An EduGeek 'Free' School - What would you do?

[dhicks]

can you touch-type?

 

No, and I've never found I've needed to be able to. Touch typing might indeed be a useful skill, too (although I figure if you're going to learn touch-typing you might as well go all out and learn how to use a chord keyboard), but I don't think it's neccesarily a skill that needs to be included in the Key Stage 3, GCSE or A-Level curriculum, mainly because trying to include skills-based tests in academic subjects doesn't do them justice. There's no reason schools / colleges shouldn't teach touch-typing, but do it properly and do a vocational certificate course that gives the pupil a certificate they can take away with them afterwards. Same for MS Office applications - do a proper vocational certificate, don't try and shoe-horn vocational learning skills into a GCSE. And neither of these vocational course's requirements should dictate the ICT policy for the whole school - whole school ICT should be there to assist the learner and fade unobtrusivly into the background, you can keep a couple of ICT suites for running vocational certificate courses. You'd still use tablet PCs, though, just sit them in keyboarded docking stations and have them RDP to virtual desktops.

 

--

David Hicks

[tmcd35]

You'd still use tablet PCs, though, just sit them in keyboarded docking stations and have them RDP to virtual desktops.

 

--

David Hicks

 

Now I for one find that a very interesting idea!

[mjs_mjs]

i would sit them all for the A+ by year nine or abouts, have play rooms full of stuff that the students can play with so destops, ram hd's ect.... and i would go for a more university approach to learning, obv in the first year you'ld have to teach the student skills like how to google correctly, word process, print and e-mail. then rather than teach fact based subject, get them to resheach them. the flaw in my design is that some 11-15 year olds arn't capable of this and as a youth worker i do believe that my idea would be great fun, but alot of skills would be missing from their lives.

 

did i mention alot of pool tables and tea making stations?

[tmcd35]

and i would go for a more university approach to learning, obv in the first year you'ld have to teach the student skills like how to google correctly, word process, print and e-mail.

 

I think there is a lot of milage to be had here. I actually find if very difficult to knuckle down and study, something that didn't exactly put me in good sted at university. I put some of the blame on the high school education system that, from what I can remember, never actually taught you how to study. As I recall, and you correctly say, it's a lot of 'fact based learning', which while does have it's place - it doesn't exactly put you in good sted for later life unless you want to speciailise in pub quizes

 

I'd like to see more focus on skills based learning and coursework and less cramming facts for exams.

[bossman]

Our educational system is geared for exam based skill testing and obviously those students with a good memory fair better as tmcd35 has already summerised in previous posts.

 

Some schools have moved their teaching and learning towards assignment based qualifications but looking at some of these it seems they are more geared to the lower achievers than to high aspirational students.

 

Schools seem to be more focused on academia than extolling lifeskills which will benefit the student in later life.

 

I feel education needs to move forward to empower the student and give them the directions and the skills with which to learn "How to learn" we can no longer strap students into classrooms and spout facts at them, they will, just as they do "Turn off" and not learn anything. I feel what schools or online learning requires is a new "modus operandi" as our teaching methods especially within the subject of IT.

 

It becomes more clearer when you watch the lessons as they are being taught, the students become bored and switch off in 85% of all lessons and in some the students know more about the subject than the teachers.

 

As has been stated by more than one person on here it is the specialisation of certain subjects that students need to aspire to.

 

Our teachers are becoming more and more complacent as the students get more and more adept at teaching themselves.

 

I do agree that basic reading and writing and arithmetic are necessary but not in the over focused way they are taught as students that are taught how to learn rather than learn facts and figures will extol and teach themselves in the long run.

 

Common sense approach is needed rather than the drilling facts into them.

[jamesb]

No, and I've never found I've needed to be able to.

 

Well if you can't do it, then obviously you'd never find a need to.

