Grumbledook Blogs

It has been a slow month for blogging and I am quite a bit behind in setting down various notes on from paper to the digital page. I presently have 3 articles partly written around Sharepoint and other tools on the LA Learning Platform (Sharepoint & Web 2.0, hosted vs local Sharepoint and SafeMail vs alternative email solutions), 2 additions to the Standard Network Configuration / Build for our schools, and so on. However, this time I want to speak about TeachMeets, having spoken at one again about a week and a half ago.

Most times I have spoken at TeachMeets it has been a fair chunk of rhetoric (not being a classroom practitioner) and every time it has been a last minute thing, to fill up space and mainly because I have been inspired by something I have at that particular TeachMeet or the event associated with it. This time was meant to be different. I knew I had what I wanted to speak about, had stuff ready to show … but it never works out like that does it!  I do have a good excuse though.

Last January I retired from EduGeek.net, and if you don’t know what it is then think of it as an online community, herded carefully to share ideas and answer each other’s ideas. Nothing new there really … except that it is now one of the top hits in google, has the backing of thousands of members and is now a company. It earns money which is ploughed back into the site, running an annual conference for members (free to attend) and helps fund the running of the Technical Help Point at BETT each year …

So why would I retire from being on the staff (a volountary role) just as it takes off? Why would I step down from a group I had been part of since a fortnight or so after it started up? Why would I move on from a group where I had a position of authority and control? Well … I didn’t. Leave that is. I discovered that I had to get a balance between work and life. I also discovered that my use of EduGeek really needed to go back to about the collaboration and sharing. I was missing that bit and it was a really important decision.

My need for collaboration has always been great … not because I don’t have ideas, I do … but I need to share and compare them. Since getting online properly 11 years ago I have been lucky to be involved with a number of sterling communities … starting with Alt.Fan.Pratchett and other newsgroups (I remember with fondish memories the circular arguments between the windows, linux and RISC fanbois on uk.education.schools-it!), then moving onto JISC Mailing lists, Becta forums and then I found EduGeek … a sense of coming home occurred and after a bit of cajoling into doing more behind the scenes work I discovered that I was one of the admins … a respected member of the community and running things with the support and direction of the EduGeek EduGod, Chris Byers. But I continued with my other networks too … I was on twitter mainly due to Russ Dyas (fellow EduGeek Admin), facebook due to a plethora of old friends, blogging due to Peter Ford and I have a presence on most social network / web 2.0 sites … partly to protect my online presence (ooohhh … that is another post that I need to finish actually). I have had a few prods recently about it being strange about stepping down from an EduGeek role  too … in spite of repeatedly explaining about needing a life, work commitments and having to do other stuff.

So … what does this have to do with TeachMeets? Well, at TeachMeet Bett 2010 I was originally going to talk about collaboration and the benefits of it and EduGeek.net was going to be my principle example, but I ditched that … not because Edugeek.net was the wrong example … but because I got inspired. Although collaboration could be about one site or one group, it plainly isn’t with me.

One of the previous presenters that night demonstrated a fantastic site, http://linkbun.ch, as a URL shortener and once you have put a list of URLs on the page it will give you a single shortened URL. Click on it and the page gives you the option the entire bunch … each link in a new tab. http://linkbun.ch/kc2y was the list I put together and this is pretty much my list of sites where I have learnt how to collaborate. Translating this to teachers, they could get the various resources they need for a lesson and just send a single link out to kids, translating it too techies then this could be the various FAQs and how-to guides for soemone else to complete a piece of work. It has lots of uses for me and it was just perfect to show people where I use to collaborate.

So .. to answer the original question, I didn’t leave an internet start-up … I am just looking for the next stage in my journey (but glad to have various places to stop back at on my way around).

I’m also wondering at which point I will turn up to a TeachMeet and actually talk about what I planned to instead of having a cracking idea on the night!

