CDSM Interactive Solutions

First, an apology – this blog entry was due on 26th July and so is a couple of days late. Colleagues may know that we’ve had a bit of a busy time at CDSM with things being especially busy in Wales at the moment, and so the blog ended up a bit further down the list than expected when I set out the original schedule. I’ve jiggled things about now, though, so expecting to get back on track in the next week or two – ideally, I’ll have everything on time according to the original schedule by the end of the second week of August.

Back to today, then – this entry will provide an overview of one of the guidance papers that we’ve produced as part of the iLearnWales project to provide VLE services to schools in Torfaen and Monmouthshire. The details of this project can be seen in my previous blog, so here we’ll assume that you’ve read that and go straight into the overview of the paper. If blog readers want to receive a full copy of the paper, just mail me and I’ll get a copy to you as soon as I can. A copy will also be available in Welsh when it is formerly published by the LAs.

Below is a summary of the main documents and other guides that users of iLearnWales can access. You’ll see that there are guides to support all users, and this has been a key focus of my work with the LA team:

1. Target-setting, personalisation and differentiation – using the ability of iLearnWales to provide resources and activities that can be unique to individuals and focused on groups other than class or form groups.
2. Raising expectations and fostering ambition – using iLearnWales to stretch and challenge learners of all abilities, and ways of using the system to foster higher expectations and ambition in learners.
3. Use of data – iLearnWales will gather a mass of data that can be extracted and used to inform judgements and actions.  It is also a useful interface for pulling data together from various sources so that leaders and teachers can see patterns and trends more clearly.
4. Assessment for Learning to raise achievement and attainment – AfL is important in both live and digital learning – this project focuses on raising achievement through AfL in content and processes in the system.
5. Enriching pedagogy – using iLearnWales as a CPD and school-improvement tool, enabling all adults supporting learning to share and develop knowledge, skills and practice.
6. Extending opportunities – this is about more than just content – resources can include people and processes that can improve achievement and attainment and be made available very cost-effectively in iLearnWales.
   
7. Tracking and monitoring – at one level, iLearnWales is a big database that stores and enables access to all sorts of information – use it to store, recognise and reward achievement.
8. Provision of support to the whole learner – this is about treating iLearnWales as more than just a curriculum tool – it is a space in which a wide variety of things can happen and where the whole learner can be supported with an impact on achievement and attainment across the board.
9. Parental engagement – using iLearnWales to improve the home-school link, and engage parents in processes that would otherwise be difficult to deliver.
10. Ensuring whole programme coverage – because it can be a challenge to cover the whole programme in some subjects in secondary, we have a project focused on doing that using the system.

The 10 sections can be treated individually or together, and can be considered in any order.  Readers can see the paper as just a list of project-areas that they can adopt in order to ensure that iLearnWales improves achievement and attainment in school.  Alternatively, they can take the 10 areas and combine them into a programme for ensuring the impact of iLearnWales on learners’ performance – this enables Leaders to apply them to their own schools, as well as encouraging them to think of further examples of their own.

For each of the 10 sections, we suggest the same method.  This is a simple and practical project management method that starts with identifying the project area for work from the 10 sections and works through identifying the group and the role of the LP to looking at the readiness of staff before delivering and evaluating the project:

Just to be clear what we mean by each of these activity headings…

• Identify the group – readers might choose a single class-group, subject, year or classification (such as gender or FSM, or a specific under-performing group), or decide that they want to deliver the project to all learners – the key thing is to decide the group for the project and what we want them to achieve.
• Specify the LP functions – we need to know which elements of iLearnWales we will use in order to deliver the project, and to make sure they work the way we need them to for the project to be delivered.
• Check staff engagement and skills/capacity – this is an area we must get right, or the project just won’t work.  With iLearnWales, skills should not be a problem as we have a CPD programme in place – it will be a matter of capacity and engagement.
• Deliver the project – if we discover that colleagues need additional skills, this is where we start – otherwise we can get straight into what we want to do with the technology and learners.
• Cost-benefit analysis – throughout, we need to be clear that doing it like this is the best way of doing it – so it’s important to check back on the group and their achievements in relation to the effort we put into the project.

