The worse thing about the ICT curriculum, however, is its implicit assumption about our relationship to the technology. “Look,” it says seductively, “using a computer is like driving a car: you don’t need to know how the thing works – you just need to know how to drive it.”

Of course, this is, broadly speaking, true for cars, because few of us are going to go into the car-making (or even car-repairing) business. But computers are not like cars. They are machines driven by software, and software is pure “thought-stuff”, in other words, something that is accessible to anyone with the requisite curiosity, intelligence and talent. So while teenagers might not be able to make cars, they can certainly get into the software business, because the entry barrier is so low. All you need is imagination, talent, time and persistence. But it really helps if you’re schooled in an environment that encourages tinkering and experimentation, rather than one which just preaches utilitarian use of information appliances with “no user-serviceable parts”, as the saying goes.

and

What is happening is that the national curriculum's worthy aspirations to educate pupils about ICT are transmuted at the chalkface into teaching kids to use Microsoft software. Our children are mostly getting ICT training rather than ICT education.

And if you can't see the difference, try this simple thought-experiment: replace "ICT" with "sex" and see which you'd prefer in that context: education or training?

(via Kids today need a licence to tinker)

A nice article combining a bit of history, and introducing me to the concept of the Raspberry Pi.  I had a conversation with my Father-in-law a while ago about tinkering, and the fact that his great-grandchildren just replace things if they break, and have no interest in attempting to mend things, because stuff is easily replaceable.  A far cry from my Dad and other's of his generation who kept everything as spares, just in case

I completed my NVQ work towards the end of last year (I'm still waiting for the certificate to arrive - hopefully next week), Madgex have organised for a group of 4 of us to work towards the ILM Level 5 Award in Management.  This is less evidence based instead being based around workshops, tutorials and work based assessments.  The 3 units we're going to cover are:

• M4.01 Understanding the management role
• M5.13 Managing for energy and effectiveness
• M5.28 Leading teams

I found writing about my progress here helpful last time, helping to keep me motivated, so I plan to do the same again this time.  So far we've had our induction, and been handed our handbook - which I've spent the afternoon reading through.  The first of the workshops is at the end of the month

Yesterday Denise tweeted a link to the video of Anna Debenham's talk on the state of web education to the London Web Standards Group.  Denise also popped some comments on it on her tumblr feed.

I stored it away in my "to watch" list, and got an opportunity earlier to take a look.

My reaction, firstly, you can make websites using powerpoint? really? I had no idea.  I knew you could use Word to do it - I stumble across them frequently in my day job at the moment (due to legitimately scraping shonky sites) and swear loudly every time at the poorly formatted html, littered with mso atttributes.  But why oh why are we teaching children to do this.  Whilst watching her presentation I had quite a few sweary outbursts, so many that Richard came in to find out what the matter was.  

Next weekend, I'm going to see my 14 year old nephew and will quiz him a little more intently on what he's currently doing in his ICT classes at the moment.  I know in the past there has been an emphasis on using powerpoint to do presentations, but I haven't enquired recently what he has been up to.  We tried to get him programming using python using the Hello World! book a few years ago, but once we weren't there to encourage him, his enthusiasm waned. 

Anna has since spoken at Mozilla Drumbeat to (she says) mixed reactions, although everything I've read seems positive.

She tweets:

Reading some nasty comments about my presentation. "naïve", "20yr old thinks she knows everything". Expected but really, really hurts :(

but I'm with Seb and Aral

Aral says:

@anna_debenham @boagworld Just went through it here and it looks perfect, Anna. Let's set up an event in Brighton on this issue.

And Seb replied with:

@aral @anna_debenham @boagworld Where do I sign up to be a part of that? #passionateabouteduction :-)

The following is the video of the talk that Anna presented at Mozilla Drumbeat (watch this one if you're short of time and want to get an idea of her message - its only 10 minutes long):

Anna Debenham at Drumbeat Barcelona from Alex Halavais on Vimeo.

My other take away from this, beyond the shock of how out of date the curriculum is, is a reminder to make sure that any events I organise are accessible for the under 18s/under 21s as well as making participants feel comfortable (see my list from a few months ago)

After almost 2 months, I sat down with Dawn, my NVQ assessor again yesterday.  I'd had to postpone my planned meeting as I just wasn't finding the time to prepare the work necessary for unit B6 - Provide leadership in your area of responsibility during June so I ended up doing a few bits and pieces on holiday to have at least enough to show willing for this unit.  I'd emailed the work through prior to our meeting and was relieved to find out that I wasn't far off from having enough to close this module off as well.  So, only 2 to go.  Both are optional units, and after a lot of discussion the next one I'm going to tackle is  Unit D7 - Provide learning opportunities for colleagues which will be another personal statement covering both what I currently do within the Madgex environment, but also what I'd like to do given total free reign.  Learning has always been something I've been interested in, both from a personal perspective, but also from a team perspective so I'm really excited by this unit.

Whilst we were chatting, Dawn mentioned that the funding for this NVQ is part of the budget cuts from the new government, meaning that there won't be a new intake of managers using the Train to Gain scheme.  What a shame, but what a great opportunity I've had.

Dawn, my NVQ Assessor, came into the office yesterday for a catch-up after a couple of missed appointments.  I'd already emailed through my "homework" from last time to get some feedback, and so Dawn was able to let me know what the last remaining points I need to address to get module E6 - Ensure health and safety requirements are met in your area of responsibility out of the way.  I'm aiming to get this done before I see her next, and then that will be 4 of my 7 modules done.

