Personal Blogs

If there are only one or two, add two or three more that you might like to include in the future, or in a different context. 

Make notes on each resource, including for example: 

What media or formats are the resources in? 
In my context of KS4 & KS5 secondary education we our main resource is an interactive whiteboard for delivering lessons and books for writing notes/completing activities combined with worksheets as frames or for giving information.  Teachers use a lot of powerpoints to deliver lessons and often embed videos within them

Which students would need an alternative? 
SEN students are identified and their learning passports highlight alternative strategies.  At KS4 a handful of students are able to complete their work on their own computers, at KS5 the majority of students do.  There are also a number of students whose work needs to be printed on different coloured paper.  Within the setting there are also a few students with hearing issues who are to be "seated at the front" although I do not believe this helps during noisy group work.  There is also one blind student although I have not taught her in my subject.  I believe that there are a number of SEN students who have NOT been identified who would benefit from an alternative.

Which alternatives would be an ideal solution, given unlimited human and technical resources?
All lessons delivered online through websites or Google Classroom to students who are carrying their own chromebooks.  When lessons are delivered this way objectives and timings can be flexible to  suit different styles of learning as well as SEN needs, those who prefer to listen could use screen readers and headphones, those who like to read can do so at their own pace, making notes can be simplified by copying and pasting information, using online tools for mindmapping etc.

 Which alternatives are practical in the context of the learning outcomes? 
The biggest practical issue in secondary is the need for the teacher to constantly be able to sow progression of the students, if work/notes etc is completed on a computer and not in books it must be kept in chronological order to show inspectors what students have completed and how their understanding has been improved.  This could be done through Google Classroom as files are stored in classes but students are weak at following file naming and filling protocols.  

Are the resources readily available for your students at the time they need them? 
With Google Classroom the resources can be readily available under the current system they are merely available during lesson times.

Who in your organisation is responsible for providing alternative formats and any descriptions required? 
Individual teachers

Is anyone responsible for checking the quality of alternative format materials? 
No

Are there any copyright issues?
No - teachers produce their own materials or use those under licence for use by the organisation.

• What was surprising?

I was surprised by the level of issues dyslexics face, when I did the test and saw the passage I could process it fairly easily but it clearly conveyed the difficulty faced by dyslexic people

• Was anything difficult to understand?

No I don't think I struggled

• Would another kind of training be better for you?

I like practical training so a fully interactive course where you experience the issues and answer scored questions would help

• Could you use any of these resources in your role?

Yes - the practical exercises would be brilliant

If you are an experienced practitioner, think back to your own introduction to the field.

• Did you have formal accessibility training? If so, how useful was it?

None whatsoever!

• Can you suggest anything that would be useful to the less experienced students in your group?

Quite an eye opener, lots of things I didn't know popped up as we as many which I did.  Mindmapped for later perusal  

• How would you define ‘accessibility’?

The right of all individuals to be able to use the same materials, or partake in the same activity.

• Who do you think is responsible for accessibility?

Everyone, designers of courses in this context but also curriculum designers.

• What do you understand by accessibility in an educational context?

Materials and activity suited to everyones needs and abilities.

• What do you understand by accessibility in the context of online learning?

Materials being accessible by anyone with learning, physical or mental needs.

• Why is accessibility a concern today in your context or country?

We nod to it and adapt materials to suit learners with different needs instead of ensuring that all materials are fully accessible to all learners.

Yep - took myself off to the Ideas Hub for a couple of hours today and did the first 750 words of my EMA.  Keen to do more but as ever I have a stupidly busy weekend ahead.

Actually I WILL do some work on it this weekend, not only am I feeling "in the zone" but I want to get it done so I can start the next module.  Tomorrow is a bust - taking my charming teenager to The London Dungeon, god help me, can I leave him there?

Actually thinking that I can use the EMA to pitch a couple of headteachers I know to let me do some consulting work on Google Classroom.  I am buzzing!

I've jumped ahead a little so I can interact with the group - I've been a little unwell the past week and this has meant I fell asleep every time I tried to either read or listen to (I have software which converts!) any papers.  But I was keen on this project as I love the chance to be creative.  So after receiving an injection of energy (literally - I have a B12 deficiency) I took myself off to the Ideas hub in Chelmsford to work through it.  Not only is this a creative space but currently there is a schools arts festival on and I have been enjoying the music played by local kids whilst I worked.

