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Using technologies to break boundaries
The document discusses using new technologies to enhance technical education in Scottish Borders schools. It provides examples of sharing course programs between schools, new forms of assessment, and utilizing technologies like online portfolios. It also addresses how literacy skills are developed through design-based learning activities that allow students to estimate, measure, evaluate their work, and apply specialist skills to make quality products.
Using technologies to break boundaries
- 1. Stuart Meldrum HawickHigh School Scottish Borders Council @stuartmeldrum http://stuartmeldrum.co.uk #slf11 Using technologies to break boundaries: T echnical Education in the Scottish Borders
- 2. Using technologies tobreak boundaries: Technical Education in the Scottish Borders
- 3. Using technologies tobreak boundaries: technical education in the Scottish Borders share course programmes for S1 and S2 give examples of new assessment approaches illustrate how new technology is being utilised responsibility for literacy
- 4. Share Course programmesfor S1/2
- 5. What will theylearn? How will they learn? How will they show their learning? The Pupil
- 6. Examples of newassessment approaches So, how will they show their learning? Assessments must be: Valid, Reliable, Proportionate Assessments must offer: Breadth, Challenge, Application When reporting to parents pupils are: Developing, Consolidating, Secure ?
- 7. During practical activitiesand design challenges, I can estimate and measure using appropriate instruments and units. TCH 2.13a Having evaluated my work, I can adapt and improve, where appropriate, through trial and error or by using feedback. TCH 2.14a I have gained confidence and dexterity in the use of materials, tools, equipment, software or control technology and can apply specialist skills to make quality products. TCH 3.13a
- 8. During practical activitiesand design challenges, I can estimate and measure using appropriate instruments and units. How to assess those then… Having evaluated my work, I can adapt and improve, where appropriate, through trial and error or by using feedback. I have gained confidence and dexterity in the use of materials, tools, equipment, software or control technology and can apply specialist skills to make quality products.
- 9. During practical activitiesand design challenges, I can estimate and measure using appropriate instruments and units. How to assess those then…
- 10. How to assessthose then… Having evaluated my work, I can adapt and improve, where appropriate, through trial and error or by using feedback.
- 11. How to assessthose then… I have gained confidence and dexterity in the use of materials, tools, equipment, software or control technology and can apply specialist skills to make quality products.
- 12. What about Application?How do you assess a pupil making connections? How do you assess what is going on in their heads?
- 13. Personal Learning PlanningIn this unit: What skills have you gained most confidence with? What exercise did you find the most difficult? How would you make sure you did better next time? How might you use these skills in the future? Try to think of three examples.
- 14.
- 15. Utilising new technologies… for exemplification …
- 16. Utilising new technologies… for building up a portfolio …
- 17. Utilising new technologies… because it is what we do …
- 18. Literacy I canspell most of the words I need to communicate, using spelling rules, specialist vocabulary, self-correction techniques and a range of resources. LIT 2-21a I consider the impact that layout and presentation will have and can combine lettering, graphics and other features to engage my reader. LIT 2-24a By considering the type of text I am creating, I can select ideas and relevant information, organise these in an appropriate way for my purpose and use suitable vocabulary for my audience. LIT 2-26a I can convey information, describe events, explain processes or combine ideas in different ways. LIT 2-28a
- 19.
- 20. Stuart Meldrum http://stuartmeldrum.co.uk@stuartmeldrum
Editor's Notes
- #2 To frame the session: 9 secondary schools across a local authority of 4,732km 2 (6 th largest in Scotland), with about 66miles between eastern and western most secondary schools. Generally teachers from different schools meet once a year, and each school has a different department or faculty structure so very little to ensure that there is a common approach to course development. That said much of what is good is common across the schools.
