This is just a quick post to share the presentation Ruth Cunningham gave at the MIICE conference last week. I thought it was just splendid! I’ve shown it to my colleagues at work here this afternoon and they were mighty impressed as well. I did try to put it into Window’s Movie Maker so that I could add Titles and Credits (but it just wouldn’t accept it (very jerky – maybe because I converted it from quicktime to wmv format?)
Paul left some reply messages on my twitter in response to one of the bullet points in my previous post when I wrote about what I’d heard at the recent MIICE conference. I’ve just noticed that Jaye left a comment on the blog post about the very same bullet point.
She commented:
“Nice to have you back blogging after a wee hiatus – and sounds like an interesting conference. One thing bothers me slightly though, and thats the wording from the LA presentation which talks about
” School-wide challenges will be set from the centre so that staff and pupils are given a real reason to use Glow”
This smacks of top-down central control to me, and, in my opinion anyway, will have the opposite effect to the one perhaps intended as schools will see GLOW use as an imposition from on high rather than being within the context of the school’s and student’s daily work and having come from them…I think it’s the fast track to less use of GLOW if it’s seen as a project sent down from on high..
I hope that schools in this authority will resist this, and find ways (of which there are so many) to use GLOW to support their own work in learning and teaching in a way thats contextual and relevent to their individual and collective needs as pupils, teachers, classes, age/stage groups and schools…”
I’m really glad that I made it clear that what I was writing was myinterpretation of what was said, and that I might have heard only what I wanted to hear. I also added that what I was recording on the post may not have been what was meant by the presenter
Thankfully I was being ‘green’ last night and hadn’t thrown the original notes I took at the conference into the food bin. Having rescued them, I now see that what I wrote down for that bullet point was actually:
School wide challenges set from centre
I have no idea what the presenter meant by that phrase or what context it was said in. I was scribbling down quickly what I felt could be relevant to my own situation. My scribbled notes also showed that I had added something on to the presenter’s statement. I had scribbled:
(VTC?!?!)
This is very significant to me - because of all the things the presenter said, that one small statement saw lightbulbs flashing in my head. Isn’t it strange that the statement that filled me with inspirational ideas is the one that set alarm bells ringing in my twitter friends heads
I’ll try to explain why those lightbulbs started flashing!
The notion of work patterns seems to correlate to the traditional classroom’s ‘routines’. If an online community is going to be successful people always need a reason to go back to it. This is where routines and regular ’special events’ help people have that kick into action in those parts of the course where motivation begins to flag. Is this what your tutor means?
Initially, I disagreed with Ewan’s thoughts. I wanted the children to have control over their own blogs, rather than have me directing them. I’d tried directing pupils’ blogs previously and it had failed because the class didn’t have ‘ownership’ of their own online spaces. I’d also approached Jackie Marsh via email and she backed up my thoughts when she said:
………….. I like the way you are letting the children drive the use of the blogs, that is so important if they are going to be successful…………
I think her advice is the key to achieving success when giving children in your class their own blog.
Later in the dissertation journey I wrote an Online Communitiesblog post. I’d come across Gilly Salmon who believes that:
“We find that everyone needs human support to take part successfully in online communities. I give the name ‘e-moderator’ to this person since, although some of the skills are the same as those of group facilitators, there are some new ones too. The e-moderator’s role in such rich and interactive environments is both rewarding and demanding!
E-moderators need to give very explicit attention to enabling and promoting all aspects of online socialisation. To succeed in fully engaging the participants and promoting their active involvement, imaginative and creative images will be needed! Energies can to be harnessed towards the shared enterprise and purposefulness of the learning community. In a sense, e-moderators create a special little cultural experience belonging to this group at this time through discussion and negotiation”
I think it was only at that point that I began to understand what Ewan had meant when he left his comment.
