Yesterday I attended the inaugural London Festival of Education – it was a great day with lots of thought provoking questions raised – not always answered and a programme that was packed.  For me this was part of the problem – there was just too much good stuff at one point delegates had the choice between listening to Micheal Wilshire, Guy Claxton and Michael Rosen – it was a toughie.  I was able to follow a lot of the other talks/debates via twitter and catching up on blog posts today, but it was a shame that there were these clashes and also that some sessions were put in rooms where the capacity was limited to 150.

I started the day by listening to Michael Gove – may be not the most ideal way to start at Saturday but I enjoyed the conversation – he does have an unerring belief in his own beliefs which I do not always agree with.  Yes, there are schools that are not operating as outstanding schools, but surely there should be support for these – not just turning into academies.  Yes, I believe that education should be assessed but the notion that education without assessment is just play – well then I will continue to ‘play’ in my teaching and learning as surely this is how we learn? Yes as Michael Gove pointed out if you tell someone that they are a failure this will have a devastating effect they why does he do this to our profession as a whole?

Graeme Eyre has written a more detailed account of the conversation which you can read here. Also Tom Bennett  as ever has written a great account of the opening conversation with Gove which you can read here.   Oliver Quinlan also blogged here

Next was a panel  with Sir Tim Brighouse, Vic Goddard and Munira Mirza talking about What does it mean to be educated? very interesting perspectives from all three.  Vic Goddard kicked it off and I really  agreed with his point that listening was important within the classroom and talking and listening – hearing the aesthetics in a conversation – he spoke of humanising knowledge – promoting empathy and that if all we do is fill children with knowledge then they are no more than a dictionary. Everything we do is about making connections.  Sir Tim Brighouse was next quoting Temple  as the purpose of education as this: ”Are you going to treat students as they are or as they might be?”  Going on to say that if you want to have human liberty you must have education – to ‘think for yourself, act for others’. As ever he spoke so much sense that I could have listened to him all day – he also made the point  that Eton can give a false sense of confidence, like making you think you can run the economy or country when you can’t – again hitting the nail on the head!

At this time I have to confess on leaving the main hall, a combination of needing something to eat and also to process what had been said in the morning sessions – it was that full.  I had also missed Oliver running his session on ReconsiderED; the discussion – he has written this session up and can be read here.  I also missed Dug Belshaw discussing Learning technologies, but again he has blogged both the session and his thoughts on the conference.  It did mean that I could grab some lunch and have those conversations which was needed and I think to build on this year would be great to build in a slice of thinking/wandering time into next years programme to give delegates the chance to visit the various pop up spaces around the festival which I missed.

After lunch it was back into the main hall for ‘what makes great teaching – the global view’ this had John Hattie and Pasi Sahlberg on the panel and was fascinating. Hattie spoke of the impact of teachers of their passion – not just a love for the job but the passion that enables teachers to see ways to improve own impact and that see teaching as part of their lives.  It was also ways to build on these high impact teachers within schools, it is about the impact of teaching on students, not the teaching, that ”we must recognise ourselves-the impact we have as teachers.However, we reward and recognise student effort – not ours”  he spoke out the biggest issue being within our schools, not without and  asked where is our professional teaching body within the country?  Sahlberg continued this theme by stating that in Finland ‘we trust our teachers, we don’t test them to death, we dance and play as well as do the academic and that - The quality of the education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachrs.  He spoke about Finish findings on good learning saying that learning had to be goal-orientated, contextual and cumulative.  He also got one of the biggest round of applause when he suggested that politicians stay out of teaching.  Hattie made a great point during the questions when asked about time and where was the time to become a High IMpact teacher – that these teachers ahd the same amount of time as everyone else!

Then it was off to #ukedchat – looking at how social media can connect educators this was run but Tim Rylands and Martin Burrett – it was great – we did some speed dating – talking to others in the room about the pros and cons of using tools such as twitter and tips for the best way of using tools such as twitter. As well as this we were also introduced to some great tools – on the iPad/iPhone – GroupZap, brainstorm and syncspace for sharing ideas.  There was also Cacoo and linoit for min mapping as well as memplai.  Sarah has also created a lino that people in the session were asked to add to that can be found here. it was a great fast moving session and at the same time there was a live #ukedchat occurring!

Next was back into the main hall to listen to two of my favourite authors Michael Rosen and Anthony Horowitz – who spoke about developing a love for reading – at the heart of this was creating a great library, that literacy and reading are not the same thing, reading is not a passive activity you are actively involved in the themes and characters of the text that you are reading, reading is not something to rise up to – if you are not enjoying it – leave it – find something that you do. Rosen was more political – asking what we were doing to put children off reading – giving them tests like the Spag!  Transformational power in reading for pleasure, but with all the strategies in place and the form filling that teachers had to do there was no time – we need to make time!  It was a great session, although I had missed Sir Michael Wilshire talking, thankfully it had been recorded and a transcript of it as well as the recording can be found here

Finally was the question of what qualities do the best teachers share?  Camilla Batmanghelidjh spoke of the best teaching being rigorous, demanding, aspirational and that worked to abilities, Bridget Minimore read her own poem about English Teachers , some things will stick with you forever! Celia Hoyles, spoke of the fact that great teachers give everyone a grounding but also a glimpse of the horizon, Michael Rosen – more highlights advice to be curious and that the fundamental basis of education is talk.  Kindness was also mentioned but if you want the teachers to be kind to the children, the management has to be kind to the teachers was again a great point from Camila.