- #3 Why am I here? We have a set of people in the region who have the unfortunate title of ‘subject champion’ and I am the SC for technical subjects. Now that is the first point of mine today, Technical, Technology, CDT, Design and Technology. And that is just a few of the possible names for the departments in which I see myself as working. In my school we are colloquially called– as in most other schools – tecky teachers and that is good – a cover all term that we all understand. However, there is the argument that you do need a different name for the different departments in the different schools because we all teach a different range of subjects, especially as you progress up the school. Now, while, CfE has given us a set of Os and Es which we are supposed to cover, at least to some extent, in the BGE stage there will, no doubt, be schools that are giving different weightings to each subject to prepare students for the progression that they expect them to be able to offer. That in itself presents a situation in schools where they are planning courses towards subjects that they do not know enough detail about yet, and the structure of the senior phase may not be decided. It presents uncertainty in schools and perhaps that is why people are here today? I digress, I see my role as not being the champion teacher of tecky – far from it! Instead I see it as being someone who is going to shout from the rafters about all that is good about our subjects and I do believe passionately in the relevance that they have in a new curriculum. I also see the role as being one where I shout loudly about all of the good things that are going on in SBC schools, highlighting the good work that teachers are already doing. The problem is that we are all Scottish in SBC, or at least we are in one way – we all seem to have the Scottish mentality of thinking that what we are doing isn’t particularly good. And I think that is reflected in what I see today – there are people here looking for me to give them a set of resources and to send them on their way to replicate what we are doing in SBC. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on what way you look at it, those people aren’t going to get much in the way of physical goodies, or magic ideas. I am of course going to share a bit of what is going on, but I genuinely believe that what you are doing in you schools already is probably very, very good. And I also believe that if you were to take what I do in Hawick, or what Mike Armstrong does in Jedburgh or on the other schools then it wouldn’t necessarily translate.
- #4 What I can give you is the outline of what we are doing and go in heavier with the detail of how we got there. So today I will go over a few things: New course outlines for S1/2. New assessment methods New technologies in the classrooms Our approach to Health and Wellbeing, Literacy, Numeracy outcomes.
- #5 I could show you course outlines for the different schools in SBC, I could talk you through this time line for S1, or show you in detail our assessment guides for each unit; or show you what we assess on at Hawick but that wouldn’t be of much use to you. Far better, and useful is the approach. We are in the process of planning our S3 – as I am sure most of you are. I can’t tell you what it will look like exactly but I can tell you it will be framed the same way as our S1/2 courses. Obviously, I can speak best about what is going on in my own school, Hawick, but I have peppered in a few examples of practice from other schools too. We are not singing to the same hymn sheet: we all have our different agendas; and staffing levels, priorities and specialist skills and it is right that we are working to develop nine individual courses for S1 and nine individual courses for S2 and so on. Speaking though about Hawick, we have in S1 10 units of work and these have each been developed over a range of different timescales. Some are time-proved models that will develop craft skills while keeping within the department budget, while others are new units written this year or last year.. So, we in the classroom rather than straight into the workshop – it infuriates the kids doesn’t it ;) we do it partly to wind them up, but it is really to get to know the classes – we really want to get a handle on the individuals, get to know them and what they get a buzz out of. We can of course set out expectations and standards for their work. These are new skills but they are in an environment that is more familiar than a workshop, and using tools they know – albeit in a slightly different way from primary. So, we take them through an introductory graphics unit for the first 10 hours or so and in that time we teach them a range of skills: sketching; rendering; evaluating their work and improving upon it; presentation skills and draughtsmanship. And it culminates in the creation of a folio of a few sheets that will act as a resource for the future. It also forms the evidence upon which we can assess them - and they can assess themselves. The final sheet that they complete is a graphics display – a safety poster or some such thing – and it should highlight all the skills that we have covered, as well as some knowledge. But with this sheet we are trying something different this year: the reverse is where they can complete some Personal Learning Planning – this is going to form the main part of our reporting to parents. I will come back to this again. The rest of the year we have projects such as a toothbrush evaluation exercises for design knowledge, graphic displays, numeracy and literacy. A unit in basic engineering science related tasks; some more manual graphic communication work; some CADD work; and of course making a coat hook, a money box; a wooden puzzle, the stem photo frame. These practical projects are a real mixed bag of new and old things, but the skills and knowledge that we are covering is much the same as before – the thing that has changes, as I keep saying, is the planning and the preparation for assessment. So let’s take a wee look. The thing is it doesn’t matter if it is brand new or older than me, the change is that we have looked at the unit from scratch in most cases and built the assessment from the ground up. I cannot possibly say that we have done this from the first days of CfE but it is how we work now I the majority of schools. The interesting thing though is that while we may not have done this so formally since we started planning courses, we did ask ourselves these questions.
