aim_model_blank_small.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="151" src="https://catalysed.co.uk/images/aim_model_blank_small.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">AIM model</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
I developed my <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/aim_models.html">AIM models</a> specifically to try and highlight and visualise this need, to surface what teachers are currently thinking about, worrying about, working towards, so that the right digital technologies can be brought to bear on those needs and intentions. By aligning digital technologies with the same needs and intentions highlighted by the <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/aim_models.html">AIM models</a>, using my <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/tech_trumps.html">Tech Trumps®</a>, teachers' can easily perceive the usefulness of specific apps.</div>
<h3>
Attitude towards using</h3>
<div>
There's one final barrier before we can crack on to intention to use, and actual use - attitude towards using. Most of the hard work is done by now, but there will always be some people concerned or confused, and even the most simple and easy to use tech will still need a little explaining. That's why I use small group workshops to explore new techs together, with fake student accounts but in real live classrooms, so that teachers can see in practice how a tech might pan out in a real scenario. This also helps to squash any worries about hardware or software not behaving on the day - something I'm sure we've all had to put up with, and perhaps the most dreaded experience of the tech nervous! By using peer approaches, and especially small groups from the same department who can then support each other, you can build internal expertise and confidence.</div>
</div>
<h3>
Behaviour intention to use (BI) / actual system use</h3>
<div>
By now the last two stages should fall into place pretty easily. Good leadership and secure policies, with ongoing support for digital practices, should ensure that the intention to use continues. Integrating tech use into other school practices, for example having regular sessions within existing CPD, or adding an edtech element to ongoing review and assessment policies, will keep it in minds. And of course the odd session with <a href="http://catalysed.co.uk/">Catalysed </a>wouldn't hurt either.<br />
<br />
All in all, by using the TAM to analyse your own digital practice, and putting steps in place to address its major stages, you should be able to use digital technologies to accelerate your learning. And reap the benefits - potentially a <a href="https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/resources/teaching-learning-toolkit/digital-technology/">four month improvement in learning outcomes</a>!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-38323350709872191232017-05-12T16:38:00.003+01:002017-05-12T16:38:39.649+01:00Tech Trumps® Friday focus: Quizlet - Simple study tools for learning anythingOf all the things you can do in the classroom as a teacher to improve learning outcomes for your students, perhaps the most important is developing a better understanding of how well your pupils understand the topic you're teaching. Luckily formative assessment, as it's more formally known, is something that digital technologies are particularly good at supporting. This Friday I'm exploring one of the many <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> that can help you develop your formative assessment practice, as well as differentiation in the classrom - Quizlet.<br />
<h2>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvXj4ZJYbASbeqCAULSL0yLn2B8BkEBa1CgVOYQhyoXq5YHWUAw6HTshmlOgzlKdY5iiLiZFQ6fgW0x_x771U05qNG_RNOJiMymwbDS2dTi2minOJe9Fgr0kT7FY7H_rCCDjLAKZRfr_aB/s1600/Quizlet.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvXj4ZJYbASbeqCAULSL0yLn2B8BkEBa1CgVOYQhyoXq5YHWUAw6HTshmlOgzlKdY5iiLiZFQ6fgW0x_x771U05qNG_RNOJiMymwbDS2dTi2minOJe9Fgr0kT7FY7H_rCCDjLAKZRfr_aB/s320/Quizlet.png" width="211" /></a></div>
What is <a href="https://quizlet.com/">Quizlet</a>?</h2>
At it's heart Quizlet is a tool that allows you to create what the company calls study sets. These study sets consist of a list of terms from the topic you want students to study, plus the definitions for each of those terms - that's it! Say you were teaching photosynthesis, then you'd create a list of, say, 10 different key terms from the topic (e.g. chlorophyll, respiration, stoma, etc.) and then add a definition for each one in turn.<br />
<br />
The clever bit about Quizlet, and what makes it so strong on <i>Differentiating </i>and <i>Assessing </i>in particular (scoring 8 on both), is that it allows students to engage with the terms and definitions in multiple ways. They can:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Use flashcards to try and recall the definition and then the term - or vice versa</li>
<li>Go through each term in sequence trying to learn them one by one</li>
<li>Spell the term using an audio prompt</li>
<li>Take a marked test to see how well they know the terms</li>
<li>Play a matching game, linking the terms and definitions</li>
<li>Play a gravity game, protecting their planet by answering questions correctly</li>
<li>Play a live game in the classroom, which combines competing against peers and collaborating with peers at the same time</li>
</ul>
<br />