It was a great day! For next year – easier entrance, more time to have those conversations- over coffee, in break out rooms.  Congratulations must go to all who organised and I look forward to next year!

To end a thought from Camila again – ‘Why are donuts always round and not triangles”

So to Thursday and back to LWF with the chance to look around and hear some of the speakers in the main event – for me I liked the domes, although at times they did seem small for the number of participants that wanted to listen to the breakouts – having also been to the brewery the same  can be said. The theatre space was large -although my favourite was the round from last year.  At times the noise from outside could be heard but did not detract from the main speakers – it will need time to develop and I look forward to seeing what Graham has in store for us all next year.

So onto the speakers

First up was Mitch Resnick who I absolutely loved and could have listened to all day! He spoke of the discovery of learning that comes in Kindergarten, of Scratch the programme that he came up with and that is used in my school and thousands of others across the world to give children a chance to discover and program for themselves, he then moved onto warrior cats something that was new to me but will investigate and used it as an example of how people where using scratch to take well known literature and changing it for themselves. including a lovely example of mothers day cards – his talk ended with his view of ICT as “Invention and Creativity Technologies” something that will most certainly stay with me.

Next was Mark Surman and Michelle Levesque from Mozilla who carried on the theme of discovering and creation and talked about enabling a generation of web makers through tools such as hackasaurus and open badges – again another great talk about enabling children to discover and create.

I skipped out of the main hall at this point to have a look around the domes – talking in Lego- building a classroom of the future, looking at the computers in the Museum of computing as well as watching young hackers come up new and interesting developments that would be shown later in the main hall. I missed one of my heroes Jesse Schell speaking as I was hosting a session straight after in one of the salon pods that involved myself and 9 teachers all who I have met via twitter and all who agreed to help me – each of them are inspirational with what they do and I am lucky enough to call them friends.

The aim of the session was to show what is happening in Education now – not in the future but wright now in classrooms up and down the country – we took the approach of starting at Year 2 and taking a journey through the life of a child right up to university. This idea and line up was decided before Gove made his announcement at BETT  at the beginning of the year and is an example I feel of what can be achieved in schools with technology – the presentations if you missed them or would like to watch again are embedded below – with a few to follow.

I think we really showcased what is happening in schools as well as the power of Twitter for CPD and forming relationships – it was certainly something special and I know from following tweets those in the audience agreed.

Once it had finished it was time to head back into the main stage after a few conversations – part of these conferences for me is the catching up and the face to face conversations that make these a special occasion.

Back into the main hall for talks from Jim Knight who spoke about the design of spaces to encourage learning and what would schools look like if Steve Jobs had gone into education  and not technology an interesting talk – I also enjoy listening to Lord Knight speak – he regularly talks and listens to teachers and the same was true during one of the breaks – a real pleasure. Then it was on to the Young ReWired State with young people demonstrating what they had been working on – a great demonstration of passion for ICT and coding as well as brilliant presentation skills as things sometimes did not quite go to plan a great way to end the afternoon session.

Then it was time for the closing with Sir Ken Robinson live from LA- one of his quotes that resonated both with myself and many in the audience was that Technology does not remove the need for great teaching and active learning – it enables them.  This was the last talk of the conference and home I headed.

Final thoughts – the domes I liked being able to move in and out of – although would bigger domes next year be possible? The talks prompted my thinking as always and given me things to think about which is always good, the connections made and conversations were fantastic, I was delighted to host a session and thanks go to Graham for inviting me to put something together. I missed some parts of the Brewery – mainly the main stage area but not others and next year LWF will be in the ‘new’ West Hall of Olympia – it will also cross over with BETT which next year moves to EXCEL which could be an issue mainly for those teachers who would like to attend.

For the last two days I have had the pleasure of attending the Norfolk ICT conference – a two day event for teachers and leaders within the county with the themes of Aspiration, Inspiration and Collaboration. The day started with Sebastian Gasse outlining what is currently happening in Norfolk schools and presenting the challenges that lie ahead.  It was great to hear from the children as well who spoke about how technology has aided their learning including home access with laptops, being free with their learning and finding things out for themselves by designing games and pr for companies as well as the varied wa

y that pupils engage with ICT within the school from radio, flips, animation, laptops to name a few.

The first Keynote of the day was from Ewan Mcintosh –  whose theme was if you truly want to engage pupils, relinquish the reins – you can read about this on his blog once again Ewan challenged our thinking and has certainly given me a few wee things to ponder on!

Groups then moved on to workshops which covered a range of topics from e-safety, using social media, ICT in the early years, home access, the power of data to reveal stories and using games in schools.  These were both informative and interesting – I attended Ewan’s workshop on using data, this included the amazing work of David MCCandless and his information is beautiful site, David’s talk at LWf was a highlight for me and you can watch his talk here .  Ewan encouraged us to think about how data could help us tell stories and encouraged to think about the stories that we could tell using data and solutions that the children could themselves come up with and I will be looking to include some of these ideas in my teaching in the Summer Term.

