This is a shameless plug for my young friend Lewis who has launched a new social enterprise to combat bullying, especially the kind of bulling that happens when young people wear the "wrong" clothes.
They've just ordered their very first batch of polo shirts, please support them by buying one (or ten).
Carpe Diem Style
Sunday, 24 March 2013
Friday, 25 January 2013
The ABB Tipping Point?
In 2013 English universities will be allowed to take all the students with ABB (or equivalent) grades that they can get. This is incredibly exciting as it gives students the choice of where to go, not limited by government quotas.
ABB is an interesting set of grades as (forgive the stereotype) these students are most definitely bright and capable, but for whatever reason have not quite achieved the grades required by some institutions. So why do these institutions want better than ABB - and what happens if they reduce their entry criteria? It might be because they simply want the best students they can get (despite the widening participation agenda) but I have a suspicion that in some cases, only the most academic students (that's not quite the same as the brightest students) can survive.
So why do really bright students get "only" ABB. Sometimes they are only OK at one specific thing (like maths perhaps), or they are a little dyslexic. Maybe they don't have parents who have the academic background to help them with study skills. The great news is that some universities already welcome ABB students and understand how to help with all of these things. They have excellent courses, their best academic staff teach (and don't hide away doing only research), their libraries are designed to be good places for undergraduates and it's all a bit friendlier. Interesting things will happen if these universities start to get more of the ABB (and AAB or AAA) students - I wonder if there's some kind of tipping point here!
ABB is an interesting set of grades as (forgive the stereotype) these students are most definitely bright and capable, but for whatever reason have not quite achieved the grades required by some institutions. So why do these institutions want better than ABB - and what happens if they reduce their entry criteria? It might be because they simply want the best students they can get (despite the widening participation agenda) but I have a suspicion that in some cases, only the most academic students (that's not quite the same as the brightest students) can survive.
So why do really bright students get "only" ABB. Sometimes they are only OK at one specific thing (like maths perhaps), or they are a little dyslexic. Maybe they don't have parents who have the academic background to help them with study skills. The great news is that some universities already welcome ABB students and understand how to help with all of these things. They have excellent courses, their best academic staff teach (and don't hide away doing only research), their libraries are designed to be good places for undergraduates and it's all a bit friendlier. Interesting things will happen if these universities start to get more of the ABB (and AAB or AAA) students - I wonder if there's some kind of tipping point here!
Friday, 29 June 2012
Like to succeed, but not afraid of failure!
I went bowling with 100 or so of my closest friends this afternoon. A few of us are pretty good, but most just enjoy having some fun with people they don't see much of. I'm not much good, but like most of us like it when I somehow manage to knock some pins over, but feel a bit embarrassed if I miss completely too often.
While watching some of our high achievers I noticed something interesting. When a throw immediately looked pretty good they would watch intently to see where the ball went. More interestingly, when their aim was less accurate they would quickly turn away and not pay attention to the outcome.
This is all obviously only a bit of fun, but it seems to me that we have a bunch of people who do their best, really like it when we do well together, but are not terribly afraid of failure. Overall it seems to me that people who think like this very often do much better than those who are worried of what will happen if they get something wrong.
For what it's worth I watch any ball I throw like a hawk from the moment it leaves my hand. Sigh.
While watching some of our high achievers I noticed something interesting. When a throw immediately looked pretty good they would watch intently to see where the ball went. More interestingly, when their aim was less accurate they would quickly turn away and not pay attention to the outcome.
This is all obviously only a bit of fun, but it seems to me that we have a bunch of people who do their best, really like it when we do well together, but are not terribly afraid of failure. Overall it seems to me that people who think like this very often do much better than those who are worried of what will happen if they get something wrong.
For what it's worth I watch any ball I throw like a hawk from the moment it leaves my hand. Sigh.
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Please come and kick my bin!
In a previous life I was a manager in a very large North American technology company. The pace was rapid and the environment was robust. If you messed up (and we all do) the feedback from senior folk was generally rapid and fairly explicit. We had a VP from the US who liked to kick bins around. This was pretty scary, but it was a great environment to learn and grow. The feedback was clear, but so were the objectives. Decisions were made and stuff got done. The feedback also came upwards. If I messed something up for my team, made a poor decision or forgot to communicate nobody much was shy. Sometimes I got shouted at, but I always knew what my team thought of me.