What the paper does, then, is go through a detailed account of these project phases for each of the 10 sections, giving really practical advice on how to use the project management method to deliver the ideas underlying each of the areas.  I look forward to working through it in detail with the LA team, and seeing schools in Torfaen and Monmouthshire trying the ideas out.

As ever, if you want to comment on anything I’ve said in the blog or in any of the papers, please feel free to comment in the blog or to mail me at Kevin.palmer@cocentra.com – I’ll be happy to have your comments on the blog or to engage with you in other domains if you’ve a mind to.

About the Author

Kevin Palmer is Director of ICT at Cocentra.  His experience includes senior positions with responsibility for ICT in colleges, chairing the Further Education sub-committee of the Association for Learning Technology, delivering projects for the JISC and winning a range of awards for work in CPD and training for college staff in Learning Technology.  He has worked with Local Authorities, Schools, Academies, Free Schools, Colleges and Universities on maximising the impact of technology on learning, and with broadcasters, corporate organisations, charities and regional-national governments on the relationship between best-practice teaching and learning and the role of technology.  His current work includes developing use of VLE and e-learning with a range of clients, from small Primary Schools to multinational manufacturingorganisations, and his most recent publications include the Learning Technology Needs Analysis, a tool for self-evaluation for schools and colleges, and Technology, A Platform for Learning, a practical guide to making best use of VLE technology in schools and colleges.

First, an apology – this blog entry was due on 19th July and so is about a week late.  Colleagues may know that we’ve had a bit of a busy time at CDSM with things being especially busy in Wales at the moment, and so the blog ended up a bit further down the list than expected when I set out the original schedule.  I’ve jiggled things about now, though, so expecting to get back on track in the next week or two – ideally, I’ll have everything on time according to the original schedule by the end of the second week of August.

Back to today, then – this entry will look at some lessons learned and feedback from a project we are supporting to roll VLE technology out across the English Teams in eleven secondary schools in Torfaen and Monmouthshire in South East Wales.  This is not an academic paper, but a reflection on practice, so it’s really just going to touch the surface of what’s happening.  If readers want to know more about it, please mail me or comment here and I’ll make sure we come back to you.

The post is in seven sections:

1. VLE project context
2. An explanation of the CPD and PLC links
3. An explanation of the CPD model
4. A summary of the subject foci and an account of the workload-sharing model across the schools
5. A quick summary of one part of the CPD programme that went especially well
6. A comment on the project’s best practice model
7. A look at the lesson planning template being used by the PLC

1. VLE Project Context

The context of this work is the iLearnWales project, a significant project covering the 11 high schools of Torfaen and Monmouthshire.  The project is focused primarily on KS4, is funded by the schools, the Local Authorities and Welsh Government, and provides infrastructure, connectivity, devices, software and CPD.  Indeed, in terms of the Cocentra ICT Service pyramid that we use when we support schools in developing ICT, this is one of few projects that we’ve ever worked on that provides support and investment throughout the pyramid – see below for the standard pyramid, with an indication of how the levels are supported:

The project is directly supported by three dedicated LA Officers, who provide implementation support, CPD, training and liaison between schools, the LAs and the VLE supplier CDSM.  My role in there is to work with the LA Officers on developing the CPD approaches and resources as a development of some of the work we did in Technology, a Platform for Learning, and in this part of the project to work with Heads of English on development of the English PLC within the project.

2. An explanation of the CPD and PLC links

An important feature of the project, and one that I personally think will define its success, is the investment in CPD and transformation that it carries.  The LAs are very clear that the project is about learning, attainment and achievement first, and about giving teachers and learners the tools they need to succeed.  It is on this basis that I have been engaged, and my job is to work alongside the LA team to help keep the focus on learning with technology and to enhance the value the technology can add.  This is not a difficult task working with these particular LAs and with CDSM, though it’s not always been the case in other projects that the focus was quite so clearly on learning and achievement.

