An Expat Educator in Asia

My mad and busy life has prevented me from posting for some time so, when from out of the blue, an email arrives asking if I accept Guest Posts, I have to admit that I was pretty keen. Natalie Hunter is the proposer and seemed to comply with the caveat’s I gave her so here is her Brief Bio:

Natalie Hunter grew up wanting to be a teacher, and is addicted to learning and research. As a result she is grateful for the invention of the internet because it allows her to spend some time outside, rather than just poring through books in a library. She is fascinated by the different methodologies for education at large today, and particularly by the advent of online education. She also loves to travel and learn via interaction with other people and cultures.

Here is what she has written. Comments, as always, greatly appreciated.

Benefits and Disadvantages of the One Laptop Program

The OLPC XO3 proposed offering

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) inspired education program, One Laptop Per Child, is an admirable project. The principles upon which this program was established have been acknowledged by governments, educators, and organizations that fight poverty and inequality. In theory, this program will benefit untold numbers of children and will furnish them with positive advantages in their lives.

What could be wrong with a program designed to provide every school-aged child, throughout the world, with a laptop of their own? Every child, regardless of race, gender or financial or social status, would be equipped under the One Laptop Program with a tool that has the potential to expand their knowledge exponentially, through use of computer-based tools and access to the internet.

In the vision of this plan, the giant hole of poverty would no longer keep many children from reaching their full learning potential. Children in less affluent countries would be able to utilize tools that could enhance their reading and writing skills, even though they may not be a part of online schools, giving them the opportunity for developing the basic skills essential to succeeding in the work-force and in life. These basic communications aptitudes will enable children to compete in the job market while keeping abreast of ever changing technology.

These children represent the future of their respective countries, but also, the future of our planet. Through the “World Wide Web” they can gain understanding of the different cultures around the world. They gain knowledge of other governments and how they work. They can form international networks and feel connected to others from around the globe.

Computers can bring people into contact with one another. This fosters the free exchange of ideas; it helps to ignite a passion for learning and it is the means for growth and maturation. Individual interests in a subject, such as music, art or science, become the reality, rather than the dream, of education with computer software. These benefits and advantages are just the tip of a long list of dramatic results that can be achieved from this program. Is a program based upon noble principle, but what is required for these blessings to become real?

Gayle Laakmann McDowell expressed her concerns and reasons for not supporting the one laptop program. She saw for herself that it was common occurrance for the internet not to be available, curtailing student efforts to use them as a learning tool resource while visiting Mayange, a rural village in Rwanda. She and others believe that this is not a cost effective program; a more productive arrangement, in her opinion, would be to provide laptops per family or establish a computer lab, based at school. This plan would offer more support for the children trying to use their new technology, and provide online educational resources for less money.

Venezuela inaugurated the One Laptop program in 2009; it has provided more than 750,000 laptops. President Hugo Chavez stated, “I plan to issue 3 million laptops by 2012.” The Venezuelan government believes that children’s natural curiosity will propel them towards a greater interest in learning. Computer technology coupled with access to the internet will offer children the opportunity to have unlimited resources at their fingertips.

Fortunately, Venezuela realizes that the key to this programs success is teacher training. The one-to-one program will need constant monitoring and updating, before it can meet its proposed objectives. Some potential problems have already surfaced; many of the children, who have received laptops, do not understand how to use them. Another problem that has come to the forefront is the exclusion of state schools from the teacher-training program.

Deomira, sister of the former opposition governor, suggested establishing school-based computer labs and providing teacher training for all schools. In the Miami Herald article, Miss Deomira told the reporter that these changes would optimize the original intent of the program.

The One Laptop Per Child Program, that was considered to be the panacea for inequality and educational deprivation, among the world’s children, failed to produce the expected results. There are inherent flaws in the original plan that had initially gone unnoticed. The program creators failed to take into account that children, as well as teachers, were not adequately trained to use this wondrous research tool. This program might also countermand other established programs which promote positive changes. As it stands now, it seems almost impossible for this program to succeed, only if it is revised and the problems are addressed will the program have the positive effect originally intended.

