Today I'm gonna teach you like it's 1999: Part 2

The problem is schools were not designed with learning in mind. As the likes of Sir Ken Robinson have so eloquently explained the school system is a product of the industrial period and is built on the industrial concepts of mass production, efficient use of resources and management of time. I am neither a technophobe nor am I a purveyor of the dystopian views which some extol but I am painfully conscious of the limitations that using technology for its own sake can bring to a learning environment. I would love to redesign my school on the Google working model, where students would be free to access learning in flexible ways from flexible spaces – where innovation and creativity were rewarded more than punctuality and appearance. But the tenacious factory approach to schools is a result of the practical need to educate hundreds of young people every weekday between the hours of 9 and 3.30 in buildings which are mostly outdated and rooms that can barely hold 33 people, let alone allow flexible usage.

The reality of the sometimes uneasy relationship between technology and education is that the two are not always mutually beneficial. As I ranted about in Part 1, I think the use of technology is sometimes something that reduces the quality of teaching and learning. The ideas which I put forward as a potential rebalancing are by no means new and when I say teach like it’s 1999 I don’t mean it in a backward looking, modern life is rubbish kind of way. My proposal is that teachers actually need to do two things: 1. Embrace technologies and social media and use them to reinvent home learning 2. Consider how, or indeed if, they are needed in class at all (i.e. teach like it’s 1999).

Home learning largely consists of preparation (or frontloading as they say in the USA), consolidation (usually some kind of assessment) or applying the skill or knowledge in a different context. All of these lend themselves to the exploitation of social media and technologies. The Flipped Classroom concept essentially focuses on preparing students for deeper and more creative learning experiences in class by asking them to engage with video content before the lesson. Done well (teacher generates their own content with resources for interaction) this method frees up the lesson time for more creative and collaborative development or teacher-led explanation or demonstration. Increasingly students are able to access online content on phones and other mobile devices so why not allow them to engage with the content anytime, anywhere? 

Consolidating learning also lends itself to social media. Asking students to write blogs, a wonderful way of reflecting or encouraging them to collaborate on document creation using Google Docs or SkyDrive are much more engaging and relevant activities than ‘complete this worksheet’.

Why not give consideration to a series of lessons which might exploit this idea of engaging students in learning outside of the classroom? A four lesson series of lessons could have the following:

• Frontloaded home learning using a 10 minute video and associated question sheet to introduce a new topic/concept
• Lesson 1
• Use of social media channels to respond to any needs for clarification/further exploration of ideas
• Lesson 2
• Consolidation home learning task such as a blog entry or collaborative document
• Lesson 3
• Use of social media channels for further discussions
• Lesson 4
• Frontloaded home learning task for next topic/concept

So what happens in the lessons if the content is delivered outside of class? Deeper learning, that’s what. Learning is a complex concept, but it is generally unanimously felt that being the passive recipient of someone else’s knowledge is not the most effective form of learning. So what is the most frequently used ICT tool in classrooms? PowerPoint: A presentation tool with its bullet points, crappy clip art and dreadful sound effects which has consumed teachers’ planning time for over a decade. Gradgrind would have loved it! But haven’t many moved on from this rather fin de siècle approach? BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and the proliferation of iPads, Chrome Books and Smartphones surely means that students and teachers can now be constantly connected, exploiting the opportunities of new technology in the 21^st century classroom. The truth is there are some really innovative and experimental teachers out there who are testing the boundaries of pedagogy. There are forward-thinking and well-funded schools who are equipping their classrooms with the latest gadgetry to entice their learners and motivate their staff. But most people are still using PowerPoint.

Maybe we just get caught up in what we think the classroom of the present/future should be like and assume that it is a replica of Google HQ. We assume that it should be filled with amazing technology. But for what purpose? Technology in itself is not the answer for education, in the same way that it is not to blame for all of society’s ills. The reality of most classrooms will continue to be centred on the human relationships that exist between one teacher and 30 students. Activities, therefore, during that period of time need to be tailored towards optimising the engagement and opportunities for deep learning. New technologies can be best exploited, for most of us, outside of the classroom. Let’s remember why we got into this game in the first place. Let’s remember how we used to engage them in 1999.

Today I'm gonna teach you like it's 1999: Part 1

I’m a huge advocate of exploiting new technology in education and have spent the last couple of years promoting the informed use of social media in schools. However, I’m a much bigger advocate of meaningful learning experiences and opportunities for creativity and engagement. A tension often exists between the prevalence of modern technology and remembering what effective teaching and learning is. At his recent BETT speech, Professor Brian Cox suggested replacing interactive whiteboards in school with blackboards, and I would agree that using technology for the sake of it can undermine more traditional strategies that work. Is it time that we had a fresh look at the role of technology in education rather than pursuing the rather lazy assumption that all technology is good for learning?

I started my NQT year in 1999. It very quickly dawned on me that the impact of my lessons had a positive correlation with the amount of time and thought I put into planning and assessment. Teaching through the use of ICT had been touched on in my PGCE year but was very much seen as a sideshow for the main event and engagement in lessons relied heavily on the imagination and creativity of my planning which often aimed to give my students the opportunity to be imaginative and creative in class. Images and quotes were displayed on the Overhead Projector, worksheets were often homemade and bespoke for individual classes and students. My classes were teacher-led without being didactic and students were given opportunities to engage in content using various activities and assessment tools. In 2000 my classroom became the first in the school to have the blackboard replaced with an interactive whiteboard. People came to observe me and my magic board and I was sent out to other schools to help train staff on how to make the best use of this new technology. I desperately searched in vain for software which would exploit the capabilities of the whiteboard so that it didn’t just become a glorified OHP but eventually I, like the majority of the profession since, settled on the tool which seemed most relevant: Microsoft PowerPoint.