The UK is a much gentler environment, especially in the public sector. Senior people say that they are "not sure that they are entirely comfortable about something" (this means the same as when a US manager comes and kicks your bin). You have to work harder to be sure you're going in the the right direction. Senior managers generally understand the language (otherwise they wouldn't be where they are) but it's tough for new first line managers who don't always perceive a clear direction or clear feedback. Staff tend to treat managers (especially those with fancy titles) with great deference. You need outstanding listening skills to spot when you've messed up and your people are unhappy.
The message of the day is cherish the staff who come and rant at you and value the feedback if your boss kicks your bin.
The UK is a much gentler environment, especially in the public sector. Senior people say that they are "not sure that they are entirely comfortable about something" (this means the same as when a US manager comes and kicks your bin). You have to work harder to be sure you're going in the the right direction. Senior managers generally understand the language (otherwise they wouldn't be where they are) but it's tough for new first line managers who don't always perceive a clear direction or clear feedback. Staff tend to treat managers (especially those with fancy titles) with great deference. You need outstanding listening skills to spot when you've messed up and your people are unhappy.
The message of the day is cherish the staff who come and rant at you and value the feedback if your boss kicks your bin.
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Learning Versus Qualifications
I work in a place where giving out qualifications is a big deal. Huge ceremony, fancy clothes, lots of fuss - a grand day out for everyone. However very few of the academic staff here seem to think that giving out qualifications is our main business. We help people make sense of their world, learn lots of useful stuff and go out having gone through a good deal of personal and professional growth. The qualification is our acknowledgement of the growth and learning our student have achieved. It's an exciting business to be in.
Somehow, this is not what young people perceive education is all about as they go through school and college. Visit a "good" college and you will be told about A-level results until you are sick of it. Sounds good until your willing offspring pick up the idea that nobody is much interested in whether they develop any deep understanding, or whether they grow and develop through being there. All that matters is the grades. This really comes home when you see bring students being forced to undertake mind numbingly unchallenging Computing A2 projects because the college has figured out the mark scheme and knows that a pathetic little project with a beautiful write up gets an 'A' more easily than a complex and difficult project. No wonder so many university computer science departments have much interest in A-level computing.
Other sciences are the same. I went to an open day at a "top" sixth form and some very enthusiastic students showed me a chemistry experiment. It was big and complicated and had a long chemical formula above it that read something link blah + blah = blah + H2O. I'm not a chemist, but know that H2O is water. However, these bring young people would not even guess what the clear liquid dripping out of the tube at the end was. I bet they both got 'A' grades. Conversations with other students were similarly disappointing.
If you know any really smart kids who hate school or college, perhaps the the qualification fixation explains it a bit. Educators who believe that qualifications are more important than learning should quit. Today. They betray our young people, their parents and our society.
Somehow, this is not what young people perceive education is all about as they go through school and college. Visit a "good" college and you will be told about A-level results until you are sick of it. Sounds good until your willing offspring pick up the idea that nobody is much interested in whether they develop any deep understanding, or whether they grow and develop through being there. All that matters is the grades. This really comes home when you see bring students being forced to undertake mind numbingly unchallenging Computing A2 projects because the college has figured out the mark scheme and knows that a pathetic little project with a beautiful write up gets an 'A' more easily than a complex and difficult project. No wonder so many university computer science departments have much interest in A-level computing.
Other sciences are the same. I went to an open day at a "top" sixth form and some very enthusiastic students showed me a chemistry experiment. It was big and complicated and had a long chemical formula above it that read something link blah + blah = blah + H2O. I'm not a chemist, but know that H2O is water. However, these bring young people would not even guess what the clear liquid dripping out of the tube at the end was. I bet they both got 'A' grades. Conversations with other students were similarly disappointing.
If you know any really smart kids who hate school or college, perhaps the the qualification fixation explains it a bit. Educators who believe that qualifications are more important than learning should quit. Today. They betray our young people, their parents and our society.
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Use of Technology in Teaching
I read a frightening article in The Chronicle of Higher Education today. If you don't want to read in, just look at the chart!
There are those who claim that academics who don't make the most of technology to enhance the learning experience of their students are in some sense guilty of malpractice. On the other hand, there are plenty that teach in a very traditional way and get good student feedback and great learning outcomes.
The question this raises for me is about what our institutional priorities should be for e-learning. We have lots of good (and expensive) tools: Blackboard, streaming media, Wimba, PDP, clickers and more. Furthermore, there is lots of good feedback from staff who use these things. However, I have dark moments when I wonder how much teaching is really enhanced by technology. Everyone uses the VLE, but is it really much more than a convenient repository of documents for most students? How much learning is really enhanced by facilitated online discussions? Do students engage with their lecturers electronically?
