Doug Belshaw

“I not only use all of the brains I have, but all I can borrow.”: The uses of ICT for collaborative teaching and learning. The main point of my presentation is to recommend the elements that should be integrated into the proposed E-HELP website to make it the most collaborative environment possible. Before I do so, I intend to discuss the reasons why collaboration is a good idea in the first place, along with potential barriers and methods of doing so. 1. Reasons for collaboration One of the main reasons for collaboration in teaching is the widening of horizons that it brings. The reason we teach is so that pupils learn: the more we know and the better we can deliver it, the more pupils are likely to learn. As with any job, you take into the workplace your own ‘toolkit’ of skills and ideas. Collaboration is one of the best ways to add to this toolkit and therefore do your best for the pupils in your charge. With collaboration, of course, comes ‘networking’ – getting to know and trust others who share similar interests. In turn, there are opportunities for both professional development and career advancement. It’s all very well being ‘trained’ en masse by a representative of the company which is supplying your new interactive whiteboard. A one-to-one demonstration by a colleague is much better. It is this peer-learning which is an intrinsic part of collaboration: knowledge and skills are cascaded throughout the community by willing volunteers. At the end of the day, collaboration can be summed by being good practice – as Aristotle would have said, it is a good, an end-in-itself. Or as Alexander Solzehnitsyn rather succinctly put it: “Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.” 2. Barriers to collaboration I’m sure we’ve all experienced the situation where at a meeting everyone within the department has agreed that resources should be shared. What happens in practice is that the more conscientious members of the department keep adding to the pool of resources, whilst others simply take them without giving back. A ‘why should I?’ attitude then prevails – the sharer becomes disillusioned as they realise they are perhaps the only one putting in the extra work. The non-sharers notice the shift in opinions and think, “well if she’s not bothering, why should I?” Of course, many teachers are reluctant to share their resources not out of selfishness but out of a sense of insecurity. It is often the case that, with a lack of feedback through informal observations, etc., teachers are often unaware as to how good the materials they produce actually are. Coupled to this is the presumption that to share something it must not only be good but that it must be complete. Given that different teachers use resources in a variety of ways this is nonsense. Something half-finished can be as good, if not better than something presented in toto. Each teacher puts a different slant on what they teach. A resource – for example a Powerpoint presentation on the causes of World War I – may be used as an introduction to the topic by one teacher. Another teacher it has been shared with may tinker with it to use it as a revision tool. There is no need for shared resources to be complete, but if they are they must be editable. Collaboration also breeds flexibility. Imagine you’ve planned a lesson for tomorrow on interpretations regarding the execution of Charles I. You convert relevant videos to digital files and then chop them up into relevant sections. The lesson is planned: you are going to focus on how the execution is portrayed in the film ‘Cromwell’ as opposed to ‘To Kill a King’. As you’re packing up for the day a colleague drops in for a chat. During the conversation he mentions how much his pupils enjoyed watching the Blackadder version of Charles’ execution. He lends you a copy of it, you incorporate it into your lesson the following day, and not only does it add an extra dimension to your lesson but the pupils remember it and the fun they had in History. Collaboration is as much about off-the-cuff suggestions and informal ideas as it is about sharing complete and finished resources. Sadly, there are some teachers – hopefully not many – for whom such collaboration is seen as a threat. As one of the non-sharers in the example above, the threatened teacher sees sharing and collaboration as a dilution of talent rather than an opportunity to enhance pupil learning. They see a certain resource or style of teaching as being ‘theirs’, meaning that anyone else either cannot do as good a job, or is somehow ‘stealing’ something of theirs. These teachers have to be shown that the bigger the pool of resources and ideas, the better! Intellectual property is a myth. There is one thing which I must take issue with regarding collaboration. Some teachers feel that if they share resources their name must be plastered all over it so that they receive due recognition. As Brian Tracy, the management guru, once wrote, “the more credit you give away, the more will come back to you.” If the aim is the development of pupil understanding and knowledge, why must the person who put together the resource attempt