I was in the bank today with my wife at the counter service section. A girl goes to the next counter, hands over a card to withdraw money. The member of staff asks why she doesn’t use the machine but the girl says she’s exceeded her daily limit.
The member of staff asks for her to sign a withdrawal slip. The signature doesn’t match.
The member of staff asks if she has any other ID. She doesn’t.
The member of staff asks her to fill out her date of birth and memorable name. She gets the name wrong and goes through a few but still doesn’t get it right.
The girl then says to leave it as she’ll borrow the money from a friend at which point the member of staff says that she’ll authorise the withdrawal.
Errrm. What’s the point of all those questions and systems if you don’t stick to them?
Recently I have seen increasing mention of Google Apps and its use in schools in my Twitter feed from my personal learning network. More and more educators are looking to switch their whole school across to using Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office, GMail instead of Outlook and Google Apps with single sign-on instead of multiple login accounts for the various services.
Why have we suddenly gone Google mad and is it really better than the alternative?
A major advantage for Google Apps is that it is free … ish. It will still cost money in terms of people’s time to switch over and it will take time to administer the Google Apps set up, to create user passwords and to reset those passwords when they are forgotten. It is important to remember that free does not always mean free because of the ‘on-costs’ associated with it. However, it is probably less than the licensing costs for Microsoft Office and the relevant upgrade fees.
Another aspect of Google Apps is its collaborative nature. We seem to see more schools getting students to work collaboratively and indeed working collaboratively across different schools. This certainly fits in the Google model much better and sharing is easily accomplished using Google Apps. Historically this has not been the case with the Microsoft Office suite which has been much more single-user centric. This has been rectified with Sharepoint 2010 and the Office 2010 suite although this would come at extra expense.
The main sticking points for me when it comes to the switch are connection and features.
Google Docs’ strength is also its biggest weakness. You can access your documents from any Internet enabled computer, but if you have no Internet then you have no access to your documents. As a business tool this could be disastrous as you could have an office of staff twiddling their thumbs as you would have no access to software to even create new documents. Google have phased out their offline access to Docs so you could be left with nothing. This could equally happen using Microsoft Office if your network goes down but you would still be able to create new documents and it would not matter if the Internet was down. With the Google solution you would be scuppered either way and often the lack of Internet is out of your control, as was the case of a colleague who lost school Internet due to a workman cutting through a cable.
Although Google Docs has a wide range of features available it does seem to lack some of the more advanced features of its desktop counterparts. Although I could find mention of mail merge features on the Internet I couldn’t find anything related to mail merge on Google Docs when I searched. This is a big problem for schools where mail merged letters are commonplace. Google Docs also lacks the rich templates and presentation tools that are available in Microsoft Office. Some may say this is an advantage as many people overuse those features and end up with poor presentation as opposed to the clean Google Docs output but this choice is lacking in Docs. The Insert Image from Google Search function in GDocs is slick but when wrapping text I couldn’t find any options to increase the wrap distance as it was too close to the image.
Text wrapping in Google Docs
Google Spreadsheet is a feature rich application and has all features that most basic spreadsheet users would need. It does lack PivotTables which I use quite frequently and I couldn’t find a way to change the zoom percentage to view large spreadsheets at a glance. The formula list on Google Docs is way beyond anything I would need and the graphing tools are simple enough for most basic users.
My ‘features’ concerns are not limited to lack of features but addition of new ones. Google has a tendency to add new things in with little warning and this is not generally a problem for the tech-savvy user but those who are more wary of change may be a little irked by the changes. You can often disable new features and temporarily return to old versions but users may not be aware of this or know how to do so.
Am I ready to make the change?
Personally I wouldn’t be comfortable making the change to cloud based Office applications on a large scale across a school. My main reason for this is that I do not believe there is enough stability or bandwidth in the Internet connections that are provided to many schools, especially large schools or those in remote locations. If I were looking to reduce operating costs for a school I think I would rather go down the OpenOffice route so I still had a desktop client.
I would certainly make sure that students were aware of Google Docs as I think it provides excellent facilities for those who don’t have Microsoft Office at home. I also think it is important that students learn to use a range of tools so they are not slaves to Microsoft and are aware of a range of applications so they are able to select the most appropriate ones for their needs.
So a while back we asked the wonderful people of Twitter to post their #newleaders tweets to help people who are taking on a new leadership role. The tweets came flooding in and since this time I have been working to strip out RTs, decipher meaning where people are limited to 140 chars and categorise the tweets to organise into an eBook.
There is a problem though, the #newleaders tweets are very different from the #movemeon tweets which could be summarised quite neatly in 140 chars. Whilst there are loads of #newleaders tweets there is a lack of depth in the book. So I am appealing for some short stories/anecdotes to use in the book.
I would love it if a few people could write a short passage (around 250 words) talking about a particular leadership experience they have had. We can anonymise them and we don’t want tales that would personally identify anyone.