Anyway - heres a powtoon of the important points as I see them.  Context?  Encouraging parents in the home schooling networks to look towards SLA to encourage learning.

Looking around (how did I not know it was a Moodle?) I see a lot of personalisation which shows me different areas which are of interest to me, both inside this course and for general OU offerings.  I like recommendations and the idea of branching out into further areas.  Learning for me is a Tree - formal learning of this kind is the branches - moving out from this into other areas the leaves and the programme itself is the trunk.  The interesting part is the roots - this is all the learning I do outside of this environment, much of which is informal, or for pleasure and all of which shapes me into my learning tree - inspires me to seek formal knowledge or certification about the interests.

Part 2

Sadly I work in secondary education  (or do I?  I only train students on assistive tech now and I'm not sure if I want to go back to secondary education.  Data I see is tracking, targets and predictions, all designed to help the institution and hold the teachers accountable for results.  I don't see data as personalised.  All I see is data that was created about an entity (they are not treated as students OR children) which predicts what they can achieve in an ideal world.  And if the world is not ideal?  Well the institutions still expect them to achieve it to get extra brownie points for the institution.  What I want is data that says - how can we HELP "billy", the boy who lives in care after being removed from his parents crack house to achieve HIS best, not the best his target says but the best outcome for him - a bit of education which leads him into college where he can learn a skill and improve HIS life, maybe he won't get 12 GCSE's but maybe he can train as a bricklayer and get a job which means he can support himself when the system chucks him out at 18.

Oh dear, part 2 was a rant.

Part 3 

Well I think I partially covered it in part 2 but to me collecting data in a classroom should include, which activities did you enjoy?, what information made you want to find out more?  Questions that personalise learning for the individual and invite them to challenge their perception and experience of learning.

Wow its good to be back to blogging and off that bloody group project.  As ever I gave myself a week off after the TMA (which I didn't start until the Group project deadline had passed) so here I am playing catch up.  I'm also behind on my Adobe Train the Trainer MOOC - giving up teaching was supposed to help sort this out!  Oh well on with the task.

Wikipedia (2016) "Learning analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs" 

The words that jump out at me are contexts, and environments - interesting as they seem to focus on the learners as people not statistics.  Reading on I was pleased to note this theme continued and that there were definitions which showed analytics being useful in planning support and intervention.  In fact it wasn't until the context that I felt that sinking feeling as the word accountability cropped up.  

Dipping into the history I see that the current definition is less personal, which is a worrying trend.  Maybe I was being optimistic (as ever) when I picked up the context and environments as my main points.

Siemans & Long (2011) interested me with the idea that learning analytics are transformative.  

"analytics provides a new model for college and university leaders to improve teaching, learning, organizational efficiency, and decision making and, as a consequence, serve as a foundation for systemic change. "

The idea that the analytics can shape higher education by penetrating the fog and shaping the planning of activities intrigues me, personal experience shows that to use analytics to shape learning requires constant data collection and analysis throughout the course in order to personalise the learning experience.

I couldn't find the second paper.  Maybe I'm being dense.

My reading did help to shape my thoughts towards my definition.

Learning Analytics - A model for improving personalisation of learning through understanding the contexts, experiences and environments which are shaping individuals learning experiences.

Siemans, and Long, (2016). [online] Available at: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm1151.pdf [Accessed 6 Jul. 2016].

Wikipedia. (2016). Learning analytics. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Learning_analytics&action=history [Accessed 6 Jul. 2016].

Well the activity said it could be broad so I'm going with....

FREE applications

Google Docs, Add ons for Google Docs, other applications like padlet, word cloud makers, video makers. 

Open Education needs Open Applications - If we are open with our learning we need to be open with our responses.

And just one question from me - why is it that after creating a TMA in Google I have to flipping well export it to Word to upload it to OU.

I love a MOOC, but I start a lot more than I finish.  Although with my mindfullness hat on "thats OK, just notice".  I guess I get out what I need and then I move on to something else.  Thats only partially to do with the over scheduling of my life because as I have come to realise recently, although I over schedule and try and fit too many things into too little time I also crush an awful lot of candies!

