Disruption - Silicon valley's Worst Buzzword?

Is this really becoming one of those overused buzzwords in education?  I've always been a big fan of Clayton  Christensen’s  book and his concept of disruptive technology because it made absolute sense to me. To be honest, I don’t  think I'm ready to let go just yet…especially as we are in the midst of a seismic disruption in education. This of course is  the mobile  devices revolution which is causing disruption to so many entrenched practices which truly should have been  left behind  in the twentieth century.

What do you think? Is it another candidate for the education buzzword bingo card?

Disruption: Silicon Valley’s Worst Buzzword | New Republic.

CPD and why DBE and SACE have got it very wrong...

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is, or should be a constant factor in the life of every educator. Most countries around the world recognise this and expect a certain level of commitment from teachers, usually in the form of a requirement to keep a PD Portfolio containing evidence and reflections on professional development activity undertaken. Many countries require teachers to undertake a defined number of hours each year, and record this in their portfolios. South Africa does this too - recently introducing changes and new recording requirements as well as an expectation that registered teachers undertake activity which carries a pre-defined number of 'points'. And unfortunately, however well intentioned these changes may be,  this is where they have got it very badly wrong...

Instead of treating teachers as professionals and imbuing the CPD scheme with a level of commensurate trust, SACE, the body which has been charged with overseeing CPD for educators has mandated that all PD activities which are to carry points have to be vetted and certified by them (although to be fair to them, this has been legislated for- they just have to carry out the work). And not only the courses, but the people delivering these courses as well. The mechanism for certifying PD activities is tortuous and over-burdensome and discourages many organisations which offer training and development activities from submitting their offerings, which might otherwise be very valuable for educator CPD. If you don't believe this, try looking at the form necessary to submit a PD activity. The 'one size fits all approach' gone mad...Just as standardised testing doesn't improve student achievement, neither will standardised CPD enhance teacher professionalism.

 Many such organisations vary their courses according to the needs of the individual or institution. SACE won't allow this.
Many such organisations use a wide range of employed and freelance trainers with particular areas of expertise. SACE won't allow this (all trainers have to be certified for the exact courses they will deliver. No substitutions or changes allowed).
Many organisations see value in using local teachers and other experts to co-deliver courses and PD activities. SACE won't allow this either.
This is not to say that these courses don't add value to educator CPD - they do, but they just won't come with the points tally which teachers need to satisfy the 3-year requirements. And so teachers probably won't undertake these activities, choosing instead the 'official' activities which come with the points attached.

Valuable courses from organisations like Apple, Google, Microsoft and many others probably won't qualify. MOOCs won't either. Or much of education post graduate study. Or valuable crowd-sourced activity such as oversees conference attendance, webinars and teach meets. And the submission process is closed now anyway, so no new providers can submit their courses. What a joke. It is no wonder with a regime like this that South Africa has some of the most poorly prepared and trained teachers in the world...they just don't stand a chance! When events such as ISTE, Microsoft Global Education Forum, Apple Leadership Tour or even conferences such as eLearning Africa and Education Week might not qualify for CPD points, what credibility does this add to the national CPD management programme?

And try telling Apple Distinguished Educators, Google Certified Trainers, Microsoft Expert Educators, and the University staff delivering MOOCs that they need to go through a certification process with SACE in order to be able to deliver a strictly defined number of courses they have already been trained to deliver and awarded competence for,  and they'd probably feel insulted. I have worked in education and training for over thirty years in schools, in teacher education and as a consultant advising large tech companies and governments. I have post graduate qualifications in teaching, Psychology, education management and leadership, use of ICT in learning and teaching, and business. I deliver training for these organisations world-wide, including in South Africa. I am qualified to teach in South Africa in fact. This record and experience speaks very well for itself without the need for a SACE seal of approval. My own company, Tablet Academy is one of the world's leading consultancy and training organisations, training thousands of teachers each year on the use of technologies in the classroom. We are one of the biggest iPad training organisations in Europe. We certainly won't be submitting our courses to SACE for their stamp of approval, that's for sure. They have already been 'certified' by thousands of educators, governments and education technology organisations across the world who have used or benefited from these activities and from our highly qualified and experienced trainers and consultants.

Transforming South African education needs urgent attention in two crucial areas. These are assessment and teacher training (including CPD). Assessment, I will leave for another day, but teacher training, I can speak on with some authority, and I say that the Government and SACE have got this very wrong indeed. The teaching profession needs to feel valued and trusted. This CPD regime leaves them little more than compliant hoop-jumpers. I sincerely hope I'm wrong about this but from the available information, I'm forced to conclude I am not...

CPD is a lifelong journey through learning for self improvement and for educators, contributes towards better learning and teaching in schools. Teachers need to be free to choose appropriate CPD activities for their individual needs as a part of an ongoing professional development review process. This might be subject-specific, general, or for leadership. But the choice of activity and the weight it carries should not be dictated by a process which is so top-down,  rigid, inflexible and controlling. Lets trust our teachers to make professional choices.

