I Should Be Marking

Ivan Pavlov first used the term ‘reinforcement’ as a psychological theory back in the early 1900s. In the famous experiment trained dogs so that when he rang a bell they knew they were about to be fed. After a short while they would start salivating (a conditional response) upon hearing the bell (a conditional stimulus).

The same principle applies in classrooms. In practice, many of us recognise that praising a pupil reinforces their positive behaviour, and most of us refer to this as positive reinforcment (although it differs from the technical term as used in psychological theory). It seems a sound enough argument – reward somebody for doing well or trying hard and they are more likely to want to do well and try hard in the future.⁽¹⁾

My first thought after this is ‘what is negative reinforcement?’ Is it reinforcing negative behaviour, such as giving attention to attention seekers when they behave poorly? Is it taking punitive measures when somebody misbehaves? Or is it as simple as not providing postive feedback when someone has done well or tried hard? Which of those lead to negative results?

I’ve been thinking about this after watching my daughter (4) at her dance class. She was mucking about and not listening to the teacher and so I gave her ‘the look’ from the sidelines and made it clear that I wasn’t happy. She immediately started sulking and paid no more attention to the teacher than she had before.

A few minutes later she looked back over to me and I gave her an encouraging thumbs up and a smile. The response was immediate – a happy, smiling, attentive and energetic little girl dancing around and keeping to the steps.

It’s often difficult to offer positive reinforcement when there isn’t positive behaviour to reinforce. There is, however, always positive potential – and if we can reinforce that then maybe some of those situations that are turning sour might just be turned around.

It’s not a perfect solution and it won’t guarantee a good lesson from that horrible class you dread on a Friday afternoon. I can’t even honestly say I use it often enough myself, but it’s worth bearing in mind. In an attempt to remind me, I’ve made up and printed out the image at the top of the post and stuck it in the corner of my whiteboard, to remind me that my actions have a heck of an impact on students. Something worth remembering.

⁽¹⁾ Interestingly, the ideal outcome would be for a pupil’s positive behaviour (conditional stimulus) to invoke positive feedback/praise (conditional response) – making the teachers the subjects of the psychology, not the students.

It’s interesting to think that badly behaved attention seekers use psychological tools to get their desired conditoned response…

I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before, but a few months ago I started a collaborative Google Docs presentation (in the style of Mark Warner’s Ideas to Inspire) aimed at gathering ideas to share with colleagues at work.

Since then I’ve had much inspiration and many ideas from a range of people (particularly Mark Berry) and have so far printed up two issues of ‘Techy Tips for Not So Techy Teachers‘ (although I would love to go for a non-paperbased version, I would miss the very market I am aiming for) and have had a few positive comments from individuals.

Have done a bit of work today on the next two, I’ve published all four at mwclarkson.co.uk. Feel free to use as you see fit, but please do provide a link back to me (here / my website/ my twitter account) if you do.

No pithy title for this one, but it does what it says on the tin.

GCSE ICT is changing from 2010 with completely new specifications across all exam boards. One of the major changes is that ‘coursework’ is out, and ‘controlled assessments’ are in. These are not practical online exams in the style of Edexcel GCE Applied ICT, but more like the DiDA Set Project Brief (SPB) with a certain number of hours for students to work independently but under supervision.

There are a number of short course and double options, but I’m only looking at single award qualifications for now.

So here is my take on some of the specifications and sample assessment materials I have come across.

AQA

3 modules – 1 written exam (40% / 90 minutes), 2 controlled assessments (20% / 15 hours & 40% / 30 hours).

The content in the specification looks pretty similar to what we have now (Edexcel) with hardware, software, applications, legislation, control and so on. The sample paper also looks OK, although in the middle there appears to be a spelling test in which students have to correct 3 errors in a paragraph of text. Errors include a missing capital letter, the word ‘of’ repeated (”The great advantage of of word processing”) and a misspelling (”wthin”). Now while lack of proof reading is a problem for students, it seems a little irrelevant for the middle of a 90 minute exam. Bizarre.