It isn’t that long until BETT 2010 and I am in the fairly novel position for me of having some time on my hands. In previous years I have been running the EduGeek Technical Help Point, been assisting on stand such as the ICT Register or Lapsafe … or had a steady stream of suppliers to catch up with in a limited period of time because I am only down for a single day.

This year I am down 3 of the 4 days, and all of the evening events, and am still pretty open for catching up with people. So I have decided to plan out my days and evenings here … and perhaps people who would like to catch up with me (or me with them) can at least arrange it via this blog or check on whether I am around when *they* are free.

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

(I can’t believe I had left this in as draft and not posted it! Originally written on 24th October – Published 2nd November!)

I marvelled last night to receive a message from Drew Buddie about where the plans had reached when looking at what is happening over 3 nights at BETT 2010 (yes, that is 3 nights) and more information can be found at his blog.

It is quite timely actually since myself and Peter Ford were talking yesterday about trying to set a date for a Northamptonshire TeachMeet. We are collecting a number of people on the way who just inspire us so much with what they are doing in their schools or schools they work with that we want to give them a chance to showcase and link with others of a like mind.

We are presently looking at opportunities in May and although I was going to wait until after half-term, people like Drew and Tom Barrett have given me the bug to get things going now. It is worth mentioning that the EduGeek stand at BETT was inspired by the Help Us Get To BETT Moodle stand that Drew and others got going. If not for that idea and the support of EMAP (who have come up trumps for Drew and co this time again) then such ideas would not have happened. Not said it publicly before, but thank you.

So … next step, TeachMeet Northants!

On 15th October 2009 Open Source Schools held a seminar on Innovation for LA Staff.

A fantastic day with many wonderful sessions but I thought I would point out my own one first. Tasked with talking about how IT Support teams are making a difference with Open Source I chose to talk about a number of core facts by which I work with schools and projects I have asked IT Managers in Northants to complete.

The presentation can be found here

And twitcam stream for the afternoon session is here and I am the first speaker so no need to scrub through. The morning session can be found at http://twitcam.com/3xoh and http://twitcam.com/3xpf

Further information about the day, discussions about open source in schools and access to other information is available at Open Source Schools.

There are times when you just know that a day is going to be a wonderful one, that no matter how nervous you are about presenting, no matter how tired you may or how much work you have to do for the next day… You just get a tingle.
And that is what I had this morning as I drove down to the Open Source Schools seminar on innovation for LA Staff.
In fact I felt so excited that I started to rethink my presentation and I mentally rewrote it… And then spent some time in the intro reworking the presentation.

A wonderful set of speakers made the event wonderful and rather than do a breakdown of each one I would strongly suggest you visit the streams that were kindly set up an run by Leon Cych (links on the Open Source Schools website).

I’ll make a specific blog post about my session later but I would just like to thank all those who were good sports by joining in, by answering questions and for the positive feedback at the end.

But the thing I really want to blog about is the wonderful tour we were given of Bletchley Park, slightly whistlestop due to the time the seminar finished, but wonderful nonetheless.

We went round in awe and with a sense of reverence, and we are talking about the great and the good of OSS and innovation in education. The feeling that what we do, to help kids and teachers, has a direct line from the work done by the secret many in those huts.

OSS folk (in particular Moodle) have been called men in sheds, fiddling around … And as was said at the beginning of the day, it was the men in these sheds that made a difference.

It gives you hope and gives you the drive to do the best you can.

You don’t get many days like today… and I am glad it was shared with many other like minded people.

Friday was quite a fun night really … an eventful start to it as I witnessed a car crash into the central reservation, provided immediate assistance (no injuries, just shock), called emergency services and got my trainers covered in mud.

If you have never come across a TeachMeet before I consider myself lucky that I had my first experience at BETT this year. TeachMeet is a fantastic chance for education practitioners to get together and share good practice. It is a special type of Unconference and has a distinct flavour of fun. Speakers (and anyone can speak) talk about practice and can speak for 7 mins (micro-presentation) or 2 mins (nano-presentation) … with a few longer learning conversations or specialist speakers. The key thing is that it is not a sales pitch … but based on practice, what works in a classroom and no idea is talked down.

