Same Old, Same Old

After a hard fought season, the Kellett Staff Fantasy Football League came to a less than thrilling conclusion at the weekend with reigning champion Mr. Lovell retaining his title by a comfortable margin. Runner up Miss Lewis finished a gallant and somewhat unlucky second after leading the competition for the vast majority of the 38 weeks.

In third place for the second year running was Mr Dawes, representing the accumulated brainpower of the ICT Department.

Unfortunately there was a familiar look to the bottom of the league too, but to save embarrassment we wont be discussing that here!

A special well done to Leo who was the winner of the first Kellett Student League. no mean feat as there were nearly 100 entries in that event.

World Scratch Day - Hong Kong Event

It's great that a group like LEAD exists in Hong Kong to help raise the awareness of technology opportunities within the curriculum. Even better that they were able to organise an event to mark the second birthday of Scratch, the interactive programming language devised at MIT.

Hong Kong's event, which added to events in over 40 other countries took place on Saturday at the Cyberport, a fitting venue to consider technology within the curriculum.



On show were a number of Scratch presentations from local HK schools, including the amazing Sawing Down the Tree game. The standard of presentations wa extremely high and I was left a little bemused after a Year 5 student showed me his complex and entertaining presentation. It's clear that there's some great work going on in HK schools and this was a great opportunity to observe, and dareisay, think of ways in which we might be able to catch up!

It was then down to work, as in my haste I had mistakenly signed up for the 'Advanced' Workshop! Edmond from LEAD gave us the complete technical lowdown on how to use external Pico boards with Scratch and it was a fantastic opportunity to play with buttons, sliders, audio and light sensors. We certainly need to add some of these to our stock as they are a great way of adding that element of external control to presentations.

Back to the theatre for a session on how Scratch has made an impact in local schools and well done to the translation team who were brilliantly efficient in allowing colleagues from the international school community full access to the discussion.



Another session on using Web 2.0 tools within Scratch followed after lunch. We covered some of this stuff with Year 6 earlier in the year and hopefully the new version of Scratch may have an improved picture editor so that this type of work can be done within the interface. Nevertheless, the session was useful, it was good idea to use Audacity to add your own sounds and the pitch altering tool made for some fun effects!

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

The final session initially involved colleagues from local secondary schools talking about the new secondary curriculum and how Scratch was being used to help with ideas involving, creativity, design and problem-solving - it was great to hear those words being used.

The day rounded off with a panel discussion focussing on A New Paradigm of Teaching and Learning featuring Jane Harris (CIS), Dan Everest (YCIS) and myself. We discussed our feelings about the importance of Scratch within the creative 21st Century curriculum and outlined our collaborative project (more on that later!). We also touched on the importance of games within the wider curriculum, assessment and a number of other issues close to our hearts!

It was a bit un-nerving sitting on a sofa in front of an audience, but moderator Dr Felicia Tsang ran the session well and I only felt stupid the one time!

Well done to all those involved on the day and we look forward to building upon this good work to spread Scratch out of the lab and into the classroom where it belongs!!

World Scratch Day - Hong Kong

Firstly, apologies for the lack of blogging recently. It's not that there's nothing going on, in fact, it's completely the opposite, which is one of the reasons for the lack of blog posts....

That, combined with the 'R' word... r_ p _ _ _ s - no prizes for guessing what the least favorite occupational hazard involved with teaching is!

Anyway, yesterday was World Scratch Day and Hong Kong was one of 42 countries involved, with an event at the Cyberport. I'll add a full report of the day as soon as the other r_p _ _ _s are finsished, but here's Mitch Resnick and Karen Brennan to give a bit of background and flavour:

Education Leadership Summit

So, day one of Apple's Education Leadership Summit. Firstly, what a pleasure to see so many influential, creative people come to HK to talk to the education community. Heppell was the same as ever, completely engrossing, and what a bonus to see Greg Whitby, hadn't expected him to be there. A good excuse to embed one of my fav vids (below).