 

Touch typing might indeed be a useful skill, too (although I figure if you're going to learn touch-typing you might as well go all out and learn how to use a chord keyboard), but I don't think it's neccesarily a skill that needs to be included in the Key Stage 3, GCSE or A-Level curriculum, mainly because trying to include skills-based tests in academic subjects doesn't do them justice. There's no reason schools / colleges shouldn't teach touch-typing, but do it properly and do a vocational certificate course that gives the pupil a certificate they can take away with them afterwards.

 

Because it is much, much easier to learn how to touch-type while younger than it is while older. It is also a really, really useful skill. Would you expect kids to handwrite their homework and written work? If not, why expect them to type it by hunt and peck, or looking constantly at the keyboard? I cannot really explain how useful it has been for me to be able to do this without sounding like I'm boasting, but believe me, I'd place it as being essential.

 

I've also noticed that it is only people who cannot touch-type who tend to disparage it's value.

 

Same for MS Office applications - do a proper vocational certificate, don't try and shoe-horn vocational learning skills into a GCSE. And neither of these vocational course's requirements should dictate the ICT policy for the whole school - whole school ICT should be there to assist the learner and fade unobtrusivly into the background, you can keep a couple of ICT suites for running vocational certificate courses. You'd still use tablet PCs, though, just sit them in keyboarded docking stations and have them RDP to virtual desktops.

 

I'd agree on the MS Office applications being vocational, but these days I just can't see why you'd consider touch-typing to be specific to a particular career. If you can point out to me a career which school should be preparing children for, which wouldn't benefit from much faster typing speeds, the ability to read and type or talk and type or look at the screen to error check your text while typing and so forth, then I'll gladly concede the point.

 

I still don't like the idea of tablet PCs without keyboards - there's a reason that the keyboard has been around as long as it has, and it's an incredibly powerful tool if you know how to use it properly. Of course, if you have to stare at the keyboard to type anyway then I suppose there's no problem with tablets.

 

Also - how're you planning to deal with any visually impaired children in such an environment, or would the school just not be suitable for them?

[deanc]

I think what is needed is a major rethink about what ICT courses are, at present ICT is a very basic introduction to how to use a computer. Often hampered by the ammount of time allocated to it because it is seen as easy. what most of the members on this board belive to be ICT is in fact covered by the computing qualifications, the reasons we tend not to teach these are quite simple:

 

1) the majority of teachers currently employed to teach ICT do not have the subject knowledge required to deliver these courses as they have moved into teaching ICT from other subjects (it tends to be business studies, but also know of a maths teacher and a music teacher that have moved into ICT), the reasons for this are quite simple ICT degrees have not existed long enough for people top have completed them and moved into teaching, the average age of a teacher in the UK is somewhere in the 40s-50s.

 

2)in an average secondary school the subject matter is totally irrelevant for most users of technology, does a receptionist need to know the fetch-decode-execute cycle. does a student that intends to be a builder, who may find basic word processing and spredsheets useful, need to understand the OSI model. if we are honest probably not. although not called so any more we operate comprehensive schools and provide education for all, whilst it might be possible to provide Computing as a option subject it is not really suitable for offering to all students.

 

the final option is to look at the BTEC specification where ther is a lot more scope to deliver hands on technical based qualifications, and as CCNA and CompTia qualifications can be counted as part of these this may well fit the vision of what an EduGeek Free school should deliver.

[tmcd35]

I think what is needed is a major rethink about what ICT courses are, at present ICT is a very basic introduction to how to use a computer.

My beef is they are often times not even that. Maybe I'm being a little unkind to my teaching colleagues but my impression is that the current subject can be summed up as "here's how you insert pretty pictures into word/powerpoint/etc".

 

1) the majority of teachers currently employed to teach ICT do not have the subject knowledge required to deliver these courses as they have moved into teaching ICT from other subjects (it tends to be business studies, but also know of a maths teacher and a music teacher that have moved into ICT), the reasons for this are quite simple ICT degrees have not existed long enough for people top have completed them and moved into teaching, the average age of a teacher in the UK is somewhere in the 40s-50s.