The second unit looks very much like the kind of webquest we would give to Year 7 for a cover lesson, doing some research in advance of a foreign exchange trip and you get more than half marks for “plan[ing] how to tackle the problem”.

The third unit is a bit more like the traditional GCSE coursework in that students would have to complete two activities, e.g. create a website for a band and a spreadsheet model to track costs and expenses.

OCR

This course has four units – B061 (60 minute exam), B062 (20 hour controlled assessment), B063 (60 minute exam) & EITHER B064 or B065 (20 hour controlled assessment).

The first exam (ICT in today’s world) features many of the topics from the current syllabus, although without most of the more technical aspects. The sample paper looks at, for example, input/output and storage in the context of a mobile phone as well as the traditional spreadsheet and database questions.

The second unit looks like a traditional courseowrk unit, making a spreadsheet model in the example documentation.

The third unit is a written exam in a business context with pre-release material. I haven’t seen a sample exam paper yet but it should keep the Business Studies teachers who have been shuffled into doing ‘a bit of ICT’ quite happy at least.

The fourth unit is either to produce some multimedia product (e.g. a multimedia advertisement or simple computer game) or a programming project (e.g. a spelling game for youngsters with a low reading age). This adds a touch of ‘iMedia’ to the syllabus, although it isn’t clear whether the school will have to swing one way entirely or whether individual classes/students will be able to opt for one unit specifically. It is nice to see some options though.

Edexcel

Edexcel astound me. They appear to have spent the whole of their planning budget producing a very flashy but insubstantial PPT presentation which is then not available on their website. I have a copy of it on a USB pen and all I can say is that it looks worse than DiDA. There is no sample syllabus, no sample assessment materials and no clue as to what would actually be involved in the course. They have paid someone to make some particularly unflattering cartoon images of three of the lead people though. At least it makes that part of the decision simple.

WJEC

The single award has 4 units – 2x 90 minute exams (20% each) and 2x 22.5 hour controlled assessments (30% each).

Units 1 and 3 both look very much like traditional GCSE exam papers with the topics you would expect, along with some new looks at animation techniques (e.g. rotoscoping) to go with the spreadsheet, database, HCI, legislation, etc.

Unit 2 is about obtaning and presenting information (topics look to include letters, flyers, spreadsheets and databases) and Unit 4 is based around the creation of a multimedia product (Flash, websites, maybe PPT)

OCR Computing

Yes, you read that right. OCR are releasing a pilot GCSE in Computing.

There are three units – a 90 minute exam (40%) and two controlled assessments (30% each).

The exam picks up on all the things missing from the ICT exam, including logic, denary to binary to hex conversion, some pseudocode, detailed looks at CPUs, Operating Systems, image filetypes, compression and other techy goodness.

The second unit is about researching a current trend, e.g. backing storage. Research should look at books to see what WAS done and look online to see what will be done in the future. It has the potential to be quite dry, but also quite interesting once you start looking at RAID and other technologies. I know a (small) number of pupils who would have thrived on this stuff.

The third unit is a practical programming unit with 3 tasks. In the example there is a Scratch game, a password assessment tool and a database problem.

It certainly looks challenging, but the geek in me loves it.

Summary

Edexcel is hopeless. Based on what I have seen I’m not touching their new course with a barge pole.

AQA seems a little odd with some of the content choices that have been made, but is probably the closest to the old GCSE in terms of the exam paper at least.

OCR looks OK. The first exam seems to be pitched at a fairly low level and the third unit is still a bit of a mystery.

WJEC looks to be the closest match to the previous GCSE model, although with 3 hours of exams and the longest controlled assessments, it’s a bit assessment heavy.

OCR Computing sounds like just thing I’ve been looking for for my more technically minded and capable students. It will be interesting to see what sort of numbers we can get signing up from our current Y8 cohort (who look to be a more challenging yeargroup) but I would love to do this.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

Addendum

A kind soul has pointed out to me that the OCR ICT Unit 3 sounds very much like the current Module 4 from the GCSE Spec B which is not so much business oriented as it is about a detailed look at how ICT is used in the real world. Apparently one of the more interesting and worthwhile elements of the course. I’ve not run that spec personally, so can’t comment beyond that, but hope it clears up the situation a little.

