Mantle of the expert - deceiving children or inspiring learning?

I have been teaching through the mantle of the expert approach for seven years now, having first seen it in action at Little Bealings Primary School. I had heard about it in passing from my headteacher and curiosity got the better of me, so I convinced him to send three teachers from school to an open event at Bealings. Our trio consisted of myself (trying to find my niche), our deputy head (and English coordinator) and a new teacher who I had mentored as an NQT.

Your cakes are too tiny for Giants!

Our thoughts about what we had seen differed greatly. We spent some time with a trainee teacher, whose lesson was pure drama from start to finish. Our deputy was concerned about the pace, the learning and the progress in what she thought was an English lesson. I saw it as more than that: PSHE, collaboration, decision making and totally led by the children. There was no written work at the end of it, but photographs and film clips were taken throughout. The planning made sense to me as well. It wasn't comprehensive, because things change. Energy was put into the ideas and resources for the lesson, not the paperwork. To me it was dynamic.

 Even more memorable was what was going on in the infant classroom (a gardening company). It was busy, the children were excited, they were making decisions and different things were happening in different areas of the room. It wasn't a conventional room either. It wasn't dominated by tables and chairs. The displays were not particularly neat, but they were covered with the children's ideas and work. I was hooked. This felt right to me. The learning had been put into a context and the children were thriving on it. I saw much evidence of their learning, but was astounded by the children's confidence and the way that they could reason and articulate their thoughts. Our new headteacher at Roydon felt the same the first time she saw me teaching this way.

My first major mantle

My first mantle S.T.A.R.S (space transportation and restoration services) lasted a whole term. It was with year 5/4 children. I worked in role as many different people throughout the term, but started the mantle as an angry professor who was cursing NASA's inability to launch a rocket. Did the children know it was me? Of course. Did they immerse themselves in the drama of the situation anyway? Totally.

A Chadburys employee

What was more noticeable was the 'buzz' that was created. Parents were interested in what was going on and they were telling me that their children were talking to them about their learning in ways they had done previously.
Teaching through this way seemed to naturally support children with SEN, whilst stretching TAG children. How do I know this? Through what I was seeing and hearing and through their results at the end of the year. I had lots of visitors and they were confirming what I was feeling - it is a positive way for the children to be in control, make progress and learn.

The importance of appropriate language

I have written this post in response to a comment on twitter that suggested I was 'deceiving' the children. It is true that you are creating an imaginary world, but surely this is what we want to do in school - feed and nurture their imaginations? I am careful with the language I use and favourite phrases include:

'I wonder what it would feel like ...'

'What would you do if...?'

'What would it be like if ...?' 

'When I put on this hat/tie/jacket I will become...'

There are many more phrases that I will use during a drama, but sometimes I drop right in role without warning. At these times, language is used carefully to debrief the children. I am not going to go into detail about mantles, as I have written about them elsewhere, but over the years I have worked with the children to rescue orangutans and polar bears (helped by Sir Richard Branson!), rebuild a Chocolatier that burned down, created documentaries and resources for publishing and broadcasting companies, become a rival company to RyanAir, catered for the needs of giants, gnomes and Australian documentary makers, been  trainee timelords and found many different artifacts that have led to huge investigations.

I could talk about drama and mantle of the expert for ever, because I am passionate about it. The benefits for me as a teacher are:

• It suits my teaching style
• Its creative nature keeps me happy as a teacher (I like dressing up!)
• The enquiry approach lets children lead the way. I like pretending that I don't know the answers. It encourages the children to problem solve.
• You never teach the same thing in the same way (so I don't get bored if I repeat a topic)
• It promotes problem solving, collaborative skills, decision making and using initiative
• It enables a personalised learning approach 



Amy Pond?!

• There is never a dull moment!