We then went through the details of my one remaining mandatory module, B6 - Provide leadership in your area of responsibility, which I'm going to tackle next.  Fortunately, a lot of the outcomes, behaviours and knowledge items can be re-used from earlier modules, so there are only 7 or 8 extra pieces of evidence I need to find, or statements to write.

Work is pretty busy at the moment, with the project I've been working on ramping up towards it's launch date, as well as doing the day to day management activities and it being appraisal time, so I've started making appointments with Dawn a little less frequent so that I can try and find some spare time (usually evenings or weekends) to crack on and crank out the evidence.

After quite a few weeks without seeing Dawn for one reason or another, this week saw her visiting me at Madgex twice. Firstly on Wednesday to observe me doing a one to one, and then again on Friday for a more usual visit.

At Madgex the concept of "one to one"s is a principle we hold dear. This is a meeting between line manager and line report held regularly to feedback any news from the company generally, to catch up, to progress any issues, etc. I book mine in with my line reports every 3 weeks, meaning that Wednesday mornings see me sitting down with 2 of them and catching up for anything from 20 minutes to 45 minutes depending on what there is to talk about. On Wednesday Dawn came in to observe me in action. One of my line reports used to be an NVQ Assessor himself, so I thought he would be a good candidate for being observed, and he was. After a few minutes of feeling self-conscious we just got on with it. I usually start off by chatting about things I know they're doing out of work, and as it was Easter at the weekend the conversation started about chocolate. I then get them to talk about what they're currently doing at work, how things are going, and try to elicit any frustrations that they have, following up on anything that they raised or mentioned last time we met. I then move on to feeding back any company news or anything else that I have to share with them. And then finally, a quick check to see if there is anything else they want to talk about, if they're generally happy before going our separate ways. I desperately wanted to conduct my one to one in my usual manner, rather than acting differently, as I was really interested in getting useful feedback. I know that I wrote more notes that I normally do but other than that I felt I was pretty pleased that I didn't change too much. The feedback I got from Dawn was mostly positive, which is always good to hear, and she seemed to think that my format worked pretty well. I need to get her to do another observation later on, so I need to give some thought to whether I get her to observe another one to one, or a different type of meeting.

Friday's catch up was mostly about my progress with module E6 - Ensure health and safety requirements are met in your area of responsibility. I'd started working on what is effectively an essay to provide a Professional Discussion style approach to cover this off. I started with another mind-map listing the outcomes and had identified areas of evidence for each of them which I'd then written about. Dawn reviewed where I had got to so far and confirmed that I was heading in the right direction, and agreed that yes I had got my outcomes covered. We then went through the behaviours and knowledge and understanding requirements and I was delighted to discover that quite a lot of them were already covered too. So, before my next meeting in the beginning of May, I need to spend some time expanding my work to date to encompass these additional areas and I'll be well on the way to submitting module 4 of 7. Time to decide which module to tackle next.

As organiser of Madgex Photography Workshop #2, I drew the (very) short straw of doing my 8 photos on the final day.  So, prior to handing the cameras in to Colourstream, I attempted my 8 shots.  As a reminder, the brief was: 

1. a number
2. something taken from ground level
3. a Brighton landmark
4. something red
5. a dog
6. shoes (this one is in tribute to lomokev and his fine collection of shoes and feet photographs)
7. street art
8. the person you're handing the camera over to

My attempts were:

A number - actually lots of numbers

Something taken from ground level - these guys were jumping from surface to surface until I turned up with the camera, then the guy on the right waved at me, so I thought I'd take the photo then

A Brighton landmark - due to limited time I chose the nearest place to my work place, the pavilion...

Something red - probably my favourite of my photos

A dog - not enough time to get home and take a photo of my lovely dog but I fortunately found one tethered outside a cafe in Bond Street

Shoes - I wasn't the only one to take a photo of the display outside this shop

Street art

the person you're handing the camera over to - in my case it wasn't so much a person, as a shop

The feedback was generally positive, people had enjoyed the challenge but had found it much more difficult than the last challenge (which allowed the use of any camera, any post processing etc). At least a couple of people appreciated the fact that it totally levelled the playing field (which was kind of the point).

Some of the participants did really well - quite a few of them got all the photos in order, and some of them managed to get a theme running through them all. The most impressive theme was books, with each photo representing a different book title - i.e. Catch 22 (for number), Brighton Rock (using the Brighton word lights from the pier (landmark) and a stick of rock) etc. The winner image(s) from the different themes are now all displayed on the notice board at work for everyone to look at and appreciate.

Another NVQ meeting today, they're happening every 2 weeks at the moment which is really keeping me focussed and busy.  Dawn (my NVQ assessor) told me that my first 2 modules were with the External Verifier today (they'd previously been passed by the Internal Verifier), so I should get final confirmation next time she visits.  Over the last couple of weeks I have gathered and written all the remaining pieces of evidence needed for UNIT A2 - Manage your own resources and professional development and so this has now all gone with Dawn to be mapped and finally cross referenced in preparation for submission.  Next up is UNIT E6 - Ensure health and safety requirements are met in your area of responsibility which sounds like a barrel of laughs! The plan is to prepare this as if it was another Professional Discussion, but without it having to be recorded this time. So, over the next couple of weeks I'm going to be getting out my mind mapping tool again, and putting together the framework for a conversation about Health & Safety within my team. I think that these meetings happening more often, fortnightly as opposed to monthly, is really working well for me and helping me to keep on top of the tasks as it is more frequently on my mind. I realised today during my meeting that I'm actually starting to enjoy this process, and it has stopped feeling quite like such an evidence gathering exercise and more useful and relevant.