I turned up just in time to see Daniel Needlestone talking about the use of Google Apps at his school, and it just got better from there.

Rather than do a transcript of each speaker I’ll just put up a few links of things such as the blogs of various speakers (most have updated their blog with info about what they spoke about), the archived FlashMeeting from the show and to a few other things.

Daniel Needlestone – Google Apps at school http://nstoneit.com/

Steph Beard – Scratch http://scratch.mit.edu/

Ian Usher – Games Design Courses. A volountary group ranging from year 8-13 who designed games in Flash. The course was run via Moodle as the VLE and external experts took part via a remote conference (via Adobe Connect mainly).

Doug Belshaw – http://dougbelshaw.com/blog/ - Doug gave a quick thank you to those who supported and helped him through twitter in his successful application for Director of elearning at an Academy (his childhood school). he went on to talk about the use of blogs in Yr10 History by using http://www.posterous.com/ more details are in his blog post. Also use of http://voicethread.com/,  Google Apps Team Edition (http://www.google.com/apps/edu/index.html) and http://classtools.net/

We split off into two rooms to allow for more specific presentations and I stuck with a dominantly secondary room.

Jose Picardo (http://www.boxoftricks.net/) kicked off talking about communication and how he manages it with hs students, since his school does not have a VLE. Homework was an issue, students don’t know their password for email and don’t really *want* to go out of their way. Links and comments would be put up on http://www.diigo.com/ and messages would be put up on http://www.edmodo.com/ and documents uploaded to http://www.scribd.com/ - I did also consider that possibly using http://www.evernote.com  as an online annotation tool might also be handy to use …

Stuart Rideout – http://www.getplannerlive.com/ a free online homework and planner tool that has been developed and is available to all schools. Very popular with the students and they push staff to constantly update.

Doug Dickinson – http://www.ictopus.org.uk/ whilst being aimed at Primary there are still a large number of resources available via lessons2go … there are also a range of copyright free images via the Pictopus section of the site.

After a short beer break (or J2O in my case) we returned to the first of the learning conversations (this one led by Doug Belshaw) ”Why Technology?” This is 3.19.00 on the flashmeeting session (link at the bottom) and it is better to listen to this. I will try and capture the audio later for this as it has a few interesting points.

Lisa Stevens – http://lisibo.blogspot.com/ talking about updating the school website, http://www.voki.com/ and http://www.twitter.com to interact with other language users across the world.

Laura Walker – http://mrslwalker.com Laura also thanks fellow tweeps for support in her succesful bid to become Director of eLearning (another person who is not an ICT specialist) and talks about how the role of eLearning has changed in schools, no longer just the Network Manager or Head of ICT. Stressing the importance of your PLN (Personal Learning Network). Where do you go from here though in your long term road map? LA? Consultant? Senior Management / Leadership within the school?

Tom Barrett – http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/ demonstrating how he has been testing the SMART table in the classroom. Full details are on his blog but I was interested to hear that there was pretty much no learning curve for the multi-touch functions. It just came naturally … even for those not using iPhones and so on.

Next was the second Learning Conversation (led by ian Guest) was “Are we preaching to the converted?” in reference to getting more people involved with Teachmeet (and similar CPD events) and is on at 3.53.00 on the flashmeeting but does get cut short as the flashmeeting ran out of time. The consensus appeared to be that inspiring folk to use ICT is an important factor. Differentiated training resources, using non-IT specialists (in particulr the ‘middle of the road’ ability staff) to deliver training, having a focused group to help steer ICT CPD and making use of peer support all seemed tried and tested methods.

The last two sessions are not on the Flashmeeting … those of John Sutton and yours truly … I think there is a conspiracy!

John talked about Honeycomb as a tool for sharing ideas, links and other information with students … he might have said more but I was suddenly thinking about what I was going to speak about … sorry John!