Tablet Pecking Orders…but it’s really now a battle of the Ecosystems

We often make big assumptions in education, as we do in everyday life I guess. When it comes to Tablet devices for Education, the assumption has been that the iPad is the ‘Gold Standard’ and all the others are somehow ranked in descending order beneath it. Another one of the current biggies is all to do with apps. It goes like this; Apple apps are the best, and Android have the numbers, but Windows is lagging behind. And of course, Apple had the head start and Android, with its looser system now has the numbers and multiple outlets. But does this longevity and volume really equate to choice? A closer look at some of the increasing number of Windows apps reveals some real quality products, especially when coupled with some of the Windows 8 system features. This is where the Windows ecosystem can really start to compete.  Android apps for education are really starting to come of age as well.

Now, I have no particular affinity or real tie to any one of the three platforms. I’ve done work with Apple and Microsoft and used Android in education settings and am very keen that education institutions considering Tablet device projects should take independent expert advice and consider all the options benchmarked against their real needs and aspirations for eLearning. And increasingly I’m finding that the new Windows 8 tablets are a real option that schools should seriously consider in a way that hasn’t really happened before the last half of 2013.  Apple now has some serious competition in the education sector – competition which I think they’ve not yet fully considered yet alone acted upon. This competition is good for education as products get better and solutions become much more affordable for all schools. It is no longer the case that better off schools go with iPads and the poorer schools have to take Android. Windows 8 devices have come in like disruptive technology to completely shake up this paradigm.

Often when making  tablet purchases for education use, the apps question gets thrown into the ring, and the more mature IOS apps are often used as a justification for huge investments in iPads for schools but its not just about the apps – its how they actually get used. Many people in education are waking up to the inescapable fact that whilst they are really great pieces of IT kit, going down the iPad route does leave you very isolated and locked into a particular environment without much inter-connectivity with all the other things you might need to do in school and further afield. This is where the Windows 8 mobile platform really racks up the advantage points – its interoperability with almost everything that your school or education institution needs to do both inside and with outside connections and activity as well.  After all, whatever your views, Office productivity tools are pretty ubiquitous, whereas iWorks ( Keynote,Numbers and Pages) might be beloved of techies,  and geeks but their functionality is way down the scale when compared to the Microsoft tools. Just compare the powerful functions in Excel with Apple’s Numbers if you really want to compare. And Apple have nothing at all to compare with One Note. When it comes to education use, these productivity tools really come into their own in a way that Apple or even Google Apps  just cannot currently match.

This is a real and growing challenge for Apple – the isolationist working it can often encourage and the lack of real connectivity which can hamper workflow in a school or other education institution.  Windows devices with their ease of connectedness to your desktop systems and Office 365 for Education available for free to schools start to become a really attractive proposition if you give careful consideration to what it is  your institution really does need, rather than knee-jerk reactions based upon assumptions of ‘gold standard’ devices and a pecking order down from there.

Do we really need screen after screen of apps?   if we are really honest, the answer is most probably no. If you look around some of the pre-installed apps (and Tiles,in the case of Windows 8) you can often find many hidden gems which can be used very creatively for learning and teaching. One I particularly like is the ‘Send to QR’ app for Windows 8. It allows you to use the Windows 8 Share charm to share a web page you might be looking at or using as a QR code with others….

And there are many more if you put away the preconceptions and assumptions and just go and search for them- applying the creative subversion principle along the way… and remember, a jigsaw has many pieces and requires careful thought and planning

Be Creatively Subversive with Windows 8

Its very often the case in education that we stumble across things by accident. And as educators, we often get to thinking – “hey, I could use that with my classes”. It’s very often not the way the thing we stumble across was meant to be used, but you know, actually, it could work with students in an education setting if we get creative with our thinking.  I guess this is a kind of  creative subversion (a term first used by Debra Myler back in the dim and distant last decade) and if we look at the Windows 8 tiles, a couple of examples jumped out at me recently. I'm sure I'm not the first to have thought about these, so I apologise in advance if I'm about to steal someone’s thunder.

The first is the Bing Health and Fitness tile. If you swipe through this, loads of teaching and learning opportunities jump out at you. There are the workouts for different times and places. Great for PE, obviously, but also for the life sciences as well. I mean why would you have a different work out when you are in a hotel to  the one you might use at your desk or even in bed? There are some fab fitness workout and individual exercise video clips too. Then consider the opportunities for cross curricular project work; the exercise, health and diet tracking tools are a really cool way to engage youngsters with really important health and well-being life skills.There’s shed-loads of useful info about healthy foods, additives and nutrition as well.

Continue swiping and you come to a section

which allows you to explore every part of the human body in 3D,and in incredible detail (some schools and colleges pay big bucks for software which does this – but this app comes free with Windows 8 …  happy days! ) as well as pretty detailed information on some common diseases and medical conditions.

