NOF training - story |
A diary of the Science Consortium - its rise and fallHere's a perspective on the Science Consortium, set up to train science teachers in the use of ICT. It had lots going for it but could have been miles better. This view is harsh and real: too much hassle was inflicted on teachers, and too much money was sponged away by a software company. Background: science teacher ICT training in the UKThe National Lottery provided funds to improve the use of IT in the classroom. UK schools were allocated money to buy training from 30 approved providers. A few providers offered subject specialist training & the rest offered the entire range of subjects. The government dictated the training methods used in the system. While there were hands-on sessions in or out of school, a lot was based on online learning modules. By the year 2001 it was clear that only a few providers were having any impact. At the time I was working with the Science Consortium, a minor player that stayed not too far off the mark by specialising in science. By 2002, the major competition, LSP set up by PC supplier RM, banked at least half of the 230 million pounds available and amassed venom for an offering that was big on IT but seriously thin on science. Only genius marketing and sales lets you get this good. When I met the Open University who had designed this leading training programme I thanked them, "Cheers", I said, "You make us in the Science Consortium look brilliant"
(Most recent entries at top)
Dataloggerama - what we say (April 2003)Signing up some 40% of schools (that’s about 200, 000 teachers) RM/LSP turned out to be the top NOF training provider. Offering to train teachers how to use ICT in their subject, all would be good were it not for the fact that RM and its Open University partner offered teachers little science specific material. In a subtle but contrasting way, the Science Consortium’s programme offered to show teachers how to teach science using ICT. The result was that if you wanted ICT lessons with a science flavour you went to RM. If you wanted to teach science concepts using the newer technology you went to the Science Consortium. It should have worked better that way. Nearly a thousand schools and 7500 teachers joined the Science Consortium ICT programme which has undeniably achieved a high teacher response compared to the RM’s Learning Schools Programme. But high here is relative – most NOF training organisations failed to enthuse the majority. If anyone believes that online ICT training could have worked then it needed to be different to what is was. Expert users found the Science Consortium plagued with buggy software and a interface that inspired little confidence. Novice users found little understanding of the problems they faced in accessing the school network. Anyone looking for creativity found a set of lessons rendered in monochrome. Nothing new here, just old ideas, in a different online gravy. New Media, the software company offered CD-ROM’s that would only work on school networks after a fight. It controlled the website too and thwarted efforts to change it. Which ever way we look at it, NOF has not worked for the majority of teachers. The Science Consortium has done better for most, brilliantly for some but not good enough for most. Though miles better than the NOF-funded training that failed to differentiate their materials for subjects such as science, the Science Consortium, can claim credit for offering the least naff NOF programme. NOF moves the earth for teacher (April 2003)To the sound of popping champagne corks, a science teacher has been found whose approach to using ICT has shifted from complete unbeliever to zealous convert. Asked how they found the experience of doing a NOF online training course with the Science Consortium, the 45 year-old teacher felt the earth had moved for them. “Yes, NOF really moved the earth for me.” they said. Today’s news only adds to the wealth of evidence that the TTA/NOF project, involving some £230 million, was not a futile wind up exercise. Around 400,000 teachers were eligible for the training, and most of them signed up or to save them bother, were signed up by their head teacher. In fact, now that the programme has finished, we have at last found several UK teachers who have benefited from the ‘NOF’ ICT training programme. A representative of the Sheffield Hallam University was in their usual self-congratulatory mood. “Lots of people signed up for it because it sounded better on paper and the ASE was behind it. Someone I know at the Teacher Training Agency thinks it was good. Don’t tell us different, we don’t want to hear” Set up in 1999, the scheme provided £400 to train each teacher to a specification devised by TTA, the teacher training agency. Very few people have successfully read this specification, which lathers up the business of using ICT in school into an unnecessary froth. This masterpiece of repetition, called something like ‘Expected Outcomes for Trainee Teachers’ is archived on the web and hopefully it will remain so. University can’t pay bills - (March 2003)From Data blogging: It’s funny how we form impressions from the slightest clues. Ask any education adviser why they