Tablets in schools!

Are you using iPads and other tablets for learning? I want to hear from you! Im putting together my next article, all contributors will get in the magazine and on this website!

Free Software Vs Premium!

Its been a year since we began our exciting venture into the world of techno geekery, I have tried to bring you the inside track on all things online and for the classroom. (And this is the first post in a while) This month we are looking at free software vs premium; do you need to invest in software or can you get away with getting it free?

First of all lets get our terminology right: Premium: or proprietary This is software you pay for, from a company. They sell you a number of licenses to run it on certain machines, think Microsoft.

Free: Or Open Source, usually developed by a community of programmers, for the benefit of people. Why do they do it? It can be for a range of reasons from not wanting to pay huge fees for premium and being alturisitic.

Freemium: This software that’s initially free, sometimes supported by advertising, and then you can buy premium services from them. This is a model used by mobile phone applications.

So we know our options, what are the Pros and Cons of going free? This could apply to software for Staff at the school, and to programmes used with pupils:

Some free software examples, from @Doug_Patterson on Twitter:

JING: Jing is great for fast and easy creation of professional looking screenshots, so it’s mainly a teacher tool. (http://www.techsmith.com/jing/ )

SUmO PAINT: Sumopaint is awesome for photoediting. It has alot of functionallity and is webbased, which I love, no installation needed! (http://www.sumopaint.com/home/ )

xmIND : Xmind is great for mindmapping which I used alot as a teacher and is great for the students to organise there work. (http://www.xmind.net/)

PROS

• Its Free!
• You also get the freedom to copy and redistribute the software on all then computers in the school
• Upgrades are also free!
• Not tied to one company for maintenance.
• If its not exactly what you want, vote with your feet and uninstall it and just more on to another one!

CONS

• As its free, some free or ‘open source software’ can go under (so can premium) and there is no clear source for help or updates.
• Sometimes you need to search for support, rather than have one point of contact.

Free software can be a great option for a school, particularly with classes working on particular projects, though for larger scale implementations there is a lot of piece of mind that goes with using proprietary software.

Free software Vs Paid for Schools – Request for help

Hey, Im looking into free software for schools, and how it measures up to paid software. Do you need to pay? Do you get what you pay for? Also what are your favourite software packages? Do you use them for yourself or with pupils as well?

Im interested to hear from a range of people, including suppliers and users, give me some thoughts in the comments or email me here technogeek@edexec.co.uk

The article will be appearing in EdExec magazine and on this blog!

Teachers and social media – the safeguarding minefield

Techno Geek stands aside to let legal expert Chris Cook of SA Law guide you through how teachers should use social media

The arrival of social media has greatly increased our ability to communicate with others, although there are particular issues facing schools that must be considered from a teacher/pupils perspective. There is now a much greater scope of opportunity for teachers and children to engage outside of the traditional working day.

Schools must recognise that social media may also expose both teachers and children to significant risks. There is now much greater scope for children to receive abuse, which in a social media environment is much harder to prevent bearing in mind that the people responsible for protecting a child may not be aware of it, even though it is occurring within the home.

Social interfacing provides a medium for children to be groomed in an environment where the perpetrator is essentially invisible. The potential risks could include strangers masquerading as minors, but also the more common occurrence of abusive behaviour from fellow pupils. Potential exploitation of children might worsen, as children tend to play on their curiosities more than adults would, leading to the possibility of an unsuspecting student disseminating to strangers information about themselves including telephone numbers and addresses.

There are not just risks from third parties. Schools and teachers need to be mindful of maintaining professional boundaries with pupils. The generally informal nature of social media as a method of communication could result in a degree of familiarity that could distort the student-teacher relationship. In turn, pupils could start regarding their teachers as friends as opposed to role models, increasing the chance of inappropriate dialogue and, in extreme situations, career-threatening allegations.

It is therefore clear that schools need to have in place clear and comprehensive policies dealing with usage of social media.  It unfortunately remains common for schools to have in place outdated policies that are too vague to be of any assistance to the school in managing issues that arise from issues such as professional boundaries breaches and abusive behaviour in a social media environment.

It is particularly important to ensure that such policies make it clear that teachers are required to maintain standards both inside and outside of the school environment and that they adhere to their duties of confidentiality and the principles of the Data Protection Act 1998. While teachers themselves are at risk, schools are also open to legal proceedings from parents and pupils alike due to the principle of vicarious liability.

