Technology and Learning - Are we missing a key point?

Technology and Learning - Are we missing a key point?

Over the last few weeks I've seen countless articles and tweets discussing the issue of technology in the classroom. This is obviously something that I am very passionate about because we need to get it right, but my concern is that we might be focusing on the wrong things.

As a classroom teacher of 19 years and a senior leader for 10, I have seen huge change in classroom practice during that time. From my NQT year with lots of mistakes like writing names on the board, trying to keep my reward charts up to date and my first Ofsted inspection where the focus was clearly on making sure displays looked 👌, through those 19 years to the use of Google Classroom, laptops, collaborative learning and an ever changing educational landscape on a Brexit preoccupied UK.

Through all of this the key message is that surely, as educators, our role, indeed our mission, should be to develop young people who are better equipped than ourselves to lead the future of our world. All too often, in my opinion, there are calls to 'ban' mobile phones and technology in the classroom because they are a 'distraction'. In some cases, this 'ban' expands to school premises altogether.

Of course, when I was at school, there were no such distractions; no clandestine swapping of Panini stickers under the table, no constant drive to rub your feet on the maths room carpet and give your table partner a static shock, no time-wasting deciding which colour ink out of the 20 in your multi-barrelled pen you should use to underline the title and certainly no passing of hand written notes around the room to the frustration of the teacher. When little Charlie was caught passing notes around in English, did we ban pens and paper? No. We explained the consequences of inappropriate use.

We have a duty to prepare our young people for the world ahead of them, NOT the world we are comfortable with!! 

Mobile phones, tablets, VR headsets are all part and parcel of the world our young people operate within and technology is developing at such a rate that if we try to shield them from this, we are doing them a massive disservice. All too often, adults shy away from the technology because we don't understand (remember Nan asking a 6 year old to programme her first Betamax video recorder?) 

Banning mobile phones and technology from our classrooms does not teach our young people appropriate or responsible use. Surely we want young people to experiment with technology in a safe environment where, if something goes wrong, they have someone to turn to? That's much more likely in a classroom than at home in their bedroom. Allowing the appropriate use of technology in our classroom, when there is a genuine educational benefit, is a great opportunity to develop key skills that these young people will need to secure the jobs of the future; the ones we keep telling them don't exist yet. Teaching appropriate and responsible use will also address the concerns around online activity and mental health. We just need to better educate ourselves first. If you're a Mental Health First Aider in your school or even just someone who is conscious of the pressures and is happy to address them, then good on you!! We need more people like you.

So in my mind, as long as there is educational benefit, the use of mobile phones, tablets, laptops, VR etc in the classroom is not just exciting but also fundamental in developing the skills that these young people will need and one day, we'll be grateful to them for the amazing things they've invented/developed/improved that make our lives easier.

So where have we missed the point?

Modern classrooms are still designed on the whole for young people to be sat on a chair, at a desk, facing the front, looking at a big board/screen. With the arrival of laptops and tablets in classrooms on a more regular basis I feel that one of the biggest issues facing our young people in the future will physical effects of inadequate school classroom/furniture design. 

Ask any osteopath and they will tell you that '📱neck' is a growing problem amongst adults who work from home and spend a lot of time working on laptops. Those working in a work environment of course have their annual workspace audit to check chair condition, screen heights, working angles etc but those at home probably don't have the same luxury and just get on with it. Good posture is key to all round health, especially in later life, and let's face it, these young people are going to have much longer lives than us, probably with much longer working lives too! All the more reason to look after them now.

So what are we doing for our young people who are using these devices more and more, at a time when bones are still forming? At the moment, I would argue the answer is virtually nothing. 

There's a huge opportunity out there for designers to reinvent the modern classroom and furniture to safeguard our young people's physical health in the future whilst helping the world of education to move forward from what we have always done. 

These are just my views but I'd love to hear what others think. 

G Gems 27: Optional extras 👨‍🏫

Add bitmojis to your docs and emails with the bitmoji chrome extension. It's really simple.  