Over 200 schoools from 21 countries represented, a truely global event.

First up, Dave McMaster of Canadian welcoming all and talking about their tech journey. Then Tom Kelley from IDEo with a hugely entertaining session on innovation. Some really interesting definitions of the types of innovators and a real bonus, a FREE copy of his book. I was too cool to get in the line to get him to sign it though, maybe I'll sneak it to him tomorrow when nobody's looking.

Vivienne Stewart from the Asia Society was next to speak concerning education and globalisation. Her words struck a real chord and have massive significance for a school like ours. Our "Islands of the World" project with among others, Martha's Vineyard and the Orkneys is a start, but we clearly have much to do in fostering the sort of collaboration and understanding she talked about. As usual, it's all about giving teachers explicit support and the time to explore the possibilities available to them. Hopefully our upcoming International Day can be a springboard for more of this work.

Lunch was an extended one, purposely I assume to give people the chance to connect. I was lucky enough to meet Noah Katz from Renaissance College's Digital Technology Team. One of the features of events like these is that just when you think you might be beginning to master the skills, concepts and knowledge you need to move forward, you meet somebody like Noah who makes you realise the journey has only just begun. He was naieve enough to give me his contact details... big mistake, Noah!

A discussion panel on 21st Century Leadership followed by a breakout session gave us greater opportunity to explore global collaboration and some good ideas from Greg Israel.

The day ended with John Couch, VP from Apple Aducation talking about Apple's Vision for Modern Education. All you need to know about John's session is that it was due to finish at 5.30 and at 5.50 on a Saturday evening, everybody was still sat listening.

With events like this there's little chance for deeper reflection until the event is over, so the above is a brief, rushed summary of Day One. I'm off to Day Two now!

Apple Conference Countdown - Bring It On!

It's fair to say that I'm pretty excited about this weekend's Education Leadership Summit at Canadian International School. I've spoken to quite a few teachers who are attending in the last few days and it seems I'm not the only one! Clearly Hong Kong is ready for this type of event now and it's to Apple's credit that they have assembled such an impressive list of speakers and persuaded delegates to attend from all over Asia. It's important that the ed-tech community here in HK builds upon this weekend and moves forward, not only at our own conference in September, but also in the future.

Hopefully, more exciting collaborative projects like the one documented below will be born this weekend.

On another note this will be the first major conference I have been to since the "Birth of Twitter" and I suspect that it will be a major feature of the conference, providing an interactive back-channel to the proceedings and enriching the conference experience for delegates. Twitter is a great tool for teachers. It helps them to learn. Yes, it has been trivialised in the media to an extent, but it's helping teachers to connect and converse with each other. Without Twitter, we would not be involved in the Islands of the World project, which came about through a Twitter contact.

Thanks to Tom Barrett (again!) for pointing out US Principal Bill Carozza's blog post with regard to teacher's use of Twitter - well worth a read. He makes the telling point about the tool;

"Twitter and its ability to form a PLN has been one of the most useful professional development instruments in my 25 years in the biz"

So, I'll be sure to have my laptop charged ready to tweet the weekend away...

During my teaching career I've heard the word's "Thank goodness it's Friday" mentioned a few times. That's how I feel... I can't wait to get to work... on Saturday morning.

Global Collaborative Project

You know that you are beginning to win the battle when a student approaches you at the end of the lesson and asks if you can post links to what they've just covered on 'your blog'....

So...

P4 have begun to look at the global collaborative project on islands that I've been tweeting about a lot recently. We looked at the project Wiki and also located the other schools using Google Maps. We spent time looking at Hong Kong Island making sure we knew the districts so that we could explain them to a student from another school.

During the next session we will begin to assemble the resources we need to present information abour our island life and about our school. As we were looking at satellite images of the skyscrapers in and around mid-levels we thought about how the students of one of the schools in the project might feel about our island. Their island, in the Orkneys of Scotland has a total population of 70 - most of the buildings in mid-levels have at least that number living in them!

