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This year's Northern Grid for Learning Conference in Newcastle was a great experience for the 230 or so education professionals who attended. The day long professional development event was hearty, encouraging, inspirational and highly entertaining - not something that can be said of every conference I have ever attended. I won't go into too many details of the day, which has already been covered quite well by the likes of Bill Lord and Martin Waller, but I will say this: There was plenty of smiling time. In a time when education is being squeezed and where there are not a lot of reasons for teachers to be cheerful, this event was quite a tonic. Russell Prue, in his inimitable, hilarious, and ever so slightly camp style, opened the proceedings with a barnstorming keynote. The humour was at times sledgehammer stuff, with Russell poking fun at inept government ministers, and parodying rigid school systems. We need a new model of assessment he argued, and it should not be based on 'guess what's inside the teacher's head.' He severely criticised the manner in which standardised tests and exams are conducted and gave us several OMG moments - as he exposed some of the differentials that are evident between what teachers teach and what learners learn. Shift has already happened, he remarked, and the world is not turning back to where it once was. When we ban mobile phones in school, he asked, who are we trying to protect? The learners, or the teachers and the school? Warming to his theme, he received one of the biggest laughs of the morning when he said: 'No pillock in London has the right or the expertise to tell you what to do in your own school'. It was indeed an impressive start to the day, and many delegates went to coffee with grins all over their faces. The workshops following the break were varied and fast paced, including sessions on digital storytelling, new tools and web applications, school blogging, using tech to support language learning and learning platforms from a whole host of familiar Twitter familiars, including Ian Usher, Dan Roberts, Lisa Stevens, Steve Bunce, Joe Dale and Bev Evans (all of whom are great value to follow on Twitter). Ian Addison's session on 15 ideas in 15 minutes was one particular highlight for me, because the ideas were wide ranging and far reaching in their potential. Jan Webb's session was equally eclectic, as she took us on a journey through a number of useful ICT applications, and showed the memorable and delightful video of twin babies holding a conversation about a lost sock.
I won't go into details of my own closing keynote, but Russell Prue referred to me as a 'Dynomutt' (I assume by this he meant I was barking, but I will take it as a compliment) ;-) I will say that I probably had the most difficult job of any the conference presenters, and that was to try to summarise and consolidate on the back of so many excellent presentations, as well as attempting to follow them when they had been so inspirational. I guess one of my main contributions to the conferences was to call all those teachers present to make a difference, be champions and agents of change, and to never, ever give up, even when the odds appear to be against you. If you are fighting a gorilla, I told them, you don't rest up when you are tired. You rest up when the gorilla is tired.A big thank you must go out to Simon Finch and the rest of the Northern Grid for Learning team for organising a very enjoyable and thought provoking event. Simon's images of the event can be viewed here.
It's grins up North by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
So the British Educational Communication and Technology Agency (Becta) is no more, euthanised by the new UK coalition Government's first round of cuts. About 240 jobs will be lost for a saving of around £65 million a year. We suspected it would happen, and our fears were confirmed this morning. Since its inception, Becta has been responsible for advising schools and colleges throughout the UK on how best to maximise the potential of ICT - information and communication technologies - in teaching and learning. But Becta has been a political pawn from the start. On it's website today, there is a statement reading: "A new UK Government took office on 11 May. As a result the content on this site may not reflect current Government policy". It leaves us asking just how much was Becta allowed to do? And how effective were they given the constraints imposed upon them by their political masters?
The Twitterverse and Blogosphere have been polarised. There are those who say good riddance, Becta did little more than impose a technocratic set of solutions onto schools and colleges who relied blindly on its advice. There was disquiet from some teachers that "schools often ending up with out-of-date and expensive technology" and that and did not have "the freedom to choose what they wanted, rather than what some bureaucrat felt they needed." That commentary is sourced from Rory Cellan-Jones's BBC Technology blog. Others mourn the loss, as if it were a member of their family - and when one considers all those who are losing their livelihood, I can see why the sentiment is strong. Among others, Ian Usher's blogpost for example, is fiercely protective of Becta's record, and points out several bits of disinformation circulating that shed a poorer light on the agency than they perhaps deserved. Then there are those who take the middle road. A brief blog perspective from John McLear makes a point I want to elaborate upon. He suggests that the demise of Becta will have teachers searching around for expertise, and this may ultimately lead to creative solutions, and that ultimately schools "may benefit from a slightly more fragmented decision making process inside authorities and nationwide." A few years back, in his seminal YouTube video "The Machine is Us/ing Us", Mike Wesch made the point that the Web was us, and that we would be the ones who organised the content of the web, through tagging, linking and otherwise making some sense out of chaos - Teaching the Machine. I think the same will apply to the future support of ICT in schools and colleges. I may be wrong, but I think there are enough learning technology experts out there who are connected enough to join forces and provide advice for schools when they need it. Here's my opinion on this, for what it's worth: I know there is a danger, as Neil Adam has counselled, "we are in danger of islands of brilliance in sea of mediocrity", but isn't that the way Advanced Skills Teachers work from their home school - and out across their networks of schools, cascading their skills? Isn't this also the way Specialist Status Colleges disseminate their funding down through their network of feeder primary schools? I see the opportunity here for a modern day version of Illich's 'Learning Webs' where we help each other more, and through the use of social media, it is emminently achievable. Peter Ford sees a danger in our voices becoming 'lost in the echo chamber' of social media, but poses the question - does the loss of Becta provide for a new age in which OFSTED pays "more than lipservice to the use of new technologies in schools". These are by no means the only voices out there - there is plenty more commentary to come over the next few days I am sure. I will say this - although the loss of Becta is very bad news and I'm very sorry for those who have lost their jobs, we can either look out from our cages and see the mud or see the stars. I for one would be very happy to provide advice and support to schools who need it, and indeed I am already doing so. Thanks for what you have achieved Becta. Now here's to a future where teachers help each other more.
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This year's Northern Grid for Learning Conference in Newcastle was a great experience for the 230 or so education professionals who attended. The day long professional development event was hearty, encouraging, inspirational and highly entertaining - not something that can be said of every conference I have ever attended. I won't go into too many details of the day, which has already been covered quite well by the likes of Bill Lord and Martin Waller, but I will say this: There was plenty of smiling time. In a time when education is being squeezed and where there are not a lot of reasons for teachers to be cheerful, this event was quite a tonic. Russell Prue, in his inimitable, hilarious, and ever so slightly camp style, opened the proceedings with a barnstorming keynote. The humour was at times sledgehammer stuff, with Russell poking fun at inept government ministers, and parodying rigid school systems. We need a new model of assessment he argued, and it should not be based on 'guess what's inside the teacher's head.' He severely criticised the manner in which standardised tests and exams are conducted and gave us several OMG moments - as he exposed some of the differentials that are evident between what teachers teach and what learners learn. Shift has already happened, he remarked, and the world is not turning back to where it once was. When we ban mobile phones in school, he asked, who are we trying to protect? The learners, or the teachers and the school? Warming to his theme, he received one of the biggest laughs of the morning when he said: 'No pillock in London has the right or the expertise to tell you what to do in your own school'. It was indeed an impressive start to the day, and many delegates went to coffee with grins all over their faces. 