We have split the tweets into these areas that might give you ideas
Making Changes/Change Management
Communication
Decision Making
Delegation
General Tips
Meetings
New role (advice for the first term of a new role)
In a complete departure from the normal content on my blog I am trying my hand as a TV chef. This is a delicious guilt free (200-225 calories) chocolate cake that you can cook in the microwave in 5 minutes with minimal preparation.
Sounds too good to be true? Watch the video above!
Since I started teaching, students have had problems with homework - either getting it wrong … or not doing it at all! Students have homework diaries or planners but those students who need most help don’t fill them in properly or forget them. One solution is to use a VLE but for many staff the VLE has too many features for them and is too complex or not fit for purpose.
I started writing plannerLIVE! five years ago after using a message board for online homework in a previous school. In those five years I have made improvements and have now released brand new features that make it a brilliant tool for any school to use for homework. The best thing is that it is completely FREE!
The main guiding principles for plannerLIVE! were that it MUST be EASY for any teacher to use and there shouldn’t be any barriers for parents or students. As a result we don’t force parents or students to log-in and they can search the homework database without worrying about forgetting passwords (which can be a support nightmare for schools).
Searching homework
Searching homework is incredibly easy for students or parents to use. There are a number of drop down boxes and they can choose as many or few search criteria as they want.
Homework automatically disappears from the search listings when it expires so if users want to find a homework that they haven’t handed in they can click the “Search Past Assignments” to find old assignments.
Adding homework
Adding homework to the system has to be easy and I genuinely haven’t met any teachers who can’t use the system … it’s THAT EASY!
You fill in the form and it’s automagically added to the main search listings. The teacher doesn’t need to do anything else to make it happen.
You can also add web links or upload worksheets into the homework page by using the relevant buttons.
Don’t reinvent the wheel!
One of the main aims for plannerLIVE! was to save teacher time. Teachers are incredibly busy with more pressure being put on them to raise improvement. The Curriculum Library feature allows you to share and re-use homework assignments from other teachers. This allows the spreading of best practice and save you time!
Electronic hand-in and online questions
Last summer we introduced new features so students could register and are able to hand-in homework online or ask questions about the homework by sending a message to the teacher. Now we have hundreds of pieces of work handed in online.
New for 2010: Management overview
One of the features we were asked for a lot was a management overview of the homework showing what homework had been assigned and when by different members of staff.
We have now rolled out this feature on plannerLIVE! and members of staff who have been given the correct access rights can view a breakdown by subject or staff. By clicking the relevant number, you can view the homework that has been set in a particular month by any individual member of staff or in a subject.
New for 2010: School sub-units
A number of schools now separate groups of students into organisational units. These are different for different schools and could include
Houses
Halls
Bands
Campuses
or any other term a school uses
Schools have now got complete control over these sub-groupings and can name them to ensure minimal confusion for users.
The right price: FREE!
The best thing about plannerLIVE! is that it is completely FREE! No restrictions, no limits. Schools can register and start using the system immediately.
Admit it, you’ve needed a ‘handwritingy-looking’ font, trawled the web and then either given up or used the dreaded Comic Sans. What you really wanted was to use your own handwriting as a font … right?
Personalised handwriting fonts can cost $20 or more depending on the complexity of the font and your handwriting. Now it is quick and easy for you to create your own font using iFontMaker for iPad. You download the app for your iPad and you’re good to go.
The app takes you through the process step by step working through each of the characters needed in the font set. All you need to do is draw the letter, number or symbol using your finger. You can then type a sentence in the application to test what it looks like, re-do any letters you’re not happy with and create the font. It’s uploaded to the web and you can email a link and download it to your computer.
There are a variety of ways to create your letters, using a brush, caligraphy pen or a pencil … and you can vary the width of the output to create a fine or thick font. You can create a whole font in 5 minutes it really is THAT easy.
You can extend the font set beyond the standard characters and can include accented characters and other more ‘exotic’ symbol such as the Euro symbol in the extended Latin set. You are even able to create Japanese font characters using the extensive application.
It is a little more expensive than many apps, at £4.99 on the UK App Store or $6.99 on the US App Store but it is well worth the money as you can create a whole range of fonts and it is great for adults and children.
iFontMaker is a clever and different type of app to most of the others that are available and is a great way to show off your iPad to your friends!
Key information
Publisher: The 2TTF Cost: £3.99/$6.99 Hardware: iPad only
… and if you really want to be able to write like me you can download my scrawly handwriting font by clicking below!
We all like news, we all like bed. What could be better than an easy way to catch up with the news whilst in bed?
The Early Edition is a brilliant app for the iPad priced at £2.99 from the iTunes Store. It is a aggregator that pulls in news stories from all your favourite websites and presents them in a newspaper format.