As part of the investment in CPD, the LAs are taking a PLC approach, and identifying subject-based PLCs for English, Maths and Science in the first instance.  I am directly supporting the English PLC, with other advisors supporting the Maths and Science in line with their expertise.  The LA team of three is the common thread, with the Project’s most senior Officer coordinating the whole programme.  It should be noted that we are talking here about two LA areas, who are in turn part of a five-LA region supported by an Education and Achievement Service that covers all five LA areas.  At times of fast change in the way LAs support schools, it is important to keep both the big and the small pictures in focus, so just as we’ve used the PLC to focus on the detail of coverage of the GCSE curriculum, we’ve also started talking at a senior level to colleagues in the wider Education Achievement Service about how this work can add value to what they do.

3. An explanation of the CPD model

At a level of detail, then, the model for delivery of CPD under this PLC mechanism is as follows:

• Identify a pair of subject-champions for the project in each department, using a set of criteria designed by the project team
• Provide each of these with four days of CPD by running two four-day programmes of CPD each with a group of eleven
• Within the four days, cover the following:
  • Understanding of the project, its drivers and the benefits to schools, teachers and learners
  • Understanding of the technology system being used to deliver the project
  • Understanding of the common terms of good practice in lesson planning and delivery, and in delivery of learning via the system
  • Development of sharable teaching resources using the templates and good practice guidance
  • Development of a model for sharing resources across the schools, and agreement on allocation of areas of the curriculum to schools
  • Agreement on a model for cascading the CPD into departments, with support from the LA team where required and agreed
  • Provide structured support for learning ‘the system’ throughout the four days by having the LA team there to support 1-1 when needed
  • Plan to provide some support to the PLC team and their colleagues when back in school

4. A summary of the subject foci and an account of the workload-sharing model across the schools

One of the key benefits to all schools from this project will be shared teaching and learning resources, and shared sets of communications and collaboration activities.  At the risk of sounding like some old bloke down the pub, I’ve been in the VLE business a long time now.  In fact sometimes it feels like a very long time since the intranet at Barry College gave way to a Virtual Campus at Swansea, a Moodle implementation in North Wales and then a whole-LA LP implementation in Salford.  Running through all of these activities has been an impulse to share the best resources and learning activities, and to enable teachers to spend less time prepping and marking and more time working with learners using high quality resources to which they have added value for their own learners.  In this project, at last, I begin to see examples of how this can work really well across a coordinated subject-focused community.  The English folk are not only keen to share resources, experience and expertise, they’re keen to use the technology to do it and to extend their sharing to others, including the PRU.  Below I have set out what the schools will be focusing on – the agreement is that each school will provide the equivalent of three fully resourced lesson plans per teacher over the year, and that these plans will focus on the areas agreed in the table below.  This is not the maximum the schools will be producing and sharing – in addition to this schools will be able to share whatever else they think will be of use, and all schools will be sharing resources around AfL in literacy skills so that we can turn these into banks of AfL items for all teachers to use.

Fortunately, all schools are studying for the same GCSEs in English and English Literature, which means that all resources will be sharable by all schools, with the production range as follows:

5. A quick summary of one part of the CPD programme that went especially well

This is quite a personal response to one part of the programme that went especially well.  Not delivered by me, I should say, and not actually in the original plan for the four sessions, but if you’ve ever taught for more than five minutes that won’t surprise you.  The bit I’m referring to was delivered by the Project Lead, and covered a list of top-ten things to do with the kit being supplied by the project.  This included good stuff like using webcams to record personal reflections on achievement and get them into the VLE, using still image capture for lesson plenaries to be reviewed immediately before or as a starter to the next lesson, and using some of the onboard software to make image-collages in a variety of subject areas.  It also included some technology that was new to many members of the team, such as software tools that come bundled with the kit as part of the project – and all of this nicely focused on what teachers could immediately see as useful activity in class.  What really struck me about it was how enthusiastically the English teachers took to the suggestions and adapted them to their own lesson design, and how far they were prepared to experiment with the ideas being presented to them and create new versions of those ideas.  Indeed, we found a number of teachers immediately starting to experiment with the newly available technologies in the lesson planning phase, despite having a new lesson-planning template to think about at the same time.

