Fortnightly Mailing

Ferl - The Ofsted Handbook for Inspecting Colleges

This helpful article on the FERL web site by Becta's Nigel Ecclesfield reviews the revised Ofsted Handbook for Inspecting Colleges, and highlights the paragraphs relating to e-learning and supporting learning through the use of ICT. Essential reading if you work in English Further Education.

Ask Edward Tufte - a moderated forum - mainly about design

Years ago I was given Edward Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and have used it occasionally ever since. Tufte is renowned for his dislike of PowerPoint, as normally used. His $7 Cognitive Style of PowerPoint is worth every penny (well, cent), and it has recently been updated. There is also a  slightly quaint  Ask Edward Tufte Forum, complete with RSS feed, which has some long discussion threads, some of which have been running slowly and steadily for the last 5 years. Worth browsing if you are interested in "information design".

MathWorld - the "world's most extensive mathematics resource"

During May I did a rather poor 2 day commercial course about using Excel for statistical analysis.  The PCs that trainees were using had web access and, grumbling to myself about better course design, I was able to supplement the teachers' input and the information in the handouts from parts of the statistical tests section in the MathWorld web site. This was the first time I'd come across the site and it is where I would now go if I want an explanation of a mathematical term or concept.

The nature and value of formative assessment for learning

Link rot fixed using WebCite, with minor edits, 11/5/2011

This 2004 paper [72 kB PDF] by Paul Black and Christine Harrison, with the King’s College London Assessment for Learning Group, is in the same vein as Inside the Black Box - Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment [PDF]. The latter influenced me a lot, in particular when working with David Jennings  in 2003 on BS8426 - A code of practice for e-support in e-learning systems. (BS8426 is absurdly overpriced, but this 8 page CC overview covers quite a lot of it.)   Here is the abstract in full:

The this paper has two foci. The first is to present an account of how we developed formative assessment practices with a group of 36 teachers. This is then complemented by a reflection on the productive and positive experience of these teachers, in the light of learning principles, of changes in the roles of teachers and pupils in the task of learning, and of effects on the self-esteem and motivation of pupils. Attention then shifts to the second focus, which is on the ways in which these teachers struggled with the interface between formative assessment and summative testing. The conclusion is that the potential of enhanced classroom assessment to raise standards may never be fully realised unless the regimes of assessment for the purposes of accountability and certification of pupils are reformed.

 

Graffiti Research Lab

The Graffiti Research Lab, is "dedicated to outfitting graffiti artists with open source technologies for urban communication". One of the lab's collaborations - see the video in the continuation past below, which may give you an Active X warning of some sort - is "Jesus 2.0", a work by New York City installation artist Mark Jenkins.

Sharp critique of W3C Accessibility Guidelines by Joe Clark

In To Hell with WCAG2 Joe Clark, provides a detailed, fierce, and apparently well-based critique of the nearly finalised version 2 of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Here is the introductory paragraph.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 were published in 1999 and quickly grew out of date. The proposed new WCAG 2.0 is the result of five long years’ work by a Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) committee that never quite got its act together. In an effort to be all things to all web content, the fundamentals of WCAG 2 are nearly impossible for a working standards-compliant developer to understand. WCAG 2 backtracks on basics of responsible web development that are well accepted by standardistas. WCAG 2 is not enough of an improvement and was not worth the wait.

Some readers of Fortnightly Mailing are accessibility practitioners, and "plain English" comments on whether or not WCAG2 is a step forward will be welcome.

Thanks to Joe Clark for sending me a comment linking to the above definition of "standardista".

Interview - with the inventor of "The Sims" - about user-generated games

Will Wright

Interesting article on the BBC web site by Tayfun King about the current growth of "user-generated" computer games, in which instead of being thrown into an environment created by the game developer, players can grow their own world, inhabited by creatures and objects which they themselves have designed. The article is backed up by a worthwhile ~15 minute video of an interview with Will Wright, the creator of "The Sims" (described as the best-selling game of all time).

Book spending, ICT spending, and literacy

The effect of book stocks per pupil on Key Stage 2 test results

Are low levels of book spending in primary schools jeopardizing the National Literacy Strategy? is an article in the March 2006 issue of the Curriculum Journal, by Steve Hurd, Malcolm Dixon and Joanna Oldham. (Some readers will be able to access the full text of this article through their Athens account.)

The article analyses data to show that there is a positive correlation between spending on books (and a smaller, but positive, correlation between spending on ICT) and the acquisition of literacy by primary school pupils. Citing evidence from secondary schools that there is competition between spending on books and spending on ICT, the article suggests that it is this which explains why book-spending has been falling whilst learning-resource spending has been rising overall. Here is an extract:

Book expenditure per pupil is the most important resource variable accounting for differences in test performances between schools. It has a positive effect which rises directly in line with the level of spending. Every £1 spent on each child on books raises average test results by 0.004. This implies that if we raised average spending on books by £100 per child then average test results would rise by 0.4 points (or by 1.5% per child). The effect of variations in the school book stock is shown in Figure 3. (At the top of this post.) The overall effects on standards are small. However, they suggest that standards can be raised by increasing the number of books to about 63 per child, more than double the current level of 25 books per pupil. ICT expenditure per pupil also has a significantly positive effect on pupil performance. For every £1 spent on ICT per child the average test score rises by 0.002, so increasing spending by £100 per child raises average test scores by 0.2 of a point (a rise of 0.72% per child). It is evident, therefore, that, at current levels of spending, putting more money into books is twice as cost effective in raising Key Stage 2 test scores as a similar amount spent on ICT. Increasing the stock of computer hardware beyond current levels, indicated by pupils per PC, has no significant effect on test scores. In line with previous studies, variations in the teacher-pupil ratios (i.e. class sizes) around the current average levels do not significantly affect pupil test scores. Thus the findings do not support a case for reducing class sizes any further. They argue that, instead, money should be put into improving the provision of learning resources, and of books in particular.

The article mentions in passing that in Norway book spending in schools is seven times higher than in England, and it also highlights that since 2004 data about book spending by schools is no longer collected by DfES, with only the ICT component of learning resource spending separately identified.

September 2005 revised version of the e-GIF 6.2 Technical Standards Catalogue

Last year (or was it the year before?) I represented ALT at some meetings convened by a part of the Cabinet Office which was then called the Office of the e-Envoy. The meetings were about e-learning specifications and their place in e-GIF, the UK Government's Interoperability Framework, which "defines the technical policies and specifications governing information flows across government and the public sector".

The most recent update to the e-GIF Technical Standards Catalogue was published last September, and it still contains a long list of specifications relating to e-learning, none of which have got "Adopted" status. Most are in the long grass, having been given "R" or "U" status, that is: "recommended for consideration by" or "under review by" eGovernment Unit/Department for Education and Skills Working Groups. 

Although at least one reader will say "and long may they remain there", I think the lack of clarity on Government intentions in this area does no good.

Change at the top at Ufi

Ufi has recently restructured its directorate, with five new faces, and three of the "old guard" retiring or moving on. There are brief biographies of all 8 posts on the Ufi web site.