like some schools and they will list an intriguing set of performance criteria. Many will confide they’ve ticked a box or two just by measuring the reception they receive. They pick up lots of clues, reliable or otherwise, by looking at corridors, wall displays and even whether teachers get a free lunch on an INSET day. If an inspector called at my old school, we would dig out the coffee mug with a handle, buy Danish Pastries, tidy furiously and on one occasion, buy emulsion paint to smarten us up. For years now, I have worked with Sheffield Hallam University where the handling of bills and money skews my assessment . I had got used to being paid months late but over the last few years things have gone silly if not scandalous. Send an invoice and wait. Remind and several months later, a purchase order appears. Send another invoice … and so on until you’ve worked for two years and paid tax on earnings still to receive. Six other consultants can testify to similar ‘oh hasn’t it been paid’ treatment. Just now I heard that The ASE (Association for Science Education), a charity, had a claim going back to 2001. But to simply conclude that Sheffield Hallam University has a duff accounts department misses the earlier point. Random observations of an organisation might not be a basis for any fair assessment, and they clearly miss out the good things that people do. In our school, we’d have been miffed if you’d not seen our good teaching, even if in every other respect we were such a mess that it rippled through the fabric of the place. Look at it like this: when the people you work for sit on your travel claims, say they are dealing with them, or as an excuse, say they pay you enough in wages anyway you’d think differently about the organisation you worked for. And if they told the world they were the country’s best hope for science education (SHU hopes to become a leading partner in the UK’s National Science Centre) you would have to cry. The university's Centre for Science Education employs dozens of consultants to help with various projects. Today I hear a leading professor at Sheffield Hallam University confirm that their accounts department is unable to handle its payments. And this is not a first time or a one-off: in recent years Sheffield Hallam University entered into a business partnership under the weirdest terms. They joined up with New Media to run the Science Consortium. Agreements were made whereby they would dole out a share of the proceeds. It is not that the university doesn't deny that these agreements were made. Our beef is that they deny that they were ever entitled to make those agreements in the first place. For helping us to operate under an illusion of jam tomorrow, and its amateurish handling of money, Sheffield Hallam University is the winner of an award we have newly created for them: Read >> NOF Award 2002/3
The Science Consortium stalls to its end (October 2002)Though expected to run until March 2003, by September 2002, ‘Science Consortium’ partnership was no more. Science Consortium members have reflected sadly if not angrily, how New Media clearly never actually saw this not as any partnership but as a vehicle for self-interest. People have been very naïve in thinking anything else was the case. New Media’s ex-boss Dick Fletcher extracted too much for too little. This man tells lies to your face, which is fine as long as you realise that the guy's dishonest. And yet most surreal is New Media’s backing by Nuffield, who tilted the Science Consortium’s balance of power away from ASE and Sheffield Hallam University and firmly into the hands of the software company. New Media doing OK from NOF (December 2002)Science software maker New Media, has lodged a £1.5 million bill for its services to NOF training provider ‘The Science Consortium’. The Consortium comprises the Association for Science Education, Sheffield Hallam University and New Media in association with the Nuffield Curriculum Centre. Set up in 1998 and although once tipped as unlikely winner of training contracts, ‘The Science Consortium’ recruited impressively. Beside RM’s Learning Schools Programme, which became the major contract winner, the recruiting success came not from marketing but from the offer of relevant science content for the classroom. If few teachers have anything good to say about ‘NOF’, the overall picture is that the Science Consortium clicked ok with many. As some came to recognise, it seemed the least bad. As a consequence nearly a thousand school science departments signed up to the ‘The Science Consortium’. Many fought within their schools for the right to use a training provider associated with the ASE, their professional association. As a charity dedicated to its mission, the ASE would not be in it for the money. Nor particularly was the university. But now despite the Consortium becoming a very successful and respected provider, those aspirations to minimal financial gain have come true. Hopes to have made a surplus with which to fund future projects have been quashed. Set in the context of a business that grossed some £3 million over three years, New Media has billed the organisation for £1.5 million - a half of the total revenue. That divides