to turn themselves into a minor celebrity? I have heard some argue that it makes pupils aware that their teacher is in touch with others who share both resources and good practice. Seeing as the majority of pupils half-believe that I live in the History Office at our school, I find this hard to swallow. As Edgar Quinet stated, “what we share with another ceases to be our own.” It’s better than being your own – it now belongs to the community of which you are a part! So much for reluctant sharers. Imagine that we are now dealing with an individual who recognizes the benefits of collaboration and is looking to share with teachers other than those in her department. She turns to the Internet but runs into a problem: in order to share resources and ideas, our potential sharer must get to grips with both technology and ICT jargon. There is a crucial moment, a delicate balance, in all this. As sharing over the Internet is a purely voluntary exercise, if it becomes too difficult or time-consuming then the potential collaborator is put off – perhaps never to try again. Even if she is successful in ‘posting’ something on the Internet, there is no guarantee that she will be either correctly understood or interpreted. It is crucial that the E-HELP website addresses these issues through necessary guides and explanations. 3. Methods of collaboration Communities only exist in terms of relationships between their members. To build a virtual community requires a structured way of allowing relations to develop, and one of the best ways of doing this is through online discussion forums. Two of the most successful I have come across to do with education are The Education Forum and the Schoolhistory Forum. These are havens of advice, ideas and resources, mixing both formal and informal elements to create a forward-thinking, safe, and friendly atmosphere. It is the virtual equivalent of the quick chat over a cup of coffee in the faculty staff room – except that your staff room is now infinitely larger and you can ‘eavesdrop’ on other people’s conversations by searching through previous threads! It is the little things which often make an average lesson into a great one, and such forums are repositories of small but effective ideas. The E-HELP website should certainly have an online discussion forum to add a sense of community and to make it an interactive and ever-changing destination. This will give it a great deal of user-ownership. Discussion forums are great for linking to other websites and for describing things in words. Sometimes, however, you want a resource you can quickly adapt for a particular class. This is where resource exchanges come in – the online equivalent of photocopying each others’ resources folder. A few years ago the NGFL set up the Teacher Resource Exchange, a highly-organized and categorized place where teachers can share resources and ideas. Although unfinished resources can be uploaded and comments made upon what is shared, there is a sense of a lack of user ownership. I have tried to remedy this with the recent launch of mrbelshaw.co.uk/shareforum, which attempts to be a cross between a discussion forum and resource exchange. It is a simple concept: registered users create a new thread for each resource they wish to share, adding a short description of what it is and how it can be used. Whilst anyone can download shared files, only registered users can add comments, ask questions of the original sharer, etc. The original posting with the downloadable file will always be at the top of the thread. If the E-HELP website has a facility such as this it would be a very attractive feature. Some may be wondering why all this is necessary – what about good old email? Well, there are advantages and disadvantages of this method. One major disadvantage, of course, is the number of people who can access what is being shared. When resources are posted on a website they are of a ‘pull’ nature – you can access what you want when you need it. Email, on the other hand, is ‘push’ oriented – you can only access what someone has sent you and you have stored somewhere. However, one major advantage of email and other one-to-one methods of collaboration (such as burning CDs/DVDs) is getting round draconian copyright legislation. (It baffles me why, as teachers, we are subject to the same rigid laws as ‘pirates’ who run off thousands of copies of a DVD for ill-gotten gain.) Sharing a video clip on a website it likely to get you into trouble; sharing it by email, by post or in person makes it less likely. It is for this reason that the ‘personal message’ (PM) functions of message boards are so useful. Things can be said and suggested which, whilst useful for teaching and learning, may fall foul of out-of-date legislation. I recommend that the E-HELP website includes such a feature. There is a way to anonymize sharing and to get round copyright legislation, although it is only really useful at present for large files which quite a lot of people access. Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology changes the way in which users on the Internet can download files. Normally, computers download the desired file directly from the ‘server’ which makes the file available. Using P2P technology, however, the computer requesting the file downloads different parts of the file from different computers. Each computer is effectively turned into a ‘mini-server’: (normal downloads) (P2P downloads) The whole file does not even have to have finished downloading on one machine for it to be shared with the rest of the network. Whatever has been downloaded by one computer is shared with other computers requesting the file. So long as one full copy exists somewhere in the network, all computers will eventually receive the file! At the moment it is necessary for there to be a ‘tracker’ on at least one machine in the network to co-ordinate file-sharing. In the future, however, such trackers will be built into the software each computer must be running to download the file in the first place. There will be no need for a central tracker (e.g. Exeem. Of course, this will be a great boon for people who use the Internet for nefarious purposes: if there is no central tracker which can be closed down, they are a lot less likely to be caught! However, it will also be useful to the average Internet user as it will mean both greater reliability and faster downloads. Why is P2P an important technology in terms of the E-HELP website? Well, people who host websites charge for the amount of data which is transferred from your website to other people. In other words you pay more the more successful your website is. The problem is even greater when large filesizes are involved: it only takes a relatively small number of people to download them for it to cost the site owner a lot of money. With P2P technology this problem is lessened. The more popular the file, the less likely that most users will be downloading it directly from the originating website. Although in the past setting up trackers, etc. was a job which demanded a high degree of expertise, new systems such as Blogtorrent have made the system a lot simpler. A visual interface means that users with sufficient priviledges are able to add files to the server through their browser. Users can likewise download files from a link through their web browser. In the future I envisage P2P technology being part of the normal Internet experience. The necessary client-side software will be embedded in browsers: the user will notice no difference between downloading straight from the originating website as opposed to from ‘peers’. Many websites shy away from allowing large-filesize downloads for fear of cost implications. I believe that the E-HELP website should embrace P2P technology meaning that large-filesize downloads become part-and-parcel of the site. 4. The E-HELP website I’m sure we’re all aware of the difference between a lesson’s content and the style of delivery. You may have the best lesson content in the world but if your delivery isn’t up to much then it counts for nothing. That’s one of the first lessons I learnt as a student teacher! It’s the same with websites: having great content means nothing nowadays, the way it is presented is paramount. Organization is the key: a successful website has a logical structure and way of organizing its elements. Traditionally this has meant employing web design consultants to look after both what you are saying on your website and how you say it. Fortunately, there is a better way… A Content Management System (CMS) is like the most efficient and glamorous personal assistant in the world. It categorizes any information given, making relevant links between it and other elements. Everything is presented in an organised way which is easy on the eye. Creating new content therefore is not a laborious, time-consuming and technically-demanding occupation. In fact, each user becomes a content-maker – meaning that the website itself becomes a truly collaborative effort! How much does this wonderful technology cost? Nothing! In the true spirit of collaboration, many CMS’s are what is known as ‘Open Source’, meaning that not only are they free-of-charge but they can be modified and adapted as you see fit. The four which I would currently recommend, depending on how they are to be deployed, are Moodle, Drupal, Xoops and Mambo. Each of these can be previewed at opensourcecms.com. Combining all I have said above into some semblance of a conclusion, I see the E-HELP website as being a place where collaborations can take place in an unstructured yet organized way. The collaborations will be unstructured in that the website will not prescribe what kinds of collaboration may take place; they will be organized, however, in that the products of such collaborations will be easily accessible and well-categorized. I envisage videos and other resources regarding good practice being made available for easy download via P2P technology. The website would also foster formal, semi-formal and informal partnerships, not least through the discussion forum. Hopefully, the CMS decided upon will allow for all of these elements to be coherently integrated so that the user can get on with collaborating rather than getting to grips with technology! Doug

