What Does an ICT Savvy Student Look Like?

I need to start thinking about where I am going regarding the use of ICT in my classroom and not just about solving the issues in front of me. Within science education I feel that I have moral purpose and understand the place of my subject within the curriculum. But what about the other parts of my job; the pastoral side and (prominent for me at the moment) the ICT side.

As I have said before our school have asked the students to each bring their own iPad to school. There are a few students who haven't, but they usually do have devices of some sort. As predicted by a lot of the articles about BYOD that I have read there is some issues over the level of use of the devices within lesson. I agree that as a parent I would be concerned if my child had a £400 device and was not using it effectively. But what does using it effectively mean?

When the scheme was first announced by the chair of governors at a speech day he spoke about 'skills for life'. Our Saturday lesson programme has been transformed for key stage 3 into PHSE lesson taught by the pastoral staff in the hope it will give them skills and knowledge for life. The iPad 1-2-1 scheme is also supposed to give the students the 'skills for life' in an increasingly technological world.

I actually like this idea better than introducing iPads to improve learning. I read all the time that there is no evidence that ICT will make much different to the learning. For many members of staff incorporating ICT into lessons is going to be a stretch. On top of all the curriculum change embracing new technologies and creating the resources to go with them is going to be a lot to ask.

For me technology is a great way to keep myself organised and I hope that the students will pick this up too.

So what does a tech savvy student look like?

I did some research about the use of ICT in business. The vast majority seem have stories about the transformation of their business by being able to reach customers better. The others seem to say that by designing an app helped communication within the company. That didn't seem to apply to the students.

Instead I wrote the following aims: students live in an increasingly technological world, where businesses, organisations and individuals are using advances in ICT to communicate, collaborate and organise. Students need to be aware of the benefits and risks of this as well ash the practicalities of using technology.

In no particular order, a 'technologically advanced student' will be:

• using RSS feeds, twitter, social networking apps, instapaper, read later, to collate potentially useful information and resources for later use. They may even do this in collaboration with others
• accessing alternative forms of media such as podcasts, video and blogs. They will probably do this in short chunks. This may be related to work, but also related to the interests of the students.
• sharing, communicating and collaborating on work projects over distance and time using electronic devices. This may be communicating with other students, but also will be communicating with teachers.
• organising time, resources and work using shared calendars, email and folders that sync across several devices and maybe shared with many others.
• able to manage their workflow
• aware of their own digital footprint and act according when using social media.
• able to produce a range of media to be consumed inside and outside school. This maybe in conjunction with school work, charity work, social work or to raise awareness of an issue. This will involve blogging, video, podcasts, documents, images, infographics, websites, GIFs, and presentations. 
• supporting others in their use of electronic devices.

They may go further and:

• produce their own app
• learn how to code
• investigate computer networking
• build their own computer
• use ICT in another enterprising way

I would admit that it isn't necessary for students to be able to do all of these things for their learning, or even their life. But I do think that it is important that students are aware of all the implications and ways that ICT can be used.

The next steps are working out how we get there? Do we use technology for learning? Should we be restrictive and prescriptive about the way that technology is used in lessons? What about outside lessons and in extra curricular activities? Will practice change as a result of technology and what will the behaviour of our students in lessons look like? How will these changes impact on their employability? Is it even possible?

First Attempts at Making a Video using ExplainEverything

I have this vision of being able to use videos to help my students learn. But first I need to practice and become quicker at this.

I have heard a lot of people recommend ExplainEverything, so I gave it a go. My first attempt is not for public consumption, took my hours and I didn't think it looked very professional. Then I searched for some tutorials. Perhaps I should have done this first. http://www.morriscooke.com/?p=134

I learned that you can upload a presentation and each slide in the presentation will be a different slide in the ExplainEverything movie. So I decided that I would create a presentation and use ExplainEverything to talk over the top. It seemed (and it is) much easier to do this in ExplainEverything than in iMoive.

I wanted to make the film look slightly interesting, so I took inspiration from Jamie Clark: jamieleeclark85.wordpress.com/ The resources he makes always look great and I saw no reason why I couldn't use keynote to create attractive slides and make the short film more interesting to the young people who will use it.

By far the worst thing about making a video is doing the voice over. I strong recommend writing a script and reading through it. Even then I make mistakes and change my mind when reading it. I have found the experience of voicing a video very interesting. I don't find it easy to succinctly describe physics phenomena, so I imagine that I babble on in class. Creating the video means that I need to use as few words as possible and get to the main points. Hopefully this makes it clearer what students need to know.

If you watch the video you will see black stripes down the slide. In future I need to realise that I must make the background presentations with 'wide screen'. Which is a possible selection in Keynote. This should eliminate the issue.

I wish that in the video below I had used more features of ExplainEverything to actually move the hand around. (I think it can do this). But I will continue to play and make more resources. Hopefully it will help to engage my students.

At the moment I plan to only make instructional videos for GCSE, as I will teach Key Stage 3 with a more discovery approach and I don't want them to always be told the answer. Plus I have online textbooks and activities bought from OUP for them. A-level is changing in September 2015, so I am going to leave that for now. I hope to make very short videos for GCSE so that they will be useable in the new specifications even if content is shuffled about within the modules.

