Teachers with Tech
International Examples of Best Practice
11:30-18:30 Sunday January 9th 2011
As part of the Sunday Service we are delighted to be hosting a series of inspiring talks from some of the world's leading teachers and practitioners who are using mobile, video game, social media or other affordable and disruptive technologies to improve the quality of learning.
During these quickfire 20 minutes talks practitioners will share their passion, practice and experiences.
Get your FREE tickets now.
Facilitated by Andy Black and Bob Harrison
11:30 Dr Jo Armitage, Adviser for E-Learning, London Borough of Hounslow, UK
HOTS Challenge - get involved in learning, gaming and London 2012
12:00 Jenny Ashby, Leading Teacher/ ICT/Reading recovery/Early Years Lit Co-ordinator
Epsom Primary School, Australia
A Touch of Technology
12:30 Brendan Tangney, Senior Lecturer, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
MobiMaths: An approach to utilising smartphones in the contexualsied teaching of mathematics
13:00 Peter Stidwill, Senior Web Producer for Education, Parliament's Education Service, UK
Being an MP is no game... or is it?
13:30 Carl Faulkner, Head teacher, Normanby Primary School, UK
Digital glue: helping to change your School through the careful use of technology.
14:00 Jonathan Nalder, Principal Project Officer, Mobile & Transformational Learning (OLPC)
Education Queensland, Australia
Moving at the Speed of Complex Learning: How?
14:30 Isabelle Duston, Founder and CEO, iLearn4Free, USA
Can we bridge the digital gap in education?
15:00 Mark Sutton, Assistant Curriculum Leader, Soar Valley College, Leicester, UK
Augmented Reality in the Classroom: How the PSP can create the wow factor.
15:30 Phil Hardin, Executive Director of Technology, Rowan-Salisbury School District, USA
Innovation + Mobile Learning Devices = Transformed Classrooms with Engaged Students
16:00 Stephan Stephensen, CEO, Dansk e-Learning Center, Denmark
1.5 million kids learning English in Mingoville Virtual World
16:30 Dr Steve Bunce, ICT CPD Leader for North East England, Open University and Vital
Skateboards, games and graffiti
17:00 Michelle Gallen, Social Entrepreneur, www.talkirish.com, Ireland and UK
How to Use Technology to Unlock Your Superpowers
17:30 Andrew Dickenson, teaching and learning consultant, CfBT, UK
Wii are learning
18:00 Geoff Stead, Head of Innovation, Tribal
Mobile projects in the developing world
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Dr Jo Armitage, Adviser for E-Learning in Hounslow has completed a number of projects that indicate that young people can be motivated to learn and can gain confidence through projects involving gaming. These successes have resulted in the annual Hounslow ‘Hold on to Sports’. The finals are held in July with sports events competed using the Nintendo Wii. Qualifying rounds involve research into a chosen sport and allied sport professions with media presentations such as photostories, films and animations.
Sarah Hoyle - Creative Director of Together We Create - manages digital art, film animation and multi media projects across London boroughs
We are managing this project together – a simple idea, easily taken forward by teachers and youth workers. Over 500 pupils took part in the final wii- games event last year, over 700 pupils took part in total. We intend to expand across all Hounslow schools in 2011/12 and will open the project out to other local authorities – opportunities for a gigantic wii- play off during the three day lead up to the opening of the games.
Hold on to Sports - A project where special schools and mainstream schools, G & T and SEN groups all have fun and compete together inspired by gaming (on the Wii) and London 2012
This is without doubt a learning initiative that has had more impact on learning than any other Val, Year 5 teacher
IT skills jumped from Level 3 to Level 5
Alexia, Year 5 Teacher
By the end of the unit the children were working far beyond starting levels, (from Level 1a-2a literacy to Level 4)
Mary, Y5 Teacher from School for Social Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties
You’re teaching us in secret – no longer disaffected Y5 boy
Learning… about sports, sports professionals and healthy choices. Working with technology and gaming to understand that sports games played on computers at home can link to physical sport played outside. Encouraging the children to try new sports and get actively involved - We wanted to create a project that tapped into Young People’s love of computer games whilst encouraging the children to learn more about sports, teamwork and working to deadlines
Leadership… empowering young people to get involved, make decisions and work together in teams: to research, create and present their ideas to a team of sports professionals
London 2012… the chance to be part of the 2012 Olympics. The HOTS has been awarded the Inspire Mark making it the official London 2012 project for Hounslow
http://www.clcfeltham.co.uk/HOTS/
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Jenny Ashby (@jjash) has been the ICT specialist and the network administrator for 10 years at Epsom Primary School, Victoria, Australia. She has been an early adopter of technologies including wireless networking, laptops and iPods. In a leading teacher role, Jenny is also the reading recovery teacher and the literacy co-ordinator at Epsom.
