On the 18th January, I was honoured to be a speaker at the Microsoft Education Leaders' Briefing; the ELB is a forum for presenting the latest thoughts on the integration of technology and education and they are attended by people from across the globe. We had been invited to participate in this as one of the UK's 6 Global Showcase Schools, identified by Microsoft as being world innovators in the use of technology to change young people's life's for the better.
Below is the text of my presentation:
Good Morning &
Thank you. My name is Andy Howard and I have now been teaching for 25 years! An
awful lot has changed in that time, but an awful lot has remained the same. I
now find myself as Principal of Sandymoor School, one of only 6 UK schools to
have been awarded Global Showcase School status by Microsoft for our innovative
approach to education and the use of ICT in education.
Sandymoor School is
a brand new school; we were founded under the government's Free Schools
programme, a mechanism that allowed schools to be set up in response to local
need and without the control of local government. An initiative based on the
Scandinavian Free School & US Charter School models.
Three years ago, we
opened in temporary cabins, steel boxes bolted together and fitted out with
basic services. It did not stop us having strong ambitions for our students and
we grew. 18 months ago, work started on a brand new building, where I worked with
architects to match our vision and our ambitions. We now have a building that
would qualify for the Internet of Things - a smart building … … CO2 measurement
& Temperature sensors in all rooms,
lights that dim if it's bright outside, etc.
We are pretty much
unique - a brand new school, built entirely from the ground up, metaphorically
as well as literally, proposed and founded by 5 local parents, ordinary people,
mums and dads who just wanted to make a difference.
There are very few
opportunities these days to be involved in the start of something as big, as
ambitious, as grand as starting a brand new school! Our founders are still very
much involved in the school, all being on the governing body and very actively
taking interest in their school. The school sits in a relatively new suburb of
the New Town of Runcorn. A twin of Milton Keynes, Runcorn was built after the
second world war to provide housing to the bombed out estates of Liverpool.
Still growing today, the suburb of Sandymoor is the last growth area for the
town. Sandymoor currently has around 900 houses, but is part of the
government's house building strategy and is scheduled to grow to over 2,000
homes over the short term. The vast majority of the homes in Sandymoor are
classed as medium density, higher status family homes & they are very
sought after houses.
To the west of the
school, we have, however, housing estates built when volume was the only
measure for housing and some of the estates within a mile of the school rank as
some of the most deprived communities in the UK.
One of the school's
great strengths is our diversity and our school community. We have students
from all backgrounds in the school and almost all of them local. Over 70% of
our young people live within a mile of the school. In an area of the UK where
social mobility is at its worst, we are an example of aspiration, with high
standards of academic, social and personal development expected from all our
community.
One final piece of
our local setting is our proximity to the world-renowned Daresbury Science and
Innovation Centre; the home of the Particle Accelerator and still a world leader in scientific innovation.
The founders set a
very strong and ambitious vision for the school; to be an 11-18 school,
producing intelligent, employable global citizens that demonstrate social
competence, a desire for learning and respect for each other and the world
around us.
And there is so much
in this statement:
In a world where we
cannot predict 6 months ahead, we are, as educators, trying to do the
impossible. We are having to prepare our young people to do jobs that don’t
even exist yet, using technologies that haven't been invented yet, solving
problems we don’t even know about yet.
And with technology
as it is, we are now living in a global village, with communication around the
world virtually instantaneous, news beamed around the world as it happens and
workers engaged in collaboration with colleagues in almost any continent. How
do we prepare our young for this?
With all of that,
and the world they are inheriting from us, they also need to be more socially
aware, more tolerant and accepting of others than ever before. Xenophobia and
fear is driving a wedge between people and we need to be providing
opportunities for our young to learn from our mistakes and build a better
future.
Now, I am not a
technologist, never have been and never will be. I am an educationalist.
Passionate about helping our young to be the best they can be. And I believe
that the only way we will be able to do this, in our world, is through engaging
fully with technology.
Our ICT strategy has
this as its opening statement:
ICT alone will not
transform learning, but learning will not be transformed without it.
This is their world,
immersed in technology, the world at their fingertips. We need to embrace this
world of theirs and engage with them on their territory.
Blended learning,
where technology is used, when (& only when) it is better than other means.
When it allows us to do things previously unimagined.
Young people, all
over the world, are fundamentally no different to how they've always been; shy,
uncertain, desperate to be different, individual, determined to grow up before
they are ready and ultimately complex, amazing and totally unpredictable.
But they now live
out their lives as much, if not more online, in the digital world. They are the
digital natives, whilst we are immigrants in this brave new world.
However, just
because they are the natives, it does not mean that they will embrace every new
initiative, or 'learn more' just because it's delivered using technology. That
is the mistake that has been made so many times before, with the results that
there are numerous research papers that state that technology does not improve
student outcomes.
In fact, they will
defend their territory as fiercely as any pack of lions seeing off a rival
group. Why on earth would they want to allow into their social world the dull
duty of learning without a fight?