6. A comment on the project’s best practice model

I won’t present the whole of the project’s best practice model here – that is for the LAs to share, which I understand is in the plan.  But the main elements will be of interest, and the extent to which we secured agreement around them as a newly emerging PLC.  The main elements revolve around how teachers plan and resource lessons, how they deliver those lessons and use the resources available to them to best effect, and how they capture learners’ and their own reflective responses to those lessons.  The best practice model is well supported by research and by a process of development and consensus-building through the PLCs, and from a personal view I have to say I’d be delighted to use it to support and develop teaching staff in any of the Primary, Secondary, FE and HE environments I’ve taught in over the years.

In addition to providing practitioners with a best practice model for preparing, delivering, assessing and evaluating live teaching and learning activities, we have begun to provide an equivalent framework for preparation and delivery of system-based learning.  This is what most practitioners would call e-learning, and we’re all clear on how patchy practice has been on this over the years.  In schools, where there is comparatively little use of this method, it’s of the highest importance that we define what’s good for teachers to reflect on and build their own practice on, and the project has made a really good start with this.

7. A look at the lesson planning template being used by the PLC

The same goes for the Lesson Plan template as for the best practice model – the LAs will share that through work on dissemination of the project.  What I found especially interesting in it, though, was the idea that we could take the Estyn criteria for an outstanding lesson, and make these a default set of base-requirements for all lessons.  So we now have a lesson planning template that all teachers preparing lessons will use and that encompasses such area as ESDGC, Sector Leading Practice, mechanisms for making best use of support staff, promotion of Welsh Language and Culture and capturing teacher self-evaluation and learners’ responses to progress.

So the outcome of this process, when taken in purely numerical terms, will be that all teachers in the project (that’s around 70 teachers, just for the English KS4 group as led by this PLC) will produce approaching 250 best-practice lesson plans in a coordinated programme of production, as well as those resources that they produce to share, and the bank of AfL items in areas of Literacy.  The impact of this on practice is obvious, and if we achieve it across all subject areas, along with the investment in technology and the relentless focus on standards that the LAs have already set out as the priority, I am really comfortable about the project’s chances of success and gratified to be involved in it.

As ever, if you want to comment on anything I’ve said in the blog or in any of the papers, please feel free to comment in the blog or to mail me at Kevin.palmer@cocentra.com – I’ll be happy to have your comments on the blog or to engage with you in other domains if you’ve a mind to.

About the Author

Kevin Palmer is Director of ICT at Cocentra. His experience includes senior positions with responsibility for ICT in colleges, chairing the Further Education sub-committee of the Association for Learning Technology, delivering projects for the JISC and winning a range of awards for work in CPD and training for college staff in Learning Technology. He has worked with Local Authorities, Schools, Academies, Free Schools, Colleges and Universities on maximising the impact of technology on learning, and with broadcasters, corporate organisations, charities and regional-national governments on the relationship between best-practice teaching and learning and the role of technology. His current work includes developing use of VLE and e-learning with a range of clients, from small Primary Schools to multinational manufacturingorganisations, and his most recent publications include the Learning Technology Needs Analysis, a tool for self-evaluation for schools and colleges, and Technology, A Platform for Learning, a practical guide to making best use of VLE technology in schools and colleges.

Thanks for taking time to come and visit this blog.  The idea of the blog is to give readers an insight into the work we do in Cocentra and CDSM with schools, Local Authorities, the corporate sector and other clients to support them in implementing new technologies for learning.  CDSM specialise in web-based learning technologies, and so most of this blog will be in that area, but in Cocentra we also deal with teaching and learning with technology more broadly, and with school organisation, leadership and improvement across a range of technology and non-technology areas of work.