It seems like everywhere I look around me at the moment schools are evaluating some aspect of 1:1 computing. There are many reasons for this including the netbook revolution, Mr Rudd’s plan to put a computer on the desk of every Year 9-12 student in Australia and many more enlightened schools realising that standards for ICT are at least as important for any other core subject. As an educator that has followed and been deeply involved with 1:1 computing programmes in schools ever since David Loader kicked the whole idea off at MLC Kew in 1990. It was only 2 years after this that I found myself in an Aussie school that had followed the MLC model and Introduced a year level set of the same Toshiba 1100Plus Machines (I think it was this model but the image doesn’t look right). Yep, these “state of the art” machines had no hard drive, just a dual floppy drive arrangement which took the “newfangled 3.5″ disks” (there were a lot of 5.25″ disks around at the time).

Storage on the machine was not possible and things like networking or the internet were not even on the horizon. What was there, however, was an excitement about the possibilities and a hearty discussion about the possibilities partly fueled by Alan Kay’s Dynabook Vision which I think anyone interested in making education more relevant had read. As a result, there was not a single notebook programme that I was aware of that did not have tools for creativity on them, in spite of their clumsy interfaces and problems with loading the programme into the memory from floppies. The result was that companies like LCSI, JASC, Inspiration Inc., and Lego moved very quickly to modify pricing models and support their software on disks for student laptops.

What this naturally lead to was a lot of staffroom discussion about the use of these tools in core subject areas. Admittedly, it was a lot of hard work to get the very traditionally oriented chemistry/physics teacher or the senior literature teacher espousing the “smell and touch of books” to embrace the possibilites of making some interactive exercises to demonstrate understanding of a principle in Microworlds or to construct a mindmap prior to a book review focussing on characterisation but the conversations were taking place. Given that this was taking place in the early 90s, it is bringing a tear to my eye to read a lot of the discussion on how Australian schools should use the government money to put computers in front of students. This sort of post is typical of a focus on the machine and what IT can do. Note the absence of any comment about what students should or could be doing with it.

I was recently asked to join a meeting of School Leaders at a school that wanted to discuss the planning for a 1:1 programme at the school. Interestingly the primary (elementary) section of the school had employed a facilitator who was also an Apple Distingushed Educator. Regular readers will know that I am not a great fan of the “you promote us, we promote you” programmes of big corporates like Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc., but the teacher in question is a very professional, knowledgeable and caring educator and had clearly conveyed a well thought through argument to the leaders in the section of the school that they worked in. On the other hand the teachers in the secondary section clearly had not thought through what they saw the students doing with the tools. I could tell  from the email exchange prior to the meeting that this was the case so I tried to set them up a little better in the meeting by making comments like these:

Given that the emails that I was being copied in on were continuing to be about the network, the infrastructure and the clients that might access all of this, I decided that the only thing I could do was try to leave them with something after the meeting to reflect on and, maybe, assist them at a later date. To try to achieve this I created the attached document to which I added the following comments:

Some comments about the attached checklists if I may.

1.      This is the sort of list I put together when I was initiating
the discussion about what we needed on computers in every student’s hands
when I was responsible for the 1:1 program. I intentionally went as far to the
creative, collaborative open-ended side of the spectrum as I could. Some
of the teachers would have lists including such things as Math textbooks as
PDFs and extensive English literature extracts to be read verbatim on
the screen. I welcomed this as it lead to a very robust discussion which
really helped us clarify what we saw the students doing each day.
2.      The support team who worked under me would add their list of
capabilities for the machine and the ensuing document would be turned
into a checklist which we used to evaluate whether a vendor could assist us in
helping us get to where we wanted to go. (In Australia, every notebook
vendor supplying to schools offered curriculum materials, professional
development and conference sponsorships. Very different to Asia.)

I hope this helps.

learning tasks discussion paper

By the way, here are a couple of resources about schools that went with tablet PCs based on the analysis above. The first is from Paul White formally of NIST Thailand and now with the ESF in Hong Kong who talks about a tablet programme supported by wireless projectors in classrooms in this video. A more recent podcast from June 2009 has Bill Campbell, Associate Director of Technology at the Dwight Englewood School share his experiences at a Tablet PC School.