And that's why, I
think, we at Sandymoor are starting to get it right. By being a brand new
school, we have been able to think carefully about everything we have done;
imagine it completely anew and ensure that every element of Sandymoor is fit
for purpose as a 21st Century School.
We start every
planning exercise with a blank sheet of paper and ask the question; what do we
want this to look like, in the modern world. We do not automatically assume
that the way things have been done before are still fit for purpose. Where they
are, we use them, but only after testing them against our vision.
What do we want a
21st century student to do, to be, to experience? How do we help them adapt
their skills to make them accept the use of technology in their world?
And that has to
influence, in fact shape, the whole infrastructure.
First of all, we are
all, now, used to looking up the answer to something at the click of a button,
the swipe of a finger. So a teacher is no longer the gatekeeper of knowledge,
the expert and deliverer of understanding. It is no longer valid to have the
teacher stand at the front of a room, delivering material to students. The
whiteboard, let alone the interactive whiteboard, is redundant, because I can
look up the answer to a question faster than you can write the question on a
board.
At Sandymoor, we
have twin projectors at right angles to each other, which project directly onto
the wall, painted in an ultra-matt, green-tinged cream, which is, according to
research, a much easier surface to read off, without glare from a bright white
surface. And the twin projection system means that the learning experience is
an all-encompassing, immersive one.
There is no
traditional 'front of class', with no teachers' desk, either, which means that
the classroom environment has a much more collaborative atmosphere; my teachers
are very much more 'Guides on the Side', as opposed to 'Sages on the Stage'.
Getting rid of
whiteboards entirely, which in their time replaced the old black chalk board,
is a clear sign that we are starting to use technology to completely redefine
education, rather than mere modification of old habits.
But we also have to
think about what, in fact, the point of school is in the modern world. What
place does the teacher have, now? If they are no longer the gatekeeper of
knowledge, then they do have to adapt completely to a completely different
role, that of guide and mentor, helping the student to find their way, develop
their understanding and grow in independence.
The most
transformational invention of the last 50 years has to be the internet, the
'Cloud', and it is to the cloud that we have looked to ensure that we are
building for the future, ensuring capacity.
Collaboration is key
here; working together, in collaborative spaces, we grow and share and
experience more than we ever can in isolation.
But we always have
to come back to what is most important; the young people we are all doing this
for. How do we ensure that everything we do will help them grow and succeed in
their future, especially when we can't see what their future looks like?
By building a structure, in the cloud, using
collaborative spaces, we ensure that outcomes are clear and impact is strong.
Students work together, with teachers, to learn off each other, learn how to
learn and develop the skills for future growth.
The skills they
need, adaptability, mental flexibility, and perseverance, are all developed in
a curriculum focussed around collaborating in online spaces. Students can bring
in their own devices, regardless of make or model. Our wifi is designed around public
space capacity, with 1-1 infrastructure being not ambitious enough for us (I,
personally, have 4 devices that connect to wifi with me today), so we have a
complex wifi network capable of dealing with any device a student could bring
in and capacity for over 3,000 separate device connections.
We need to meet
students where they are, so one over-riding principle for me is what I call
device agnosicity. Any systems we use in school need to be accessible by
whatever the student will bring in. For us, Office 365 exemplifies this.
Against popular
convention, as I have said, our students have been resistant to embracing this,
but for two reasons;
First of all, as
I've said before, it is trespassing on their territory. We need to tread
carefully, and not assume that they want us in their space. We need to set out
our case, let them accept the need first and foremost. We have done this by
assuming a very business-like environment. All our students have the same
access & expectations on them as my staff. Homework, project deadlines,
meetings, etc., are all set with students via calendar invites. We don’t have
student planners. Communication between staff & student is via email, with
the same expectations for reading and action. There is no skin on our systems -
we don't treat them like children; there is no dancing frog or comic sans fonts
in sight. . . (Did Facebook create a young-person centric version, with silly
characters or simple fonts?)
And then secondly,
we expect them to take responsibility, to accept that they are part of the
solution, that they have to actively participate rather than just be passive
recipients of learning. That is hard work. But it is important, because it’s
about behaviour modification, about teaching them to take responsibility,
whilst there is a safety blanket around them to ensure they don't get hurt.
But they are still
children and while the social domain is very firmly theirs, we need to help and
support them, which means we need to be active in their domain. Tools such as
Yammer, in the Office 365 environment, are perfect for this, bringing the social
into the workplace.
There is also,
however, the flip side of the coin and that is the teachers themselves.
We need to ensure
that we don’t forget that there is a behavioural management change required
here too. If we are going to truly instigate transformation, we need to
support, encourage and if necessary cajole teachers into learning new ways to
be as well. There is always a workload increase when something new is
implemented, but it is important to ensure that there is a clear pathway to
smarter not harder ways of working.
Ultimately, however,
it needs a strong vision, clearly focussed, with the modern student at the
heart, to ensure that we truly transform education. And it does need
transformation, if not revolution, across the world - we are failing so many
young people and politicians talk about percentage improvements in test scores,
without really recognising that every percentage point that fails is a real
student who learns that they are not a success. . .
Technology will not
transform learning, but without it learning will not be transformed.
Thank you
