Head in the Cloud

Over the weekend I read a post from Tom Bennett (@tombennett71) called " iPads in the Classroom - are we machine gunning emus? " In it Tom argues that iPad adoption is an expensive exercise with "little evidence that iPad adoption has any discernible effect on the educational outcomes of children whatsoever."  Adding, "however shiny and groovy they are" they aren't necessarily the answer for under achieving children. His thoughts very much resonated with myself, as this an area of concern that I've had for a while. In 2011 I wrote a post called " They Want A Shiny New One ", which outlined similar concerns about the way some schools were approaching the buying of what is an expensive piece of kit without any real vision about how they were going to use them. Over the last three years, since that post was written, the purchasing of iPads by schools has increased considerably, and this is now being exacerbated in Wales with money availa...

Isn't it funny the way the press report things as if it were fact? Take yesterday morning's report from the BBC called " Wales' schools left behind in digital age, experts claim ". The article is basically saying that if we don't implement changes recommended in the ICT Steering Group report then we will be falling behind England where the changes come into effect in Sept 2014.  What caught my eye was the statement six lines in which says: "a similar plan will not be introduced in schools in Wales for at least four years." Four years? Where did this figure come from? I haven't seen anything announced by the Welsh Government saying that this is the predicted timescale of a new Computing PoS. Searching through the article I thought something must have been announced, but no, nothing. So who is it that's saying four years? Why not say 6 months, 1 year or 10 years? Four years seems to be an arbitrary figure, plucked from the ether by someone. ...

If you are wondering about ways to spend your PDG effectively have a look at the Sutton Trust EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit. It provides guidance for teachers and schools on how to use their resources to improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. You'll find a wide selection of approaches that a school can take, along with the estimated cost, the availability and the quality of evidence, and finally the average impact expected estimated in terms of additional months progress pupils might be expected to make as a result of that approach being taken in the school. We can see from this screen shot of the tool kit that Digital technology approaches are high cost approaches with moderate student progress, which is supported by extensive evidence. Whereas Collaborative learning approaches for instance is low cost that produces the approximately the same student progress. Certainly makes me think. 

Welsh Government have just released some follow up Pupil Deprivation Grant (PDG) guidance for schools. "What really works?" is a useful guide intended to give practical advice to schools on appropriate approaches that will help poorer pupils overcome the additional barriers they face that prevent them from achieving their full potential. I must say I'm surprised and shocked to the core......not one single mention that buying 30 iPads with the grant is an approach that will help these pupils! #sarcasm

A very good day looking at numeracy and ICT at Clytha Primary School last Friday. One of the intentions of the day was also to focus on getting the most from resources that the school has. The school had purchased 2Simple's Purple Mash , so I looked at many of its tools that can support aspects of numeracy. The staff particularly enjoyed using LOGO, talking about shape and angle. Lots of good discussing between them to work out how to complete the challenges I set. In fact, I found it difficult to get them to go for their coffee break! We then looked at using databases (2Investigate) and opportunities for graphing with 2Graph and 2Count. In the afternoon my colleague Steve Singer gave an excellent introduction to 'Scratch' and finally we finished the day off with SMART Notebook tools that can help support the teaching of mathematics. Building procedures in LOGO Getting to grips with Scratch