The more I look at Assessing Pupils’ Progress (APP), the more I like what has been done. The problem I have is that I need to devise some kind of recording and reporting mechanism, and this is proving a little tricky – so let me explain what I’ve got so far.

Based on this grid, it seems that most of the criteria can be split into 3 sections, and then into 3 sub-sections that are assessed as meeting Level 3, 4, 5 or 6. Levels 7 and 8 are a little more tricky, but are also rare (IME) and so I’m concentrating on 3 – 6 for now.

So I can give each student a Level for each of the relevant descriptors, and this will build up over the course of KS3 into a picture of exactly what the student has achieved, and when. But how?

The solution needs to be accessible to all ICT teaching staff, and if it produces a nice output to show students, then so much the better. We could do this in a GoogleDocs spreadsheet, but there would be over 700 worksheets (at 1 per pupil). We could try using a Pivot Table, but you’d still have a significant issue of scale. I think the solution needs to be a database.

I’m not an expert in databases. I can quite happily plow through GCSE and AS level problems, but in the real world it gets more difficult. I’ve knocked up an E-R diagram (below) that outlines my thoughts, but I don’t know how efficient or elegant that database structure really is.

In terms of platform, I could make an Access database, but then it wouldn’t be readily accessible. I don’t have the skills to implement a MySQL/PHP solution and the only online DBMS solutions I have found (e.g. Zoho) don’t work beyond a basic flat-file graphing and analysis tool.

So, thoughts and ideas welcome!

NB. Actually, I would probably split the Descriptor entity and have 1-many with a ‘category’ table (each category having 3 descriptors).

Following a very hectic week last week I am positively enthused with a vast array of ideas laid out before me. Writing this blog helps me enormously in terms of reflecting upon and describing my ideas in a way that makes it easier for me to recall them, understand them and refine them. But, I have been posting quite a lot over the past few days though and didn’t want to flood the blog with daily posts. Instead, I decided to have a go and putting my thoughts down in a MindMap – specifically, using MindMeister.

I found it to be an incredibly cathartic and useful exercise and my thoughts on the topics at hand are now much clearer. And what struck me was that I have never really used a mindmap before! I’ve been forced into doing a couple at school, but have never really used them as a way of keeping my own thoughts and ideas in order.

This, of course, led me to the idea of using mindmaps in better ways with my students. We get them into Bubbl.us to create a planning document for some of the larger projects – but it would be nice to spend a little time comparing tools and techniques, followed by students actually using a mindmap for something a little more significant. It ties in with a lot of the independent learning that isn’t really going on in education right now. (Point me to a staffroom where nobody whinge about students being spoon-fed). There are also the collaborative and creative sides to mind-mapping.

In terms of tools – you have

• hand-drawn mindmaps
• online apps such as Mindmeister, Mind42 and Bubbl.us
• desktop apps such as Freemind
• online & offline apps auch as Xmind

So I think I’ll get some of my Y7, Y9 and probably Y12 & 13 students looking at mind maps in the new academic year. I’ll let you know how I get on…

Feel free to have a look at the resultant mindmap for yourself.

I was planning to write two blog posts; one descriptive and one subjective. Thankfully, Chris Harte has already done the first for me, so I can concentrate on the reflection and thoughts – which could go on a bit, I warn you.

I remember back at the start of March (I know, because I checked), I saw a blog post by Lisibo about speaking at a TeachMeet, and I wrote my own blog entry saying that my aim was to attend one within the next 12 months. Not to speak, but to attend. And so here I am, barely 3 months later and I have exceeded my own goal. The next one will have to be world domination (or at least he downfall of published league tables).

Without gushing too much, I had an absolutely brilliant night. The attendees were fantastic – supportive, friendly, keen, enthusitic and much more besides. Our hosts and sponsors provided us with accommodation, wine, canapes, wine, notepads, wine, a little cash and some free wine (all of which were greatly appreciated).

The presentations themselves varied in content, but each and every one had ideas that I need to write a separate (or several separate) posts about – and I certainly will. I’ve already been in touch with a number of new (to me) colleagues in a variety of subject areas and have even managed to carry some of that enthusiasm through a full day of teaching.