The second example is the Bing Travel tile. Swiping through this opens up the world right in front of your students without having to leave the classroom! Not only do you get a huge list of destinations, but  wonderful 360 degree ‘panoramas’ of the chosen location to explore.

For each destination, you get loads of useful information including up to the minute weather reports, historical information, useful guides and even currency exchange rates. used in conjunction with Bing maps, this is surely a fantastic free resource for schools? Have your class plan trips around the world, compiling their itineraries in One Note workbooks and with more detailed research about each stop on the way like local flora and fauna, customs and traditions, national dress and foods. Plot the changing weather conditions on an Excel spreadsheet and graph the data, working out averages, means and other statistical measures like distance travelled and flight times. What about the cost of the trip,and currency conversion calculations? Get them working on group presentations as slideshows or even movies with narration and soundtracks relevant to each stop along the way. 

I’m pretty sure there are loads more things that could be done with each tile. And I’m pretty sure the developers had more than a sneaking suspicion that their apps would find their respective places in the classroom.

Creative subversion is a term I've liked to use for many years to describe what we do as teachers and educators every day. Here it is with with Microsoft Windows 8 in action! And how many other ways might there be? I'm off now to carry on exploring….

(Images are, of course, from Microsoft’s Bing apps )

Android Apps for Education – have they finally come of age?

I wrote a blog post recently about the three ‘killer apps’ you can find on Apple devices – Garage-band,  iMovie and Book Creator. And yes, its true these are far and away the best of the bunch in terms of creativity apps, pushing iPads ahead in the education tablet market stakes. However, the scene is a fast changing one and Apple will soon be facing an even more determined challenge for education market space from Windows and Android tablet devices, not only with better machines, but also with a new generation of apps for the classroom as well as a rediscovery of some existing ones…

Windows 8 and Android are finally gaining their education spurs. And looking at the Android platform, there are some great apps out there that you can use. So what can we get for our Android tablets that would be really useful in the classroom?

The folks behind the brilliant Book Creator iPad App are apparently working hard on producing an Android version, so I hear. We hopefully won’t have to wait too long for this (and Tablet Academyare about to launch a Windows 8 version called ‘Create Books’ )

Android Studio is a really good movie-making tool. OK, so it doesn't  have the Movie Trailer feature which is such a popular part of Apple’s iMovie, but you can only make so many movie trailers until the novelty wears off and boredom sets in, can’t you? This Android app is really easy to use and great for team project work.

When it comes to Garage-band, there are a few good Android apps out there doing much the same job – we just don’t generally hear about them do we? after all, Garage-Band is so utterly awesome. But Pocket Band,Groove Box and Walk Band do much the same thing on your Android tablet.

Pocket Band in particular has a great community of users offering help and advice  - I think its far and away the leader of the Android pack and you can even try it out for free before you buy by downloading the Pocket Band Lite app….Happy days:-).

Also worth exploring are…

• Simple Note (a note taking app like Apple’s Notes, but with many more export options. Great for use with a class on filed trips or outdoor class sessions).
• Create a Comic (get your students explaining bite sized concepts or parts of their course by creating a comic strip. They’ll love it and it really helps with deep memory retention of whatever it is they are doing).
• Sound Recorder (great for quick-fire observations and useful for recapping learning objectives or for taking home to help with work on essays or projects)
• Science Penguin (loads of great science resources and lesson ideas although the small banner adds between resources can be annoying)
• People (a contacts app which links to GMail,Google+ and hangouts for video calls. I find this app very useful for organising)
• Talk (Another great Google App for instant messaging, and VOIP audio and video calls)
• Quick Office (A productivity suite of tools for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, compatible with Microsoft Office which can be saved or exported to Drop Box, Edmodo, Microsoft One Drive, Google Drive or sent by email).
• Periodic Table (Lots of information, video and quizzes all about the elements. As a science teacher, I always look out for apps like this. 3D Brain and Anatomy Guide are other good science teaching apps)
• There are hundreds of amazing Primary school apps for reading, numbers, spelling, memory,  languages, and science. I’ve like to use many of these with my grandchildren. And they love them too:-)

There are Android apps for almost every iPad app you could mention, if you look for them. And I guess this begs the question, what is it which really determines our choice of tablet, especially for school use? Are we pre-conditioned by what we’ve already seen or heard or is it just the very clever marketing which has positioned the iPad at the top of our mental ‘must-have’ list? A really comprehensive needs assessment is a must before diving in to large scale tablet purchases. This will help you figure out which tablet device (or mix of devices) is the right choice for your school or college. And this could be iPads,Android, Windows 8 or a combination of all three…

Perhaps six months or a year ago, there might have been no real competition for the iPad in education,but I think this has now changed. Android has come of age with some fantastic tablet devices at really competitive prices (just look at the Tesco Hudl) and it’s slew of great education apps is now a match for most if not all of the IOS App store offerings.

So why not go check out the Android options before making purchasing decisions….