I agree with what has been said above - very professional, thought-provoking and, as always, using ICT in a very practical and interesting way! Doug PS We didn't pause it, we were too interested!

An overview of the areas I will cover in my presentation can be found at: http://www.mrbelshaw.co.uk/e-help/mindmap.html (please bear in mind that you will need Java installed to be able to view this properly, and that it might take a while to load up...) A more prosaic version can be found here. I shall post my presentation proper as a separate thread once I return from Toulouse... Doug

I shall try my best! Doug

"I not only use all of the brains I have, but all I can borrow.": The uses of ICT for collaborative teaching and learning. According to some estimates, more human beings were alive in the 20th century than in all the other centuries put together. At the same time the world is a smaller place than ever before: advances in methods of communication mean that a teacher on the other side of the world is often not much harder to contact than the teacher in the room next door. Yet many teachers do not avail themselves of the collaborative opportunities available to them. I hope to look at different ways in which teachers can share ideas and resources with their peers using ICT, as well as what the future may hold for such ventures. Hopefully this will provoke discussion focussing upon how the E-HELP website can best serve its intended audience, rather than the ins and outs of copyright legislation...

Exactly. There's a difference between being proud of your community's achievements and to identify yourself with a particular group on the one hand, and rampant nationalism on the other... My views on the future of ICT: ICT is not an end, it is a means. In the future we shall still be educating pupils to evaluate what is in front of them, get to grips with chronology, and organize and communicate their work effectively (amongst other things). What will change, of course, is the methods by which we do this. In order to make History relevant to the age in which we teach, we must take pupils from where they are to a defined end point. How we get there is a lot less important than that we get there. Having said that, I see ICT as a great tool in teaching and learning in order to develop greater understanding of a given topic. I think ICT is of benefit in two ways: organizing information in a pupil-centred, rather than teacher-centred fashion, and to allow greater collaboration. The future of each, as I see it, is spelled out below: 1. Organizing information - in many schools, pupils are already using software such as Inspiration to organise their thoughts. This is just the thin end of the wedge, or the tip of the iceberg! When the new version of Windows ships (codename Longhorn) it will include 3D elements which, if implemented properly in applications, should revolutionize the ways in which we use computers. Instead of the information displayed on a monitor being like an interactive piece of paper, even the operating system will be a 3D 'world'. I believe that in 20 years' time the current generation will think and visualize things in ways radically different than our own. People often talk about making History 'come alive' for pupils. Although there is still obviously a role for imagination, this is something which may actually deliver on that promise. 2. Greater Collaboration - the best example of how successful high-quality collaborations can be, in my opinion, is the Open Source Software movement. Computer programmers allow each other access to their 'code' in order to construct the best product possible. The end product is made freely available to the general public - e.g. OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox and The GIMP (a graphics manipulation package). This principle is also at work already in the History teaching community. Andrew Field's Schoolhistory Forum, like this forum, is immensely popular and a haven for the sharing of ideas and good practice. I have recently set up a shareforum to allow the sharing of resources to go hand-in-hand with such discussions. These being virtual communities, many of the members have never met one another face-to-face. Thus ICT becomes the enabling feature to allow something which goes on at departmental or school level to become a global phenomenon! Coming back to the debate above about nationalism, it is ICT which will enable barriers to be broken down to prevent nationalism getting out of control. Discussion forums and advanced forms of videoconferencing have the potential to allow pupils to get a different 'take' on History. We're still going to be doing the same things in the future - discussing, debating, writing, evaluating - it's just that we'll be doing it in slightly different ways! Doug

I wasn't saying that Juan Carlos was actually committing intellectual suicide, just that what he posted sounded a bit postmodernist to me... There's a tension, isn't there, between identity and culture on one hand, and nationalism on the other. Rampant nationalism is obviously a bad thing as it suggests a narrow worldview. On the other hand, every institution or state tries to build a strong identity and culture as this fosters productivity, competition and a sense of pride. I must have misunderstood what Juan Carlos was getting at. I see nothing wrong with promoting a strong sense of culture and identity through one's past. There is something wrong, I would agree, with twisting the past to show one country's glorious achievements. This is perhaps what has traditionally been done by educators in days past. I don't think many people could point the finger at history teachers nowadays, however... Doug PS I wish I had learnt Spanish when I was at school

Before I post at length, I feel I must reply to the above. Saying that we need to 'build up a European identity' through the way that we teach History sounds dangerous to me! Surely this is misrepresenting and distorting the past to fit in with the world's current penchant for postmodernism. This view says that not only can everyone have their own point of view, but that it is true (for them). As soon as I come across anyone who honestly believes in this I can no longer have an intelligent debate with them: I believe they have both cut themselves off from the past and committed intellectual suicide. As far as I see it, the history of Europe pretty much is the history of 'myths, battles, victories and defeats'. That's not to say that we cannot live peacefully now and that nothing else happened besides this. But to try and forge European harmony and co-operation by cutting pupils off from, or becoming extremely selective in one's teaching of, history is a very bad thing in my book. It's almost like the Whig view of history again - everything proves that progress has been made from the dawn of time towards your stipulated goal, and if it doesn't it's swept under the carpet. The wartime years in Britain, for example, were not principally about the hatred of the enemy. They were about co-operation, forging a new identity for Britain, and struggling in the face of adversity - something that Britons are very good at! History is far from being 'past politics', but I'd like to keep teaching 'old national histories built on remembering battles and wars.' We wouldn't have much history otherwise... Doug PS I do, however, wholeheartedly agree with your views on collaboration, Juan Carlos!