All with the same terms and definitions that you added. You get to add one set, and yet students get to interact with that set in seven different ways. As you'd expect, Quizlet also allows you to add classes, search for sets from other teacher (of which there are thousands - hence the strong <i>Investigating </i>score) - and get various views on your activity. That's all for free - for a relatively small upgrade price (currently £34.99 for the year) you can even add more, such as images, audio files, and view on class progress.<br />
<h2>
How can you use it in education?</h2>
As with my <a href="http://thevirtualexplorer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/tech-trumps-friday-focus-plickers-real.html">Plickers Friday Focus post</a> last week, Quizlet is obviously designed for education so it should be relatively easy to see how you might use it in your teaching. It's very suitable for <i>Assessing</i>, although slightly unusual in that it's actually best for students to do their own formative assessment rather than for you as a teacher. This is a great - and necessary - skill for students to develop, the ability to understand their own strengths and weaknesses and engage with challenging content autonomously. That said, if you pay for the upgrade you get the ability to check class progress over time, which is extremely valuable.<br />
<br />
The other area that Quizlet is very strong on is <i>Differentiating</i>. I think this is an undervalued aspect to digital technologies, the ability for them to offer a flexible space for students that can be engaged with on multiple different levels. Giving students the flexibility to engage with content in a way which best suits them at any specific moment in time can be a powerful way to help them develop their understanding. I think most teachers now realise that the idea of learning styles doesn't hold much water, but what does seem to be true is that at different times students might like to engage with different approaches to learning. Indeed, the best evidence seems to suggest that developing different approaches to learning is in itself a valuable learning goal. A little of everything in moderation, like most things in life, seems to be a good thing.<br />
<br />
<i>Do you have any ideas for using Quizlet that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!</i><br />
<h2>
Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps?</h2>
Do head over to the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> to see Quizlet and a host of other apps for teachers, all coded up against the key things you're working on as teachers yourselves. There's an interactive version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> to explore, plus a download version for offline use if you wish.Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-47991407835937612762017-05-05T12:42:00.000+01:002017-05-05T12:49:40.557+01:00Tech Trumps Friday focus: Plickers - Real-time student assessment without devicesThis Friday the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a> focus is on an app that it is a little unusual, in that it's the only one where your students don't actually need any technology themselves - Plickers. As such it's ideally suited for those just starting out with using digital technologies to enhance their teaching practice.<br />
<h2>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMoQxhynWuR7RooNI-QFvdWlYeZBtIdCsB8dg5TaFnS-B78rKODQ7DtnyDey5VArf9EJB1hYiT3TdzCEkYsuC2lT0ZqXb4Thz1H52cmJp-TsbTZAM1sW01TWXM-Y3qZKojHP8OV6dZ4s3o/s1600/Plickers.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMoQxhynWuR7RooNI-QFvdWlYeZBtIdCsB8dg5TaFnS-B78rKODQ7DtnyDey5VArf9EJB1hYiT3TdzCEkYsuC2lT0ZqXb4Thz1H52cmJp-TsbTZAM1sW01TWXM-Y3qZKojHP8OV6dZ4s3o/s320/Plickers.png" width="213" /></a>What is <a href="https://plickers.com/">Plickers</a>?</h2>
Plickers helps you run formative assessment sessions in your class. It's a combination of a website and a smartphone app for the teacher, together with individual laminated cards for your students which each show a different graphic.<br />
<br />
The basic idea is that you ask a question, and then students hold up their cards in one of four different orientations in order to show their answer. You use the camera on your smartphone to scan the room, and it automatically analyses all the cards and sends that data to the website in real time, so you and your students can see the results instantly.<br />
<br />
There's quite a lot of preparation to do before hand, including:<br />
<ol>
<li>Creating the cards for your students;</li>
<li>Adding classes to the website;</li>
<li>Preparing questions to ask;</li>
<li>Adding questions to a queue for a specific class.</li>
</ol>
Getting all these steps done ahead of time though means that running things in the class itself is very straightforward - just what every teacher wants! You make sure the Plickers website is showing on the whiteboard, then simply pick a class and a question from your smartphone app and it magically appears on screen.<br />
<h2>
How can you use it in education?</h2>
<div>
