"The degree of ignorance displayed by people who seemed not to have read. the Programme of Study, or to understand what the unintended consequences. might be. “
I wrote the article below back in 2012, when lots of people were calling for the ICT Programme of Study to be scrapped, and to be replaced by a more computing-centric one.
The degree of ignorance displayed by people who seemed not to have read the Programme of Study, or to understand what the unintended consequences might be.
And the insults! One writer of a national newspaper described ICT teachers as "the runt of the teaching profession", and a speaker at a conference said that ICT teachers were useless, reducing one young teacher to tears.
In htis article I argued the case for people to take part in the government consultation about the curriculum, even though I was pretty sure it was a foregone conclusion.
Anyway, here is the article, denuded of dead links.
Yesterday I submitted my response to the English Government’s consultation on the issue of whether the ICT Programme of Study should be disapplied from September 2012. The consultation period ends today. I think responding is a very important thing to do, for reasons I’ll go into in a moment, but first, an explanation to readers not living in England, or a reminder to those who are.
Consultation is key. Photo (c) 2010 National Assembly For Wales / Cynulliad Cymru In a nutshell, and somewhat paraphrasing, Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education in England, said:
Look, folks. As you know, there has been a consultation process going on about whether or not ICT should remain in the National Curriculum after 2014. But, let’s face it, the Programme of Study is boring, unstimulating, not fit for purpose, so how about if we just let schools do their own thing for the next couple of years? They would still have to do ICT until 2014 at least, but they wouldn’t have to follow the Programme of Study or take any notice of its assessment guidance from September 2012. What do you think of that idea then?
NB: Mr Gove didn’t actually use those words, though I think that paragraph accurately reflects his views (though not necessarily mine).
Now, cynics may declare that it’s all in the bag, that the outcome is a foregone conclusion, namely that the ICT Programme of Study will be disapplied, come what may. I still think it’s important to take part in the process, for the following reasons:
Politicians are accountable
Call me naive, but if an overwhelming number of people disagreed with the idea of disapplying the Programme of Study, I think it would be hard for the Government to do so and get away with it. I also happen to believe that most people are honest most of the time.
I know my rights
I’ve spent my whole working life dealing with kids and adults who demand stuff, backing up their demand with that immortal phrase, “I know my rights!”. Well, I know mine too, and one of them is the right to take part in consultations about government policy. When I submitted my response to the consultation, I was informed that my reference number was 290. I do hope that isn’t the number of people who responded. Perhaps it’s the number of people who registered, which was optional – although, even so, that would be a pretty low number. I believe that people should exercise their rights, because otherwise there is always a danger that some bean counter in the Treasury will decide it’s not cost-effective to run a consultation for just a relative handful of people.
The outcome isn’t up to you
As it says in various religious texts, ones responsibility is to act, but you can’t control the outcome. So the argument that, for example, “nothing I say will make any difference” may be true, but it may not be: how would you know? In fact, you might say something so startlingly brilliant that someone from the Department for Education will contact you and ask how much you’d like as a “golden hello” to come and work for them (I’ve been sitting by the phone all morning; should be any time now…).
There is a danger in overselling your services. Being too overbearing simply does not work.
menu and clock, by Terry Freedman
A few years ago I stopped going to 'my' gym, and started going to an unfamiliar one instead. The small increase in travelling time and the extra cost in terms of parking were more than compensated for by the peace and quiet I enjoyed as a result of switching.
So what's all this about, and how does it relate to educational technology?
Let me deal with the second question first, because I wish to keep your attention. Many subject leaders of ICT/Computing/Education Technology in schools (and sometimes Local Authorities and other organisations) have a remit to encourage colleagues to use educational technology as well. To do so, one has to tell people about, and demonstrate to people, the benefits. But there is a fine line between doing that, and being completely insensitive -- and thereby disrespectful -- to the other person.
Back to the gym. It's not the gym that's the problem, but the restaurant. If you order a cheese sandwich, you get a sort of roll call (no pun intended) of every other type of sandwich you could have instead. A request for a coffee is answered by a list of all the health benefits of smoothies. Wondering aloud if you might try the fruit salad, you get a long-winded explanation of all the ingredients therein, why they are healthy and how the fruit was hand-picked from a local farm only hours earlier. You get what you want in the end, but not before having to waste time listening to someone you don't wish to listen to, and without feeling that you have to summon up reserves of assertiveness merely in order to enjoy the light refreshment of your choice — and in the shortest possible time.
Consequently, I decided to vote with my feet.
Several conclusions can be drawn from this in the context of education technology in schools:
Firstly, I can read. Therefore, I can read the menu. I don't need someone bending my ear about all the things I could have. Does your school have a menu of ICT services that colleagues could enjoy? If not, I think you should make that a priority: not only will it be informative to those colleagues who wish to be informed, it will save you from being an insufferable bore to those who don't.