The best thing about this is that the dynamic newspaper updates every time a new story is published on your RSS feeds and include links to videos from the news sites themselves. Think of the moving newspapers from Harry Potter!
The app is REALLY easy to use and the recent update means you don’t even have to know the RSS feed address. You enter the website address and it searches for the feed address for you.
Want to create specific supplements to really get that Sunday newspaper experience? You can now group your stories into sections e.g. Tech News and assign certain blogs or sites to those sections so you can browse specific types of news.
This is a five star app and is definitely worth the £2.99 cost.
If you need any more convincing of how great this app is, watch the video hands-on review below.
It’s finally come; today is my last day at Stantonbury Campus. It seems so long ago that I got the job at Ousedale School and I’m really looking forward to starting in September but I will miss Stantonbury … a lot!
Stantonbury Campus is different from other schools I’ve experienced. Not because there are nearly 2800 students on site, not because students don’t wear uniform, not because they call teachers by their first name, but because of the quality of relationships with students. Stantonbury’s ethos is about equal value and determined optimism and this is at the heart of everything they say and do. This equality also applies to staff; it doesn’t matter whether you are a teacher, cleaner, secretary or the principal … everyone treats each other with respect.
I don’t think students are always aware of how lucky they are. The school has excellent facilities, well equipped ICT suites, a swimming pool, theatre, athletics track but the real asset at Stantonbury is the staff who work incredibly hard for students to ensure they achieve. Students receive an interesting and varied curriculum and the cross-curricular Rich Tasks that students complete in Key Stage 3 are something to be proud of.
I’ve had a fantastic and dedicated ICT teaching team who are committed to students and achievement. They are hardworking and produce excellent outcomes. They are also an incredibly friendly and caring team who take care of each other and help each other out.
I’ll miss Stantonbury Campus as it was where I got my education about working in partnership with students rather than teaching to them. It really is a special place and I hope to take some of the ethos with me wherever I go in the future.
In the words of the Big Breakfast from 1994 … “Don’t phone, it’s just for fun!”
We ran a table quiz at TeachMeet Milton Keynes to win Camtasia licences that had been generously donated by TechSmith. Congrats to the winners.
A few people have asked for the quiz so they could use it at school. So here it is, if you want the answers you’ll need to DM me your email address (my Twitter name is stuartridout) and I can send you the answers.
Learning is paramount in school. I know it is an obvious thing to say but it’s easy to forget and to get caught up with the day-to-day things like behaviour. Of course, if you have good teaching then it usually leads to good behaviour which allows outstanding learning, but that’s for another post at another time!
It’s easy to let your behaviour tracking system become more important than the behaviour itself and you can forget why you have the tracking system in place. Most schools use a paper based system (in my current school it is the yellow sheet, in my previous the green sheet) and these sheets of paper move about via pigeon holes and clutter up desks.
The problems with a paper based system are:
too many sheets of paper creating an unmanageable paper overload
it takes too long for actions to be carried out and the original incident becomes irrelevant
students can get so many yellow sheets that it can become a ‘badge of honour’ to collect them
it is easy for people to fill them in without taking any action and shifting the ‘teflon sheet’ to the pastoral team
The biggest problem with any behaviour tracking system is that it is easy to forget what the point of the system is! It is easy for the system to become an administrative nightmare that records actions but doesn’t effect change in students. It is important to record all actions that are carried out but …
… behaviour management systems exists to help students modify their behaviour so they can get back to the most important thing … LEARNING!
The next logical step is to move to an electronic system that links into your schools MIS. Most major schools MIS have a product that accomplishes this but there are external providers that will link into your MIS. We use Facility CMIS from Serco and are currently rolling out their electronic behaviour system using ePortal.
So far the roll out has gone extremely well and we are seeing more positive behaviours recorded centrally than negatives and this will be incredibly useful to share with students. If you are considering moving over to electronic behaviour management here are a few learning points that you will need to consider but we didn’t think about!
Everyone who comes into contact with young people will need access to the system including librarians, lunchtime supervisors, school nurse and other associate staff members.
All of these people will need access to a computer to record these behaviour events and need to be able to do this as part of their job. When, where and how does a lunchtime supervisor record an electronic incident?
Can you analyse the data in the way you want it to? We have halls (or houses) but our behaviour management system only allows analysis by years and subjects. This is a bit of a pain for us and we are finding a workaround.
Is the tutor aware of information throughout the process? It is very easy for the tutor to get missed out of behaviour management processes. The system we use puts the tutor at the heart of behaviour.
Eventually this information will be accessible online to parents. How are you going to ensure that spelling, grammar, tone and language is appropriate and acceptable to show to parents?
There are workarounds and ways to make all of these work but it is worth thinking about these as you prepare to move over to an electronic system. Already we have seen great success and I’m sure it will radically improve the way we manage behaviour in my school.
Searching homework