Training of staff is also very important – a policy can only be effective once staff understand its implications. Once the policy has been introduced and staff adequately trained, it must then be properly policed. Teachers should be encouraged to report any concerns regarding the usage of social media to afford the opportunity for the school to do something about it.

Parents of pupils have an active role to play in the policing of the policy and should also be encouraged to liaise with the school to report any concerns that they have as to their children’s safety. This is particularly important owing to the fact that the majority of a child’s social media usage takes place outside of school hours.

Quick Tips

The implementation of adequate policies is clearly necessary for all schools to introduce, there are some preliminary steps that teachers should consider from a safeguarding perspective before using social media to communicate:

• Have separate personal and professional profiles;
• Avoid making students/relatives contacts;
• Place contacts into different groups and set permissions accordingly;
• Make sure that appropriate privacy settings are set (and if in doubt ensure that privacy settings are maximised);
• Always maintain professional standards;
• Avoid posting any information which breaches principles of confidentiality;
• Always obtain permission from pupils (where a pupil is under 18) and parents as appropriate before posting any information or photographs;
• Ensure that contacts do not post any offensive information/photographs.

School Websites: Crowd sourcing your thoughts

Techno Geek takes the plunge and gets you the readers to answer the questions of you the readers: This month: School Websites

We have previously looked at how you should approach putting together your school website, focusing on how to achieve it whether to do it yourself or outsource the job (http://eetechnogeek.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/a-website-for-your-school/)

I received an email from a school business manager who was interested in what a school website can or should be, and it gave me an interesting idea. Firstly, the email:

Dear sir,

I very much enjoy reading your column in the Education Executive magazine and was wondering if I could ask you for some advice.

I am just about to embark on a full evaluation, and restructuring where necessary, of our school website. I was just wondering if you had any top tips/good practice or pitfalls over school’s websites? I want to make ours contemporary, informative and eye-catching.

Many thanks for any help you are to offer or pointers/other authors in the right direction.

Techno Geek loves a challenge, so I thought I would put it out to you, the readers, on the blog and twitter, and in the interests of using social media to its fullest, I decided to crowd source the answers. (Here)

Here are three of the best:

Website guidelines

There are some simple guidelines that apply to every website:

1. Great design – the design positions the school. A clear interface helps parents use the site (assuming that’s the primary audience)

2. Good, targeted content – well written content that’s clearly signposted and if it can be broken down into digestible chunks, so much the better

3. Regularly updated – recent news items, school calendars, image galleries etc.

Things to avoid include:

• too much content, especially on the home page
• not enough photos (they’re great for adding interest to a page)
• launching a site then never updating it
• ‘over-design’ i.e. something that’s so involved it becomes very difficult to update, detracts from the content and dates very quickly.

Thanks to Graham Miles of Greenschoolsonline.co.uk

Think about your audience…

You need to ask yourself; ‘who is looking and the site, and why?’

A list of users might look like:

• Parents
• Potential staff members
• Students
• Sponsors
• Governors
• Local Government Officers
• Suppliers
• Journalists
• Community members (including businesses)

Who else might be looking? What does the user need to get from their visit? Schools and colleges need to comprehensively address this question.

They should also consider what the school/college needs to get from the website? This could include targets such as:

• better reputation
• accurate messaging
• more students
• communication with parents
• brand building / strengthening
• news sharing and announcements.

The site needs to be memorable, engaging, simple to use and bespoke. No two schools are the same and your site needs to reflect your school’s strengths and character. It needs to ‘speak’ to your audiences appropriately.

The site needs to be accessible, reliable and have a fully functioning content management system that is simple to use. It also needs to have ‘growing room’, to be able to incorporate new technical developments and not fall over as the technical demands of the site grow.

I believe that schools and colleges should take their websites as seriously as their prospectuses and their uniforms – you never know who’s looking!

Ruth Sparkes of empra.co.uk

Maximise Potential

A school website needs to appeal to a varied audience of prospective parents and students, current students and parents as well as teachers.

It is important to find a balance on the website; students and teachers should be able to interact in an educational manner, but the website should not be so involved that parents become lost in endless streams of information.

Consideration should be given to the use of video on the homepage and deeper within the site.  It is essential the site is easy to use and navigate, keeping the menu system clear and concise to signpost the relevant areas.

In the current social media boom of the web economy, services such as Twitter and Facebook provide an accessible interface for both student and faculty. This medium can be harnessed to solidify a connection with the public and to discuss key events within the school community. It also means the content of the website changes and stays up-to-date, an essential for good search engine optimisation (SEO).