In 2008 Jenny was involved with a DEECD (Department of Education and Early Childhood)Victoria trial of the iPod Touch involving a grade 5/6 class and three other schools. Last year, in 2009, Jenny's role changed to a classroom teacher from 9-1pm for a Prep/1 class. She used the iPod Touch extensively with the Prep/1's in the literacy and numeracy blocks.
In 2010 Jenny has initiated and facilitated the use of the iPod Touch across the lower school from Grade Prep-2 and also has facilitated and co-ordinated the implementation of iPads for the iPad trial 1:1 in the grade 5/6 class with 8 other schools in Victoria.
Jenny has presented for the last three years at the state ICTEV and VITTA conferences Victoria, Australia. In 2009 Jenny also presented at the DEECD Innovators Showcase at Crown in Melbourne, QSITE(Queensland), ACHPER, the Knowledgebank with Elluminate and she attended NECC in Washington DC. In 2010 Jenny presented at ACEC2010 in Melbourne, Slide2learn2010 in July, the Digital Leaders Conf in Melbourne in September2010, uLearn NZ Oct and The Victorian Home Economics Conf in Melb in November.
Jenny says, "The best part about being innovative in education is being able to share my experiences with other teachers."
http://web.me.com/jenashby/iPodTouch_Project/Blog/Blog.html
The iPod Touch is magic in the early years literacy and numeracy programs. Discover how handhelds can give early learners (5-8yr olds) the power to email, blog, tweet, surf the web, create, relfect and share their learning and be reinforcing literacy and numeracy. A class program will be presented along with
a total lower school implementation strategy. What are the best apps and what can you create to individualise your students' learning? This session will leave you feeling very inspired to find out more and experience the Touch of Technology at your school.
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Brendan Tangney is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin where he is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science & Statistics and Co-director Centre for Research in IT in Education. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of Computers & Education (2008-) and the AACE Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching (2004-) and was pedagogical advisor to MIT’s Toy Symphony project. He is a recipient of Trinity’s Provost’s Teaching Award for excellence and innovation in teaching and learning.
He hates boring speakers and whatever else tries to keep his audiences fully engaged.
http://www.scss.tcd.ie/tangney
How was it that at the height of the scare about “mad cow disease” one could not go into a supermarket and buy beef (because there was a risk associated with eating it) while in the same shop a 17 year old could buy as many cigarettes as they liked (and thus incur a health risk at least two orders of magnitude greater)?
At the root of this phenomena is the almost total lack of understanding of number and mathematics which prevails in the general public and this of course can be traced directly to the way mathematics is taught in schools.
This talk will explore innovative ways in which smartphone technology can be used to help teach mathematical principles in such a way that meaning and understanding emerge from engaging with real world (or contextualised) problems. For example a simple app on a smartphone can use the accelerometer to measure the angle the phone is being held at with respect to the horizontal ground while gps can be used to measure distance. Armed with this learners can be sent out of the classroom and told to come back when they have worked out how many golf balls would fit into school building!
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Peter Stidwill (@stid42) is Senior Web Producer for Education at the UK Parliament. He’s passionate about digital learning, engagement and educational gaming. He is responsible for Parliament’s online education channel where he recently developed the award-winning learning game, MP For A Week. Before joining Parliament, Peter worked as a producer at the BBC on a range of education projects for both adults and children. These included the Digital Curriculum and Science and Nature Online, where he produced web content for BBC One’s science programme, Horizon. Peter also worked on an award-winning climate change web project and dabbled with mobile content production for the flagship children’s show, Blue Peter. Prior to this, he ran a widening access initiative for Cambridge University - an extension of his engineering masters dissertation in which he specialised in online learning.