Google Maps is a great resource for studying your own locality as well as that of others - here's the link.

For this of you who want to explore Hong Kong a little more why not take a look at out Google Earth quiz from last year?

If you would like to know more about our global islands project, the Wiki can be viewed here. We've only just started but hopefully more should appear shortly.

An Apple a Day

This weekend sees Apple's Education Leadership Summit taking place at Canadian International School. The gathered array of keynotes and workshop leaders are as impressive a group as I've seen in one place and the whole event promises to be extremely interesting.

A number of staff from Kellett will be attending throughout the weekend and I hope it proves to be a rewarding experience. I'm really looking forward to hearing Stephen Heppell speak having attended Schools for the Future conference he was leading many years ago.

The conference is perhaps an indication of Apple's determination to conquer the education market in Hong Kong. They appear to have made a conscious decision to target this area and it's good to see a company clearly committed to working in our sector who understand the issues and who can work with teachers to develop pedagogies.

Their strategy appears to be working. A recent unscientific poll I carried out in some of our classes shows that Apple are now the dominant home computer in many year groups.

For the first time ever in my teaching career I heard one of our Apple pupils utter these immortal words; "Man, I really hate Windows" !!

Visiting HKFYG HQ

During the Easter holiday I was lucky enough to be invited to a meeting with LEAD (Learning through Engineering Art & Design) at their Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups headquarters in Quarry Bay. Along with Joanna Cheung from LEAD, Jane Harris from CIS and Dr Felicia Tsang (LEAD Project Consultant) we discussed the upcoming World Scratch Day and the Hong Kong event which will take place at the Cyberport on Saturday 16th May.

As can be seen from the agenda I will be sitting on a panel discussion at the end of the day tackling "A New Paradigm of Teaching and Learning". During the meeting we discussed some of the issues surrounding this topic and how we might as a group support teachers in their understanding of how teaching and learning might look in this technology-rich era. It was an extremely interesting meeting as we covered many aspects, including how teachers are learners as well as students these days and how some teachers find that concept difficult to come to terms with. In relation to Scratch we also looked at different formats of assessment and discussed how teachers could use formative assessment within their work.

I'm really looking forward to the day at Cyberport and to meeting teachers from the whole of Hong Kong who have been using Scratch in their classrooms, as well as supporting those who are yet to use it.

In the two meetings I have had with representatives of LEAD I have been extremely impressed by their knowledge and understanding of education technology and it is clear they have been undertaking some fascinating creative projects in HK schools. I'm looking forward to developing our relationship further.

Easter in HK

Easter hols are almost over, hope everybody had a good one.

Here's a few of the places I visited, maybe you've already been or you're considering going there at some point. Anyway, here are a few thoughts.

First up a visit to Shau Kei Wan to the Museum of Coastal Defense. Based within and around a coastal fort the museum documents Hong Kong's relationship with the surrounding sea and the various conflicts that have occured on it. It's a great way to spend half a day, especially if the weather's not too hot and there's plenty of interest in the different historical displays, which are broken down into different time zones. As an added bonus, there are some big guns to look at as well!!

Next up was Wonder Park Plus, situated on the 6th floor of the World Trade Centre in Wan Chai, this much hyped Japanese gaming centre has long been on my list of places to visit. Whilst it's true there are a huge array of fantastic arcade games available within the centre the problem is that they are all in the adult section. It's hard to understand why games such as Virtua Tennis and all the motor racing games there are deemed to be only suitable for adults. All that's left for the under 16s are the grabber type games which are frankly a waste of time. Wonder Park Plus gets a big thumbs down from me, I'm afraid. My junior sidekick was not happy there!!

Given it was the holidays that means it was necessary to visit some of the great shopping areas in HK, namely my two favourites! No, not IFC, but 188 gaming mall and Sham Shui Po Flea Market. Great fun as always.