I do not subscribe to the purist Mantle of the Expert approach that says the children need badges and identities in the drama each time. I have adapted the approach to suit my style and the needs of the children I am working with. That is why I like to call it drama in the classroom. Sometimes I am purely using drama to give a context for learning, other times we become a company. My mantles can last from a week to a term and are very flexible depending on the theme; there is no room for tenuous links. 

If you would like to know more about mantle of the expert, visit their main website. If you want ideas for using drama in the classroom, there is a booklet here. If you are still in doubt, imagine you are 5/6 years old and working for a gnome. Wouldn't that be fun?!

BYOD

I did a learning styles questionnaire on the NCSL site many moons ago and it told me things that I already knew about myself, but also made me think about significant weaknesses in the way I approach things.  I scored 2/50 under the 'realistic' tab. I needed to do something about this. Whilst I believe you need teachers who can see endless possibilities, you also need practical teachers who can see the problems. I had a new found respect for teachers that I had previously considered to be blinkered. It was a huge learning curve for me, but really helped me to understand why our school is successful; we have a good balance of personalities.

 How does this relate to BYOD? Well I have realised that my excitement at trying new things has sometimes meant that I haven't thought about the potential risks. We started started blogging over seven years ago at school without any worries about having policies in place. Of course we had consent forms for photograph use, but no guidelines for actual blogging. I want to make sure that I don't do this with BYOD.

Roydon digital leaders

 The need for one has arisen because my digital leaders have wanted to bring their mobile devices into school for our digital leader sessions. This has made things so much easier for me and it enables them to carry on learning at home. The games that my digital leaders have made in their on time are amazing and they have set up their ipads/ipods to be able to blog from them. The first couple of times they brought them in, we just had verbal agreements with the pupils and parents. They understood the risks and rules, but this needed putting in writing.

Ruby's sketchnation game

So last week I searched the internet for exemplar policies. I found very little. Eventually I found a forum where  a policy written by Mount Erin College in Australia was praised. The wording was very clear, so as a starting point I have adapted this slightly and sent it home with digital leaders. As a school we can adapt our policy accordingly as we continue our BYOD journey.

I would love to hear from others about BYOD policy and practice, so that I can carry on learning!

Be prepared!

I have been asked the question more than once, 'How did you prepare for introducing ipads in school?' so will try to provide a few tips. 

1. Firstly, you need the ipads set up with quality apps that are going to be useful in class. That may seem obvious, but I have delivered staff meetings in other schools where the technicians (and in one case ex headteacher) hold the password for downloading apps and the ipads had few quality items on them. It is frustrating for me and frustrating for staff when they cannot play with the apps I am showing. To get them used quickly across the school I would recommend the following:

• Primary games maths apps - great for M+O skills across the primary age range
• Sumo maths - a fun free app with different levels for calculation skills
• Book creator - create e-books quickly and easily 
• Mr Thorne does phonics
• Twinkl phonics - fun games up to phase 5
• Collins Big Cat - for guided reading and story creating
• Puppet pals - create fun animations easily
• iMovie - create slick movies with ease
• I can animate - quick and easy stop animations 
• Smart office / Noteshelf / Notability
• Blogger - because it's so easy to get blogging with it!

The apps that we rate most highly at Roydon are shown here with some useful teacher tools here. You can cover a range of ICT skills with the programming and gaming apps shown here too.  

2. Provide an ipad for each teacher, even if the expectation is that they are available for use in class each day. Let TAs take home ipads if they want to. We have a booking out system at Roydon.

3. Make sure that there are regular training (learning through play) sessions for your staff timetabled throughout the year. Don't assume that all staff will want to take the ipads home and play with them. New apps need to be introduced properly and staff given the chance to use them so that they can understand the value of them. I would advise that this should happen at least once every half term to start with.

4. Limit the amount of apps you add, or the people that are allowed to purchase them. Try a 'request' system. This will help avoid the problem of 400 apps on the ipad with only 200 quality ones! 