Unlike some of the other <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps®</a>, Plickers is obviously aimed directly at education and specifically at formative assessment, so if this is an area you want to explore more Plickers is an ideal start to digitally enhancing your practice.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Let's explore them in a bit more depth, but to give a little more rigour to the process I'm going to use the <a href="http://thevirtualexplorer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/how-rat-model-can-help-you-think-about.html">RAT model</a> to explain what Plickers can do for you. <span style="font-family: "lora" , serif;">The RAT model, which stands for <b>Replacement</b>, <b>Amplification </b>and <b>Transformation</b>, is a useful way of analysing digital technologies, and can help you to understand whether or not they're something worth pursuing.</span><span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://hamiltoncityschools.com/brookwood/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/02/20150204_141828.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://hamiltoncityschools.com/brookwood/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/02/20150204_141828.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Plickers in action, showing students holding their cards</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;">First off Plickers might seem like a simple </span><b style="font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;">Replacement </b><span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;">for asking for hands up or something similar, so you might wonder why you'd bother going through all the set-up when you can just ask students a question.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;">To a certain extent that's true, but it's also acting as </span><b style="font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;">Amplification</b><span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;">, for example it's now giving students four different options to answer rather than just a yes or no, plus it does all the analysis of answers automatically rather than you having to count them up.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;">Finally there are elements of </span><b style="font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;">Transformation</b><span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;">, as the results are now stored online for you,so you have a personal record of every students understanding. If you were trying to same process using a paper based approach it would be extremely difficult to transfer, say, a 10 question mini-quiz, each with four possible answers, for a class of 30 students into a digital record.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;">From a practical perspective Plickers is ideal for creating a peer instruction session, as defined by Eric Mazur from Harvard University. The cycle of concept - question - quiz - peer discussion - quiz can generate significant learning gains for your students. If you're interested in this technique there's a <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiN3deV09jTAhUTOsAKHfRlCLkQFghFMAU&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uq.edu.au%2Fteach%2Fflipped-classroom%2Fdocs%2FFAB%2FFABPeerInstructionTipsheet.pdf&usg=AFQjCNELgibbX1INYd1iLBRKDulf7tjYDA&sig2=9K2hQKmrV4uRQrGHbZ-4Mg">free PDF describing how to run a peer instruction session</a> available online. Peer instruction has come from Higher Education, but the basic premise of using knowledgeable peers to help others learn comes straight from social constructivism, so is applicable at all levels.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;">One more tip I picked up from a teacher using Plickers is to sellotape or glue the cards to the students exercise books or planners, that way they've always got their cards with them. You can always keep spares in your classroom for the (inevitable) times when they've lost their planners!</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif;"><i>Do you have any ideas for using Plickers that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!</i></span></div>
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif;">Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps?</span></h2>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "lora" , serif;">Do head over to the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/" style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Tech Trumps®</a> to see Plickers and a host of other apps for teachers, all coded up against the key things you're working on as teachers yourselves. There's an interactive version of the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/" style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Tech Trumps®</a> to explore, plus a download version </span><span style="font-family: lora, serif;">for offline use if you wish. </span></div>
</div>
Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-62140720926045805032017-05-04T10:19:00.002+01:002017-05-04T10:19:19.263+01:00How the RAT model can help you think about using a digital technology to enhance a learning scenarioI love a bit of technological innovation, but sometimes the new shiny app you've downloaded just seems to replicate what you can do in real life without adding much improvement - or sometimes makes things even worse rather than better! It's all too easy to get caught up in the hype about some new app or websites offerings without really thinking deeply about whether it's going to make things better or worse.<br />
<br />
This is particularly true in education, where lots of techs have been hyped over the decades, with each in turn failing to make any discernible improvement in learning outcomes for students. The latest fad is now Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality, which I'm confident will return much the same value on investment as it's predecessors.<br />