- #6 When a student teacher, one of the teachers I learned a lot from complained once that the whole world was going to turn in to one big bullet point. I think he was a little wrong – the whole world of Scottish education seems to be turning into a massive triangular diagram. But here is ours none the less – Three questions which form the basis for all of our planning work. As teachers we knew what we wanted the children to learn; we thought we knew what they are expected to learn; we knew what their older brothers and sisters got tested on in their senior school. So it all has to come from that, doesn’t it? We have spent a huge amount of time discussing exciting projects and tasks that the pupils could do, that we would enjoy teaching, but at the end of the day while the projects were often fanciful they all came down to the same things that we wanted the children to be able to do at the end. All that time spent thinking about their older siblings’ exams was a distraction. We should have just been focussing on the skills that were required. The skills at the heart of the courses are for want of a better way of putting them: communication; creativity – if you can call that a skill; and practical motor skills which largely leads towards craft skills. But also encouraging a critical analytical approach to everything they do – in the dept and outside. We view the self-evaluative parts of our course as some of the most important parts in S1 as it forms the mentality that will allow them to success – whichever subject they go to – in later years. How will they learn. Well, this is different to what will they do. But not totally. A large proportion of our activities are hands on, pupils see a demonstration, then they have time to have a shot and practice. They do lots of things – SAY-MAKE-DO-WRITE of course the new mantra. We have a lot of do and make activities. But what is the difference between dreaming up activities and learning? There has to be the chance for the pupils to reflect on how they have done, and before they start for them to see the expected standard. Every activity should be supported with a clear set of expectations that are shared with the pupils, and with some form of exemplar. Again I will return to that later. Then the assessment part of the planning. You cannot just start off down the road of planning a course without any idea of how you are going to assess it at the end, the assessment we keep being told has to be valid, reliable and proporionate and that is not possible unless the assessment is planned from the beginning in conjunction with the planning of the activities. I will cover assessment techniques in more detail but this is the process that we go through with our new courses. And without wanting to get into to much detail there are many other threads to this, such as the quality assurance and moderation procedures. This is a big concern amongst most teachers I talk to – the big question of how we moderate what each school is asking of their pupils as they get to the stage of producing their end og BGE folio. In SBC there is a well mapped out plan of how we will, as a region, tackle this, which I am happy to share with you, and is available on the SBC QA&M area of glow.
- #7 It is worth then just taking a moment to frame all of this: Valid, Reliable and Proporionate. Well, that is nothing new. We are used to the idea that assessment must stand up to scrutiny – you must be able to tell what it means for the individual pupil, it must be a fair test of the pupil’s abilities, That should be fairly straightforward – but it is a cornerstone, you cannot ignore it. Next then Breadth, Challenge, Application. Breadth – because breadth is about assessment across the range of Es and Os for a curriculum area it is unlikely that a single piece of assessment will offer this other than something that is summative. And I will leave that up to you whether you want to build that in to your courses in the BGE stage. In SBC it is not common, assessment takes place throughout a block of work, or over the year or years. However – like the introductory graphics unit I talked about - you will probably have some unit of work that covers a number of Es and Os, and it is likely that the work will span a number of weeks, meaning that the pupil will be building up evidence all that time. That work can be marked of course – but it will be of more benefit if more formative approaches are used, sharing of success criteria, exemplification of standards etc Challenge – increasing difficulty, differentiated work for learners, allowing for progression within a class. The Es and Os set out enough to allow you to plan in more difficult pieces of work, and extensible exercises, and with a more formative approach to assessment this can be recorded well. Application – making the links with other pieces of learning and thinking skills, this is more difficult to pin down and to evidence. However I will give you an example of how we are doing, or at least attempting to do this. Levels of Es and Os, and when reporting to parents we use language like developing, secure, consolidating. Unfortunately there seems to be different advice coming out from everyone you ask on this, but when you look at BtC5 it is clear that these terms can really only be used when you have covered a pretty wide range of the Es and Os, meaning that the language you use initially when reporting to, say, parents of S1 pupils, must be different. Also depending how your school structures itself you may not be able to say a pupil is secure until right at the end of S3 – when you finally cover the last few Es and Os. However, with all of that quickly mentioned, let’s look at something more practical, how do you actually assess it all?
- #8 So, a quick pre-test: What level is this outcome in?