5. Manage your apps so that they are stored in folders for children to locate them easily. Let them synch through the cloud. It is much easier if your ipads are set up so that they all look the same. It is very frustrating if you give out the ipads, then realise that the app you want them to use is not on all ipads. Teaching children to use the search facility is helpful too. 

6. Delegate ipads to each class, but have a timetable where they can be requested for whole class work. Having 4 in my room at all times means that group work can happen throughout the day. 

7. Set your home screen up so that ipads can be returned to the right class when borrowed (mine all have badgers on them). Having a number helps to. If a child starts to create a book on Badger 1, they know where to return to find it. 

8. Employ digital leaders to help you inspire and innovate!


I am researching the use of ipads in our school, as are others that I know of, like Jenni from Frettenham Primary. I will share my findings through this blog regularly in the hope that it will help others. Simon Haughton is another ipad enthusiast who writes extremely helpful posts about his experiences with ipads in school. You can read them here. Learning from others this way will not only inspire, but hopefully enable you to learn from any problems we have had. I will try to explain in more detail about the synching issues in the next post.

Our ipad learning journey (so far)

Another post that has been a long time coming - but it needed a little thought putting into it. It is no secret that I am a BIG ipad lover and haven't looked back since introducing them in school. I have found them to be an asset in my 2/1 class and really do believe that they have optimised learning, as I will explain later. It has not all been plain sailing though and there have been a few hitches. I will try to document them as honestly and accurately as I can.

A special delivery

I had wanted ipads in the classroom since buying my own, having been inspired by their potential during a meeting with Jenni Hammond and Jill Duman. I took mine into the classroom straight away and let my children 'play'.* I could immediately see how every second of learning time could be put to use. For example, during lessons/when some children finish their maths, they can use the desktop computers in the classroom, but there is never enough time for them to collect a laptop, turn it on and get enough learning time before the bell goes. I don't always want to give them additional work, but computer based games are an enjoyable resource that they love.

So, I asked our headteacher if we could purchase some ipads. Fortunately, our head teacher was very forward thinking as far as technology was concerned. Unfortunately he was retiring and so decided that it would be inappropriate to make that decision. Whilst I understood and respected that, I also felt very frustrated. We had managed to keep ahead of new technologies and I was keen to keep abreast of innovations.

After waiting a polite amount of time for our new head to settle in (and recover from a broken ankle!) I broached the subject. Although she admitted to knowing little about technology, our new head was keen for us to continue to keep at the forefront of ICT innovations, so I went ahead and ordered 45 ipads in November 2011. This included one for each teacher, two for our Den (SEN room) and one for each child in the biggest class in school. Initially the ipads were going to be kept together and timetabled out in the same way as the laptops. After visiting another school that had recently purchased laptops, I realised that their use would be optimised if we shared them out between classes. So we have 4 in each class and a timetable where we can request to borrow other ipads if needed. The home screen on the ipads have been set with a picture of the class name (so mine have a badger on it) and the number allocated to the ipad. This makes it easy for children to return to the right ipad for their work, such as that done on book creator.


Setting them up

The first problem that we had was actually setting them up. They needed to be connected to itunes on a laptop to get them started in school - they were blocked from connecting to the internet. This confused me initially, as I had brought mine home and set it up without connecting it to a computer, so couldn't understand what was going on at school. This is a school network issue, which I'm not sure can be resolved due to restrictions. So staff had a choice: set them up via a laptop at school or take them home and connect to their internet.

Synching

Initially our ipads synched through icloud, but we were persuaded by our technicians to purchase a mini mac server to 'ease' synching. I'm not sure that I agree that the server has made it easier. With eleven teachers inspired by the ipads, we quickly ended up with nearly 400 apps on the laptops! These needed organising before they got even more out of hand. In my view, this is the responsibility of the class teacher. We have 4 ipads to organise and as long as time is made available, we should be able to keep on top of this.