Now if I can find a way of entering students early for GCSEs after turning them into more independent learners that have collaborated via e-twinning, demonstrate their work using documentaries, Go-Animate, Crazy Talk and Glogster and use PEEL to assess their understanding whilst monitoring their alpha waves and playing the Helicopter Game simultaneously with their eyebrows then I will have achieved something very positive. Otherwise, I just don’t think I’ll have time to fit it all in!

If anyone wants to see my part of the presentation, you can watch a fairly low-res video of me talking very quickly for 9 minutes and/or view the full presentation and see a list of links to real-world examples of the tools in action at my website.

Well, today was the day of the much anticipated (by me, at any rate) Achievement Show 2009. An early start, a reasonable train journey (2.5 hours) and a brisk walk (the recommended Tube station bringing me out at exactly the opposite side of the stadium to the only available entrance) and I was in.

Having never been to this type of conference before I had absolutely no idea what to expect. There were 10 or so exhibitors’ stalls, a round room made of cardboard with no roof for the smaller and more frequent talks and 10 other ‘zones’ (rooms) for larger and longer talks.

I watched a couple in the round room and was relieved that it was a relatively small room with around 50 chairs, but the noise level was awful. The first speaker had to get half way through his talk before being provided with a radio mic and the sound stopped dead halfway through the room as the only speakers were at the very front.

I bumped into a couple of twitterers (@mikeherrity and @gideonwilliams, in strictly chronological order of meetings) and delivered my presentation at around 14:20 (so only 20 minutes behind schedule). The presentation went well and was packed out (standing room only by the end), if rushed (although I think that suited the style of the presentation anyway and I certainly can talk!). I saw quite a few people scribbling like mad as I romped through the tools in the presentation and hope that a few people caught my website address and email at the end.

Overall I have to say I was a little disappointed by the rest of the show. There were a couple of talks that made me think (using e-book readers, annotation and authoring packages, Learning Platforms, creating podcasts/videos for revision) but nothing really new and a lot of the talks were clearly sales pitches (am hoping that Thursday night’s TeachMeetNE will be quite different). Also, the ‘Speaker’s Corner’ to which we were apparently to retire could not have been further from where we were talking without being outside the stadium.

A lot of the more major talks were centered on leadership, Maths, English, Science or Diplomas – none of which are immediately relevant to me.

I did talk to some nice people from Channel 4 Learning who were trying to sell a subscription to their service (just £5k for the first year!) and must get around to FINALLY trying the Yenka sequencing application. And I did get a day off timetable.

I think that (without wanting to sound arrogant) I am spending a lot of my time talking to innovative people trying lots of exciting things, and as such, the topics that make it to conferences like that seem a little stale in comparison. I’m not in SLT, I don’t use Sharepoint and I don’t want to spend several thousands on a whole school resource (I do think that a significant proportion of those there were Assistant or Deputy Heads).

Or maybe I’m just a miserable git.

I did enjoy myself though

A few months ago we installed Mahara, an open-source ePortfolio platform that integrates extremely well with Moodle (colloquially known as Mahoodle – and yes, we are quite sad).

I’ve had a bit of a play and found it initially a little hard to grasp. I looked at it and thought “now what?”. But with a bit of time to see how it works it is actually very, very useful. The trick, IMO, is to introduce it steadily, one area at a time.

So, my Year 8 students have been working through a series of graphics tutorials and the plan was to put them somewhere public (within school) for some peer review before moving on to their asessed task. The approach I took was this:

