A few years ago I heard that SIMS was to be forced to allow others to access the data contained within it, thereby opening the way for smaller agile companies to innovate and provide new solutions to provide important new functionality. So the search continued this year at BETT. It’s a great opportunity to get around a lot of solutions in a short time.

And this year – at last! – I found a stunning solution  - Go4schools – which also happened to win a BETT award (not necessarily a recommendation in my view based on previous evidence). Classroom Monitor I also found interesting and will investigate further for the English and maybe (my) ICT dept.

Go4Schools.com

Allows heads of department to set  the departmental tracking points for each term and to check they have been completed – with work flow that reminds teachers. There is nice granular permissions that allow people that need to see the data. And then, the holy grail, all vital statistics are visible in a dashboard in real time (rather than just 4 times a year). Statistics include:

• Performance against target (whole year, each class, each teacher, by vulnerable group, individual student). This makes the Ofsted requirement of tracking vulnerable groups trivial.
• Nationwide Residuals (as above)
• Tracking of interventions is based on live data. Allows year heads, tutors and subject teachers to ‘be on the same page.

Then the killer punch is that reports can be provided to parents digitally with work flow that manages a 2 stage reviewing process (by teaching colleague, then Head of Dept) and statement banks that improve quality and saves teachers time. Reporting cycles can be reduced from Weeks to days.

So not only can you get a world class assement module, it will pay for itself. You can more than offset the 4-£5000 cost (large secondary school) by saving £thousands on  admin and printing costs.

On a personal level I met with Paula Benchly,  a deputy at Neale Wade School, who’s husband John developed the initial solution for her when she was up to her eyeball in shared spreadsheets and trying to pull aggregated data from them. So it was nice to discuss the vision and development as she has been through what I have been struggling with the past few years.

Classroom monitor

If Go4school.com is about what to do with assessment (data). Classroom monitor is about better, more transparent assessment. APP grids or exam board leveling criteria are preloaded (but customisable) and there is a sophisticated interface that allows you to select a student (or group using a mouse) and mark their progress in relation to the criteria (Met, Almost, Not or Targeted – meaning awaiting evidence). Aggregated statistics are produced.

The cost would start at around £400 per department ( there may be customisation fees). So this could really help an English Department implement APP but I felt perhaps not a whole school solution.

I wonder if Classroom Monitor could be linked to Go4Schools so once the assessment is done (CM) the data flows into the school wide  system (G4S).

We are to get a 3D projector so Sally and I went to a seminar With Anne Bamford reporting the results of an academic study that was pretty bullish on the use of 3D for Science. Students understand more from seeing a 3D beating heart than a 2D beating heart. Interestingly its preferred to looking at a 3d Plastic model of the chest and to dissecting a real sheep’s heart (because they don’t move?). Students recall more and ask more and better questions.

To use 3D projection in science we are going to need more than one projector, fortunately that might prove to be more affordable than we first thought.

• Most projectors coming out now are 3D enabled – costs less than £800
• New projectors use long-lasting LEDs instead of bulbs which means they pay for themselves in about 3 years.
• Active 3D is the only option native option in projectors. This requires you to buy 30 sets of expensive (£25) glasses. The consumer market drives projector sales. Most consumers only need to buy 2-4 sets of glasses.
• Cinemas use passive 3D which allows you to use cheaper (£2.50) glasses.
• HURRAH There is a solution(Volfoni.com) that allows you to add a device to a project make it produce a passive 3D image. So students can use cheaper more disposible glasses – they might even have their own from their last cinema trip. See the Smart Crystal Pro for around 500 Euro.