Me and the MOOC

I work in an area that doesn't stand still.  I often envy people teaching other subjects like history, maths etc because for all they complain about changing syllabuses and changing curriculum these changes surely are just reinventions of the wheel.  In the subjects I teach the changes are to the materials as new technologies become more prominent.  I'm an ICT teacher so the software gets updated.  I'm a Computer Science teacher so new languages get introduced (and being NO programmer I have a LOT of learning to do!).  I'm a media studies teacher and that doesn't stand still for a second - in fact its a bugger to teach given that social media is increasingly important and banned in school!  I'm a business studies teacher - another fast paced, ever changing environment the small businesses we look at used to be a lot of white van men and now include a huge variety of mumtrepreneurs.  

So the MOOC is my friend.  I can learn a new language (last year Python).  I can learn a new skill, I can keep up with changes in SEO and developments in software and I can even get myself certified (have I mentioned that I'm a Google Certified Educator lately?) yes I used Google's MOOC and paid extra for the certification.  I also learn about pedagogy, classroom management, a new tool every week and so much more.  All using MOOC's and a raft of OER.

I also keep running away from teaching and doing supply.  Believe me OER is my friend here - and I love the challenge but when I take a medium/long term role I will nip on a MOOC to bring my skills up to date.

As for my personal life, I run a small business or  two, do social media marketing for another business and I'm busy busy with Rotary.  All of which require learning, developing, growing and moving ever forward.  Rotary being a prime example - the typical Rotarian is seen as "Male, pale & stale" and this is a stereotype we are trying to break - through our marketing and social media presence.  Another area I look to MOOC's for information on.

My Learners & the MOOC

I have had to teach coding in the past year as I was learning it myself.  So I directed my learners to codeacademy where I directed them through the Python course and I am pleased not only with their progress but with the extra work some have done outside of my classroom.  In fact a few learners have also learned additional languages from this MOOC.  A real success and it has saved me from having to teach a language which I am still learning.

I started by making a mind map to visualize the paper - turns out its hard to type on a train and juggle a coffee!  When I looked at the initiatives I was unsurprised to find there was not a perfect fit to Wiley's model.  The nature of technological and business innovation would always give rise to new models - in fact crowdfunding is giving further ideas for bringing together authors and finance for courseware, personally I'm thinking along the lines of a co-operative model with crowdfunding and advertising revenues funding individuals to develop courses within their area of expertise.

Coursera - I initially thought MIT model as they seem to have a LOT of staff and a LOT of vacancies, currently 170 staff and growing.  Then I looked at the volunteer page and saw that they have over 350 mentors as well as translators and testers, which would fit more with the USU model.  So a blended model is operating here.

BCcampus - I was firstly struck by how often I saw the word sharing, then I spotted the CC was merely attributable so I was thinking Rice model.  I see they are government funded and only have around 25 staff so I was staring to think USU model.  I can't see where they get their authors from so I was unable to make a firm decision - maybe they don't fit ANY of the models, which meets my initial expectation of this task.

FutureLearn -  I have taken a course here so I did have a little insight.  On investigation I see they have 85 partners worldwide although are wholly owned by OU.  The jobs page included learning developer (my initial thought was RUN AWAY before I end up with another job! Then I read it and found I'm not yet qualified for this, need to finish MAODE). I'm seeing this one very much as the MIT model.

OpenLearn - I see this as a different model entirely, its main function is to serve as a try before you buy course for the OU and it does this very effectively.  As these are taster courses I don't see a fit to any of the models but that it is their own model.

In summary - Wiley's models are a useful guideline or framework for building new models and each organisation will build their models individually according to their own needs.

I read the second text, on a train, in a Costa and with a 13 year old stammering child chatting away in my ear and my 72 year old mother fussing loudly over him (guess which is annoying me most....).  So please excuse the lack of depth in my post.  In fact I'm going to paste the screenshots I took and use them as the basis for my discussion.

My original first area was pedagogy - I thought this interesting that the use of OER was allowing them to use a broader range of teaching and learning methods.

I guess this one also covers the pedagogy

I love this final one as this is exactly what I do with Open Resources, I will often find a Prezi or an upload on slideshare and then make an adaptation.  In fact, because I use an online delivery method I will even take PDF's and add them to slideshare for ease of reading.

Again - apologies for the lack of depth, the room I am waiting in has now filled with people so I am about to be told to put away my computer.