As I see it, there are five main advantages to the use of ICT in the History classroom: 1. Engagement/interest 2. Accessibility 3. Differentiation 4. Independence 5. Cross-curricular application Taking them in order: 1. Engagement/interest - why is it that most pupils enjoy a lesson in the ICT suite so much? It can't be novelty value as many of their lessons are held in such places and they have grown up in an ICT-enriched world. I believe it is the interactive nature of ICT applications and resources which stimulates. Indeed, as this BBC news report shows, the interactive nature of the Internet is eating into the number of hours of TV watched by Europeans. A text book, no matter how good and colourful, presents facts, resources and questions as a fait accompli. Although some websites are merely an online facsimile of such text books, the majority (such as Schoolhistory.co.uk/lessons) are engaging, involving pupils in the learning process. People are often told during teacher training to be a 'bigger' or more dramatic version of themselves in the classroom. Using ICT in the classroom is often like this: a simple quiz becomes 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' or a plenary session can be transformed into a highly visually-stimulating game. 2. Accessibility - in the introduction to A Brief History of the Future: the origins of the Internet, John Naughton describes how, as a child, he yearned to actually see things such as letters Abraham Lincoln wrote during the American Civil War or Leonardo da Vinci's famous 'mirror handwriting': However, as he continues: Being able to take pupils on a 'virtual field trip' is now fairly straightforward to achieve and, although never a replacement for actual field trips, can enliven the curriculum. In addition to this, the actual documents relevant to the pupils' programme of study can often be viewed online. This has huge benefits when teaching skills such as validity, historical reliability and usefulness. 3. Differentiation - some methods of differentiation can potentially lead to self-esteem issues. Differentiation by task, for example, can lead to certain pupils feeling inferior to their peers. Teachers often overcome this by graduated tasks or by giving pupils a choice of activity, steering more able pupils towards the higher-level option and the less able towards the lower. Using banked, networked computers this becomes even easier. Piaget, as we all know, discussed the progression of the child. Those at the 'concrete operational' stage (approx. 7-11 years old) can deal with objects and events, but find it difficult to deal with more abstract propositions. Some pupils in secondary schools (especially those on the SEN register) will be working at this level. Trying to explain a concept such as causation, therefore, can be quite difficult using only words and static pictures. Animations using Flash can help with this enormously. 4. Independence - although many people have argued down the centuries as to the purposes of education, one upon which most would agree is to promote independence in thought. Given well thought-out extension tasks in a traditional classroom this can be developed to some extent. Given structured access to the wealth of research and resources on the Internet, however, and independent learning can really take off! The outcome of open-ended tasks can only be as good as the materials available to the participant, but when faced with the deluge of the Internet the limiting factor is the participant, not the materials. So much for the more able pupil, but ICT can really help the less able as well. No matter what the ability of the learner, some concepts - due to prior experience, understanding, culture, and environment - can be harder to grasp than others. Imagine the scenario where the task set is to extract the ways in which a certain extract of film is biased. In the traditional History classroom the whole class would watch the clip perhaps twice, making notes whilst the film was playing. Less able pupils and those who have difficulty multi-tasking or structuring their own work would subsequently have to be given a lot of attention by the class teacher. Given the clip on a computer screen in front of them with the ability to replay it as many times as desired, and the pupil can develop their own skills rather than being, as is often the case, 'over-helped'. 5. Cross-curricular application - my last point is a small but obvious one. Subjects such as 'English', 'History' or 'Mathematics' have no ontological reality: they are human constructs to help us classify knowledge and understand methods of enquiry. Cross-curricular links, therefore, are extremely important to foster pupils' true understanding of the world around them. ICT can enable pupils to easily apply skills learned in other lessons to their historical enquiries. For example: Analyzing data on the number of soldiers who died from different countries in WWI. Evaluating how Haig's use of written communication. Re-enacting the Battle of Hastings, filming it, and then editing the product. Another aspect of cross-curricular application is that education becomes less parochial if schemes of work, resources and ideas from other departments (or even countries!) are used to plan lessons within a given subject. ICT, although now taught as a discrete subject (at least in England), is still a method of communication. It is therefore imperative that applications of ICT are seamlessly integrated with more traditional methods in the curriculum. The end result should remain the same: the 'goalposts' of learning outcomes should not change just because technology makes such-and-such a thing easier to do, more fun, or more exciting. Given a work-out-of-a-text-book lesson with real, measurable learning outcomes versus an unfocussed all-singing, all-dancing lesson using every application of ICT imaginable, I'd always plump for the former. ICT is a means, not an end. Doug