So, refreshed and rested it's time to start a new term. There are some really exciting things going on in ICT this term, not only at Kellett but in the wider HK ICT community as well.

More on these developments soon. Meantime, here are some of my holiday snaps!

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

Kellett Is a Nice School

It's important to make that clear before we continue with this thread! The short films you are about to view bare no relation to what school life is really like at Kellett!

Year 7 students have just completed their English/ICT film module. During the module they are encouraged to look at aspects of movie making, including scripting, directing and editing. They also have to story board their films, file a shooting schedule and arrange for props and locations themselves. Important lessons include how to frame action and how to ensure continuity within their films.

Three of the completed films are shown below.

This is the second year we've worked on this project and again it has been a huge success. Working with a much larger year group was challenging but the students rose to the challenge and applied themselves really well. A great job!

If Teacher Tube is downloading slowly, the movies are also hosted on our Youtube page here.

School Visits

It's always good to get out and visit other schools to see what they're up to.

Last week I was lucky enough to visit two schools in HK for completely different reasons.

First up was Yew Chung Inernational School in Kowloon Tong. I met with Dan Everest from there along with Jane Harris from CIS to discuss our use of the programming software Scratch.

We've all used the software in completely different ways and it was good to talk about what we had learnt and share our expertise. Yew Cheung have been using Scratch in their Literacy lessons to enhance student understanding of MacBeth, whilst CIS have embedded their work on Scratch within Numeracy, using it to explore shape and space. At Kellett we've been using Scratch to investigate aspects of computer game design with our P6 and Y7 classes.

Whilst our experiences are clearly different there were some common trends for all of us.

Firstly, the usefulness of Scratch as a classroom tool is obvious. It is engaging and stimulating for pupils and there is an easy entry level for those students who need to work at a basic starting point.

Secondly, the scope for students to extend and self-explore progression in the software is enormous. Tasks can be open ended and exploratory in their nature, which means students can continue to expand their horizons within the environment at their own pace.

Thirdly, we all agreed one of the marked successes of working with the software was the emergence of experts within the classroom who take on the role of mentor with their peers. These self-acting "pupil teachers' are able to add their advice and insight into the software. Students seem to naturally accept this type of help and have far fewer hang-ups about it than teachers do.

The days of the 'sage on the stage' are long gone. It's simply not possible for teachers to have a wide enough experience and expertise on new software and we need to accept that's ok! That can be quite a difficult thing for teachers to do and can be a major barrier to 21st Century Learning. Most students don't have a problem with it.

As a result of our discussions and sharing we now have a bank of good practice using Scratch and we are now formulating ways we can develop this further. It may be that the upcoming World Scratch Day Event at the Cyberport in Hong Kong gives us the opportunity.

Saturday May 16th is World Scratch Day and events are taking place around the world to showcase and introduce the software to teachers who are new to the platform, as well as those who have more experience. HK's event is at the Cyberport and the programme looks to contain some interesting sessions. I will be meeting with the group involved in organising the event shortly, so will have more information then.

My second school visit in as many days was to Canadian International School. I accompanied our new ICT Strategy Manager, Billy Ling to look at Canadian's successful implementation of the Apple platform into their school. It was certainly impressive and gives us lots of helpful information as we look to develop our infrastructure for the future.

One of the key aspects of schools progressing in the the 21st Century is the ability they have to share their expertise, either through a teacher's own development of their personal learning netoworks, or through good old fashioned sitting down and talking face-to-face! Without that things would be so much more difficult.

Another Great Application

I'm pretty sure it was Lee Kolbert who first pointed out what a great web site Today's Meet is. Originally designed to run as a back channel during conference presentations, this excellent tool offers a time limited, Twitter style communication platform that could be used by classroom teachers.

Last week I asked our teachers to use Todays Meet to think of ways that it could be utilised to help teaching and learning.