To ensure the website’s maximum potential is realised, ongoing site updates and maintenance are necessary – without regular attention, the site will not perform well in the search engines and little or no return on investment will be seen. A good website grows and develops over time.

Liz NcNaughton of Ecce Media 

As you can see no two school websites will be the same, but with some careful planning and a bit of thought you can see some fantastic results. If you have a project your working on and want to shout about it, then get in touch on the blog http://www.edexec.co.uk/technogeek or on twitter @EE_TechnoGeek

Next Month: We will be looking at developing your schools online policy. Should kids be friends with teachers on Facebook? I will have a guest piece from a lawyer who specialises in this kind of thing.

A new look and a new twitter feed

The more observant of you might have noticed that Techno Geek is rocking a new theme. Its a free one from wordpress.com, its called mystique, and looks rather spiffing I’m sure you will agree.

New Look

For those that are interested I will be looking into education blogging soon in the magazine and online, Im aiming to make it a more practical guide, so as ever, your input is gratefully received.

If you have a blog, particularly in Education ICT, as I know lots of you have, I would love to hear from you and your thoughts about blogging.

New Twitter Feed

Its also been decided that Techno Geek should have his own twitter feed, you can see it to the right here, but if you’re interested in more ICT focused tweets then you should give me a follow @ee_technogeek.  I’ll be trying to get the best of Education ICT on there, but also some general social media and tech news.

Finding your online voice Pt 2

Last month we looked at how to find your online voice, to make your online contributions worthwhile and beneficial and not like Charlie Sheen’s apocalypse-scale rants. In this month’s thrilling instalment we are going to take a peek behind the veil at how to deal with a negative reaction to your online demeanour.
For various reasons, since its beginnings; the internet has been a place that can naturally harbour a lot of negativity, which can manifest itself in a multitude of ways. If you’re engaging online, and it doesn’t matter where, your going to come up against it and it’s good to have a think about how you can deal with it, turning it into a chance to engage with any issues people might have and ultimately into a positive opportunity. Here are a few handy tips from Techno Geek.

Take a deep breath
The natural reaction to anyone saying something less than positive online is to jump straight on the defensive / offensive and smite them with some cutting words (this is how Techno Geek rolls anyway) but my council is to think about it first. Chances are you’re representing an institution with a hard-won reputation, and you don’t want to jeopardise that. You need to remember the internet golden rule, never write anything you wouldn’t be happy for your mum to read.
The serious point is this gives you time to asses your response; if it’s a valid point it gives you thinking time about how you’re going to address it, but if its mindless idiocy then its best not to reply at all.

Don’t go legal
Without doubt trying to take legal redress for something said online will do more harm than good in the majority of cases, even drawing more attention to the indiscretion than it warrants. Plus it makes you look as if you are thin skinned and don’t know how to handle yourself in the online world, which is crucial for building a successful online reputation.
If a comment is offensive or derogatory then simply hit the delete button (though in the majority of cases I would try and challenge them in a positive manner first).

Don’t get personal; challenge the point, not the person
It may seem obvious but the last thing you want is a personal slanging match, casting aspersions about the fidelity of each other’s mother. Tackle the issue and not the person. This will get you maximum respect if you address the issues that warrant reply and stay above the fray. This is a key factor in turning a negative into a positive.

Turn it into a positive
While you wont be able to keep everyone happy, by engaging people’s complaints in a positive and open way you can actually come out of the situation with a win, by improving peoples perceptions of you.

If you feel the need to add your thoughts to this, than by all means do head over to the edexec.co.uk/technogeek and leave a comment. If you have any areas you would like techno geek to lift the lid on then get in touch: technogeek@edexec.co.uk.
Next month I will look at having an online policy, and where schools’ voices are appropriate, and where they are not.

What makes a good school website?

Ive had an email from a reader of ICT Matters magazine who is looking at refreshing their school website.

We have touched on this before and I’m sure regular readers will know there is nothing Techno Geek loves more than the chance to pontificate about how things should be done online but I have decided to throw open the doors on this one to the wider community:

• What makes a good school website?
• Are there any common pitfalls school sites fall into (like trying to include everything but the kitchen sink!!)
• What are your tips / best practice?

If you can answer these and include some examples, Ill make sure all the schools get name checked in the magazine or online.

If any companies that help schools with websites, then get in touch also.

EDIT: Thanks for all the replies so far. If you have practical advice then please feel free to include it below.

EDIT: You can read the article and the replies used in June’s edition of ICT Matters, and here. If you want to subscribe to ICT Matters and / or Education Executive please subscribe here.