 The problem was that once a teacher had downloaded an app, then found it to be unsuitable, it had already synched to all the other ipads. Our ICT support team decided that they would send someone in to organise our apps and they arrived on the first day of a new half term, with no-one aware!
Then they wanted all the ipads ... In my opinion this was not the most efficient way of organising our ipads. We managed to draw up a list between us of apps we definitely wanted to keep, reducing the number to under 200. I also grouped the apps into files, so that all ipads would 'look' the same. Unfortunately this never happened as the technician took so long deleting apps from each laptop and synching them to the server. As a result we have ended up with 45 ipads that all look different, which is not particularly satisfactory and will still require time to put it right.

The children can find apps quickly with the search facility on the ipad, but they do need organising. Staff meeting time will be allocated, which is possibly what should have happened in the first place. We are definitely on learning journey with these - and hopefully our experiences will help the other schools in our cluster that have since purchased ipads.

Educational benefits

Ibooks on PhotoPeach

 

I truly believe that we have already seen huge benefits from having the ipads in school. They optimise the time available because they are ready so quickly and they are so intuitive, easy enough even for our youngest learners. My children have accessed a range of apps, both in and out of the classroom and are writing blog posts with ease. Having a camera on them means that my year 2/1s don't need to learn the skills of downloading photos before they start blogging. Indeed our EYFS teachers intend to get their children blogging this year.

For group intervention activities I have used the ipads for phonics work, mental maths skills and guided reading. The children are excited to use them. I will be tracking year 1 progress using the 2simple EYFS profile app this year and will also be using a range of multimedia resources with my digital leaders. I am more than happy that we are getting value for money from our ipads - in my classroom. I will be monitoring the way that they are used across the school to make sure that we get value across the school.

This year we will be learning how to use a wiki app so that the children can save and retrieve their work.

To see some of the things my class have been doing, take a look at our class blog. To learn about the great apps we use in school, look at this ipad apps site.

Staff benefits

Like most schools, staff at Roydon have a range of technical skills. All staff at Roydon work hard to learn new things, whatever their ability. The thing that I have noticed with the ipads is that their ease of use has meant that those who have struggled with some aspects of ICT before have a new-found confidence, which has then rubbed off onto other technologies. I will gather quotes later this term.

 I mentored two NQTs (@j_santy and @wickybailey) three school years ago and felt really excited about their ICT skills and passion for the subject. They have been a great asset to the school and a huge support to me in my role as ICT coordinator. Their enthusiasm rubs off on others and it is great to have their support in teachmeet style staff meetings. It means that I am not the only one that others seek out for support too. A lot of time has always been dedicated to ICT development in our school and my role as AST and now ICT consultant has been a positive factor as I get time to attend conferences and shows to extend my knowledge and skills.

The Future

There have been many debates on twitter about ipads and many comparisons are made between tablets. My view about not exclusively having ipads has already been blogged about; a broad and balanced curriculum needs broad and balanced resources. What I dislike is people jumping on the anti-ipad bandwagon when they have never used them. I don't understand their gripes.
  Nobody will truly know the tablets that offer best value for money until maybe a few years down the line when research has been done. Because of the quality of apple products and wide range of educational apps available, I really didn't consider any others. We have made the mistake of buying inferior resources before at great expense (digi-blues for example) and need products that will last. One of our ipads has survived being dropped and stood on by a child! We also have a huge range of 'software' on the ipads to inspire the children that really compliment existing school resources.
 That said, I am very curious to know how much of an impact the ipads will have, so intend to do some form of research this year. Having like-minded people in other schools (@JenniH68) will help us make comparisons and will also allow us to continue to inspire one another. I am very much looking forward to continuing my ipad learning journey!

For other ipad related posts, take a look at Simon Haughton and Ant Evan's helpful blogs.



*I use the term play, because the children are playing whilst learning.

Sack Mabel and Doris?

