Many thanks to all those who commented on my rant last month with regards to Internet filtering etc within school, I know it’s something a lot of us come up against each and every day.

I thought I’d quickly update those who were interested on my progress.  I put together a list of exemplars of Teaching & Learning via the Web and passed these on to my Head.  He sees them as a persuasive argument and is keen to set up a whole-school debate on the issue.  I couldn’t ask for more than that, so fingers crossed that I can continue the persuasion at the next stage.

The quick examples I used were:

• Youtube: As a random example, searching ‘Sequences Math’ returns over 300 videos.  There are great education videos available for free, particularly useful for spontaneous class discussion moments.

• Google Docs: Allows multiple users (teachers & pupils) to edit the same text document / spreadsheet / presentation at the same time.  Would be greeat for collaboration / communication / AfL skills.  I’ve set up an AfL spreadsheet to share with pupils which I think will be powerful.  Could be used in Science/Maths for collecting data from experiments.  Could be used in Humanities for collaborative writing.  Tom Barret (a Primary teacher from Nottingham has been doing exemplary work on this) see here and here – his blog is full of stunning online work.

• Maths in the Movies: Great talking point for lessons.

• Flickr: Amazing collection of images and photography that could brighten any lesson.  Blocked for staff, some inappropriate images but only if you create and account, sign in and turn off safe-search.

• Pupil blogs: Graham Wegner from Australia has some excellent examples of students blogging for all the World to see and engaging in conversations with people from around the globe.

• Wikis: I have been trying to run a wiki with my Y9 class for the past 9 months or so, unfortunately it is constantly falling foul of the filter, for a short period last year it became a powerful tool, if the pupils could have easy access to edit it as well I think it’s use and potential would take off.

• Web 2.0 Storytelling: There are some great examples of telling stories using the Web.  One is the 5 Card Flickr game using the above website’s images as inspiration for a story.

• VoiceThread: Allows you to share a slideshow or audio recording with the world and have them comment on it.  Could be used for anything from Geography/Culture to Storytelling to Maths.

Image courtesy of etrusia_uk on flickr

As an example, I arrived in school today to find that Google Docs is blocked for staff.  When pushed the risk  was explained that private pupil data could be copied onto GDocs and shared.  I was offered the opportunity to have the specific url of my spreadsheet unblocked after it had been vetted. This logic seems to wipe out the use of the entire read/write web in my school Here is the sheet I am trying to share with my class, I think it’s use is fairly self explanatory: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pi_Ik07yjYQaT9yf5YdsIPQ

I can feel creativity and spontanaiety along with a wealth of learning opportunities being lost at every turn.

The school is investing in a VLE, something I am losing interest in as it will be a walled garden / fortress if everything else is to go by.

I would like to present an informed argument against this to those in power over these matters at school.  The obvious starting places seem to be BECTAs recent encouragement of Web 2.0 use in schools (also see Ewan’s take), and their guidance on safe use of data.  I believe that the former encourages what I am trying to achieve and the latter does not preclude it.

I suppose my plea at the end of this rather self-indulgent rant is for any other resources I could use to help my cause, further guidance, exemplary examples of pupil/staff on-line work etc etc.

Any advice is gratefully received!

EDIT: Just to make clear and reiterate: I don’t want to get into a moan about specific staff on a public blog, I do have a good working relationship with the IT department and senior leadership, I just need to change their ways!

This worries and saddens me as I can see the quick result of this will be even more aggressive and restrictive censoring of the internet by school network managers. There is so much excellent material available on YouTube and other similar sites it is a shame they are nearly always on the banned list of websites.

I think that this is another knee-jerk reaction by the press and by the out-of-touch teaching unions. It is another example where we should be taking a pro-active stance of educating our pupils in the safe and responsible use of the Internet, rather than just blocking access. Stiff punishments of those responsible for this type of bullying need to be applied as they would for any other form.

Admittedly it does sound like YouTube themselves need to improve there systems for the rapid removal of offending videos.

Technorati Tags: YouTube, Education, Bullying

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His use of data continues to inspire me and pushes my thoughts on using this software in the classroom. With the abolition of data handling coursework next year more time will be freed up to look at the subject in more novel ways. I am starting to think that pupils could be freed completely from the drudgery of drawing their own scatter graphs (a skill which most do not struggle with) and could be set a project based around the Gapminder tool. The potential for this to be cross-curricular is obvious.

Here’s the video:

For the uninitiated this is a dynamic graphing package populated with a range of data about countries covering the last 30 years. You choose two sets of data to graph and hey presto a lovely scatter graph appears with a slider allowing you to cycle through the years:

Within seconds I had the pupils eagerly shouting out pairs of data sets which they thought would have some kind of correlation accompanied by reasoned arguments explaining their thoughts. Then when they saw that we could highlight individual countries I was swamped with requests from a mass of countries of origin.

All in all a refreshing end to a lesson and one that has got my mind racing.

I think that getting the pupils into a computer room with this running would be great, you could use it as an excellent starting exercise before jumping into a data investigation of their own. The cross-curricular possibilities are also great. I may incorporate this into plans I am hatching for a long term project next year with pupils collecting data from other schools around the web.

EDIT:

There’s a great video from last years TED conference from Hans Rosling who created the software.