One of my remits at the moment is to look after the Falkirk VTC website. I’m not an E-moderator by any stretch of the imagination - but when the presenter at the MIICE conference talked about ‘school-wide challenges being set from the centre‘, I wondered if the VTC could be used as a vehicle to allow teachers to become more comfortable with Glow.
How might that happen?
To explain how it might happen, I need to re-visit the Voices of the World project. The project is described as being:
a place to connect educators around the world.
This network was created by Sharon Tonner, now a University Lecturer, to connect children together using their voices rather than the written or typed word. It was also created to enable children to develop an appreciation of different languages, accents and dialects from around the world.
But what it also did was to introduce teachers to freely available online sites like Voki, Animoto … and a whole host of other sites that have the potential to enhance teaching and learning experiences. Because the learning tasks were very basic, the class teachers were able to concentrate on ‘getting to grips’ with the online tools - and it soon became apparent that they were beginning to use these tools in their mainstream lessons, too.
So …… is the VOTW model one that could be used here to introduce teachers to Glow??
I’d not really heard of MIICEbefore being seconded to my new post. I wonder if that’s the same for other classroom teachers? I went along to Glasgow University on Friday not knowing what to expect. I really enjoyed the conference, but two items have stayed with me – hence the reason for this post.
The first item was a presentation about how GLOW has been rolled out in one of the Local Authorities. My own L.A. has recently signed up to GLOW and I was interested because the L.A. representative giving the presentation talked about the challenges, the successes the how they envisaged the way forward.
Here’s my interpretation of what was said – I might have heard only what I wanted to hear, though, and realise what I’m recording here may not be what was meant by the presenter, so I’ve not mentioned any names or supplied any links
The Challenges
Glow training was done in 2007, but the accounts were not issued until 2009 so much of the information from the training was forgotten in the interim
Initially there was confusion when many people forgot their user names/passwords
There was some uncertainty about reporting and help desk procedures.
Two development officers have been seconded to help out with these problems (23 schools each), but the available funding for this will soon run out.
There is at least one mentor in every school, but the grant from LTS that supported this has been lost.
They learned that it was not enough to ‘bolt’ Glow on to Improvement plans, but schools now need justify the use of how Glow can link to CfE. This requires CPD.
Mentors are learning that they need to delegate tasks. One person can’t support all staff.
The Successes
Some schools are beginning to post information on to Glow Groups, so encouraging less need for paper to be used.
Because staff need to log on to Glow to access information, they are less likely to forget their username and password!
Even in larger schools there may not be many users – but those who are using Glow are producing quite impressive stuff
Three transition projects were described:
Transition Project (1) – S1 read poems to the P7′s in Glow Meet and there was a question and answer session. The teacher then provided a session on how to write poetry.
Transition Project (2) – Various depts in a large High School initiated Glow p7/S1 transition activites. For example the maths dept set monthly puzzles for the P7′s. This gave the teachers valuable insight into the levels that the P7′s were working at. The P.E. dept had a huge amount of questions asked. This gave them an insight as to how the P7′s were feeling. The English Dept. gave the P7′s the task of writing a hallowe’en story. The feeder primary school children held back until the last minute to post their stories because they didn’t want their ideas to be ‘hijacked’
Transition Project (3) - Primary 7 pupils chatted to High School prefects on Glow. Different types of questions began to be asked as the ‘question and answer’ sessions progressed. At the start of the session, the questions were very trivial, but as the P7′s got more used to asking questions on Glow, the began to ask more relevant questions. For example, questions such as, ‘How do I get around the one-way system at high school?’ became the norm.