This post has been a long time coming - I didn't want to rush it (like I normally do), but needed to give it some thought as it is an issue that I want to address. I know that I risk getting publicly shot down for my views, but they are mine and I would hope that they are respected. I am coming from a primary viewpoint here, so would appreciate the reader remembering that we are not employed to teach one or two subjects, but are (mostly) responsible for delivering all.

Rethinking ICT

I had an interesting time at the rethinking ICT conference earlier this year and met some hard working people who I have a lot of respect for. With the exception of a few that I had met before, they were nearly all twitter acquaintances, many of whom are doing inspirational work in education (and special mention must be given to Chris Leach who put this event together). At the end of the conference an expert panel answered questions from the audience. During this time I was stunned to hear the opinion that teachers should be sacked if they did not engage with new technologies*

My initial reaction was that it would be very uncharitable of educational establishments to sack teachers for finding an aspect of their learning difficult. Would we exclude a child who struggles or refuses to learn, or would we try our hardest to find a way of engaging them? Teachers get paid to do a job, I understand that, but technology does not come naturally to everyone and teachers have to keep abreast of  a multitude of new/recycled educational ideas each year. There is a lot to juggle. I thought about some of the people I have supported over the past few years, people who I have heard (and seen on twitter) being referred to as the school's 'Doris' or 'Mabel' (a derogatory term given to those who shy away from new technologies) and the opinions at rethinking ICT hit a nerve. A big nerve. So big that I felt compelled to challenge it by stating my disagreement of the expert panel's view. I was told that we wouldn't accept it if a teacher continuously failed to learn how to teach fractions*. My response to this was that fractions don't continuously break.

If I were told that I had to embed the Polish language in each curriculum area, I know that I would find it time consuming to learn and stressful because I would not always know if I were teaching it well. Imagine how I would feel the next year being told that the language had changed, to Bengali. One of my colleagues has no trouble with technology, but if he were told to include art in as many lessons as possible, he would probably not appreciate it! Likewise, I can read music and have always aspired to play the piano, but have not been able to devote the time to it. I played (one-handed) in assembly once and it was one of the most stressful things I have ever done. I know that these examples are not the same as embedding technology, but I am trying to make comparisons of the 'fear factor'. This is a fear of the new, the unknown and the things that could lead to public ridicule. Children as well as adults can be intentionally and unintentionally cruel with their frank opinions. Some teachers lack the confidence to put themselves in that position.

I myself never wanted to be an ICT coordinator; I find many aspects of technology quite dull. I have developed a passion for it because I am a curious person; I see the creative potential and the awe and wonder technology often brings and I want  slice of the action. Maybe it is slightly easier for me than some over 40s though, because I did computer technology at school (yes, it did exist in the 80s!) and I am not afraid of breaking things. I also had two children at a very young age and they had all manner of gaming platforms, remote control toys and then computers when they were older. My youngest son collected eggs at the weekend so that he could buy himself a laptop. I am not an advocate of the term 'digital native', but our children now have many more opportunities to engage with technologies than I did when I was young and the fear factor of 'breaking it' only arises when they are told by an adult things such as 'don't touch, you might break it'. Is this why they seem to learn more quickly? They are not afraid to try something new.

Yesterday I sat and watched Ruby, who is only just two, use an ipad. She had no fear and no anxieties and was happily expressing herself through mark-making. She was delightful! Conversely, trying to teach my 68 year old dad how to email and access the internet was incredibly stressful. He would not experiment, because he did not understand and his frustration quickly led to acute grumpiness. His fear was preventing his learning; he needed a lot of practise and repetition. So why do we expect our teachers to pick things up quickly and use resources straight away? I would challenge anyone who believes that teachers should be able to do just that, to attempt the same by learning a new musical instrument.

So what can be done about it? I would suggest that the negative opinion of sacking them be replaced with a more positive offer of support. Two methods immediately spring to mind: digital leaders and RiskIT.

Digital leaders.