Finally (or the graveyard shift as Ian Usher tweeted it) I did a nano-presentation on Community. Part one was talking about the importance of sharing our communities (or PLNs if you prefer) and encouraging more crossover. Highlighted in this was the http://opensourceschools.org.uk/ community, in particular for the unconference and http://edugeek.net.

Part two was talking about engaging with your community and I pointed people at a tool showed to me by Peter Ford for student voice and also demonstrated at a recent conference for Governors in Northamptonshire. http://www.powerleague.org.uk is a handy survey tool and well worth a look.

So, if you want to watch / listen to it all (or just the Learning Conversations) then got to http://flashmeeting.e2bn.net/fm/cbd8ce-4484. Most of the speakers have more information on their particular blogs or links are available if you tweet them.

I think this is a fair summary (?) of the meet … if not then feel free to give me admendments and I’ll update as soon as possible.

Yesterday down at InfoSec / IT Support Show. After getting down there via a later (and cheaper) train I met up with Tom Newton from Smoothwall. A quick dash into infosec was completed and a lovely, chilled Innocent Smoothie was quaffed!

Why did I go down to is clearly not an education event? Actually, it is an education event. And banking. And for lots of other sectors too. In fact, if you have IT then it is relevant.

InfoSec was very good but I found the IT Support show a tad naff. The first thing to notice is that it all seems so much smaller this year. The layout is a bit more squashed than Olympia but of definitely did not feel empty, which some previous shows did.

The IT Support show was upstairs and slightly disappointing. I went with the goal of looking for more resources and advice for service management for our schools, but most people there had no interest in education, limited (or no) knowledge of the needs of schools and didn’t even pay attention to some key comments I made such as “I am not looking to bulk buy but give advice to schools!” A few notable exceptions were very helpful.

Hornbill fully accepted that whilst they have some fantastic strategies for service management and support, they could not get them to a price suitable for schools individually, but could cater for clusters or at LA procurement level.

Tools4ever still have two brilliant products which have been developed schools in mind, one for self-service password reset and the other for user administration where it gathers information from SIMS or CMIS to populate the AD and other systems.

There are a number of slimlime helpdesk solutions available from folks like sitehelpdesk.com and I can’t forget to mention NetSupportDNA too (if you can afford the whole lot!)

Back down at InfoSec I spent my time looking at two areas, information security and anti-virus options. Since most Northants schools are connected via EMBC then I wasn’t going to spend lots of time looking at alternative (ie additional) filtering solutions. I can talk about that another time or you can have a look edugeek.net.

The usual suppliers were present: Symantec
McAfee
Norman
Trend micro
Kaspersky
Sophos
and others with systems that plugged into particular solutions.

I was quite pleased with the chat with Trend, McAfee and Sophos. They understood the issue of having aging devices getting laden down with bloated signatures making machines grind to a halt. Trend’s solution is to remove a chunk of the client and make it look more online as needed.

Sophos spoke about using their free rootkit killing tool to help deal with staff or student machines when they have been off network for a period of time.

They all have decent management consoles and that is an important factor when checking that you are on top of things rather than having to do rushed fixed when a problem arises.

Information security I’ll talk about next week as Becta recently refreshed their data handling guidance.

As well as stuff from NAACE2009, there have been a few other sessions I have been to looking at BSF. Over the weekend I’ll put up some notes on this and things that I am looking at.

The first thing I need to say is that I feel bad that I am going along to these events and not fighting the good fight on technical grounds but it is obvious at the moment that alternative business case proposals are unlikely to work, for whatever reason, but there are still lots of other ways that schools can ensure that they get what they need and a greater chance of getting what they want (the two are not always the same though!)

At NAACE2009 we had a session with Steve Moss from Partership for Schools. This looked at the changes that will happen from wave 7 onwards, learning from the mistakes and sucesses from precious waves. A few key things to note was the stress on stakeholder engagement. Making sure that schools are asking the right questions about what they will get for ICT; raising awareness of using educational requirements as the arguing points and not just relying on best value or technical excellence; getting schools to recognise that service providers will want to stick to specifications and single systems as this reduces their costs as well as reducing the risk that the company will be penalised if something goes wrong when trying something new. More on this bit later.

