digital lifeboat

 CompendiumLD maps of the second stage course design.

Just wanting to capture a few notes on the twilight session by making some very generalised observations. I will be looking in detail at the avalanche of feedback over the next couple of weeks.

 I had two hours to introduce the course to the target group. Half worked in the ICT suite on computers the other half on laptops via a wireless connection in the room next door. We began the session with some introduction and explanation of the project for the benefit of new staff.

 The school has a 2Mb Internet connection.

Testing

I was not able to test with an inexperienced user before the training session. This would have highlighted some of the issues which arose on tne night. In effect the training session became a usability test by the target group. I now have data from a wide range of users in terms of ability, age and experience.

 Logistics

 The group of over 20 was too big to manage on the night working in two rooms, and I could not keep up with the number of issues that were going on simultaneously.

One new laptop was missing software needed for the activity. 

One person attended unexpectedly and did not have a log in.

 Bandwidth

It is not clear if the Moodle server is correctly setup for streaming video. Testing prior to the training night revealed widely varying download results. With multiple downloads on the night the alternative smaller flash movie was needed. More info needed to follow up further.

 Moodle

Found an unexpected (untested) aspect of the chat room that the participants were identified by initial not name, leading to confusion.

Course Content

I had way too much material for the 2 hour session and did not need any of the extension exercises I built in. I think there is scope for dividing the material up in to a beginners and advanced course.

 On the whole the group worked much more slowly than I had anticipated. Over familiarity with the content had led to an underestimate of the time needed to complete different topics. Failure to achieve the first assignment objective, was mainly due to lack of time.

The journaling reflective activity seems to have been useful.

There was positive feedback about the interactive tutorial which was a novel learning experience for the group. The group saw the benefit of active learning in that activity.

More basic instructions were required on navigation and orientation in the Moodle environment. (too much for the 2hr training but to be developed further for the course ongoing.)

 It is too soon to make any judgements about how the training went overall until the data is analysed. There is a wide mixture of experiences and feedback. There were bugs or technical hitches in almost every area of the course on the night and the materials were thoroughly tested, pretty much to destruction!

It was an exhausting experience, and not an easy one for the subjects, but I do belive that I can see ways to solve most if not all of the issues which arose. 

I think a number of principles were tested in the different activities in the course and many proved useful for further development. The discussion acitivy was the least sucessful on the night. There were too many unknowns for the participants to deal with for them to properly engage with the task I set, but hopefully an experience to build on in the future.

 More to follow… 

As I have been working on my draft specification, I have been thinking around the subject of how to engage the motivation of the teacher students on the courses I will be developing.

In my report last term and in the project specification, are lots of questions which focus on identifying the problem to be solved. The answers are biased towards the technical, and practical issues. Work is already in progress to identiy the gaps in knowledge that the training materials need to address.

There needs to be a corresponding Why? to the What of all the above.

I want to make sure I give attention to the motivational areas, the needing and wanting area as in Race. If the teachers gain a few skills, but do not gain any concepts which they find personally relevant to their own teaching I feel I will not have served them well.

I have been thinking in general terms about the introduction areas of the courses. Here is where I think I should focus on motivation, by making sure that the relevance of the topic in question to their own teaching and learning is explored.

Christopher Sessums extensive research into teacher education leads him to this observation

“I have seen teachers absolutely panic over having to learn how an application works (unlike their students who willingly push buttons to see what happens) rather than looking ahead to see how such a medium might be useful.”

He also askes the question

“Is it possible or realistic to expect teachers who do not want to enhance their basic computer skills to be compelled to do so without any incentives? What’s in it for them?”

Cultural Implications of Social Software Teaching and Learning, Ready or Not

http://eduspaces.net/csessums/weblog/144604.html

In his blog post “Web Learning about Web Learning for Teachers”, Terry Anderson notes

But I wish we could learn to spark interest in the most exiting and revolutionary technology ever to be used for formal instruction, in ways that were just a bit more designed to fire the imagination and engagement of users – both as learners and as teachers.

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/09/08/108/

Here is my motivation if any were needed to ensure that the benefits of understanding how to use a particular piece of software or employing a particular tool are stated very explicity in the course materials. Now to think about the means of achieving that.

By way of limbering up to the research methods course about to get underway here are my thoughts on my attempt to do some research on the pupil cohort at work.

This week I finally manged to publish the results from my survey of pupils from last term. I will write about how I did this research and what I learned in broad terms without publishing the statistical results here.

The purpose of the research was to discover how many of our pupils had access to a computer at home with broadband Internet access suitable for accessing work in the school VLE, Moodle. It seemed to my colleagues and I that we could not push forward the development of the VLE without having some indication of how many children could access it from outside school. Also we needed to be looking at how we might make provision for those children who might not have computers and Internet access. We are aware of the growing scale of gov initiatives to address the digital divide, however we expect a number of children to fall through this net even so.

A questionnaire was prepared on paper which was sent home with all the pupils. Responses were identifiable initially so that they could be checked off a register to see who had replied. We wanted to get statistics for the children by year group. The personal identifying information was then removed before someone else entered the data into a spreadsheet. I had to re check the data several times as some of the sample groups were very small errors in the input had a disproportionate effect on the results.

The initial round of questionnaires bought in a return of about 30%. I then sent out via e-mail and letter further copies to those who had not responded.  By the end of term we had had a response rate of 50%.

In general I think next time I will send the survey directly by post and e-mail to the parents. The survey itself was quite long and we attempted to get too much information. Next time I will have just three questions. Do you have a computer, do you have Internet access, is it broadband?

Maths and statistics not being my strong point I have a vague awareness that there may be statistical methods by which the data we have could be extrapolated to make predictions about the the 50% who did not respond. However in the absence of this knowledge the application of “common sense” to the figures had yielded some interim conclusions.

The results from the group who have responded show a disproportionately high percentage of broadband Internet access way above the national average, currently 57%

This lead me to conclude that those who did not respond largely represent the balance of those who do not have computers or internet access.

This means that overall across the school our pupil cohort have well under the national average of access to the Internet. This would be consistent with other measures of the student cohort.

It was interesting that as the returns came in I was initially impressed with the level of Internet access the pupils seemed to have, and was quite optimistic about our ability to close the gap on the digital divide. However it was only at the end of the process that the true picture emerged. It is clear that only the massive levels of investment proposed by central government will make an impact on this situation. For ourselves, once the impact of the £300,000,000 is assessed we will need to revisit this question again, a year on from the first survey.

Meanwhile we can use the data we have to work on plans for a range of after school activities for pupils and their parents.

Results are in from the EELIP unit and the high standard of all was mentioned in dispatches so well done to all.

Having had a few weeks off study I am itching to get back down to it and move forward again. Work is incredibly busy and saps my mental energy with the number of different areas I am trying to resource.

Since I last posted I have been trying to negotiate myself a path through next year. Had some good meetings where I was able to present the case for implementing my report. However the response to this is still unknown and I am prompted to begin to muse on what if…I am not able to pursue the project I outlined in the strategy report? What other question would I address as my research project for next year?

It’s hard to think where to focus my energy in the abstract. I do see a rich supply of questions arising from the blogs I follow in educspaces and elsewhere. Perhaps something will hit a spark.  I am going to start reading back over the past two years entries of this blog as well to try and collate some ideas about questions I have asked.