into £600,000 for its software, and £900,000 for other services. Given that the bulk of the training programme involved developing teaching materials, training trainers, school training days, paying countless on-line mentors, and running a massive logistics operation, this hints of blindness to what the Consortium mostly did these last few years. It organised events, went out and delivered them and supported progress. Nevertheless, the software company has effectively claimed £200 of each teacher’s £400 training fee. New Media's Software (September 2001)New Media’s science software was bundled as part of the Science Consortium training package. From the earliest days, the compatibility of the software with school computer networks came into question. That many teachers who did make progress with the programme and overcame installation problems only shows the fantastic determination that runs through our trade. But many teachers, if not most floundered and threw in the towel. Most were settled with a half-installed system that could never deliver the benefits that were built into the training materials. The loss to the community is not onlyteachers’ time. The training programme sought to stimulate debate about what good software is and how to use it, but that aim was stymied. Instead of debate, we mostly heard about problems. When I raised this issue publicly on the SC website, I was admonished for disloyalty to New Media. Given the quality of their service to the Science Consortium, New Media’s million pound invoice is all the more laughable. Their vast bill covers unfit for networks software and the price for fixing it. Further charges for developing the Science Consortium website only add to the humour. Science Consortium bundles New Media softwareOf around £3 million of the Science Consortium’s income, a half (£1.5 million) has gone to New Media, a software developer. Spending money on software has been good for schools. Instead of having software on trial for the duration of the training programme, schools get to keep it. Although to do so was to divert money away from training, from the school’s point of view it was a good thing. Most of us do not like training being foisted upon us, though we do like freebie CD-ROMs. It meant that most schools got a CD-ROM free, and ignored the training. The result is like buying a magazine for the cover gift and chucking the rest. Other NOF providers like Anglia CPD would be intrigued by this. They were not permitted to bundle their discs with their scheme. These and other providers offered demo discs, software on loan and so on. When NOF/TTA approved the Science Consortium bid in 1998/9, the programme said that New Media would loan science software to schools for the duration of the programme. The plan said that New Media would produce ‘demo disks’ that would cease to work after a year. After this time, schools would have an option to buy the full copy. However, some six months on, a different scheme was constructed. New Media could see how they were going to make any money and they bundled their software, and billed for it out of the training money. Consequently New Media wants £0.6 million to purchase its software. If this were a trifling amount, we could forget about it. However, this amount could have bought a good deal of additional school support. For example, it would have bought a day of a consultant’s time for each school to help them through – something that would have made tutors much more effective. About the Science Consortium (September 2000)'The Science Consortium' was set up to provide training funded by the UK National Lottery and approved by the Teacher Training Agency. The funding allowed maintained schools to access one of many options for ‘NOF’ funded training. The Association for Science Education’s INSET Services partnered with the Nuffield foundation, Sheffield Hallam University and software developers New Media to offer a programme for science teachers. The resulting ‘Science Consortium’ offered science teachers lessons using ICT. The lessons comprised pupil worksheets and teacher guides using a good range of technologies. Some used data logging or online reference sources. Other lessons featured software simulations of kinetic theory and meiosis, models of the Haber process and foxes eating rabbits. Others involved data handling, activities on the planets, chemical elements and nutritional components in food. Given all that might be done with a computer in science, the lessons mix teacher demos and class hands-on work to fit available resources. The Science Consortium training combined online tutoring with in-school and out-of-school days. 'The Science Consortium' offered modules for science teachers in secondary schools – members of this group have specialised in using IT in science teachers for the past ten years. The consortium was made up of the Association for Science Education INSET Services, multimedia software producers New Media and Sheffield Hallam University. Roger Frost, John Wardle and Keith Hemsley who worked as advisory teachers and for the National Council for Educational Technology. The group’s track record in putting the science before the IT has been unparalled. |