I would be very interested to get some comments from some of the educators whom I know read this blog and are in schools considering 1:1 programmes for the new school year. Are you having these sort of conversations about what learning on these machines looks like? Are you just looking at a machine that enables access and then seeing where it goes from there? Are you being seduced by the vendor that promotes the “creative notebook” and thus falling into the “iMovie project in every classroom” trap? (Had a great reference for this but can’t think how I tagged it!)

Comments, as always very welcome.

Photo: Teaching is not Rocket Science http://www.flickr.com/photos/shareski/2942564830/in/pool-858082@N25

I have just returned from this workshop advertised at the Centre for Information Technology in Education at Hong Kong University.The workshop was dedicated to taking us through the use of tools that could be used on mobile phones but were really very basic. You can see them here.

I was behaved and kept my mouth shut (uncharacteristically) but I really wanted to scream out “Why are we hamstringing kids with such primitive tools in 2009?!” The argument of the presenters, who were from the US, was that every student would not be able to present with a computer so why not make the most of the computers in their pocket? I really want to take issue with the first part of that statement. Surely in an age where every professional in even the most basic of desk jobs uses a computer, why are we still wondering if they might be of use in schools?

Graham Wegner recently reflected on this failure to move ahead in schools in a recent post he called Immunity. Whilst governments make decisions to try to find funding to put computers in front of kids in poor and remote communities, it amazes me that schools who can afford the technology are still wondering if they should do anything with technology in classrooms. We know that getting students to create, the top level on the new Blooms Revised Taxonomy is what we should be aiming to do and yet, we still think that using mobile phones, essentially tools for delivery of content, might do the trick in schools.

Shouldn’t we at least be saying that there is a minimum spec tool that first world economies should be insisting on for students, especially if we want them to be used for creation of digital artifacts that demonstrate that our students are creators, collaborators and all round thinkers?

Photo: Netbook http://www.flickr.com/photos/ekosystem/3153286618/

I have mentioned previously that sometimes an idea has its time and this seems to well and truly be the case for discussion on learning spaces. I was privilidged to be a part of the Apple Global Leadership Summit in Hong Kong last month where Stephen Heppell delivered a fabulous keynote during which he shared specific illustrated examples of schools coming to terms with changes in education and trying to plan spaces and environments conducive to the changes.

Stephen forced the audience to really think about how schools might provide spaces that are felxible, adaptable, engaging, inspiring and supportive of new modes of learning that we can only just dream about now. Notes for this aspect of his presentation are here. They are well worth a look for schools looking at building or redesign of spaces.

Following on from this, ISB Bangkok apears to have recently flown out more US educators, one from a little closer to Thailand, to advise them on an upcoming renovation of their Main Library. On an aside, it makes me a little angry to hear some international schools say that they have no money for sending staff to a conference in their home city when others find the money to do things like this! Completely off the topic but sometimes it is great to get a rant off your chest .

It seems from Kim’s post that, unsuprisingly, these powerful thinkers were able to make a great contribution to the learning space that ISB will create.

Hot on the heals of this comes a discussion on a list I belong to where an Australian teacher poses the question:

Our school (primary in SE Queensland) will have a new library built with money from Federal Govt as announced recently.  Apparently while the govt build the shell of the building, we (the staff) were asked today how we would design the internal requirements for a library for the 21 century. As we were reminded, something that would be there long after (many of us) had long gone.
I would appreciate your thoughts about what you believe should be included/designed  in a primary school library for the new century.

As you can imagine, a list with a lot of forward-thinking educators on it was set alight by this question. One of the best framed replies, however, came from W.A. Educator and friend, Brett Clarke.

I presume you have already googled “21st century school libraries” (without the quotes).

It produces a number of relevant hits including

http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/rblonline/Library/publishedwork/21stLearningCommunities.pdf

which poses the most relevant question

“So what purpose do school libraries (yours in particular) serve in the 21st century school / learning community?”

Until you have determined this, design decisions lack a solid foundation. Any architect / designer needs to know the specific purpose/s for which a space will be used and the desired “feel” (emotion to be engendered) in the space before they can begin serious design work.

Also google UNESCO and 21C school design – they have created some specific documents on design of educational spaces.