Secondly, there's an implicit assumption that I am not well-informed enough to make a sensible choice by myself. At least, one could infer that. By the same token, to look at this in an educational technology context, if someone tells you they'd like to word-process their worksheets, do you respond by suggesting they may like to consider desktop publishing them instead? I did once, and was unable to understand the negative reaction I received. It's fairly safe to assume that someone who is intelligent and qualified enough to be a teacher is able to decide what they'd like to do with their own worksheets. And if you do harbour any doubts about that, you can always refer them to that menu I was talking about.
Thirdly and finally, I think it is generally acknowledged that there is nothing worse than an evangelist. As an ex-smoker, I suddenly lurch somewhere to the right of Attila The Hun when anyone inadvertently blows cigarette smoke in my face. Nobody is more tedious than the couple who have just discovered a new holiday resort and insist on showing you -- and describing in great detail -- every single one of the 400 photographs they took whilst on vacation.
Similarly, if you start to get the feeling that the staffroom starts to empty when you enter it, and bookings for equipment either dries up or starts to be done on teachers' behalf by trusted students, perhaps it's time to ask yourself if, perhaps, you've been coming on a little strong lately.
This article was first published on 23rd September 2009.
I submitted my review of this book to Teach Secondary magazine, an educational magazine in the UK. The first review below is what the magazine published. The second one is what I actually wrote! In substantive terms there is little difference between the two, but you may find it interesting to see what the editor altered.
Click the here to see this book on Amazon (affiliate link)
Published version
Have you ever considered that the relentless contemporary pursuit of economic growth, efficiency and digitisation may not be accidental? Many have also wondered whether artificial intelligence will become sentient, and what it will do if that comes to pass.These fears aren’t especially new, but what’s interesting with Against the Machine is Kingsnorth’s way of approaching the material with what could be described as a ‘biblical’ perspective.
It’s a decision that may prove divisive among readers and, I suspect, potentially limit the book’s appeal – but having committed, he does a good job of presenting the challenges we all face in the modern age and placing them in a sweeping historical context.
There’s much to discover here, including fascinating dives into the hidden histories and latter-day impacts of the UK’s Enclosure Acts, the French Revolution and steady rise of modern surveillance technology.
A fascinating and rewarding book.
Reviewed by Terry Freedman
My original version
Have you ever considered that the relentless pursuit of economic growth, efficiency and digitisation may not be accidental? Many people have wondered, for example, whether artificial intelligence is, or is about to become, sentient – and, moreover, what it will do if it does.
None of this is especially new. Indeed, I was reminded of a film from 1977 called Demon Seed about an all-powerful computer that wanted to procreate. What perhaps is new is the author’s apocalyptical approach coming from a biblical perspective. This is not a position, sometimes positively supernatural, that will appeal to many I suspect. However, Kingsworth does a good job of presenting the challenges facing the current age, and placing them in a sweeping historical context.
There is much to discuss here, such as the real reasons for, and impact of, the Enclosure Acts, the French Revolution and the advance of surveillance technology.
I keep coming across articles and research about schools’ AI policies — or the lack of them. It seems to me that we’ve been here before, with policies about teachers’ and departments’ use of technology, and e-safety. There is a familiar pattern:
Someone realises that everything is a bit ad hoc or completely absent, and expresses the need for someone to draft a policy about it.
That “someone” is either the head of computing, ed tech co-ordinator or similar, or the IT technician.
Alternatively, a template policy is downloaded from the internet, and the school puts its name in the appropriate slot.
The policy is then either distributed to all members of staff, or announced in a school bulletin.
It is then filed in the Principal’s Office, the IT technician’s office, or numerous waste paper baskets.
Job done, another box is ticked.
Terry, thinking about, and unimpressed by, the typical education policy formation process.
Yes, I am cynical, but tell me I’m wrong. In one of my jobs as Head of Computing, the Ofsted person assigned to me asked me what I thought of the school’s Equal Opportunities Policy. I replied that unfortunately I hadn’t had a chance to read it since it appeared in my pigeon-hole the previous day. He said nothing, but a wry smile flickered across his face. He knew what was going on, he could see right through the bullshit. Why would I wish to be seen to be party to this rubbish?
When I was working as an ICT advisor, the government of the day announced that schools which didn’t have an e-safety policy would be denied technology-designated funding from the government. Many of the schools in the district I worked in had such a policy; several didn’t.
My boss: We have a pro-forma e-safety policy. If you get those schools without a policy to put their name in it and sign it, we can approve the funding.
Me: Well, surely we should withhold the funding until they actually do something themselves?
My boss: Are you going to be the person explaining to a group of ferocious headteachers why they are not getting the funding?