The other session at NAACE2009 was about Change Management, and without wanting to single out a provider, it was run by Northgate, and as some may have already heard me say, it was vey much a case of “we will do your change management because we know best!”

There was me thinking that *all* partners in BSF had to understand change management? If we
Don’t then we will only get what is delivered, not what has been asked for.

Personally I wasn’t impressed with the message put across, and will challenge that in any bidders I come across. I was also given the impression that many people do not understand that change management means different things to different people, and also in different stages I’m the program.

The other two events I have been to was the guardian ICT in BSF event, and a local meeting with 4Ps to raise awareness of next stages. More about these sessions later

A pretty good conference with a good bunch of folk ( I can’t even say “for consultants and advisors” any more!)

The various sessions generally hit the mark or provoked thought and discussion and rather than do a single post of it all I’ll summarise most of it and the break down a few sessions.

I would recommend you go to http://blackpoolconference00.naaceblogs.org and have a look through the blog posts and comments, the available presentations and the videos when they are available.

The opening address was a vid clip from Jim Knight with JK on twitter answering questions. A record of this twitter session is on the above site.

Anne McFarlane challenged a number of preconceptions around the use of mobile devices and we could look where there are opportunities to make a difference with that.

Mick Waters spoke about the curriculum, the problems with it and why the shift looks as if it is happening to a skills led, information accessing model that operates across the curriculum. There were no Q&A at this session but it did seem as if the curriculum is still being done *too* schools. His parting comment about us having come to the conference to find out where to go next showed this a bit. Perhaps an acknowledgement that many at the conference will tell QCA where to go next… on the curriculum that is! This should not take away from a good session with a healthy dose of reality in it.

The masterclass I went to was looking at what Microsoft had been doing over the last year in pushing things forward and I have to praise the innovative teachers network here… some really good and novel uses of kit going on.

This was followed up with the keynote on day 2 by Mr Bean. Martin G Bean, the General manager Education Products Group, Microsoft that is! OK a fair chunk of it was a sales push for how MS software can push the boundaries, and yes… it can. The innovative teachers network is showing this and whilst the Surface may just seem like a gadget it has potential depending on how good the tools are to allow teachers and students to build high quality resources for learning and teaching. Martin was honest and said that they are looking to us for ideas too and that content providers are also working on adapting existing or making new content. I’ll wait a bit before making a conclusion about it really. In the hands of the right teacher it would be brilliant, but them so coils a snooker table I sometimes feel!

The next sessions, promoting ICT in BSF and change management, I will leave for the moment as they need dealing with separately. One session cleared up a few things but the other pricked a nerve!

The afternoon exhibition was handy to just have an explore of ideas with a few suppliers.

The last two sessions I went to were both with John Davitt, a keynote and then I stayed on for his breakout session. A truly fun guy who seems to have more ideas per minute than I do all day. (no comments on that, please!)

Day three will also be a separate post too. Too much to squeeze in!

So, I am nearly home now and will have to have a break tonight to recharge my brain. Thanks to all who kept up with my tweets and I’ll try and link to the naace capture of that soon. Alternatively you can use http://search.twitter.com and search using the hashtag #naace2009

I have a number of things to blog about at the moment after the NAACE conference 2009, but I am still aware I have a pile of notes from BETT to put up and some more sharepoint stuff too… too many conferences / shows, too much operational work and not enough time to sit down and think about what things mean and how things change because of them.

Oh well… for the moment I will just collect my thoughts from the last few days and see where we go from there. Perhaps a few more hours over the weekend to work a bit more on the generic ICT Vision Statement that Peter and I are putting together. NAACE 2009 definitely sparked off a number of things to put in there… but a number of things need to be taken out!