Digital leaders are the best free resource at school to keep abreast of ICT. For example, when I introduced scratch and kodu at school, I knew that our hard working year 6/5 teachers would want their children to use it. I am ever aware of the hours that they put in and do not wish to add to their workload. Digital leaders are the perfect compromise. The teacher gets to join in the lesson, learn with the children and develop their confidence. Why not make a pledge to employ digital leaders and join our supportive network.

RiskIT

If you want your teachers to use new technologies, adopt a whole school approach such as  RiskIT. This strategy encourages and empowers teachers to explore ICT in a safe environment without making them feel pressured or ridiculed. I will definitely be promoting this next year in our cluster schools. I will not explain it any further here, but please read Jan's post by following the RiskIT link.

Other methods of support that are commonly used in school could also prove useful: 1:1 support, small group work, peer tutoring, modelling, lesson observations.

And finally - we need to stop negatively labelling our teachers! Self-fulfilling prophecy? Does our low expectation = low output? It's a hard enough job without people in the same profession being negative and knocking you down. Instead of questioning their 'inadequacies', maybe we should be asking ourselves if we have been teaching 'Doris' and 'Mabel' properly and giving them appropriate support. I don't just mean chucking a manual at them (could you learn to play the saxaphone that way?) I mean proper, personalised support. I feel that it is my duty as ICT coordinator to find out what our teachers know, what they need to learn and how best they can be supported to do so. Spending a little time reassuring them and ensuring that appropriate support systems are in place is essential. At our school it works well, because it is a supportive team. If someone struggles, we pull together to help them.


* that was the gist of it, I cannot remember exactly what was said. 

Hackasaurus x-ray goggles

I had learned about hackasaurus x-ray goggles at the google academy in April, but like many things never got round to playing with it. I was reminded of this free tool at the Naace Hothouse by Doug (@dajbelshaw) so decided then and there that I should make time to play during this holiday. I was further inspired by Ant's (@skinnyboyevans) great blog post and his thoughts about using this tool in KS2. 

I intend to use this tool with my digital leaders. I like the idea that they will be learning about what 'hacking' means and I know that it will generate discussions that will help them understand more fully about copyright, privacy and internet safety issues. It is very easy to use and you really don't need to understand much coding to be able to play with this.

So, I had a quick go today, starting with grand ideas that were inspired by some of the photos that I have. My first hurdle was getting my photos to replace the existing ones, as I kept getting the 'broken photo' icon. I failed to get photos from dropbox or flickr to work (so failed to become an Olympic gold medal winner), but managed to use an old photo from facebook. The photo then dictated the kind of website that I wanted to alter. I am not sure why the other urls did not work, but will endeavour to find out. It shouldn't be a problem for my digital leaders though as they can use blog photos. 

The thing I like about this is the thinking that the digital leaders will have to do. They need a photo. They may have to stage this. They also need a story to accompany the photo, then they need to find a website that lends itself to their photo and what they want to say. I will encourage them to consider themselves as Olympic winners, famous inventors, scientists, historical figures, actors or singers etc. What a great way to get them writing!

So here is my tongue in cheek effort!

Click to enlarge

Update on 24/02/12

I have had another play before a recent enrichment morning and became the new Emile Sande as well as joining Dick and Dom in the bungalow. My digital leaders wrote a post on the digital leader network, although their work is not shown on it unfortunately.

My appshed app!

It's not amazing, but it's a start. I thought I would share my first app so that you can see what it looks like so far and maybe it will help you think about its potential. I am thinking of using it with my digital leaders in the first instance, so that they can create an app about themselves. I can also see how this can be used within my work in the cluster, to get boys writing. It will definitely compliment any inanimate Alice work.  

The appshed edit screen

Ipad view

Take a look at it!

If you haven't got a QR code reader, you can access the app here, though it does look different on a laptop/PC.

There are a few hitches that I need to look at more carefully - like losing some of the text on each side of the page. I'm sure it is easily rectified once I know how!

I would love to know what you think!