The next year I was working for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, and we had a multi-agency meeting about e-safety in schools. A young man from the department of education thumped his fist on the table and declared: We need to make sure that only those schools with an e-safety policy in place gets the funding. His older colleague said: And who is going to do that? There are 30,000 schools in the country, and only you and me in the office.
It was at that point I realised that all the announcements and initiatives emanating from the department for education were all smoke and mirrors: there was nothing behind the curtain! Now, maybe it’s all changed now, but I would need some convincing.
Back to the issue of schools’ AI policies. Imposing one from above never really works in my experience. Setting up a committee ends up as a talking shop where nothing ends up being done, or is like an elephant’s giving birth: it’s done at a high level, with a lot of noise, and takes two years to see results.
I’m inclined to the view that what senior leadership teams should do is have what I call a very thin policy, or baseline, and then allow each teacher and area in the school to build on that as they wish.
For instance, you might stipulate that if AI is used in the production of a scheme of work, say, that fact should be stated somewhere. That would set a good example I think. The policy document might also state that AI shouldn’t be used to produce entire documents which are then passed off as the teacher’s own work.
There is a more fundamental issue I think: are teachers actually using AI, and if not, why not?
But so what? Well, I think Andrew Ng, the co-founder of Google Brain, was probably correct when he said, “AI won’t replace people, but maybe people that use AI will replace people that don’t.” That would apply to teachers too, in my opinion.
To be implented and to mean anything, any school policy must:
meet genuine needs;
be easy to implement.
Meeting genuine needs
By “genuine” I mean real, not doing something in order to tick a box or satisfy some artificial requirement that benefits nobody. When it became feasible to have computers in classrooms there were some headteachers who would walk around the school in order to check whether the computers were on, as if they thought kids would learn stuff through a process of osmosis. Same thing happened when classrooms started to acquire interactive whiteboards. A speaker from Ofsted went even further: he told the assembled group of advisors on a training day that if computers weren’t available then the teacher should just mention them. I asked the then head of ICT at Ofsted if that was indeed the official Ofsted stance, and he shook his head and said “They have had so much training. No, it is absolutely not Ofsted’s official policy.”
So what would count as a genuine need? Something that will make the teacher’s job easier, more efficient or more effective. That means that teachers need to know about what they could do with AI, and I don’t mean giving them a long list of ideas. If something looks overwhelming, it will be ignored.
I’ve included in my newsletter, Digital Education, a few things I’ve tried out, which may give you some ideas for whetting teachers’ appetites. See Midweek Meanderings #2.
Be easy to implement
I don’t believe that giving people a long list of prompts, each of which is half a page long, is useful. It’s too complicated. Teachers are intelligent people. If a prompt doesn’t give them quite what they want they can refine it through an iterative process. Some AI programmes, like Google’s NotbookLM and ChatGPT, make that process dead easy by suggesting further avenues of exploration — in effect prompts —-themselves.
There are other things you can do to help teachers implement AI if they can see some potential benefits of doing so, and I will come back to this another time.
I submitted my review of this book to Teach Secondary magazine, an educational magazine in the UK. The first review below is what the magazine published. The second one is what I actually wrote! In substantive terms there is little difference between the two, but you may find it interesting to see what the editor altered.
Click the here to see this book on Amazon (affiliate link)
Published version
I can’t say I fully understood all the maths in this book, but putting myself in a maths teacher’s shoes, I see Blueprints as a godsend.Why?
Firstly, because it answers that most dreaded of questions – how is maths relevant to everyday life?
Secondly, because ofthe sheer range oftopics and intriguing areas of maths that it covers.A cursory glance at the ‘Dramatis Personae’ included at the start reveals a list of composers, writers, architects and artists, plus several other professions you might not expect.
Yes,Blueprints is no dry maths textbook, but rather a journey through various key mathematical concepts, as readers are shown how they’ve featured in nature, or been integrated into great works of art and craftsmanship overtime.
The concepts discussed include the circle,the Golden Ratio, fractals and randomness itself.The well-judged prose, combined with an impressive breadth of coverage,makes Blueprints a genuine pleasure to read.
My original version
I cannot say that I fully understood all the maths in this book, but putting myself in a maths teacher’s shoes I see Blueprints as a godsend. Why? Because it provides two important elements.
Firstly, it answers that most dreaded of questions: how is this relevant to everyday life?
Secondly, the range of topics and areas of maths covered is intriguing. Even a cursory glance at the “Dramatis Personae” at the beginning will serve as an hors d'oeuvres to the main course: composers, writers, architects and artists and several more professions are featured.
Thus Blueprints is not a dry maths textbook filled with imaginary problems, but a journey through the key concepts to see how they have featured in Nature or in people’s works. These include the circle, the golden ratio, fractals and even randomness. It is nicely written too. This, combined with the breadth of coverage mentioned earlier, makes Blueprints a pleasure to read.
Note: I also wrote a review of this book for Schoolsweek, which I republished here: Blueprints.