To be fair, pages using a CMS will always be better than Joe Average can knock up. Only web designers can do better in my opinion, and we don't want to have to pay for those if we can avoid it! CMS's have come a long way, it would seem, since the one you refer to. In my opinion, we'd be best going with Mambo or Drupal - both almost infinitely configurable... Doug

Further to my post above, a good way of allowing everyone to be part of the E-HELP website without requiring advanced ICT skills would be to use a 'Content Management System' (CMS). There's many to choose from, and you can play about with a lot of free versions at: opensourcecms.com. Doug PS I'm using Siteframe for mrbelshaw.co.uk/share...

Likewise, sounds like a great idea (although I think perhaps we should be moving away from paper-based dissemination of work). My time as an NQT is limited, but I'm sure that I could contribute in some way! Doug

I'm going to state the obvious here, but every single resource produced needs to have extremely clear directions on how it can be or should be used. This includes getting the resource in the first place! Those of us who use ICT in our everyday lives often forget that if something looks difficult to do or doesn't work first time, most people will simply give up. It is for this reason that off-the-shelf (but preferably Open-Source) products such as Moodle are useful. They have already been tested, are easy to use for the end user, and can be adapted without too much fuss to most needs. I'm experimenting on my website at the moment with an automated peer-to-peer program called Bittorrent to reduce the bandwidth implications of offering large video files for download. This has been made possible by a recent development of this protocol called Blog Torrent. As more and more people access certain files on the Internet this will be an increasingly effective method of delivering files. As it is, Bittorrent is already responsible 35% of the web's traffic. Although I haven't enabled the function at the moment on my website, there is the ability for anyone with a valid user name and password to post their own 'torrents' which would be 'seeded' from their own computer. It's developments like this which really harness the power of technology, in my opinion. Once the structures are in place, the E-HELP website should be a dynamic community of expertise and collaboration. This would be made possible by different people or teams being responsible for certain areas. Within these areas content should be both easy to push and pull from the site. Content management, already somewhat divorced from stylistic considerations, will be a separate issue in three years' time... Doug

You can't force people to use ICT. Or rather, you can force people, but you can't force them to use it effectively. What I'm afraid of is online resources being presented as some paper-based solutions - as a fait accompli. Lessons, no matter how dictatorial the schemes of work, will always reflect the personality of the teacher. I believe this to be a positive, not a negative thing. Consequently, ICT-based resources or aids need to be able to be have an individual teacher's 'stamp' put upon it. Only then will ICT be truly integrated within teaching. One thing that I do look forward to in a more ICT-based future is the ability for more motivated pupils to not only work at their own pace, but access resources to aid their learning anywhere they have access to the Internet! Doug

Hi, My name is Doug Belshaw and I feel severely underqualified to have been asked by John to be an associate member of the E-HELP team! I'm an NQT in History at a school in Nottinghamshire, England and try my very best to use ICT both to assist in my teaching and general organization, and to aid my pupils' learning. I'm greatly inspired by examples of great teaching and teachers as demonstrated on the Schoolhistory website and its forum, of which I know many here are members! For what it's worth, my initial degree was in Philosophy, my MA in Modern History, and I'm currently studying towards an MA in Education. Doug

I am an evangelical Christian and a History teacher in my second year of teaching at a large (1600+) school in Nottinghamshire. My first degree was in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, and I studied for my MA in Modern History at Durham University. I am currently working towards an MA in Education (also from Durham by distance learning). My website provides resources and links for both pupils and teachers, and I have set up a forum to share resources and ideas which is currently getting off the ground! Doug