http://www.parliament.uk/education
Most 11-16 year olds find politicians boring and politics a turn off. So how do you engage young people in the work of Parliament and arm them with the skills and knowledge to become active citizens? Parliament’s Education Service turned to gaming for the solution. MP For A Week is an award-winning, multi-level online game that drops players into the shoes of an MP. Whether ‘catching the Speaker’s eye’, asking questions in the chamber or facing a baying pack of journalists, players are scored according to their decisions and must survive the week. But behind the scenes lies a powerful game engine, a year’s worth of work and a massive collaboration between students, teachers, MPs and games developers. Peter Stidwill, Parliament’s online education producer, explains how technology, politics, gaming and learning came together to create this highly acclaimed resource. And he will reveal how the game has paved the way for Parliament’s next major online project: a unique society-building adventure. The talk aims to share best practice and practical pointers in developing engaging and successful learning games, and will be of interest to producers, practitioners and players alike.
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Carl Faulkner (@carlf67). Working as a Head teacher in the North East of England, Carl has developed his schools use of a range of technologies that support learners, their families and teachers.
The impact of his work with staff has been recognised through the presentation of several awards, including from the Guardian Newspaper, Hand Held Learning and the Northern Grid for Learning. Previously in his first Headship Carl led his school to be 'one of the top 12 most improved' schools in the country.
Carl has served as Team Leader in a Mountain Rescue Team, helping to coordinate and lead the response to a wide range of emergency situations.
I am firm believer that technology should be a lot more than the 'stuff' that doesn't work properly yet; although with over 200 handheld 'PDA' devices owned by students, and numerous Wiis, DS handhelds and SMARTboards in use everyday at Normanby making it work- and produce results- is a challenge. A big one!
I will talk about how innovation can be initiated and maintained in a school environment, and share my pupils views. I will draw upon my experiences both in school and on a windy rainswept Moor in the middle of the night!
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Jonathan Nalder (@jnxyz). Since experimenting with his own device in the classroom 6 years ago, Jonathan has been on an amazing journey of discovering just how digital tools, and especially mobile devices, can transform learning. From his own learning support classroom, to the urban schools of south east Queensland, the remote schools of far northern Australia, as well as to conferences in Victoria, New Zealand and the UK, Jonathan is now dedicated to getting this message out, and assisting other teachers to start on this incredible journey. His current job sees him working to promote and make real the benefits of the One Laptop per Child XO, as well as the iPad and iPod touch as a member of the SlidetoLearn.info team. Jonathan is an Apple Distinguished Educator, completed his Masters in Learning Innovation in 2008, was a Smart Classrooms Teaching Award winner in 2009, was shortlisted for the Handheld Learning Awards in the same year, and received an InnovatEd mLearning-focused grant in 2010.
Assumption: Education exists to prepare students for their future lives. Well, are we? We already know future employment will require creative, problem solving collaborators, but just how can educators and students keep up in the complex classroom that is required to create such future citizens? In two words - mobile devices.
This talk will detail a practical coal-face example of how to empower learners to become complex thinkers using handheld technology in a way that allows everyone to start moving at the speed of complex learning.
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Isabelle Duston (@IsabelleDuston) is a French polyglot currently living in the US with her three young children. She founded Apps of All Nations, LLC, an international mobile application development company. Her first series of applications was iCooking, a collection of 20 cookbooks for the iPhone available in over ten languages. After the success of iCooking, Duston moved on to start iStory, a collection of interactive and educational children’s story applications for the iPad.
A serial entrepreneur with a firm belief in the use of mobile technology to stimulate educational growth and social change, iLearn4Free is Duston’s first non-profit endeavor. She believes the digital world is lacking a strong platform for foreign languages, and that by bridging this digital language gap many social changes can be made, especially those regarding illiteracy in the developing world.
iLearn4Free is developing mobile applications that will teach children how to read in their native language. Using international collaborative tools to develop an engaging, interactive application, iLearn4free implements a business model that should allow the organization to distribute the application free of charge in the developing world.
Starting iLearn4Free has enabled Duston to align her skills with her vision for social change.
There is currently a tremendous gap existing between the western and developing worlds when it comes to the utilization of digital tools in the field of education. The digital gap between native English speakers and non native English speakers (95%) is even wider.
iLearn4Free is addressing this issue by creating educational applications for mobile devices in numerous languages that will be offered in the developing world at no cost. These applications will address early learning, with a focus on literacy.