I am conscious in writing this blog, and the paper that is attached to it, that changes first in Government and then in policy in the last two years have caused something of a crisis of confidence in the world of VLE/LP, if not in the wider world of learning technology and ICT across the board, at least in England.  My own view is that there has been some unnecessary panic about ‘what Gove(rnment) thinks’ about ICT, and that if we really believe in the importance and impact of ICT we should get on with it and let the practice speak for itself.  For some years, I think ICT has been culturally, pedagogically and organisationally subsidised in schools, just as it has been financially subsidised.  I think the truth is we can’t afford to do the financial subsidy any more, and we need to let ICT earn its own crust by demonstrating its value to learners, teachers and leaders.  As a parent of two young people recently out of their teens, I think I see some parallels….

This week I want to share an advisory paper with you that I’ve used with a number of schools in England, and shared with hundreds of colleagues on LinkedIn.  The paper is about how we can use Learning Platform (LP), Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or Learning Management System (LMS) technology in our approach to Ofsted, and it looks first at how we evaluate the impact of the technology and second at how this can be done in terms that are specific to Ofsted and to the need to demonstrate quality and impact in schools in England.  The paper is about using the technology for the good of learners, learning, attainment and results, and about proving it so that the technology does earn its crust.  The paper comes from and is part of a larger piece of work about how to make the most of this particular technology, and is generated by years of practice with schools, college, Local Authorities and corporate clients with whom we’ve worked to get the most out of the tech.  I hope it’s of use, and of course will be glad to hear or read responses to it.

Learning Platform and Ofsted – Impact Evaluation in English Schools and Colleges PDF (802 KB) (this link will open in a new browser window)

I also want to give you a sense of what’s going to be in the blog a few weeks in advance, and since this is the first entry, I’ve set out what’s coming in the next five weeks or so.  Over the next few weeks, the topics the blog will cover will look as follows:

If you want to comment on anything I’ve said in the blog or in any of the papers, please feel free to comment in the blog or to mail me at Kevin.palmer@cocentra.com – I’ll be happy to have your comments on the blog or to engage with you in other domains if you’ve a mind to.

About the Author

Kevin Palmer is Director of ICT at Cocentra. His experience includes senior positions with responsibility for ICT in colleges, chairing the Further Education sub-committee of the Association for Learning Technology, delivering projects for the JISC and winning a range of awards for work in CPD and training for college staff in Learning Technology. He has worked with Local Authorities, Schools, Academies, Free Schools, Colleges and Universities on maximising the impact of technology on learning, and with broadcasters, corporate organisations, charities and regional-national governments on the relationship between best-practice teaching and learning and the role of technology. His current work includes developing use of VLE and e-learning with a range of clients, from small Primary Schools to multinational manufacturingorganisations, and his most recent publications include the Learning Technology Needs Analysis, a tool for self-evaluation for schools and colleges, and Technology, A Platform for Learning, a practical guide to making best use of VLE technology in schools and colleges.

CDSM has been selected as an approved supplier by the Government Procurement Services Information Management and Learning Services (IMLS) Framework. The Framework will be used by schools, academies and local authorities to select and purchase learning platforms and management information systems.

The selection process was undertaken after extensive and thorough research into the needs of educational establishments across the UK, ensuring that only the providers with the highest quality products and services would be selected for the Framework. CDSM’s My Learning Space platform passed with flying colours, which is a reflection of the work and effort put in by CDSM and our community of users.

My Learning Space is now recognised and endorsed by the UK government for procurement at School, Academy and Local Authority level.

Selection for the framework ensures that My Learning Space continues to go from strength to strength. It is rapidly establishing itself in the UK as the learning platform of choice for schools and academies who want technology to support their vision of teaching & learning.

Steve Finch, Head of Business Development at CDSM, said: “We’re delighted to have My Learning Space approved by the Framework. Schools, academies and local authorities can now focus on choosing a learning platform that best fits the school without the usual procurement hurdles, saving them time and money which can be better spent on teaching and learning. We’re thrilled to know that our efforts in developing a class-leading learning platform based on the direct feedback of teachers and learners across the UK have all been worth it – validation from both the community of users and the UK government “.