Prakash Nair is generally considered the world authority on 21C school design (see Fielding Nair International)

It will probably take 3 years to design and build and hopefully be relevant for 15.

Remember that someone designing a school library 15 years ago probably wouldn’t have considered the existence of the internet/WWW or wireless networks – so what do you think will be around in 10-15 years?

Chris Betcher suggested

http://21cschoollibrary.wikispaces.com/

which suggests some useful points.

However, suggestions such as lots of powerpoints etc, represent today’s thinking not tomorrow’s – and implies a belief that there will be lots of computers that need to be plugged in.

After spending the last 6 years in a school with over 1200 laptops, nowhere in the school needed lots more power points, let alone the library, and in 3-4 years it is less likely to be so (with the emphasis moving to mobile, rather than just portable, computing power – devices will last a whole school day…).

The presentation does highlight the importance of flexibility (everything on wheels – which is a good point).

No internal load bearing walls is the other!

Is the library of the future quiet or collaborative – and how can you have a lot of different groups collaborating/presenting and the noise not disturb/interfere with the other groups?

Noise control/compartmentalisation is important.

Whilst students will continue to create dioramas as part of project work that would need to be displayed as they are today – perhaps in a place we currently refer to as a library, more of their work will be digital and needs a similarly comprehensive opportunity for being shared (and for interacting with) with a broad, casual audience. – ultimately large touch screens. Depending on the size of group imagined, the projectors suggested in the wiki above may be better replaced with touch screen LCD type panels (IWBs will be replaced by these once these panels get cheaper in a few years). If ultra short throw projectors (with IWB) are installed – be prepared for replacement – google “microsoft surface”.

When it comes to sharing digital work, our current model is often to connect a computer (via a tether/umbilical VGA/DVI/audio cable) to a video projector for others to view.

Expect a change in this model to one more like the AppleTV “entertainment hub” where the display device has (or is permanently connected to) its own intelligence – and artifacts are wirelessly (perhaps temporarily) transferred/connected to it, so it can be viewed (and even better, interacted with – see surface reference above). Gigabit wireless may well be here before your “library” is built (along with wireless USB etc).

(Anyone know of an ultra short throw video projector with 802.11n (fast wireless) connectivity and enough built in intelligence to host a VNC client?) Didn’t think so… but one would be really useful!)

Sony/Epson/Mitsubishi are you listening???

Anyway,

Delay the specification and procurement of the actual technology related aspects for as long as you can.

Get advice from someone experienced in the design of technology enhanced learning environments.

The BER is putting great demands on the architectual profession – many architects who are not experienced in this field are already being approached to undertake these works due to the volume of work and short timeframes. Find out what experience the practice assigned to your project has.

The other major question to ask is

“What advantage would students of the future get (or should get) going to your “library” that they couldn’t get in other learning spaces that will be dripping with wireless information access and probably have an IWB or similar?

Is it the library staff?

Is it the books?

Is it the flexibility of the learning space/s?

We have had computer labs, but they are becoming irrelevant now given that those functions can be in any classroom today with laptop technology.

Is a single location in a school called a library going to be irrelevant in the near future?

What might “distributed libraries” look like?

Could every classroom be a “library”? What would it take?

I think that every submission for the “Building the Education Revolution”, should be subject to these kinds of 21C schooling questions relevant to the specific building submission before approval.

This initiative is a great opportunity to move forward, or waste a lot of money and opportunity and build for the present.

I hope every school has someone like you who is asking good questions in a useful forum like this.

Please contact me off-list if you would like to discuss any of the above in more detail…

Hope some of this helps…

Cheers,

Brett Clarke

Apple Distinguished Educator, 2002.

I would be very interested to know if your schools are engaging in this sort of discussion.

Regards

Paul

I took a visit to the Hong Kong Electronics Fair yesterday both to inform myself of what was going on in the consumer electronics field that might be of interest to educators and to see if there were sources for some of the things in use in International Schools that were a lot more efficient than traditional channels. An example being that you still can’t buy a Flip Video camera here in electronic crazy Hong Kong!