<h2>
How the RAT model helps</h2>
The RAT model, which stands for Replacement, Amplification and Transformation, is a useful way of trying to frame up these technological innovations, and can help you to understand whether or not they're something worth pursuing. It's similar to the SAMR model (Substitution, Amplification, Modification, Redefinition), but I think the simpler RAT model is easier to use in practice. I'm a specialist in this field, and still struggle sometimes with whether something is substitution, augmentation, modification of redefinition when using SAMR - the simpler RAT model generally works better in my opinion.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xhq5nEPtHFc/Ub1AePtTfjI/AAAAAAAAFxY/Fvcr0ZPRLbo/s1600/RAT.004-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xhq5nEPtHFc/Ub1AePtTfjI/AAAAAAAAFxY/Fvcr0ZPRLbo/s1600/RAT.004-001.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
As can be seen in the diagram, the RAT model basically has three stages: tech is either replacing a real world process without really changing anything, amplifying a real world process in some way by making things more efficient or effective, or actually introducing a new way of carrying out a real world process that would be impossible without the tech.<br />
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A simple example: parking your car</h2>
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If you're anything like me you'll have a small container somewhere in your car overflowing with coins, that are there for the sole purpose of paying for parking when you're out and about. Trouble is, I rarely use them anymore - instead I have a growing assortment of apps, all vying to be the one app to pay for all my parking needs. Trouble is, going back to the RAT model, they're almost all just replacement technologies.<br />
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<li>Usually you still have to go to the ticket machine in the car park to get the number for the car park, so you make exactly the same journey that would with your coins - it's just <b>replacement</b>. It doesn't really offer anything new for you, though perhaps makes things easier for the company!</li>
<li>Some may add some minor enhancements which are handy, for example the ability to remotely extend your stay once you're parked, but again this is hardly ground breaking. It's <b>amplification</b>. It's improved efficiency without fundamental change.</li>
<li>But there is one I know which is different. Instead of simply paying for a specific chunk of time once you're arrived at the car park, this app allows you to start the <i>process </i>of parking when you arrive - and keeps it running. It's a lot like when you get a paper ticket on entry, and then paying when leaving, but in this case you never need to even go to the ticket machine in the first place. GPS picks up your location, you start parking, and then drive off when you're finished. It's <b>transformation</b>. The ticket machine is no longer required, replaced by a mobile phone app.</li>
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Using the RAT model in a learning scenario</h2>
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So how can we use the RAT model to help understand how to apply a digital technology to a learning scenario. First we need to define the learning scenario, as the research agrees you must have context when considering digital technology use in education. Tech should never be assessed alone; never trust someone who promises the tech will transform something all by itself!<br />
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Let's say you wanted to focus on formative assessment, trying to improve your understanding of how well students understand what you're currently teaching within a single lesson. Without technology you might perhaps create some small handouts to use in the middle of the lesson, a mini-quiz for the students to answer with 10 questions, peer marked half way through, with results used to cluster students into groups for the remaining part of the lesson.<br />
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My <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps<sup>®</sup></a> would suggest you use something like Socrative to help with this, the in class web-based student response system.<br />
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<li>At first using Socrative might seem like simple <b>replacement</b>, i.e. you'd create the same mini-quiz that you would normally do. But this is fine, it's simply good pedagogy, and that doesn't change.</li>
<li>However it's also <b>amplification </b>at the same time; the process is now quicker to run, and the marking is automatic rather than being done by hand. Plus the results are stored online automatically and individually, something which - let's face it - you probably wouldn't have time to do for paper copies.</li>
<li>Finally there is an element of <b>transformation</b>, by adding feedback directly into your quiz you can add explanations for students who get the wrong answer. This type of personalised automatic feedback is simply not possible with the paper equivalent.</li>
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So here we can now see how the RAT model can help think about the role a digital technology is playing within a learning scenario. By using the same process you'll be able to spot when something is just replacing a normal process as opposed to amplifying or transforming it - and avoid the hype!<br />