- #9 Coming up with a method of assessment then: Here is a partial photo of a working drawing for a coathook to be manufactured out of aluminium. Skills involved in the project? Accurate measuring; controlled use of marking out tools; filing, drilling, bending, finishing skills – plastic dipcoating – safety considerations. So – assessment of a coathook before might have consisted of the teacher taking a look at the object before it goes home and picking a number 1-4 , or letter A-C out of thin air, or the pupil being allowed to decide which window the teacher flings it out of. An alternative approach would be to bring in the assessment straight away, introduce the class to the idea of tolerances. Give them a demonstration of marking out one line. Let them pick their tolerance: plus of minus 3, plus or minus 5. Get them to set a target before they start. Then capture the evidence with a digital camera a afterwards. This photo take very little time to take, organising it might take a little time, but nothing too onerous with batch processing on Serif, or Photoshop. Instantly you have success criteria, you have exemplars, you have evidence at the end, and you have the learner taking charge of their assessment, because they set their own targets. Is it breadth? No, it arguably covers a number of Es and Os, but it is just one exercise. Is it Challenge? That depends on the pupil of course but arguably yes. Is it Application? Not on its own. Perhaps though when you do something similar in woodwork pupils will remember the idea of tolerances, or when you are drawing. Or better when they are in, say, Geography and they are learning grid references they will remember tolerances… So how about other outcomes… Evaluating my work, and improving after trial and error. They have a number of lines to mark, so they may make improvements. Also when they do something similar later they hopefully will make a better job. Gaining confidence and dexterity in the use of tools. I argue yes. It is only a limited sample of tools but for certain less able pupils this is where they find their challenge?
- #10 Coming up with a method of assessment then: Here is a partial photo of a working drawing for a coathook to be manufactured out of aluminium. Skills involved in the project? Accurate measuring; controlled use of marking out tools; filing, drilling, bending, finishing skills – plastic dipcoating – safety considerations. So – assessment of a coathook before might have consisted of the teacher taking a look at the object before it goes home and picking a number 1-4 , or letter A-C out of thin air, or the pupil being allowed to decide which window the teacher flings it out of. An alternative approach would be to bring in the assessment straight away, introduce the class to the idea of tolerances. Give them a demonstration of marking out one line. Let them pick their tolerance: plus of minus 3, plus or minus 5. Get them to set a target before they start. Then capture the evidence with a digital camera a afterwards. This photo take very little time to take, organising it might take a little time, but nothing too onerous with batch processing on Serif, or Photoshop. Instantly you have success criteria, you have exemplars, you have evidence at the end, and you have the learner taking charge of their assessment, because they set their own targets. Is it breadth? No, it arguably covers a number of Es and Os, but it is just one exercise. Is it Challenge? That depends on the pupil of course but arguably yes. Is it Application? Not on its own. Perhaps though when you do something similar in woodwork pupils will remember the idea of tolerances, or when you are drawing. Or better when they are in, say, Geography and they are learning grid references they will remember tolerances… So how about other outcomes… Evaluating my work, and improving after trial and error. They have a number of lines to mark, so they may make improvements. Also when they do something similar later they hopefully will make a better job. Gaining confidence and dexterity in the use of tools. I argue yes. It is only a limited sample of tools but for certain less able pupils this is where they find their challenge?
- #11 Coming up with a method of assessment then: Here is a partial photo of a working drawing for a coathook to be manufactured out of aluminium. Skills involved in the project? Accurate measuring; controlled use of marking out tools; filing, drilling, bending, finishing skills – plastic dipcoating – safety considerations. So – assessment of a coathook before might have consisted of the teacher taking a look at the object before it goes home and picking a number 1-4 , or letter A-C out of thin air, or the pupil being allowed to decide which window the teacher flings it out of. An alternative approach would be to bring in the assessment straight away, introduce the class to the idea of tolerances. Give them a demonstration of marking out one line. Let them pick their tolerance: plus of minus 3, plus or minus 5. Get them to set a target before they start. Then capture the evidence with a digital camera a afterwards. This photo take very little time to take, organising it might take a little time, but nothing too onerous with batch processing on Serif, or Photoshop. Instantly you have success criteria, you have exemplars, you have evidence at the end, and you have the learner taking charge of their assessment, because they set their own targets. Is it breadth? No, it arguably covers a number of Es and Os, but it is just one exercise. Is it Challenge? That depends on the pupil of course but arguably yes. Is it Application? Not on its own. Perhaps though when you do something similar in woodwork pupils will remember the idea of tolerances, or when you are drawing. Or better when they are in, say, Geography and they are learning grid references they will remember tolerances… So how about other outcomes… Evaluating my work, and improving after trial and error. They have a number of lines to mark, so they may make improvements. Also when they do something similar later they hopefully will make a better job. Gaining confidence and dexterity in the use of tools. I argue yes. It is only a limited sample of tools but for certain less able pupils this is where they find their challenge?
