Learning Conversations

I've always, in some form or other been involved with schools. Whether this has been as a teacher or someone who supports teachers. Over the past couple of years I've been working with groups of teacher advisors from around England, exploring ways in which they can be more efficient and effective - by making appropriate use of the technology available.

At the same time, I've become more and more convinced that our personal professional development and our work can be hugely enhanced by using easily updateable websites which produce web feeds (eg. a blog). Convincing people to take the plunge, however, is difficult. Especially when the only examples seem to be always focussing on how technology can support teaching & learning. (Although perhaps that's just a by-product of what happens when you encounter connected learning - it raises a whole host of new possibilities.)

So what's in it for a teacher advisor? What's the best way of using a website like this? What's going to stop them? What examples are there of people doing it already?

Let's take a hypothetical Primary Music advisor - we'll call her Jo. Probably the only one in their authority, or possibly even the only one in the whole region. Their job is to "raise standards" in music. Currently this involves running workshops for teachers, working with colleagues on cross-curricular creative projects, hosting network meetings for Music Co-ordinators, possibly working on inspection teams, and being aware of new resources and ideas. She also contributes to the authority's termly advisory team newsletter.

Jo is seen in her authority as a trusted source of advice and inspiration. Teachers that attend her workshops always come away with some good ideas that they can put into practice immediately.

Yet Jo is frustrated. She would like to get round to see more people. She would like more people to get to the workshops. She spends a lot of her time sharing what she has learnt and the good practice she has seen, and often feels that she is repeating herself. Time, and Jo's capacity is the issue.

There are two possible (and complementary) answers to this. One is for Jo to focus on helping people become more independent and motivated learners - so that she is not seen as the fount of all knowledge. The other is to make better use of her time so that valuable face-to-face time is used most effectively.

So Jo decides to set up a blog. It's not hard. In fact it took her two minutes to create a website that looked good and allowed her to publish text, images, video and audio very easily.

Jo uses the blog to talk about new resources and ideas, and about some of the things she's seen happening around the authority. The teachers, (and it's not just the music co-ordinators now) use her blog as a filter for all the information coming at them about Music in the curriculum. She has become their trusted source of information. But the conversation is two-way - as she's opened up her posts for comments. Jo gets feedback and further questions about them - and often from people that she would never have reached otherwise.

Jo has also showed people how to use feed readers and personal homepage systems such as Google reader, Bloglines and Netvibes. This means that they don't have to keep going to her blog to check for updates. Instead they have a single page which collects together the feeds they want to subscribe to. Adding new feeds is easy, so her teachers could gradually develop their network of trusted sources. The conversation grew wider and began to have more impact.

The hardest part for Jo was at the beginning. A lot of her colleagues advised her not to go down this route. Public publishing was seen to hold all sorts of dangers and questions about accountability, liability, ownership and copyright. The IT Services department in the authority did not have suitable software on the website that she could use. Her managers did not know how to deal with her publishing without control from higher-up.

Jo showed her managers the BBC personal blogging policy which seemed to fit her situation well. She wanted to keep her blog personal, rather than have it as part of the authority's systems so that she would not lose all the valuable knowledge and reflection it contained when and if she moved on. She also showed them some examples of other sites that were being used in similar ways, for example, Learning & Teaching Scotland's MFL blog, and East Lothian's Head of Education's blog.

To help her colleagues understand what she was about she also used part of a team meeting to do the Paper Blogging exercise designed by Leonard Low.

Having got permission from her employers, she set up her blog and put on the appropriate disclaimers about it being her own thoughts etc. Jo is very aware that what she writes is public and reflects on her. So she's careful in the opinions she writes, and especially careful with copyrighted material. As a musician Jo understands the need to respect intellectual property. Even though this can sometimes restrict what she publishes - especially when it comes to children's compositions - it doesn't often have a major effect. In fact it's a teaching point that she uses with children: it's always a good idea to check if you're allowed to use material within your own compositions. (Hint: Look for the Creative Commons license).

Let's leave Jo for the moment. If you're an ICT advisor it's easy to find examples of people already doing this. There are hundreds of personal websites that are publishing news and ideas about ICT in education. In most other subjects there is a distinct lack of suitable examples. I was looking for one for a Science advisor yesterday and could not find a single blog that focusses on school science. Plenty that look at ICT in Science - but not one that takes Science as a whole.

There are many (free) ways individuals can set up a blog, eg. Edublogs, Terapad, or even use Google Reader.

If, however, anyone is interested in joining Learning Conversations as a contributing member please let me know. I can give you your own space for you to use and will track and highlight posts in my "editorial". I know the site looks a bit ugly at the moment - I'm working on that.

To do this properly it needs people who are close enough to the classroom to be authentic, but with enough links across different classrooms to provide a wider perspective.

There's no money in it - but the personal and professional rewards far outweigh the time it takes to post. If there are enough suitable posts I will consider aggregating them into a paid for download, or print-on-demand service. In which case contributors will get a share of any profits, based on how much of their content is in the final product. I don't see this as a major money-making opportunity though - since ideally people will receive this content for free.

If you'd like to be considered for contributing membership, or want to discuss this further please use the comments space below or email me at:

mberthelemy-at-learningconversations.co.uk (change the -at- to an @)

(Please note that all characters are fictional and are no actual people or events are depicted.)