A very important point but what are the powers that be doing to redress this situation? I'm in my 30's and have a third class hons in Applied Computing. Where can I go to get a PGCE and teach my beloved subject?

 

2)in an average secondary school the subject matter is totally irrelevant for most users of technology, does a receptionist need to know the fetch-decode-execute cycle. does a student that intends to be a builder, who may find basic word processing and spredsheets useful, need to understand the OSI model. if we are honest probably not.

While I'd agree that the OSI Model and the Fetch-Execute cycle are too far, basic WP and Spreedsheets don't nearly go far enough. Remember that IT is all pervasive in this day and age. We are expected to buy a home computer, but an ISP package and connect two together in order to function properly in our modern society. So why are we sending newly formed adults out into the world with out them knowing the basics of installing an OS/software, simple networking and file sharing, etc?

[dhicks]

Because it is much, much easier to learn how to touch-type while younger than it is while older. It is also a really, really useful skill.

 

Okay, so touch typing is important, our Free School will let children do a certificate course in it (is a couple of hours a week over half a term enough to learn properly, or would they need longer?). This implies you'll need at least one location (a dedicated classroom, or maybe a library or similar drop-in style point) with fixed keyboards and mice (which would also come in handy for an MS Office certficate course). I'd still avoid messing around wiring fixed network points around the place, just get a decent managed wireless system. The tablet PC is going to need a docking station of some kind, probably something that charges it and lets it use a DVD drive as well as a keyboard.

 

I still don't like the idea of tablet PCs without keyboards

 

The idea is that such a tablet PC is small, cheap and robust enough that everyone in the school can have one. Loosing the keyboard means no hinged keyboard to fold out and no keys to get damaged. Using something with a keyboard attached implies sitting-down-and-using-a-computer, a tablet can be used more like a book.

 

how're you planning to deal with any visually impaired children in such an environment

 

Good point. I'm guessing text-to-speech facilities on the tablet would be useful, as would speech-recognition. On a tablet, partially sighted pupils could increase the size of the on-screen keyboard. Otherwise, USB single-handed chord keyboards with proper training for those who ned to use them.

 

--

David Hicks

[jamesb]

Okay, so touch typing is important, our Free School will let children do a certificate course in it (is a couple of hours a week over half a term enough to learn properly, or would they need longer?). This implies you'll need at least one location (a dedicated classroom, or maybe a library or similar drop-in style point) with fixed keyboards and mice (which would also come in handy for an MS Office certficate course). I'd still avoid messing around wiring fixed network points around the place, just get a decent managed wireless system. The tablet PC is going to need a docking station of some kind, probably something that charges it and lets it use a DVD drive as well as a keyboard.

 

Why do a certificate course in it? It doesn't need to be a qualification, just a skill which needs to be taught. I also don't see the need for a dedicated classroom when tablets with an actual keyboard would be much more effective, and generally faster to use.

 

Just to give a comparison - the best hunt and peck typists can usually get up to about 37 wpm, for memorized text, and maybe 60 wpm for short bursts. An average professional typist has an average speed of about 50-70 wpm, whether the text is memorized or not (since they can read as they type). A good typist, one who has put effort into learning, can generally reach around 80-95 wpm, and with a bit of practice can hit around 120 wpm without difficulty.

 

So, typing a quick e-mail for me is around four or five times as fast as for a hunt and peck typist. It all adds up and saves a lot more time than you might expect. The same applies to any sort of writing. 120 wpm is nearly as fast as speech, and an advanced touch-typist can come close to dictation speeds.

 

The idea is that such a tablet PC is small, cheap and robust enough that everyone in the school can have one. Loosing the keyboard means no hinged keyboard to fold out and no keys to get damaged. Using something with a keyboard attached implies sitting-down-and-using-a-computer, a tablet can be used more like a book.