I am on holiday at the moment and I am concerned whether I will be able to keep up the creative juices when I get back to school, but as twitter colleagues have suggested, students will be able to make the videos too! I look forward to that.

Using Your Own Device in a Physics Lesson

Today I set myself the challenge of only using ICT (and some practical equipment) to teach Work and Power.

I have known for a few weeks that I would have to do this.

I used http://issuu.com/ , http://padlet.com , Google Docs (a spreadsheet), http://www.socrative.com , https://bitly.com , http://www.pinterest.com , YouTube, and http://piktochart.com .

The first issue was remembering to bring the devices. This *shouldn't* be a problem in September when the students all have to bring iPads to lessons. Also being a science teacher will help as they will be able to charge them in my classroom, so a flat battery shouldn't be a problem either.

The second issue was finding the resources in the first place. I wrote a bit.ly link on the board, but this proved difficult to input correctly and took them to all sorts of websites other than the issuu magazine I had uploaded.

I can see resolutions to this, either by e-mailing (time consuming) links, creating QR codes to scan, or uploading to a department blog. The issue with using QR codes is that students will need to have a QR code reader, the issue with the third is that blogs are blocked at my school. I hope that the school will allow us to use blogs or edmodo with the students as this would be a great place to start with lessons.

We all got to my worksheet. However, for some reason issuu mangled the link to the googlespreadsheet, so back to bit.ly to provide me with a link to that. Then the students had to find their own mass and enter it into the spreadsheet; I always allow students to use my mass if they don't like it. The spreadsheet calculated their weight. Then we measured the height up the stairs and each timed ourselves going up the stairs. Then returned to the classroom, and inputed the data.

My next aim was to get the students to use the data and work out the equations linking mass, weight, work, distance, power and time. Their ideas when then put onto padlet. They really liked using padlet and seeing the collaborative work of their peers, but there were quite a few half finished sentences or just a name hanging on the wall, so practice at using this website would be useful. I was also frustrated because I wasn't able to upload an image that I wanted to include in the wall (with the answers). School firewall! I will have to approach this issue at school ready for next year.

After that they watched a video from my-gcsescience.com and one that I had made. It took me two hours to make 1minute 22 seconds of video and I could have spent a lot longer. It is very poor in relation to the videos I know others can make, and listening to my own voice echo around the classroom wasn't great.

Then we tried a secretive quiz. The students were cross with me as they got a few questions 'wrong' that the explanation said were 'right'. I think because I didn't indicate the right answer when making the quiz. I will have to be more careful with this in the future.

The students were really excited by the idea of collaborating on the same document, and they liked making notes from my YouTube video. They also appreciated the instant feedback that socrative quizzes provide.

I made an inforgraphic summarising the key ideas using piktochart and uploaded it to pinterest, which should help the students with the key ideas in their learning.

Next step is to think about what apps I want students to have on their iPads come September, and to work out how I will use the devices in more lesson. I think that I will be busy making videos and socrative quizzes during the next holidays!

Bring Your Own Device

At Easter all our students were asked to supply an iPad as part of their school equipment. I have read blog posts from senior leaders who explain why Bring Your Own Device has not been successful because teachers have not embraced. I am worried that this will be the same situation at my school.

The students often do have their own IT equipment, the older students use laptops for coursework, research and typing up their projects. Younger year groups like to make videos with theirs. But there has never been the expectation that students would use ICT in lessons, and I haven't been.

I know of schools that use iPads in their lessons and many teachers that would love the opportunity that I will have in September. In areas of America they seem to embracing iPads in education with enthusiasm.

However, BYOD presents me more issues that using 1-2-1 devices that have an image controlled by the school. Can I insist that students download certain applications? I might be able to do that with free applications, but what about paid ones? What if their device is full, can I insist a student deletes an app so they can use the one I want them to?

I also wonder about other aspects of students having their own devices? Should I be incorporating e-safety more obviously into my teaching? Should I be worried that a year 7 student might make a video clip for me and upload it to YouTube?

Another concern is that the using the technology will take longer than doing an alternative with paper and pen, detracting from the learning of the concepts. We struggle for curriculum time as it is, and devoting more lesson time to creating digital content may mean lessons have less learning?

On the other hand, ICT presents an opportunity. Students can use video to supplement their understanding, they can collaborate on experiments more easily, they can take photographs allowing recording of work more easily. Do they need everything written in a book or file?

iPads in the classroom should make my life more easy; student using online, immediately marked, homework packages would be one example. I would like students to be able to find records of their learning in videos and photographs as well as in notes. A variety of ways they can access information can only be helpful.

I want to help my classes use ICT to become more organised. I already use my iCal applications to organise my calendar, it would be great to do the same for the students, even sharing calendar events.

But using iPads in lessons is going to be a major change, I will have to think about how I resource every lessons and work on creating more resources than presentations and worksheets. Editable forms, blogs, videos, online quizzes will all become part of my practice and I need time to be able to create these resources. I need the equipment myself to create these resources.

Then I ask myself, will it be worth it? Will my attempts to use ICT in lessons be scuppered by the student who is waiting for a new one because they have smashed their screen or can't take a photograph until they have deleted the 3000 they have on their device already, or the wireless network that decides to switch itself off during my lesson?

I suppose I will have to try it and see.