The Future
CPD events are planned so that they cater for both basic and advanced Glow users
School-wide challenges will be set from the centre so that staff and pupils are given a real reason to use Glow
Training will be open to ALL interested parties – not just Glow mentors
The second highlight of my experience of a MIICE conference was when Ruth Cunningham, who is nearly at the end of a postgraduate diploma to become a primary teacher, gave an awesome presentation…. I hope I’ll be able to share it on here very soon
Entries (RSS)
“Nice to have you back blogging after a wee hiatus – and sounds like an interesting conference. One thing bothers me slightly though, and thats the wording from the LA presentation which talks about
” School-wide challenges will be set from the centre so that staff and pupils are given a real reason to use Glow”
This smacks of top-down central control to me, and, in my opinion anyway, will have the opposite effect to the one perhaps intended as schools will see GLOW use as an imposition from on high rather than being within the context of the school’s and student’s daily work and having come from them…I think it’s the fast track to less use of GLOW if it’s seen as a project sent down from on high..
I hope that schools in this authority will resist this, and find ways (of which there are so many) to use GLOW to support their own work in learning and teaching in a way thats contextual and relevent to their individual and collective needs as pupils, teachers, classes, age/stage groups and schools…”
I’m really glad that I made it clear that what I was writing was my interpretation of what was said, and that I might have heard only what I wanted to hear. I also added that what I was recording on the post may not have been what was meant by the presenter
Thankfully I was being ‘green’ last night and hadn’t thrown the original notes I took at the conference into the food bin. Having rescued them, I now see that what I wrote down for that bullet point was actually:
I have no idea what the presenter meant by that phrase or what context it was said in. I was scribbling down quickly what I felt could be relevant to my own situation. My scribbled notes also showed that I had added something on to the presenter’s statement. I had scribbled:
(VTC?!?!)
This is very significant to me - because of all the things the presenter said, that one small statement saw lightbulbs flashing in my head. Isn’t it strange that the statement that filled me with inspirational ideas is the one that set alarm bells ringing in my twitter friends heads
I’ll try to explain why those lightbulbs started flashing!
I’ll begin by revisiting a post I made on this blog whilst researching for my Chartered Teacher dissertation. In a response to that post, Ewan McIntosh commented:
The notion of work patterns seems to correlate to the traditional classroom’s ‘routines’. If an online community is going to be successful people always need a reason to go back to it. This is where routines and regular ’special events’ help people have that kick into action in those parts of the course where motivation begins to flag. Is this what your tutor means?
Initially, I disagreed with Ewan’s thoughts. I wanted the children to have control over their own blogs, rather than have me directing them. I’d tried directing pupils’ blogs previously and it had failed because the class didn’t have ‘ownership’ of their own online spaces. I’d also approached Jackie Marsh via email and she backed up my thoughts when she said:
………….. I like the way you are letting the children drive the use of the blogs, that is so important if they are going to be successful…………
I think her advice is the key to achieving success when giving children in your class their own blog.
Later in the dissertation journey I wrote an Online Communities blog post. I’d come across Gilly Salmon who believes that:
E-moderators need to give very explicit attention to enabling and promoting all aspects of online socialisation. To succeed in fully engaging the participants and promoting their active involvement, imaginative and creative images will be needed! Energies can to be harnessed towards the shared enterprise and purposefulness of the learning community. In a sense, e-moderators create a special little cultural experience belonging to this group at this time through discussion and negotiation”
I think it was only at that point that I began to understand what Ewan had meant when he left his comment.
One of my remits at the moment is to look after the Falkirk VTC website. I’m not an E-moderator by any stretch of the imagination - but when the presenter at the MIICE conference talked about ‘school-wide challenges being set from the centre‘, I wondered if the VTC could be used as a vehicle to allow teachers to become more comfortable with Glow.
How might that happen?
To explain how it might happen, I need to re-visit the Voices of the World project. The project is described as being:
But what it also did was to introduce teachers to freely available online sites like Voki , Animoto … and a whole host of other sites that have the potential to enhance teaching and learning experiences. Because the learning tasks were very basic, the class teachers were able to concentrate on ‘getting to grips’ with the online tools - and it soon became apparent that they were beginning to use these tools in their mainstream lessons, too.
So …… is the VOTW model one that could be used here to introduce teachers to Glow??