Johannes Ahrenfelt also prompted me to think more about making the best use of social media within Junior schools, as he talked about the power that these have and how they can be used to bridge the gap between students expectations and the reality of 21st century education – the link from his talk and resources can be found on his blog here

I was presenting he second Keynote of the day in the afternoon looking at using games within the classroom and the power of collaboration.  I started off by asking why we use games and explored the notion of play and ‘secret learning’ looking at the fact that games enabled children to be challenged, motivated, to set themselves goals and take risks.  I spoke about some of the projects that we have undertaken at school.

I also looked at children as games creators and the importance of them having time to look at game development and design using Scratch, Kodu – @GeekyNicki has shared her scheme of work for using Kodu here and 2DIY I also mentioned the Video Games Ambassador scheme that was launched today by Stemnet and UKIE which looks like an exciting scheme to encourage children to work with the Games Development industry.

I moved on to the power of collaboration through networks and spoke about the work of the Redbridge Games Network what schools within the borough have been using and what we are looking to develop further in the future. Also, highlighting other networks across the country who have been set up to share ideas and work together.

Perhaps the two best tools I use for collaboration and CPD both turn 5 this year - twitter and teachmeet and I highlighted the benefit of these for finding things out and developing myself professionally as a teacher.

I finished with some small research that the Active Learning Network within the borough have been looking at to see impact of games on narrowing the gap, spelling scores and maths assessments.  These small research projects are now being replicated within other schools to see if the results are replicable – I looked at spelling using word coach and my project and results can be seen below:

It was great to follow this with a workshop where work that is on going in two schools using the Wii and the DS was presented with time for questions and answers and a discussion on how to get games based learning into classrooms.

It has been a great two days and thanks must go to the Norfolk ICT team for their invitation to keynote as well as their warm welcome and hospitality.

As it is Valentines day today thought I would go down the non-commercial route and highlight sites that I love to share created for free by teachers who inspire me on twitter.

The first are from @simonhaughton an ICT genius who has created the Infant encyclopedia and Primary School History and then readily shared them with the world – both are fantastic and a great way of researching especially for use in Infant classrooms.

Bev Evans @bevevans22 hosts a fantastic site at communication4all - freely sharing a range of resources for using in the classroom and this year is also posting a clip art image a day as part of her posterous project.

Next is Mr Thorne nd his wonderful Mr Thorne does phonics site – great for showing in class and at home and it also features Geraldine the Giraffe ct

Next is from Mark Warner @markw29 who creates a range of websites – teaching themes and ideas to inspire do exactly what they say – great themes and ideas to inspire!

Last but not least – is safe search – the tech bit comes from @johnMclear who works for @primaryt a great search engine that is safe for use in schools – easy for children to use and links to copyright free images too.

These are just some of the sites that I love to visit and love to share – let’s share some great work this Valentines day created by teachers who love what they do and do such a lovely job!

Almost a month since my last blog post… a combination of factors have led to this but I am now back! With lots of ideas and blogs to come in the next couple of weeks.

After attending both LWF and BETT – the weeks leading up to now have been very busy both at work and personally – but I have had lots of fun and spent some great time with the family.  Sometimes life can be like that, it’s good to take a step back, recharge the batteries and look at new ideas – of which I have been doing lots of over the last month.

LWF was an amazing event, speaking on the round stage as part of the games based learning strand was at the same time a highlight and perhaps the most nerve-wracking thing I have ever done!

From Learning without Frontiers Flickr

It also enabled me to meet up with lots of old friends and make some new ones as well as being inspired by the likes of Jimmy Wales, Stephen Heppell, Evan Roth, David Puttnam and Tim Rylands.  It was a lot to think about. All the videos of the talks can be found here

Bett was slightly different again the best bits of BETT were for me the networking around the show and at the Teach Mett on the Friday night it is truly inspirational being connected with such amazing people.

I have also failed miserably at my 365 project – however I did re -start it on the 4oth day as seeing as this is my 40th year – thought that would be ok.  So not failing just not completing the whole project. Failing did not put me off it has just made me more determined to do a photo a day for the rest of the year!

So what is coming up – lots!!! There has been lots of talk recently about both the purpose of education and what should be taught in schools – on Thursday night there was a great debate on twitter as part of #ukedchat on the purpose of education hosted by Doug Belshaw and one of the guys behind purpos/ed.  If you have not already looked at this – you should! There have already been some great posts in 500 words on the purpose of education.

Along with this is the National Curriculum Review – Graham Brown Martin is hosting an event in London on 3rd March debating ‘What should be taught in schools’  this looks like it should be an interesting night with speakers Toby Young, Katherine Birbalsingh, Donald Clark, Dr Ralph Townsend, Tristram Shepard and me.  There are also events planned in Chesterfield and Newcastle. More information can be found on the wiki, with the hashtag for the event #ncr11.

Interesting times lie ahead – will you be part of the conversation?