PowerPoint made us lazy. Like all these things, it’s not the fault of the software, which can create amazingly engaging presentations, but the way it has been used in our profession. I used to start planning lessons with a key question in mind which would lead to some creative thinking about how best to engage my students in the topic followed by creative resource-making. Now I was starting my planning with this:

PowerPoint was not designed with teaching and learning in mind. It is a presentation tool. Effective lessons are not presentations. Presentations are used, largely in the world of business, to inform or persuade. The presenter usually has some information (e.g. sales figures) or ideas (e.g. marketing strategy) which the audience, either through genuine interest or because it is their job, are willing to listen to. Teachers may well have information and ideas that they would love their audience to absorb in this way, but this is not the reality of children or schools. Presentation/lectures clearly have a place in higher education, are just about possible at times at post-16 level but are definitely a no-go area for a year 10 class on a wet Thursday afternoon.

So why have we persisted with PowerPoint presentations for the last decade? I blame the assumption that new technology is always a good thing in education. We have been encouraged to ask questions of the use of ICT in lessons – if the technology is available, why isn’t it being used? Every staff INSET, parent information meeting, training course and student-led presentation is delivered on PowerPoint (or Keynote, Prezi etc), so, we concluded, should every lesson. This has made us lazy. Consider the amount of time that has been spent on summarising content into bullet-points, searching for appropriate images and adding animation effects and how this time could have invested in considering creative learning opportunities. PowerPoint appeals to our lazy gene – we even steal presentations off other teachers so we don’t have to expend effort on creating our own (some call this sharing best practice).

The presentation is not the presentation. Starting with PowerPoint just encourages us to deliver content. That’s bad enough on its own, but delivering it in a dull and inspiring manner is as bad as my old Deputy Headteacher dictating from the Bible in RS lessons.

PowerPoint is a great example of how technology can kill creativity. It is not alone. The all-too familiar practical obstacles of using computers in class must be bane of ICT teachers’ lives -  ‘I’ve forgotten my password’, ‘I’m still waiting for it to log-in’, ‘let me just finish this level’. Yet we all still clamour to book that period in the ICT room so we can deliver a tired PowerPoint presentation to our class before letting them free to produce their own tired PowerPoint presentation so they too can deliver content to a disinterested audience. Where’s the learning?

This was less of an issue in 1999. Most classrooms didn’t have computers and ICT suites were used to teach ICT competencies. Good teachers used planning time to create engaging activities. Good teachers still do this, but there is a danger that PowerPoint and the availability of online resource sharing sites has made teachers spend more time on the presentation than the way in which their students might learn the skills or knowledge.

In my next post I’ll propose how we might consider ways of embracing technology and social media outside of the classroom while at the same time resisting the shackles that these things can bring to the creativity and imagination of what actually happens in our lessons.

Flipping the INSET

The flipped classroom is a wonderful concept which I completely endorse (and have written about here) where modern technologies are used to engage students in content before a lesson (most typically through teacher-generated videos) freeing up classroom time for the development and application of those skills and knowledge. This is a great way of moving from didactic, content-heavy lessons which can encourage more creative and meaningful learning activities as a result. We have been aware of the spectre of poorly-conceived, PowerPoint-driven lessons for some time and this kind of thinking gives teaching staff the confidence and space to reimagine what they do in the classroom.

A recent meeting with middle leaders where we discussed the characteristics of learning at the school opened up a related issue relating to staff INSET. We frequently use INSET time to share good practice, which, in more recent months, has tended to focus on educational uses of social media tools; Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Lingt Language, Socrative, YouTube, The Virtual School, Screencast-omatic, Pearltrees, Montage ... the list is long and expanding with every session we have. This has started to become a bit of an issue. We are reaching social media saturation and with so many new ideas staff who do not have their finger on the technology pulse can be put off by the sheer volume available. This means that there are a potentially large proportion of our staff who are rather reluctant to embed these wonderful ideas which can be of significant benefit, especially with the flipped classroom concept.

Content-heavy INSET is not everyone's cup of tea

Our problem, and I suspect we are not alone, is that we spend a significant proportion of our INSET time delivering content which therefore means that there is not enough development time for staff to apply the new ideas that they have been introduced to.

So why not flip the INSET? Screencasting and blogging tools allow staff to capture their teaching and learning ideas in a format that allows colleagues to consume the content at their leisure and to fit in with their busy schedules – anytime, anywhere life-long learning. This would then free up time, as with the flipped classroom, for INSETs to be used for the application of new ideas, rather than going away from an INSET thinking, ‘that was a great idea that I’d love to use, but now I’ve got to mark these books, plan this lesson, fetch the kids, etc etc’. Instead the practice can be used in a practical sense and is therefore much more likely to become embedded. Time can be freed up for staff to discuss new ideas and work collaboratively rather than always being the passive recipients of other peoples’ great ideas. We always need teaching and learning champions in schools, but not everyone has the time or inclination to constantly tweak their practise, and it is the school’s responsibility to provide those opportunities.

Some ideas to flipping the INSET:

·        Learnist or Pearltrees – create a series of links relating to a topic or area of interest (such as the flipped classroom or blended learning);

·        Screencast-o-matic or Jing – use screen capture tools to record video explanations and guides for teaching and learning ideas that can be shared with staff at any time;

·        Blogging – write about teaching and learning ideas perhaps embedding pictures of students’ work of video of the idea being put into practice.

It’s about flipping learning and it’s about flipping time (after Stoll and Fink).