PRINTING

We waste a lot of paper and toner on printing. The last time I moaned that we needed software to control and monitor printing credits I was told it was too expensive. It seems now that they are giving this software away for free. Not only that (RUBBING MY EYES) they will replace all your printers with colour printers for free just to have the privilege of you buying toner from them. Sounds too good to be true, I will have to investigate further. Surely there must be a minimum spend.??

http://www.printersforschools.co.uk

I met with one of the directors of the company.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakecaptive/3205277810/

Summer holidays are time for thinking. Teachers need to learn. But how long to think before producing something? (eg. blog posts, emails). I’ve been thinking about democratic schools and have actually found something similar in Brighton, the South Downs Learning Centre. The Self Managed Learning (SML) technique it seems was also trialled in some East Sussex schools in 2005/6 but of course they couldn’t let go of the curriculum so it didn’t get anywhere.

I’ve discovered that youtube on a large TV is an amazing resource as I have watched testimonies of students from democratic schools discuss their experiences as is Google books (See Daniel Greenberg’s “Free at last” especially the chapter on fishing.

Given the bombardment of rhetoric from the establishment its good to realise that its critics have been around for a long time. I’ve been looking at books from Myles Horton & Paulo Freire (thanks Kata), Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society) and John Dewey.

This is a part of learning, the beginning of a cycle… just taking time following intuition. This post is nothing more than a collection of links to stuff that I might (I do hope) to get back to.

http://www1.edexcel.org.uk/D201_0909/html/SPB201Leaflet.htm

Planning/scoping on paper is good but some kids prefer to design directly onto the machine.  I reckon there are 4 things to go in a poster like this:

• Slogan (or title)
• Layout
• Image
• Top Tips (4-6?)

We know it would be quicker to get the Top Tips down first but could a students produce a good poster having thought up the top tips at the end of the process? Probably yes.

So how can you give students the independence to go it alone but not turn out with something of poor quality (or unfinished) at the end?  Take a step back. let them design their success criteria (a peer assessment sheet) and let them go?

My thought for today

Had some good chats with

• Chris Filkins at Priory
• Russell Prodger at Rattan
• Tom at Rye

All official resources are linked here

Also I liked

filmsforlearning.org

Where’s Klaus

Serif Web Plus

Crazy Talk Facial Animator ($69)

Comic Life ($24)

I don’t read self improvement books as a rule but this struck me as interesting. .. for school leaders

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic as a Personality Ethic and a Character Ethic. (note the sub title) Covey  reviewed American self-improvement literature back to 1776…

I began to feel more and more that much of the success literature of the past 50 years was superficial [focused in a Personality Ethic]. It was filled with social image consciousness, techniques and quick fixes–with social bandaids and aspirin that addressed acute problems and sometimes even appeared to solve them temporarily, but left the underlying chronic problems untouched to fester and resurface time and again.

 He then goes on to distinguish the Character Ethic as follows:

In stark contrast, almost all the literature in the first 150 years or so focused on what could be called the Character Ethic as the foundation of success–things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty and the Golden Rule. Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is representative of that literature. It is, basically, the story of one man’s effort to integrate certain principles and habits deep within his nature.

Earlier this year I had a meeting with Gary Phillips who has very similar ideas to me in terms of getting technology into Ladakhi schools. It’s taken me a while to write it up – sorry!

Sending the Acer Aspire One netbooks for a cost of GBP 200 is a great solution. At 1kg + power supply they are light and cheap. These can be used with an external monitor & keyboard in school and be taken home by students. Linpus Linux is pre-installed. The 3 Cell battery only lasts 2 hours but makes the unit light. 6 Cell batteries are not worth the extra weight or money as electricity from solar power is available during the day.

People visiting Ladakh from UK can be asked to take a laptop with them. Visitors might even buy one themselves to donate, netbooks are useful whilst traveling then can be left at the end of the trip. Weight wise it would be feasible for a person to carry 2 laptops but this might cause customs problems.

Theoretically it might be tempting to find or customize an ideal version of Linux for our uses. But without reliable Linux knowledge or support in Ladakh this solution won’t fly. The netbook’s Linpus lite is ok and will allow us to standardize.

Why not Desktop computers?

Sending parts out to India is fraught with difficulty due to customs and getting people with the right expertise to build machines. Getting CRT monitors to Ladakh is still quite a costly due to relatively high resale value, large transport cost and possible damage caused in transit. CRTs also need more power. We estimate that at least two times the number of netbooks can be run off solar than desktop machines.