The expanding global access to mobile phones provides us with an unprecedented opportunity to distribute these applications. Can the social enterprise business model chosen by iLearn4Free enable us to meet the tremendous challenges we are facing? These challenges include:
• Competing with PBS kids, who just received $72 million from the US education department to develop digital applications for literacy
• Build an application which can be adapted to different languages
• Create well-designed, fun and engaging applications at a low cost
• Establish and maintain effective educational content
Isabelle Duston will share with you how she plans to meet these challenges to reach her goal of bridging the digital gap and bringing equality to educational access across the globe.
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Mark Sutton. This year will be my sixth year in teaching, and I’m still as passionate about what I do. I’ve not always been a teacher though, and started out my career first as a silversmith and jeweller, then as a product designer, not to mention a 3D artist. Quite a mix, but one which I hope invigorates my teaching. It certainly goes hand-in-hand with my love of all things technological and gadgetry. This love of technology certainly imbues my teaching, and I love nothing more than passing on my passion for cool technology to my students, and any other teachers who are willing to listen.
http://www.mysecondsight.com/index.html
Just over a year ago, I attended the LWF conference hoping to be inspired and find new, exciting ways of using handheld technologies in the classroom. I knew such devices as the iphone and PSPs had potential, but was keen to see how other practitioners were using them. Last year I left invigorated, I return passionate.
Technological experiments turned into successes and these I plan to share, going from the basics of utilising PSPs for feedback and supporting EAL students to more cutting-edge teaching and learning activities: augmented reality walkthroughs of the solar system creating the “wow” factor students seek in their learning and the bringing to life Sherlock Holmes, using multi-media and AR, engaging some of the more stubborn and book-shy individuals. Following on from these case studies, I will be sharing my thoughts of future developments and those already in the pipeline.
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Phil Hardin is the Executive Director of Technology for the Rowan-Salisbury School District. With over twenty-six years of experience in education, Phil has been instrumental in bringing the use of mobile learning devices to the district’s thirty-five schools. Working with school district superintendent, Dr. Judy Grissom, they implemented the first 1:1 high school iPod touch project in the U.S. and the first Internet equipped wireless school bus project in the state of North Carolina to support the use of mobile learning devices.
After teaching high school chemistry and physics for fourteen years, Phil accepted a position with the University of North Carolina General Administration where he directed the NC Teacher Academy’s instructional technology program. Phil returned to Rowan-Salisbury Schools in 1999 to direct its technology program.
Phil’s education includes a B.A. in chemistry from Catawba College and a M.Ed. in physics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He holds a supervisor’s certificate in instructional technology and was selected as the State Technology Director of the Year for North Carolina in 2005. Phil has written and received funding for over twenty grants that have provided over two million dollars in funding to support technology initiatives in the school district.
http://www.rss.k12.nc.us/21stCentury/default.html
When faced with the challenge of improving student achievement and transforming classrooms into an engaging environment where students would be prepared to be successful in a global society, the Rowan-Salisbury School district began leveraging the power of mobile learning devices. The school district saw mobile learning devices as important educational tools that could be used inside and outside the classroom and thus could be used to extend student learning opportunities well beyond the traditional classroom.
Beginning in 2008, the school district began the transformation of classrooms by implementing a 1:1 iPod touch project that provided over 700 mobile devices to students in one of the district’s low achieving high schools. The school district is currently implementing over 2,300 additional iPod touch devices in over 50 elementary and secondary classrooms. This presentation will focus on how teachers are using the iPod touch devices to create engaging classrooms for students. Examples of teacher and student created mobile curriculum resources will be shown and the methods used to provide curriculum enrichment and remediation opportunities for students using the mobile devices will be described. Project planning, teacher professional development components, and the deployment of Internet equipped school buses will also be discussed.
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Stephan Læssøe Stephensen, founder and CEO of Mingoville. Stephan has been employed in the financial sector in London, pricing derivatives for large Swiss and British banks. In 2003 Stephan founded Danish e-Learning Center and has developed some of the most successful and award winning learning applications in Denmark. Stephan is a frequent guest speaker on e-learning, game development, technology in education at different venues around the world.
Picture this: 8 year old Peter is sitting very concentrated in front of the computer singing the same song over and over again, practicing his English pronunciation which has to be perfect. He is recording the song for the concert he is giving in the Mingoville World tonight. A concert, he has invited all his online friends to go to. On the other side of the world, 9 year old Alexandra is logging in to the Mingoville World. She is looking forward to going to the concert with her German friend Peter.