I have to say it was mostly a waste of time as I saw little of great interest to educators. One thing I did get to check out, however, was a range of options for recording sound onto the 2g iPod Touch. Some readers are probably aware that there were some good, albeit expensive, options for recording sound, like podcasts, onto the original iPod and the 2g iPod Nano using things like the Belkin TuneTalk shown opposite. As I did not have an original iPod, I used a MiniDisk recorder which died. I have recently bought a new iPod touch but was very dissapointed that I could not easily record to it. After some searching around I discovered that you can actually record to it by downloading something like VoiceNotes from the iTunes Apps Store (basic version is free) and you can sync these files back to your computer using VoiceNotesSync.

The problem that you still have is that you still need a microphone input as there is no mic on the iPod Touch and it is not immediately obvious that the 2g iPod Touch supports a mic. Some hunting around will tell you that it does. What is more, I found some helpful earphone and mic suppliers yesterday who were able to demonstrate that a great range of mics out on the market can be used for recording to the 2g Touch.

Good news for teachers looking to use these versitile machines in the classroom!

Doug Johnson of The Blue Skunk Blog fame just posted about Sir Ken Robinson’s book which he has been reading. I am very keen to try to get hold of a copy myself. Here is the link to the post and copied below is my reply.

I enjoyed this post Doug, as I have enjoyed many others from you. The issue that I have with the theory of “finding and then supporting the intelligence” is that it presupposes that kids live in environments where they have exposure to all of life’s rich experiences from which they can see what they are good at. Here in Hong Kong, limitations of space and parental income mean that kids get to find out if they are good at shopping, helping parents in the family printing business or studying hard. These kids may excel at barefoot water skiing, golf, horse riding or film making like your son but they may not get to find out if they are never exposed to the experience. I guess that we should be aiming to expose kids to every experience possible in their environment but the local schools in this part of the world have a long way to go to achieve this for all. Depressing!
The other thing that I have trouble getting my head around is the gaming phenomena and just how far we support this as being a valid “interest” of kids. Again, to quote a HK context, every kid here would have to say that they are interested in (good at??) gaming. We have areas of Hong Kong with arcades full of gaming consoles for sale. Kids and adults alike travel the subways of Hong Kong with attention glued to the Nintendo DS or PSP. I have yet to see any of them having math formulas or foreign phrases for learning a modern foreign language on the screen and most, if not all, would see them as recreational rather than educational. As a consequence, the international schools here have very strict policies about games on computers brought to school see this post from an international school librarian.
It would be very brave of a school to say “I think a lot of our kids seem to be very interested in gaming so we are going to let them develop this intelligence and hope it leads to a rewarding future.” Even Will Richardson expects adults to direct kids into broader learning at schools. Given this, where is the guidance for a librarian like Diane in terms of how far to support the “gaming issue” in schools?

Readers of my blog will know I do pedagogically based training on all brands of electronic whiteboards with all “flavors” of operating systems. In spite of what the marketers and geeks will have you believe, it is about the pedagogy and the teacher’s vision of what the use of ICT for learning should look like far more than whether it shows you a piece of fruit or a stuffed toy when you turn it on. But then, you already know that don’t you?

I have to admit one bias, however. I really do much prefer the tactile feel of a smartboard when using things like Google Earth or Cooliris to show how you throw things across the screen in much the same way that you can with an ipod touch or iphone. Somehow the pen doesn’t quite do it for me but the number of times you have to “throw images around in a classroom” may be so limited as to not make any difference to your choice of board.

The thing that  has always caught me out with the smartboard in training is the fact it is very easy to forget that you have the pen in your hand in the middle of a lesson and thus draw over the object that you were trying to manipulate in your browser window or software app. This is why this video caught my eye this morning. Dare I say it but it might even do more for a classroom than the much trumpeted but seldom used to great effect “multitouch” development.

Take a look and see what you think. I look forward to your feedback. 

I always feel a bit daunted an overwhelmed by an event the size of BETT. I guess it reflects a bit on my lack of a systematic approach to the event. I wear a lot of hats in the role that I currently occupy. On the one hand, I was attending BETT to hear about trends and developments in the use of Educational Technology worldwide to see if the field might still have some potential to grow in importance in textbook and examination focused International Schools in my region.