Very interesting stuff - I started by reading the Anderson presentation and I was interested in the different social interactions of OER's, although I was also laughing out loud (Cafe Nero this time) when the slides mentioned some of the tech - Google Wave hahahaha.  This was the slide which struck me

The idea that the individual is part of so many wholes whilst still remaining an individual is to me a true marvel of the digital era.  We have become ever better connected without losing our sense of self.  Indeed we have found greater opportunities to educate and be educated through networks, groups and collectives.

My second choice was to look a the video ^{(always one for the easy option)}  and I was very pleased to find a TED talk - one of my favourite choices of OER, as they are concise and well explained nuggets.  I was nodding along with this one (Its OK - being in London people are used to nutters) as it perfectly described my own view of education and resources.  Education IS sharing and holding onto intellectual property is a selfish act.  Just be nice, open and share on the biggest scale you can.  I have published so many resources to the web and continue to do so and everything I publish is gifted to the world through new media and technology. When I first started teaching I made my resources into a website, now I publish them to a wiki and more and more I move towards videos as a delivery method which also get hosted and distributed to the global audience of YouTube users.

In fact it fits my favourite philosophy of "Just be nice"

The report was like wading through treacle for me!  Largely due to my total lack of experience of the normal higher education processes.  I personally have only been a part time student at higher education and even my degree was a corporate one - which took place in my place of work rather that at the University.  But I should have got past that quicker and got onto the activity because the reflective nature of it was right up my street.

To me the table is not really an indication of what "my organisation" does.  I don't have an organisation, I'm a supply teacher in a long term role and frankly I'm ready to walk!  I also have a freelance role as an assistive technology trainer which is an area I am thinking of expanding into with my own company but with a younger age group.  However for the purpose of this assignment I will treat my current "employer" as my organisation.

As you can see my organisation is very behind myself in using technology for educational purposes.  If I were to be recommending a strategy for implementing technology in their educational setting I would start with social media.  The school already uses social media for communication purposes and posts daily with school news and celebrations.  I would encourage them to start setting up social media accounts for departments to use to publish all of the following - 

• Great examples of work
  
• Coursework deadlines
• links to interesting articles
• videos being used in lessons
• Student stories from within the faculty

Adopting this technology would allow a greater connection with students and parents, a chance to showcase work and opportunities for students to further their knowledge of the subject.  The school are already using social media to celebrate success so to communicate and offer stretching tasks would merely be an extension of this use.

My second recommendation would be to move towards a flipped classroom.  Homework has to be set to meet the government/ofsted requirements and is a constant battle between staff/students.  Its a pain to mark and its a pain to police.  We also have this dreadful culture in UK schools (look out I've stepped up on the soap box) of spoon feeding our students.  This starts when the primary schools have to teach them to pass their SATs and then continues when they arrive with us.  I get so frustrated when every students first solution is to yell "Miss" as soon as they are even slightly unsure.  I want to mark WRONG answers - I want to encourage students to learn from each other but the culture is against that - and that is surely the first step towards the flipped classroom.

I have been told, by 3 separate members of staff that I spend too much time behind my desk rather than helping the students.  I struggle to understand this as I can see every student from where I sit as well as monitor what they are doing on the computers using software that is on my desktop.  When I do walk around the students ask more questions BEFORE trying to find solutions.  To me sitting behind my desk is where I should be, the students are controlling their learning journey.  I have clearly set the lesson out task by task on my wiki and they can follow the lesson through with little input from me.  I do introduce the lesson, I do go over the objectives and tasks and then I sit back and watch them learn.  My first step towards the flipped classroom.

The second step is to set the learning as homework - In my classroom I do this with a video or reading and a short multiple choice quiz to reinforce and check the learning.  The quiz is set as a google form and marked automatically using Flubaroo so that my mark book is clearly showing progress.  The homework is followed up with a lesson on that topic and I am on hand to answer any real questions, offer advice and further resources to expand knowledge.  It is this method of setting the homework in advance of the learning objective that I would recommend to the organisation.

My final recommendation would be the use of games and gamification which could be set as homework to counter the lack of technology within the classroom.  In the past I have made revision games very quickly using the simple generators on classtools and using these I have had difficult students focussing well on their revision.  During regular lessons I frequently use wordsearches and crosswords as starter activities and even offline games like hexadecimal bingo have enhanced learning.  Given that our students are of an age when they have not yet learned to balance work and fun using games and gamification is a clear forward step during lessons and revision.