• Files and folders
  Login, go into the filing system within Mahara, create a folder and upload the graphics work completed. So we were starting with something fairly familiar – a filing system. Students always find it frustrating that you can’t simply drag and drop files in the same way you can with most operating systems, and it is a chore to have to upload your files. But such is life – at least the task is easy to comprehend. It also brought up the issue of tags, and tagging data. Although I haven’t gone into great detail about the semantic web, it’s still a useful talking point.
• Create a view
  This waqs the part I was most concerned about. I can describe and even demonstrate how to do this, but it requires a little bit of thought and common sense – something that Year 8 students are not always renowned for! We stuck with the defaulot 3 column view and just added the images we had uploaded, adding a title and setting the width to 250 pixels. Those who picked it up quickly could then experiment with using different widths to create a more dynamic layout and adding text boxes to describe how their work was completed (leading to discussions about how the ‘Description’ field for each image would be a more efficient way of us achieving this.
• Setting view access
  This is a fairly straightforward task and I simply set up group names before the lesson and had students share their work with a specific group. Then they had to go and join that group so that they could see others’ work.
• Feedback
  This, inevitably, was the bit the students found most engaging – and rightly so! The ability to leave comments and feedback, and then go and see what has been said about your work really had the classes enthused. One thing that would be nice is a front page notification of comments, much as you get in blog systems. I’ll have to investigate that one!

By guiding the students through one step at a time they found it quite manageable and now seem to understand what the system is for. Some described it as ‘a bit like Facebook’ and I had to agree in part. We talked about the social network aspects of it and I told students that I wasn’t going to be pushing that aspect in lessons (as making it compulsory negates the point IMO), but that they were free to use any aspect of the software that they came across. Take-up across the school has been positive, considering we simply put a rather cryptic link up on the Moodle homepage and just left the system open for the early adopters.

Overall, I had a good time, and can see a lot of benefit to Mahara – especially once the next version comes out with better exporting capabilities.

Caveat: This is more of a geek dad post and, although there are educational lessons to be learned, I’m not going into that aspect too much.

Most websites that require an account have a lower age limit of 13. And most youngsters under the age of 13 either click the ‘Yes, I am over 13′ button or lie about their age in order to get in. As teachers, we are sometimes frustrated when we want to use sites like Animoto, Prezi, Xtranormal and other sites. So why IS there an age limit?

The issue was brought to a head for me this week because of Facebook (which operates the same age restriction). My 10 year old son signed up 6 months ago, although he doesn’t know the password and his email notifactions go to me first. All has been fairly well and about half of his class is signed up, along with about half of the parents – and everyone seems to be everyone else’s friend.

As part of his Catholic school’s work in Years 5 and 6 there was a trip organised to visit a Mosque, and some of the parents were less than happy about this (although I don’t want to turn this into a religious debate so I won’t go into the details). The debate (running through the comments on one of the parent’s status updates) got quite heated and some very harsh, ignorant and upsetting things were said. All in full view of the 10 year old pupils who were meant to be going on this trip.

The issue I’m taking here is not that some parents disagreed, or that some were spiteful and ignorant, but that 10 year old children were able to read this stuff. And I, as a parent, had to have a long, hard think about whether I really want my son to be using Facebook if this is the stuff he might have to wade through. Had he browsed to a site with this kind of stuff on I would be worried.

Thakfully, the parent removed the status completely, along with all record of the comments and after a discussion with Mrs. Clarkson, the decision is to stick to the status quo. It does raise an issue, however, about the way some ‘grown-ups’ use Facebook and I’m still not entirely happy about my son reading about some middle-aged woman’s drunken night out and subsequent one-night stand. (Note: That hasn’t actually happened AFAIK, but you see my point).

So that is why there are age limits, and that is why we need to make certain that younger children are supervised in these potentially harmful environments.

A couple of months ago, Andy Field shared a course on his school’s VLE entitled ‘Wouldn’t It Be Great‘, in which students had to investigate the future of technology and make a creative and interesting presentation (a literal presentation, in front of the class) using whatever technology they liked.

I thought it was a marvellous idea and promptly stole it for use with one of my own classes.

I was so proud of the results, I created a Wiki to show off their work (not the actual presentations, sadly, but the media files they used during them). I’d be grateful if you could have a look and maybe comment on one or two pages as a I know the students would get a kick out of that.

Looking at the feedback I think the students enjoyed themselves, and I know I did.

Wouldn’t It Be Great Wiki

Addendum:

Those of you who follow Andy on Twitter will know that his daughter recently had cochlear implants and can now hear, thanks to the wonders of modern technology. If that’s what we can do now, then yes, I think the future will be great.