- #12 Coming up with a method of assessment then: Here is a partial photo of a working drawing for a coathook to be manufactured out of aluminium. Skills involved in the project? Accurate measuring; controlled use of marking out tools; filing, drilling, bending, finishing skills – plastic dipcoating – safety considerations. So – assessment of a coathook before might have consisted of the teacher taking a look at the object before it goes home and picking a number 1-4 , or letter A-C out of thin air, or the pupil being allowed to decide which window the teacher flings it out of. An alternative approach would be to bring in the assessment straight away, introduce the class to the idea of tolerances. Give them a demonstration of marking out one line. Let them pick their tolerance: plus of minus 3, plus or minus 5. Get them to set a target before they start. Then capture the evidence with a digital camera a afterwards. This photo take very little time to take, organising it might take a little time, but nothing too onerous with batch processing on Serif, or Photoshop. Instantly you have success criteria, you have exemplars, you have evidence at the end, and you have the learner taking charge of their assessment, because they set their own targets. Is it breadth? No, it arguably covers a number of Es and Os, but it is just one exercise. Is it Challenge? That depends on the pupil of course but arguably yes. Is it Application? Not on its own. Perhaps though when you do something similar in woodwork pupils will remember the idea of tolerances, or when you are drawing. Or better when they are in, say, Geography and they are learning grid references they will remember tolerances… So how about other outcomes… Evaluating my work, and improving after trial and error. They have a number of lines to mark, so they may make improvements. Also when they do something similar later they hopefully will make a better job. Gaining confidence and dexterity in the use of tools. I argue yes. It is only a limited sample of tools but for certain less able pupils this is where they find their challenge?
- #13 I am not sure that I can answer these questions, but I can share one thing that we in Hawick plan to do a few times each year. Because application includes giving more responsibility to the pupils for their own learning we are giving them opportunities to have that modelled. That is to say we are giving them set exercises where we as a department ask all the pupils a set of questions based upon a block of work. It includes the chance for the pupil to identify their next steps but also the chance for discussion between teacher and pupil, and parent and child about the learning that has been going on. I will just quickly show you a few examples of the types of questions that we are asking. We have aimed to cover breadth, challenge, and application with them.
- #14 Again these are not anything particularly new, but they are planned right into the course from the outset and it frames the learning from the completed unit, but also sets the bar for the next unit, and hopefully gets the pupils thinking this way more often on their own. Asking themselves these important questions like ‘why is this an important thing to learn?’
- #16 I have spoken before about using a cheap video camera hooked up to a projector, I hate it when I teach in a room without it. It has come to be an essential part of my teaching, and it is great for exemplifying work, and for demonstrating fiddly operations clearly. But it needn’t be a visualiser, of any sort – cheap camcorder or expensive purpose built – you can get a hold of digital cameras, and video cameras that will allow you to record loads of wee demonstrations. These can then be shared online, through Glow or on a school network. Also, there a huge number of online video tutorials for software that you can get free of charge, or pay for a subscription. These allow your pupils to work at their own pace – appropriate challenge – through a series of exercises, giving you the time to support individual teachers. That leads me to…
- #17 There are no doubt loads of opportunities to see how to set up e-portfolios here at SLF this year so I won’t go over it but in general the chance to create an area for each pupil to store work makes it really easy for them to start building up a folio of evidence for various outcomes – remember the photo of the coat hook marking out?
- #18 In SBC we have a CNC Router and two RapMan machines. While the CNC router was expensive we do still have it at one of the school and they are getting great use out of it. And the RapMan is not too expensive (I would go for the pre-built one).
- #20 I can spell most of the words I need to communicate, using spelling rules, specialist vocabulary, self-correction techniques and a range of resources. *Responsibility of all LIT 2-21a I consider the impact that layout and presentation will have and can combine lettering, graphics and other features to engage my reader. *Responsibility of all LIT 2-24a By considering the type of text I am creating, I can select ideas and relevant information, organise these in an appropriate way for my purpose and use suitable vocabulary for my audience. *Responsibility of all LIT 2-26a I can convey information, describe events, explain processes or combine ideas in different ways. *Responsibility of all LIT 2-28a