Finding your voice online

In the first of a two part series, Techno Geek asks ‘How do you find your online voice?’

So your school has a website, maybe a blog, and is tweeting away like an aria of canaries. Then comes the moment of cold realisation. What do we write about, and how do we keep it interesting? It can be tough to know how to go about updating your online presence and ultimately making it a worthwhile enterprise. It’s no good putting your time and effort into writing a blog without people reading it.

Part of making any foray into the ‘online conversation’ successful, be it for your school or as yourself on the www, is to find your ‘online voice’.  It’s the key to building successful bridges in the Internet world. There are a couple of different ways to approach this, and it’s important to find a way of doing it that you, and indeed the school are comfortable with. I would recommend not taking the Charlie Sheen,  ‘all guns blazing’ approach. Its good to be honest and genuine, but there is a line, as in any situation, that Mr Sheen lost sight of a long time ago.

So here is my handy and by no means definitive guide to finding your ‘online voice’.

Research what other people are doing

It may sound obvious but the best way to get into developing a voice online is to see how other people are doing it. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all. By seeing how people handle themselves in different spheres, be it twitter, on a blog or whatever, it will give you an idea about what you like and what you don’t and how you would like to go about it.

A person or an organisation

One question you’re going to come across fairly quickly is how are we going to do this? Should we blog or tweet as a collective or as an individual person. I think the natural instinct is to think that we should blog as ‘the school’, which in many cases is entirely appropriate. there is also a strong argument for having one person being nominated to represent the school as the online personality, as it enables you to engage in a real way, and people know whom they’re talking to.

Be honest and genuine

Its important to think about how you want to be seen online, and a good way to think about your online doings, is to think of it as a very large conversation.  In a conversation people can tell when you’re being genuine and when you’re not. Even when people are being negative about you, respond in a positive manner. People respond well when they think they’re talking to people, they don’t when they think there talking to a faceless online entity.

Respond and be interactive

Once you have found your voice, don’t just shout out at people; remember this is an online conversation. You need to listen to people’s feedback and respond in an appropriate manner. By engaging with people online it not only helps you develop your voice, but also helps build your online reputation, which is ultimately what this is all about. For example, rather than just talking about what you’re doing, ask what others are doing and show genuine interest in it.

Pitfalls

There are always pitfalls with having an online presence and next time I’m going to be looking at what we need to look out for. I may even have a guest to give you some advice!

Graphic Data

Techno Geek takes a step into the wild world of visualising data, and manages to stick to the point… almost.

One of the trends that came out of the BETT show (that’s right I’m still writing about it!) and indeed something that is coming to the fore inside the classroom and out is visualising data.

If you’re anything like me, there is a palm-drenching wave of anxiety that washes over you when thinking about data. The thought of sifting through mountains of data, impenetrable Excel sheets, and cells stacked high like prison bars is enough to send you screaming for the hills… Well maybe you’re reaction isn’t as knee jurk or as childish as mine, but there are real issues with how in the information age we deal with the oodles of data that we are gathering. How do we bring value to it, how do we make it meaningful?

The government is starting to harness data to get something useful out of it. You may have read in the news about the new police crime data website, you can type in your post code, and the website will let you know how many and what kind of crimes have been committed in your area. (http://www.police.uk/). This can make quite sobering reading if, like me, you live in the middle of a large city! This is crime statistics data, not just presented as a graph but overlaid on a map to give it new meaning. It’s using this visual data to give it new depth.

People in education have been visualising data for many years. All manner of graphs or Venn diagrams and education are old bedfellows, but we are starting to see how we use data and how we visualise it becoming more important. I’m sure most people reading this have an MIS system of some kind, (or are at least aware of its throbbing omnipresence somewhere on-site) and may be involved in data analysis for the school.

The trends we are seeing now are towards making data more useful, for instance looking at merging different types of information, for instance a pupil’s grades or house points, where they’re from in the area, and whether they receive free school meals or not. Systems are being developed where its as simple as a teacher dragging and dropping quite esoteric data sets together and working out where they need to focus their attentions. The important thing to take from this is data isn’t just being collected anymore; data is being used to raise attainment in classrooms.

So where does it all stop? Are we being railroaded into a future were what kids will be eating for breakfast will be based on their attainment? Well maybe. I think the point, as with all these things, is that visualising data is an important part of the whole. whilst it doesn’t replace a keen eye and intuition, it does add real meaning to how we approach monitoring progress, co-opting data for the betterment of our schools and the little learners within them.