 

But it also kills your typing speed completely. Not only that, but anyone who can touchtype can generally type much faster in general, and type one-handed with a tablet perched on their arm faster than a hunt and peck typist, so long as the keyboard is within peripheral vision, just not as fast as they can on a physical keyboard.

 

Good point. I'm guessing text-to-speech facilities on the tablet would be useful, as would speech-recognition. On a tablet, partially sighted pupils could increase the size of the on-screen keyboard. Otherwise, USB single-handed chord keyboards with proper training for those who ned to use them.

 

In a classroom how's speech-to-text going to help? Even if you can get the computer to work at the average speaking rate of 150 wpm, you'll have a whole classroom of noise. Text-to-speech is handy, but again you've then either got kids wearing headphones and struggling to hear the teacher, or a lot of noise.

 

I can see that you don't view touch-typing as a useful skill, and understand it. I'd probably agree that being able to touch-type isn't an essential skill - but neither are many of the other useful skills which kids should be taught. Familiarity with and understanding command-line environments also isn't essential in IT - but your life will be a lot easier if you have the knowledge required than if you don't.

[dhicks]

Why do a certificate course in it?

 

So that it's taught properly, not just lumped in with a general GCSE. GCSEs are academic subjects, doing a certificate course would give the pupil something to take away immediatly with them, even if they can't pass a whole GCSE.

 

I also don't see the need for a dedicated classroom when tablets with an actual keyboard would be much more effective, and generally faster to use.

 

But that would mean designing the tablet PC in a particular way to suite one function - sitting down and hammering reams of text into a word-processor, which you'd rather hope pupils won't be doing very much of. They shouldn't have any need to copy-type, and it won't do them any harm to have to think while they're typing an email.

 

In a classroom how's speech-to-text going to help?

 

Probably very little, but the PC should be capable of it, just incase thing improve in a few years time. Note that "capable of speech-to-text" just means "has a microphone (or inputs for an external one)" - I'd expect speech to be processed on a server, and to be used in relativly few cases, you wouldn't have a whole class talking away.

 

Text-to-speech is handy, but again you've then either got kids wearing headphones and struggling to hear the teacher

 

Again, I'd expect text-to-speech to be used in relativly few cases, in which case you can more closly control the pupil's use of the hardware, and could probably afford better equipment, i.e. you'd have maybe half-a-dozen pupils in a school with a need for text-to-speech, and those could have decent headphones or maybe a directional speaker.

 

--

David Hicks

[jamesb]

So that it's taught properly, not just lumped in with a general GCSE. GCSEs are academic subjects, doing a certificate course would give the pupil something to take away immediatly with them, even if they can't pass a whole GCSE.

 

Okay, can't argue with that one, and at least it's an easy one to test.

 

But that would mean designing the tablet PC in a particular way to suite one function - sitting down and hammering reams of text into a word-processor, which you'd rather hope pupils won't be doing very much of. They shouldn't have any need to copy-type, and it won't do them any harm to have to think while they're typing an email.

 

You're assuming that's the only function of touch-typing, it's not. Being able to quickly fire off commands is useful.

 

As for the e-mail argument, well, people don't think when they're typing an e-mail normally. If you're touch-typing it you can actually read the e-mail as you type, meaning that you're more likely to pick up typos or mistakes as you go. You're much more likely to miss a mistake if your attention is split between keyboard and actual text coming up.

 

Probably very little, but the PC should be capable of it, just incase thing improve in a few years time. Note that "capable of speech-to-text" just means "has a microphone (or inputs for an external one)" - I'd expect speech to be processed on a server, and to be used in relativly few cases, you wouldn't have a whole class talking away.

 

Again, I'd expect text-to-speech to be used in relativly few cases, in which case you can more closly control the pupil's use of the hardware, and could probably afford better equipment, i.e. you'd have maybe half-a-dozen pupils in a school with a need for text-to-speech, and those could have decent headphones or maybe a directional speaker.

