Head in the Cloud

 I think it's fair to say that the Welsh Government have 'bottled out' on this important decision . Grow some balls for goodness sake. Disappointing but possibly not surprising.

 I mentioned in my last post that I was creating a new online course platform called The Digital Learning Den. This is due to be launched very shortly with schools. At the same time I've also been using the same Thinkific platform to build an online course area for Collective Learning . Collective Learning is a fantastic organisation who provide education focused courses to schools across Wales. For the same Covid related reasons as myself, they recognised the need to be able to offer to schools an online version of their courses that are traditional carried out face-2-face. The building of their platform has involved the design and build of the user front end and then supporting colleagues in the design and build of their online courses. It's been great to be able to sit with primary curriculum experts over the last month or so and support them in the construction of their courses. If you'd like to see the website or are interested in courses and resources currently being...

I haven't posted anything about the Covid 19 pandemic. To be honest I was afraid that most of it would just be too negative and whining therefore my silence on the matter. However, here's something that been a positive over this difficult period. I've been spending my time building a brand new online course delivery platform! 😀 The reason being that I need to prepare my business for all eventualities in the future. Currently it looks like in-school support and face to face courses are going to be few and far between this side of the new year. No one can predict what's going to happen week by week at the moment and things could possibly get worse again before they get better. Therefore the need for the platform to help me to work with schools and teachers at a distance.  To be honest I've been doing this for a couple of years with my Digital Den platform . Primary schools who have subscribed get access to a structured approach to delivering DCF skills and coding fro...

I really look forward to listening to the Making Sense podcast from the fantastic Sam Harris. If you haven't heard it could I suggest you look it up and download. Brilliant guests and always calm, thoughtful and considered in his questioning or commentary. Wish I could be more, Sam Harris. Just started listening to podcast #207 'Can we pull back from the brink?' and had to stop and post this wonderful statement in the opening 2 minutes about social media: We've all been enrolled in a psychological experiment for which no one gave consent, and it's not clear how it will turn out   This is a must listen to podcast. A podcast that Sam has found extremely difficult to post during these deeply troubling times. 

Update on my dumbphone v smartphone 'experiment'. Looks like the smartphone won. A couple of weeks ago I had to revert back to my Samsung 8+ and put the Nokia 105 back in its box. It just became too difficult to manage both phones and realised that in order to do my job and day to day activities, I needed the smartphone. Sending messages on Nokia was painfully slow and frustrating and I really needed quick access to my calendar and often to my emails. So what did I learn from those two months? I learned that it's very difficult to completely break away from a device that has become integral to my working life. As I said in an earlier post, it was quite easy to use the Nokia over Christmas when I wasn't working. However, as soon as I was back working with schools it became more and more difficult to work effectively. I also appreciated how difficult it most be for our young people if we are asking them as educators to limit the amount of time spent on their smartphones ...

Not only was the new Curriculum for Wales  released this week, today I noticed that Digital Competence Framework (DCF) had been updated too. The older version had a very nice online interactive tool to filter through the framework and view classroom ideas, not so with this one yet. From what I read this may appear later in 2020. Can only be accessed via a spreadsheet which can be downloaded here . Spent a couple of hours copying and pasting the new Curriculum for Wales version of the DCF against the previous. What are the headlines? statements placed into 'Progression Steps (PS)' as per the new curriculum. PS1 (nursery / reception), PS2 (Yr1, 2 & 3) and PS3 (Yr4, 5 & 6). statements written in the format of "I can....". The previous said, "With increasing independence learners are able to...." or "Learners are able to.....". There are some changes to the new. From my initial view the statements appear clearer and easier to understand.  ...

So, what's happened a month into my experiment of dumping my Samsung smartphone and using a really cheap, very un-smartphone, Nokia 105? Well, it has been a little tricky. I've stuck with the Nokia as my phone but I've also had to carry the Samsung with me, the reasons why I'll explain shortly. Let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of using the Nokia. Advantages Only had to charge the Nokia three times in the last month Barely notice it in my pocket (unlike the Samsung 8+ which is almost like carrying a tablet around!) It has stopped me idly browsing through Twitter, Facebook, emails or searching the web whenever I reached the limits of my attention span. Over previous months this had been about 2 minutes max. This was initially the main reason why I wanted to get the 'dumbphone' as I was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything for a long time with feeling for the smartphone.  I've pretty well broken my addiction to Twitter and g...

Finally, the Curriculum for Wales has been released today. It's only been available for a couple of hours but I've had a quick look and for what it's worth, here are my initial observations on the What Matters 6 section of the Science and Technology Area of Learning and Experience . - quite a lot of change between the draft and final version in WM6 - removal of Experiences, Knowledge and Skills section - The What Matters Statement or as they are now called, " Statements of What Matters " have changed. Both the basic statement and the more detailed version. Less wordy. - Removal of the headings, Algorithm , Data , Computational Systems , Cyber-security . No headings at all. - Introduction of the words "beginning to" in nearly all the statements at PS1 and one at PS2. - Removal of many of the DCF cross over statements that annoyed me so much in the draft ( see my post from May 2019 ). The Data section in particular in PS1 and PS2. - More state...

One week into my experiment to see if I can live without my smartphone and things are going pretty well. So let's reflect on the pros and cons, starting with the cons first. There's still the odd app or two that I have to use which meant that my smartphone was switched on once or twice this week. I find my banking app much easier to use than the web version and had to use it four days ago to pay my wage. The only other app that I may have to use is What's App as there is no comparable web version   (I believe there is and I'll check this out). However, in the last week I think I've only looked at it once and that was in the first couple of days and haven't looked at it since. There were a also a couple of moments where I would liked to have used my smartphone camera. Texting is still fiddly. No predictive text but at least I've now worked out how to do a capital letter. Finally, I found that for about three days my sleep was slightly affected. I found that...