Windows is still the OS of choice in Ladakh but is virus ridden due to pen drives been carried around and machines are often out of service. Linux avoids the virus problem

Based on a Phone conversation today with Dorjee in Ladakh.

DWLS is still waiting for a computer teacher. But the solar power seems to be working well using 4 panels for 12 machines.

Solar power is also working well for the Siddartha School, recently installed in March.

Notes
Gary Visited Drukpa White Lotus School in 2007. I visited Siddhartha School in 2007 and 2008. In summer 2008 I stayed with my friend Dorjee in Choglamsar, and his brother in Law works at DWLS so I have a connection there and subsequently met Gary in London.

Came across this post again today and I wanted to make sure I recorded it here on my blog. Its one of those stories that stayed in my head. This was the quote that got me

I went to a school where on my first day I walked into the games hall to watch a sixth year boy, wearing a GB vest, slotting baskets from the sideline one after another. He was a legend in the school and was playing for the senior men’s GB team whilst still at school. In the rest of the games hall there seemed to be hundreds of other kids of all ages playing games, dribbling, making shots and having a great time – yet there wasn’t a teacher in sight!

However , I was interested to know why they chose dance in their school as a major sport for boys considering that Don was a rugby player.

I always enjoy Don’s Blog – especially during the holidays when I get time to catch up on my reading.

http://edubuzz.org/blogs/donsblog/2009/01/31/change-can-happen-but-it-take-time/

Creative Commons image from flickr user cjelli

We’ve been discussing our assessment tracking requirements at school – excel spreadsheets versus various database solutions always the same old problems the trade off between flexibility, usability, reliability and accessibility for different parties.

It would be great to do the task in SIMS our School Information System (SIS). However, SIMS incumbant in the majority of UK schools was an outdated clunker ten years ago and has a glacial product development record. 

Even if anyone had the expertise or the required permissions in school to try and use SIMS for the job, the lack of deep linking, copy and paste and rss make it a miserable task.  And as for finding any online help forums – forget it. For me SIMS turns the db mantra “write once, read anywhere” into “write into SIMS, never see it again”. At least not until a few weeks later when a deputy head thrusts a printout in front of you and starts asking questions.

So the classic question arose again in my mind. Isn’t there an open source alternative yet? So today I allowed myself 15mins to sketch a few requirements down (so I could judge if a solution was maturing or not), then set about looking for a development effort.

It seems that SchoolTool.org is the only credible option. I do remember reading about it before but that must have been over 3 years ago.  Interestingly Tom Hoffman the project manager in this paper offers some explanation of why an open source success in this area has been so slow to develop ( I would add that many innovative teachers have anti-assessment tendencies.)  But it seems that SchoolTool is getting to the stage where some adventurous schools (or even individual teachers) might want to be trying it. In other words they are nearly at version 1.

I’m installing it now on my Linux machine.

This documentation seems incredibly well written but difficult to navigate, in fact I found the whole website a bit confusing. I nearly gave up because at one stage it seemed that development had stopped a year ago (not true). Development has been fragmented it seems in different sites in USA, Belgium and Lithuania. And it seems that there are different parts School Bell and Can Do (assessment) that can confuse the casual observer.

It would be nice to have the user forums (actually mailing lists archives) to be more obvious too. Also as a self taught asp/php sql coder I have no idea if their none LAMP choice of ZOPE is a good one or not.

More later

I’ve mentioned Helena Norberg Hodge’s Book Ancient Futures before but I’ve just found the video that was made a few years after the book on Youtube. Well worth 23mins (in 3 parts).

I found both the book and video to be an amazing summary of the effects of globalisation on an indigenous people – perhaps due to the perceptiveness of the ladakhi people – I spent a long time in the mountains in Venezuela but the people don’t have the same perspective.

Less convincing however, were the solutions that she offers in the second half of the book.  Although that would be expected. Indentifying the problem clearly is a good start.