 

--

David Hicks

 

We're back into the technology improving again - shouldn't we be looking at the technology that's available now? The tablet thing just looks like a 'give all of the kids a shhiny new toy' rather than a carefully considered move. I still believe that if you're going to give all of the kids tablets, you'd be better off providing them with the ASUS T90 or something similar.

[dhicks]

people don't think when they're typing an e-mail normally.

 

I can't argue with that, either :-)

 

We're back into the technology improving again - shouldn't we be looking at the technology that's available now?

 

A tablet PC capable of streaming audio from the device to a server for speech recognition processing (or podcasting, or whatever) is feasible (and available) right now, it's just that the field of speech recognition hasn't advanced as fast as everyone kind of assumed it would 30 years ago. That might change over the next couple of years as GPU processing architectures bring supercomputing-like capabilities to the desktop / server room, but I wouldn't count on it.

 

The tablet thing just looks like a 'give all of the kids a shhiny new toy' rather than a carefully considered move.

 

It would be a tablet PC designed for the (UK) education market, not a general end-consumer device to be used for absolutly anything. It might be an idea to limit the tablet to being only able to browse a school's VLE - if nothing else, that would allow you to limit the bandwidth used so you could then provide mobile broadband for some pupils.

 

--

David Hicks

[tmcd35]

It would be a tablet PC designed for the (UK) education market, not a general end-consumer device to be used for absolutly anything. It might be an idea to limit the tablet to being only able to browse a school's VLE - if nothing else, that would allow you to limit the bandwidth used so you could then provide mobile broadband for some pupils.

 

--

David Hicks

 

I'm still liking the idea of an Android Slate being carried around by every pupil and instead of having any desktops or laptops anywhere in the school, have cheap usb keyboard/mice in most classrooms converting the slate into a mini desktops when needed. I'm sure for classes like music and art you can get appropriate software and usb attachments to make the system work?

[dhicks]

I'm still liking the idea of an Android Slate being carried around by every pupil and instead of having any desktops or laptops anywhere in the school, have cheap usb keyboard/mice in most classrooms converting the slate into a mini desktops when needed. I'm sure for classes like music and art you can get appropriate software and usb attachments to make the system work?

 

OSes like Android, iOS and Windows Mobile are designed for consumer use, where the slate device is your own and you want to be able to customise it arrange it to how you want. The modern mobile OS is very much about how many apps the vendor can sell you to add functionality. For a school you want a bunch of identical devices with minimal management needs, easily interchangeable for repair purposes. Probably your best bet is a basic OS that skips having any kind of desktop and just loads a full-screen web browser on boot. Have it keep up-to-date with Flash player, Adobe Reader, Java and all the video and audio codecs you can think of and make it so schools can specify their own URL as the default. You might also want a video conferencing client like Skype. Nothing else, no need for any apps or other gubbins.

 

I'd avoid cheap keyboards and midce in "most" classrooms and just keep them for where they are needed, probably just for touch-typing lessons. You might as well buy decent keyboards and mice then, too.

 

--

David Hicks

[JJonas]

Replace DT and Engineering with Robot Wars

[tmcd35]

Replace DT and Engineering with Robot Wars

 

I'm joining your school - when do the gates open

[JJonas]

I'm joining your school - when do the gates open

 

It the potential staff are this excited about it what are the students going to think.

Edited October 28, 2010 by JJonas

[jamesb]

It the potential staff are this excited about it what are the students going to think.

 

A robotics class, with a robot wars, or robot football, or robot olympics every year sounds like a brilliant idea to me. If you could get other schools involved as well it could be a big event.

[GrumbleDook]

Forget Robot Wars ... now THIS is something I quite fancy.