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Using the three stages from the RAT model you just ask yourself three simple questions:<br />
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<li>Is the tech I'm using just replacing a physical process? (replacement)</li>
<li>Does the tech I'm using make the process any quicker or easier? (amplification)</li>
<li>Am I introducing something with the tech that would be impossible without it? (transformation)</li>
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Replacement can help familiarise you and your students with digital technology in general, but on the whole is best avoided. Amplification is where you'll normally find yourself, with a series of minor improvements to efficiency which together can have a significant overall impact on your teaching. Transformation is rare, but when well executed can provide sustained improvements in your practice.</div>
Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-20508843346134580642017-04-28T15:11:00.001+01:002017-05-05T12:51:59.482+01:00Tech Trumps Friday focus: Google Keep - post-it style note taking and remindersFor the second part of my new Friday focus on the <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps</a> I'm going to talk about Google Keep. This note taking app is something I use personally as well as professionally, and in my opinion gives the best combination of power and simplicity of all the various note taking apps.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzvmgwjgK4K7qDWfFbOigR9efO-Bk3Ou5bQpY0TbJ-v47VnthUJ3qH5ZOlC7dNLGMa_41o7gNZMPj3pdsHXMyscaL46IVjxfSBuznetPCMGtxRA0NrU47Y1gM0he7jQjAYIDm_CqvSv3Fa/s1600/Google+Keep.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzvmgwjgK4K7qDWfFbOigR9efO-Bk3Ou5bQpY0TbJ-v47VnthUJ3qH5ZOlC7dNLGMa_41o7gNZMPj3pdsHXMyscaL46IVjxfSBuznetPCMGtxRA0NrU47Y1gM0he7jQjAYIDm_CqvSv3Fa/s320/Google+Keep.png" width="211" /></a>
What is <a href="http://keep.google.com/">Google Keep</a>?</h2>
Google Keep is a note taking and reminder service from Google that is available on the web as well as through apps for all major smartphones. It's basic premise is a series of self-organising digital post-it notes, which you can either write as bulleted lists or as paragraphs. You can also add an image per note, or a hand drawing if you prefer.<br />
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Individual notes can be coloured coded to help your organise topics, and you can share them with other people as collaborators if you like, which update in real time. Bulleted lists can also be checked off one by one, helping you to keep on top of tasks.<br />
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You can add reminders to individual notes using Google's normal reminder service, which means that you can set up a reminder either for a set time and date, or using a location. You can also pin favourite or important notes, so they stay at the top of your screen and don't get lost.<br />
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How can you use it in education?</h2>
Google Keep is pretty strong on collaboration and investigating, but I find its best use is in planning - scoring 9 out of 10. As a teacher you're undoubtedly juggling many different classes, as well as perhaps other duties or clubs and perhaps some personal development goals as well. You can create separate Google Keep notes for each of your ongoing challenges, and use the checklist approach to make sure you're up to date with your tasks for each, marking them off as you go. The checklist approach is very powerful, and is something that is highly recommended by productivity experts. If you've not read it I'd recommend <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right-Atul-Gawande/1846683149">The Checklist Manifesto</a> as a good overview of why you should be using this approach - think of it as a shopping list for getting life sorted.<br />
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Another method, and my personal favourite for using Google Keep, is to create a different note for each day with all the tasks that you have to do for that day listed on it. Prepare these at least one day in advance, often the previous evening, and then on the day in question just have to go through the days checklist doing each task in turn, and that way nothing is ever forgotten or overlooked. Once the day is done, archive your note for that day and move on to the next one. Any tasks not completed you can simply copy to the next day. Top tip - don't try to do too much! Keeping the list to between 5 and 10 items is plenty; the key to <i>effective</i> productivity is to do less things, but do them better.<br />
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Do you have any ideas for using Google Keep that you'd like to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments!<br />
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Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps?</h2>