Kids share, develop, and create their lives and relationships in social media. At Mingoville, we go a step further with our Virtual World, turning social networking and gaming for kids into social learning for kids. Creating a virtual world that combines teaching English for kids with games and socialization is the best way to obtain an immersive yet effective learning environment on a platform that is so familiar to the kids already.
But it is not only important to develop the online learning room. I will in this presentation also demonstrate how to cater for the potential of ESL in the classroom. Future teachers will take advantage of several different learning platforms at the same time and in the same physical classroom.
Steve Bunce is an inspirational and experienced consultant. He has taught in primary, middle and secondary schools, especially focusing on ICT in the subject and across the curriculum.
Currently, he supports teachers as part of the Open University VITAL project, as the ICT CPD Regional Leader for the North East of England. He has a passion for innovative technologies including the use of video games for learning and digital storytelling. Always keen to try new ideas, his catchphrase is ‘What could possibly go wrong?’
Ollies, Nollies and grinding! Words not often used in the classroom, but familiar to skateboarders. How can we engage students in learning and develop their literacy?
Using video games, the students have looked at the language, clothing and culture around skateboarding. These games allow the creation of skate parks, video sequences and allow the students to provide commentaries for their tricks.
Game-based learning with skateboarding, showed how graffiti was evident throughout the games. This led to creating graffiti art with aerosol paints. A major success of this was how the students 'opened up' and shared about their views of school.
Then followed the use of digital graffiti using a 'Friispray' setup. This enabled virtually painting onto a screen, so the images could be shared.
In this talk, we'll see how the game-based learning engaged the students and how the technology captured the learning.
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Michelle Gallen (@michellegallen). Location-based technologist - shhmooze.com. Social Entrepreneur - talkirish.com. E-learning consultant - searchfindlearn.com. Girl Geek. Author. Chocoholic.
I completed my degree without using the Internet or a mobile phone. But thanks to my photographic memory, I excelled throughout college and my early career.
But at the age of 23, I acquired a devastating brain injury that destroyed my photographic memory and left me with crippling deficits.
Since then, I’ve used technology to overcome and compensate for a range of neurological deficits.
Becoming a geek helped me recover my confidence, my career and my life.
I want to share how you can leverage the gadgets we’re surrounded by to learn faster, to work smarter, and to make deeper connections in your life.
Andrew Dickenson (@freakygeak) When I was young my parents said I played too many computer games, read too many comics and watched too many films. Today I'm part of media education, games based learning and comic book projects. I believe in the world of today, preparing people for tomorrow.
http://learnnewstuff.wordpress.com
As part of a city wide project involving games tech and maths, and beyond, Lincolnshire's GBL consultants developed a new approach to working with gaming in the classroom. What we discovered was bags of enthusiasm for using Nintendo DSs and Wiis to engage kids, and a commitment to raising standards through exciting and innovative lessons. Engaged staff influenced the learning potential of every child, and reignited maths . By making exquisite links between subjects, games, different games tech, film and creativity,the new approach excited children from backgrounds who might otherwise have given up on school and themselves. We didn't just train brains, we made mathematicians, learners, and sponges. The pupils came to school ready to learn, excited to learn and above all, for some, they came to school.
Geoff Stead (@geoffstead) is one of Tribal’s thought leaders on new technologies, and how they can be used for learning, communication and collaboration. He and his team of technical inventors and educational wizards build apps, tools and websites to serve learners and tutors across the world. Every year over 1.2m learners use their tools and resources.
His mission is to find practical and meaningful uses for emerging technologies, embracing the power of web2.0, Social Media and Open Source Solutions to help to make learning work better for all – with a particular focus on hard to reach, excluded or disadvantaged adult learners
He is considered one of the Godfathers of Mobile Learning and has travelled the world encouraging practitioners to embrace mobile tools and opportunities since 2001. He was recently appointed advisor to the US Government on their first large-scale mobile learning project which will provide mobile apps to support aid workers and locals in disaster relief situations.
I will be looking at some of the amazing mobile projects happening right now in the developing world. Despite poor infrastructure and low spec devices, many educational projects in Africa and Asia are leading the way in finding new and innovative ways of reaching new learners, and building new skills.
My session will take an inspirational journey through m-learning destinations across the world, drawing out key success criteria and exploring some of the more significant differences to see what the UK can learn from our international friends.