[torledo]

OSes like Android, iOS and Windows Mobile are designed for consumer use, where the slate device is your own and you want to be able to customise it arrange it to how you want. The modern mobile OS is very much about how many apps the vendor can sell you to add functionality. For a school you want a bunch of identical devices with minimal management needs, easily interchangeable for repair purposes. Probably your best bet is a basic OS that skips having any kind of desktop and just loads a full-screen web browser on boot. Have it keep up-to-date with Flash player, Adobe Reader, Java and all the video and audio codecs you can think of and make it so schools can specify their own URL as the default. You might also want a video conferencing client like Skype. Nothing else, no need for any apps or other gubbins.

 

I'd avoid cheap keyboards and midce in "most" classrooms and just keep them for where they are needed, probably just for touch-typing lessons. You might as well buy decent keyboards and mice then, too.

 

--

David Hicks

 

devices like the ipad maybe designed for consumer market, but as we've seen with the iphone, this bottom up approach has had the result of permeating organisations, whereby IT in big companies see a consumer market product as a viable alternative to their top down designed-for-business or if we're talking education, designed-for-education device. it might be that it takes a while for the management apps to catch up, but they do to an acceptable or better than acceptable level eventually....

 

with an ipad you can provide some level of minimalism, you might have to make adjustments becuase of the absence of flash, but that's where the app model becomes an advantage in providing a growing market of alternative apps, and a licensing model which suits education where licensing software for each individual tablet/handheld device within the school could end up being prohibitively expensive. Plus, if education is moving more toward personalised learning, it makes sense that should you choose to not go fully down the lockdown route with the type of client devices, that you have personal devices that do allow for customization beyond just a 'here's your full screen browser, customize you VLE page' approach.

[dhicks]

Forget Robot Wars ... now THIS is something I quite fancy.

 

That's the handy thing about schools - the "I wish I had enough like-minded people to play this game with" issue becomes "Right, class, today we are...". I'm not quite sure a literal Star-Trek-like game would be all that useful / interesting, but some kind of collaberative exercise that properly utilised the large-screen display you find in the majority of school classrooms these days would be nice. Something designed for small groups of children, three or four maybe, who use a workstation between them to update a central display.

 

--

David Hicks

[Rydra]

I've always envisaged one of these free schools to move away completely from the standard "School structure" and move towards a real world, business structure with an education focus.

 

Run the school, AS a business, and tie it into the community as a conglomerate support company, providing all sorts of services and solutions.

The head would in fact be the managing director, with a board of directors being the teaching staff.

 

Your departments would be comprised of the student body, with your traditional subjects broken into the departments. Marketing department would be exactly that, and the basics of presentation, geography, business studies, History could be covered.

Accounting and HR covers Mathematics and sociology, Administration covers communication (english, ICT), You then have the services covering ICT, building maintenance, and so on and so forth.

 

The work would mostly be project based, lead by the department head (aka the teacher) who would steer the project, and provide support along the way.

 

It is a massive step away from the way education is now, but the key factor is a massive grounding in students taking responsibility for their own actions, having to think for themselves to achieve their goal, and being used to a standard operating practice that is used in most real life businesses.

 

Wheither it would work would be the challenge, and one heck of a challenge for the MD!

[GrumbleDook]

@Rydra ... as much as some folk might want to set up free schools like that, there is a need to set up schools as they were 70 years ago, where people learnt their times table by rote, where the teacher was the fount of all knowledge and you absorbed it from them ...

 

And there are those places which want to re-open the small local school which the council closed because it cost too much to run for too few children, so the community will get a school running again because *everyone* in teh village wants their kids to go their.

 

There are lots of presumptions about what free schools will mean, but one thing is for certain, the DfE has very little idea whether they will work or not, or even how much they will cost. There are a raft of concerns about the people involved (and the lack of procurement / tender for them to do the work when at least 2 existing organisations could do it) and we have to accept that a number of the decisions being made about the program are political.

 

Saying that, it could open things up for a wealth of opportunities ... and I look forward to the good stuff which can come out of it, but would like to see how the Govt will step in if it goes wrong.

[teejay]

Replace DT and Engineering with Robot Wars

 

Excellent :-)

The History department should also be run by The Sealed Knot