This is what they came up with;

• If you are watching video footage as a stimulus, children can enter their first responses as they watch the footage, note taking on a forum basis
• I can see this being used as a homework tool. Set a problem to be solved and the children respond and can see all other responses
• I'm wondering if this can be used across a year group so all three classes could see peers comments on a common topic e.g. Cross class collaboration
• This would be great for evaluating artists' work. All children can respond to the art work at the same time as well as responding to each other
• It could provide a platform for older pupils to have discussions for group homework. Providing an open "room" for ideas to be easily shared.
• Students could post arguments for science ethics topics, either for or against and then discuss in class
• Students can make a brief comment on a text I have set them for homework!
• It would be amazing as a homework tool for our Big Talk Topics - children can post comments about the topic as well as the 'dinner talk'
• Real time peer assessment of presentations.

These are just a few ideas complied over a rushed Friday - there's clearly lots of scope for using this tool and we'll be trying out some different ways in the coming weeks. If anybody is using this in an educational context, please let us know!

The Non-Netbook

I love this video which is currently doing the rounds and is beginning to attain cult status as viewing figures go through the roof. It is apparently the result of an impromtu walkabout by a teacher in a classroom at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.

The ensuing conversation, whilst being very funny, raises huge issues and questions with regard to how our students see their use of knowledge resources.

We could of course discuss the implications that this has for us as teachers... but I don't have a spare 20 hours to consider it at the moment so I'm just enjoying it instead!

My favourite bit is when he clicks on the word to try to get some context help.

Music and ICT

Following on from our photography module, most year groups will now be spending a few lessons looking at Music in ICT. It's fair to say that these two areas of the curriculum are very closely related and it's not unusual to see students using laptops in the Music room rather than instruments.

Early lessons involve creating sequences and working with loops. We use 2Simple's Music Toolkit to cover a lot of the objectives, but also make use of some web sites too.

An old favourite is the BBCs One Studio Sequencer which is no longer being updated but does still work! This is an excellent site for creating sequences and some great tunes have already been made.

Some younger students have been looking at Super Duper Music Looper. There is an online version which although very limited, does show how music can be painted into timelines. The adding of sounds into a timeline is an important skill and students will be developing this type of skill throughout the module.

What's Going On in ICT??

Dear Parents, and other interested parties!

Ever feel the need to find out what we're doing in ICT?!

It's always a bit of an eye opener when I talk to parents and show them the work we're doing in ICT and they say something like; "I never realised you did that sort of thing."

The ICT curriculum has come a long way in a short amount of time and as I've said before, if you think it's changing fast now, just wait and see what happens next! Keeping up with current developments is a real task for teachers, but it's important they do so if they are to successfully embed technology into what they do and provide students with challenges that are real and relevant.

One if the ways I keep in touch with developments is by using a Personal Learning Network (PLN)of colleagues, ex-colleagues, friends, leading thinkers in ed-tech etc as a basis for my ideas. Sometimes I read what they're up to via their blogs (using Google Reader), sometimes I'm in closer contact via forums or Nings, but more recently I've invested a bit of time in Twitter.

I've had a Twitter account for around about a year, but after my initial efforts at updating I sort of gave up on it. However, it has now begun to become a more widely used tool in education and in society itself. High profile users of Twitter include Lance Armstrong and Stephen Fry and their use has been highlighted in the media. Use of the software around important world events has also raised awareness.

Having revived my account I now find that more people I know and want to discuss my work with are using Twitter and that meaningful conversations are beginning to take place. I'm sure this will be a help to my own professional development and therefore impact upon the work of my students.

As well as my own account I have also set up a Kellett ICT Twitter account and will use this to update what's going on in our lessons (hopefully) on a day-to-day basis.

If you already have a Twitter account and would like to follow us, our account name is kellettict, or you can just click on the Follow me on Twitter link in the right hand side of this page.

If you would like to know more about Twitter, you can visit the web site, or see what Wikipedia has to say about it.

We look forward to you following us!!