You can <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/Tech%20Trumps%20(PDF%20Pack).pdf">download your own PDF version of the Tech Trumps</a> for offline use if you wish. This PDF includes all the interactive links of the online version, but you can still browse them without an internet connection.Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175390599123954395.post-57023798339624170322017-04-21T14:42:00.000+01:002017-05-05T12:52:23.548+01:00Tech Trumps Friday focus: Padlet - simple, quick collaborative whiteboardsTo celebrate the completion of my new <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/">Tech Trumps</a>, and the first issue of real packs to local schools and other educational institutions, I'm going to start a new Friday series of blog posts focusing on just one Tech Trump at a time.<br />
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This Friday it's the turn of Padlet (<a href="https://padlet.com/">https://padlet.com</a>).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji2uVVdeVcOCfm7ifIM9r9dMnfmgqpM6zcKtaz-8AWrCuExavagGYoGI92RdH2UnIcrZJnIy7x9_RYBxBZ_iulW3jAn8fToZhHXpZYpg-6tLN3IIu-OG8uljwLa1nFi6ppQlaMcxxLjBXh/s1600/Padlet.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji2uVVdeVcOCfm7ifIM9r9dMnfmgqpM6zcKtaz-8AWrCuExavagGYoGI92RdH2UnIcrZJnIy7x9_RYBxBZ_iulW3jAn8fToZhHXpZYpg-6tLN3IIu-OG8uljwLa1nFi6ppQlaMcxxLjBXh/s320/Padlet.png" width="213" /></a>What is <a href="https://padlet.com/">Padlet</a>?</h2>
Padlet is a type of online noticeboard or whiteboard, an electronic pin board where you can place text notes, images, audio, videos, links or other files.<br />
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You can customise your padlet by changing the wallpaper and the way that you position posts that are added, e.g. free form, grid or stream.<br />
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You can keep your padlet private, share your padlet using a secret link or using a password, or make it public; and in each case you can control how others can contribute - read it, edit it, or even moderating others content.<br />
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Padlet does not require any special hardware, software or installation, it just runs in a web browser, so is relatively easy to get started with.<br />
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How can you use it in education?</h2>
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Padlet is very strong on collaboration, and it takes full advantage of the internet's unique ability to be in many different places at the same time. Unlike a standard whiteboard, where the physical space naturally restricts who can engage with the content, the digital nature of padlet means individuals can contribute to it from distributed points in both time and space.</div>
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In my opinion Padlet is best used for more complex engagements with content, as it relies on students being able to create short but incisive annotations in a limited digital space. Nevertheless I have seen it used quite powerfully for shorter sections, especially when pre-prepared by the teacher with content. For example, you might create a series of posts about a topic that are deliberately in the incorrect places on the screen, set your padlet with a secret link but let anyone moderate it, and then instruct students to change the content into a pattern which they think is more appropriate. As a starter activity this would be a good way to provoke discussion for later in the lesson, and once new content has been explored students could return to the task and create their own padlet with new representations of their thinking as appropriate. Later you could even change your padlet to allow comments, and then mark students work digitally by adding your comments to their content.</div>
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A particular favourite of mine is to create a strong framework using an image, and then upload this as the background to a padlet. It might be a simple cross with four dimensions, or perhaps an image of a famous landmark, or perhaps a picture from a famous artist. In each case the task for students is to respond to your learning objective directly on the image, but using the positioning of their responses to amplify and support their perspective. This might be done as a one off in a lesson, or as a serious of continued responses to content based on changing knowledge as the students develop their understanding of a topic.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinUGfZFCPUtAIR4t_lwUrPAM5rld2Y5JyArCXFdpl5BgDuxSuqt9rU6yXia7d1lYgNxx5OKUXpk5Eq_g3fEbD8vWseZFVwvtzt2xDcYI2oK6sLKla_zrczAwqz2pod7g0MGYbXuaol6D10/s1600/snip_20170421143640.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinUGfZFCPUtAIR4t_lwUrPAM5rld2Y5JyArCXFdpl5BgDuxSuqt9rU6yXia7d1lYgNxx5OKUXpk5Eq_g3fEbD8vWseZFVwvtzt2xDcYI2oK6sLKla_zrczAwqz2pod7g0MGYbXuaol6D10/s400/snip_20170421143640.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>A Padlet wall, with a plus and minus background applied to frame thinking about the pro and cons
of a specific scenario </i></div>
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Have you used Padlet? Let me know what you think in the comments below, always good to hear other ideas.<br />
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Would you like your own set of Tech Trumps?</h2>
You can <a href="http://techtrumps.co.uk/Tech%20Trumps%20(PDF%20Pack).pdf">download your own PDF version of the Tech Trumps</a> for offline use if you wish. This PDF includes all the interactive links of the online version, but you can still browse them without an internet connection.Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08843667207795418256noreply@blogger.com0