In contrast, adoption of technology that helps students learning individually or together is rapid and requires little encouragement by the University. Put a sofa somewhere where there's wireless and power and students will instantly discover it. Create a space where students can congregate with a few laptops and perhaps some coffee and it's always busy. We're running Google Mail for our students and have (fairly quietly) just turned on Google Docs. Early evidence suggests that about 10% of students are already using it to share and collaborate. Interestingly, this has led to a stream of requests from academics for Google accounts.
The default model for rolling out e-learning technology is for the centre to provide tools and training to academic staff who then use it (or not) in their teaching. Maybe we should focus a little more on pushing the latest and greatest tools (like Google Wave) directly at students and let them create a learning environment that they feel they really own and which they can suck their lecturers into.
There are those who claim that academics who don't make the most of technology to enhance the learning experience of their students are in some sense guilty of malpractice. On the other hand, there are plenty that teach in a very traditional way and get good student feedback and great learning outcomes.
The question this raises for me is about what our institutional priorities should be for e-learning. We have lots of good (and expensive) tools: Blackboard, streaming media, Wimba, PDP, clickers and more. Furthermore, there is lots of good feedback from staff who use these things. However, I have dark moments when I wonder how much teaching is really enhanced by technology. Everyone uses the VLE, but is it really much more than a convenient repository of documents for most students? How much learning is really enhanced by facilitated online discussions? Do students engage with their lecturers electronically?
In contrast, adoption of technology that helps students learning individually or together is rapid and requires little encouragement by the University. Put a sofa somewhere where there's wireless and power and students will instantly discover it. Create a space where students can congregate with a few laptops and perhaps some coffee and it's always busy. We're running Google Mail for our students and have (fairly quietly) just turned on Google Docs. Early evidence suggests that about 10% of students are already using it to share and collaborate. Interestingly, this has led to a stream of requests from academics for Google accounts.
The default model for rolling out e-learning technology is for the centre to provide tools and training to academic staff who then use it (or not) in their teaching. Maybe we should focus a little more on pushing the latest and greatest tools (like Google Wave) directly at students and let them create a learning environment that they feel they really own and which they can suck their lecturers into.
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Billion 7800 / 7800N Router
I don't really do hardware reviews, but I wanted to say something nice about Billion's new ADSL router. My network is a little complex, I have a /27 routed subnet, I tunnel IPv6 over IPv4 and I have lots of firewall rules. I don't have NAT, and I need stageful packet inspection. Also, my phone line ls quite long.
Consumer routers tend to be cheap miserable little things. Vigor are pretty good, but don't have a Broadcom chipsets and therefore achieve poor speeds on long lines. Cisco are expensive and complex (but nice kit). I've tried OpenWRT in a clever setup with two routers, but although I'm demanding I don't want to make my router my hobby!
My 7800 is on an Andrews and Arnold BE line. It was quick and easy to setup and immediately achieved twice the speed of my old Speedtouch. My IPv6 tunnel runs just fine and the iptables based firewall does exactly what I need.
You can access the 7800 via telnet and do clever Linux things, but you don't really need to. The web interface is very comprehensive and snappy to use and it works well on Safari and Firefox.
I've never been so pleased with a router at this price point.
My ISP, Andrews and Arnold are worth a mention. They don"t block anything, they don't do packet filtering and they give me 32 IP addresses. They also let me do things like tweak the target SNR margin on the DSLAM via a web control panel.
Consumer routers tend to be cheap miserable little things. Vigor are pretty good, but don't have a Broadcom chipsets and therefore achieve poor speeds on long lines. Cisco are expensive and complex (but nice kit). I've tried OpenWRT in a clever setup with two routers, but although I'm demanding I don't want to make my router my hobby!
My 7800 is on an Andrews and Arnold BE line. It was quick and easy to setup and immediately achieved twice the speed of my old Speedtouch. My IPv6 tunnel runs just fine and the iptables based firewall does exactly what I need.
You can access the 7800 via telnet and do clever Linux things, but you don't really need to. The web interface is very comprehensive and snappy to use and it works well on Safari and Firefox.
I've never been so pleased with a router at this price point.
My ISP, Andrews and Arnold are worth a mention. They don"t block anything, they don't do packet filtering and they give me 32 IP addresses. They also let me do things like tweak the target SNR margin on the DSLAM via a web control panel.
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