On another hand, I look to see some good examples of classroom use of ICT that I can pass on to the schools who are prepared to pay for my services in the Asian region and I also want to see the latest software and hardware and get a feel for the directions that developments are moving in. I was also on the lookout for some good presenters who might have a message that we would find compelling at the 21st Century Learning @ HK conference in October. Finally, given that a lot of International Schools, especially in Hong Kong, are looking to implement Learning Platforms, upgrade School Information Management Systems and put more technology for access in the hands of students and staff, I was on the lookout for quality providers who might be focused on meeting the challenging needs of international schools in Hong Kong and the region.

Given this, it is probably no wonder that I spend a lot of my time unproductively chatting to the wrong people or attending seminars that are far to UK centric to be of use to me. I did, however, manage to catch a few folk that were worth listening and speaking to including the Studywiz people who seem to be very keen to have a strong presence in the Asian region. I have met with them at conferences including the Shanghai Learning 2 conference and have been in communication with them when doing some consulting work with Nanjing International School who use the system. Very interesting to see that the 2 big School Management Information System providers, SERCO and SIMS are very keen to look to developing more of a presence in the Asia Pacific region as are RM who are promoting the MAZE system in use at the English Schools Foundation. Great to see the vendor interest in the conference and it looks like we might be able to get some good vendor support for the conference in October.
Speaker wise, I was privileged to be able to hear, among others, the thoughts of John Davitt. John is a UK based consultant who has spoken at various big events including Alan November’s Building Learning Community Conference in the US. This alone is a great achievement. John is unique as a very hands-on presenter who creates many of the tools that he promotes. I think that he would be an excellent keynote speaker and/or workshop presenter for the conference. I tried to capture some of John’s presentation on my Vado. As always, comments about whether you think you could use John at your school before or after the conference would be greatly appreciated.

Photo: BETT09 by cloudberrynine

I always find it a great pleasure to be in a foreign country and run into friends from home. This applies to the situation at BETT where I was really keen to run into Paul White of the ESF, who I knew to be attending BETT prior to my leaving. I saw Paul most days I was there. Unfortunately, I was not so lucky in the case of Lee-Anne Patterson who I exchanged emails with the whole time but could not seem to link up with.
A big bonus of running into Paul was that he told me that he had been uploading some thoughts on the relevance of what he had seen on the ESF 1:1 ning he has set up. I found this to be a great resource personally as BETT is just too big and too extensive to try to conquer alone. It was also good to get Paul’s slant on offerings as he was interested in offerings from the point of schools going to the IBO programme and 1:1 learning. This is common to quite a lot of the schools I work with but not as common amongst the UK schools present. Paul created a posting here reviewing a lot of what he had seen up to the end of Day 2. Lee-Anne on the other hand posted about Special Educational Needs offerings here.
What a great saving for me!

I was very much looking forward to attending my Third BETT in a row in the UK this week. For a guy who is trying to get a consultancy off the ground, this has been a big sacrifice and I don’t think I would have gone this year, were it not for the offer of some consultancy work in the Middle East on the way home.

Yesterday was opening day and, for me the first time that I had a full day to just attend seminars and soak up the BETT experience. Whilst I liked a lot of what I saw, I must admit to being a little disappointed in the sameness over the last few years. I know that some of the blogs I read really talk up the happenings at BETT but a lot of the writers are ICT specialist teachers at schools and are not as concerned about systemic change in the use of ICT for learning as I am. Like the fantastic HSBC ads that came out a year ago, it depends on your point of view.

I attended quite a few seminars from BECTA and from UK teachers and Head Teachers and they are still facing the same challenge of “how to shift the good practice from being what goes on in one or two rooms to something that happens across the school. It appears that the new Next Gen Learning programme is going to go some way to helping this. I am looking forward to learning more about initiatives in schools over the next few days.

As for the products, it seems that everything I have come across so far is a refinement on something rather than a new initiative. The mini notebooks that were a real buzz last year are still everywhere but they are just one of the mix which includes electronic whiteboards of all types all of which are, of course, “much better now” because of the must have features of short throw projecting, rear projection, multitouch or some other “essential” feature, mobile technology and a learning platform.

Every single supplier is passionate that they have developed the feature that your school needs and they are very happy to bend your ear and explain why this is so.

Whoops! Must run. More soon.

Paul