Personally, I love a bitmoji as it grabs attention quickly and also makes docs more interesting. The range of different images is great once you've customised your own bitmoji and a quick copy and paste will insert your chosen graphic into your docs.  The chrome extension also talks to your gmail and gives you a bitmoji icon in compose for you add an image if you want to.

Add emojis to document names, folder names or bookmarks


Are you often left wondering if you've chosen the right emoji?
Check out https://emojitranslate.com/ where you can enter text and have it translated into an appropriate emoji. Then just copy and paste anywhere you like.  Add it to a document name, folder name or bookmark to customise your files. 

Are you using a team drive?
A colleague recently wanted his department team drive to contain a link to a resource website that was pulling together files from various different places. He wasn't keen on having everyone add the website to their bookmarks as he wanted his team drive to be a "one stop shop" for everything.

We came up with a simple solution using Google Drawings. We created a simple image, included the link as a hyperlink and then save the image as a pdf in the team drive for everyone to access. Now all they have to do is click on the link.

Here's an example that works a bit like your own version of symbaloo: Department weblinks

G Gems 26: Back in the habit

Back in the habit (finally!)

Greetings all,

After a lengthy absence I'm back in the game at last. Since February I've been chocker block dealing with GCSE options, an Ofsted inspection, GDPR, curriculum, timetables and in my spare time I've completed my Google Certified Trainer programme. All this has taken me away from blogging for obvious of reasons.

The CET came as a result of a year of training (having completed my Level 1 and Level 2 Educator exams in October 2017) and supporting others both in my school and in other schools that we have contacts with. I could not have been more exited to be approved and got straight on to setting up my training domain. It was there the excitement was cut short! Let's just say that setting up your domain and getting verified isn't the easiest process. Somehow, I managed to lock myself out of my previous gmail account which allowed my access to blogger, my website and all my files. If I tried to access my new domain it just kept saying it has sent a verification email to the address that I didn't yet have access to. Let's just say there were toys everywhere and an empty pram!

But thanks the the CET group and some Youtube videos from @LouisShanafelt I am finally able to get started and I've got my access back. It all came down to a bit of editing of the CNAME host code that is not mentioned in the instructions. Thanks Louis!!.

So now I'm back and my domain is live and I'm spending the first few days of my summer holidays working on a couple of projects:

Teaching & Learning Dashboards

Example Dashboard using dummy data

Using google forms for lesson observations is a really easy way to a) collate information in one place b) secure that information under GDPR and c) evaluate all the information you've gathered. So at my schools I've been updating the T&L Dashboards to show triangulation. Let's be clear, I didn't create the original, I've been updating the existing due to changes to our processes but it's been good fun and it's great to see what you can do.  Essentially, we use Explore in google sheets to create charts from the data collected during observations including how well staff are meeting the Teacher Standards, book looks, student voice, assessment, behaviour for learning, planning and more. All this pulls into sheets and then we use formulas to create a 1 page A3 visual summary.

Initially this would have taken hours to set up but with Explore it's now much easier and you don't have to be a formula expert to pull it off.


Staff Training: Escape Rooms
I've now been asked to run some staff training in September for our Learning Support Assistants to show them how they can use G Suite to engage disaffected learners. I've only got an hour and I hate CPD when you are talked at so I've decided to make it as practical as possible. I'm designing a 30 minute online Escape Room using Google Forms and Drawings. If you've never tried this it's easy to set up: Just create your google form and have separate sections for each question. Use response validation to ensure an exact answer and then "continue to next section" on completion of a question.  I plan to share the form with the team captain using Google Classroom's differentiation option while the rest of the group have access to the clues. They'll get the first clue on the stream and then when the captain submits a correct answer I will share the next clue with them. If they get stuck I'll post further clues on the classroom stream. They'll only have 30 minutes to solve the clues and escape, but all the clues are curriculum based so that they can see how G Suite could be used in different areas. Then I'll be taking them through how it was all set up.

Here's an example of a clue.  Can you work out the answer? 

I'm looking for a 4 figure numerical code.