Happy New Year 2020

2019 has been a great year. I’m very grateful to all of the support shown by you: my loyal readers and fans. Some of the highlights of 2019 were as follows:

1. I released a second book for teachers: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback
2. More teachers than ever before read and benefited from the articles on this blog
3. I became a Google Certified Educator (Level 1) – I highly recommend this course for every teacher (check out my blog post on this at https://richardjamesrogers.com/2019/12/29/becoming-a-google-certified-educator/)

2020 projects in the pipeline:

1. I’ll become a Google Certified Educator Level 2 and then a Google Certified Innovator, and I’ll be sure to blog about the process so that others can learn how to do it.
2. My next book: The EdTech Book, will be released.
3. Giveaways of my first two books will happen from May – Aug 2020.
4. More blog posts and more frequent YouTube videos to provide teachers everywhere with practical tips
5. A new podcast will be set up to provide practical tips for teachers.

Happy New Year everyone and thank you for your continued support.

Becoming a Google Certified Educator

An article by Richard James Rogers (Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback).

I’m really pleased and happy to say that I am now officially a Google Certified Educator!

More good news: Any teacher can do it, from anywhere in the world and in this video I show you how:

But, why should you become a Google Certified Educator? Here are a few reasons:

  • It’s really cheap (the Level 1 exam is only $10)
  • It looks amazing on your C.V./resume
  • You’ll pick up some new tips for using G Suite from the exam itself

So, my message this week is simple: Become a Google Certified Educator!

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What Should Teachers do With Their Time Off?

An article by Richard James Rogers (Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback).

Updated August 2022

Accompanying video:

One of the massive perks about being a schoolteacher is that we get loads and loads of holidays. In fact, in my particular case, I’m only actually in school for around 180 days per year. That’s a lot of free time to deal with. 

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So, with this in mind, I find myself asking a rather controversial question: Are we using this free time productively?  

I’ve been lambasted quite viciously in the past for expressing my views on this particular issue. My views haven’t changed, however, so if you’re one of those snowflakes who gets easily triggered, easily offended or who has a nervous breakdown when someone has a different opinion than you, then you might want to stop reading now.

The laziness of it all?

With all of this free time in-hand, I often wonder why more teachers aren’t starting their own businesses, writing books, setting up podcasts, starting up blogs, doing online marketing or anything to better themselves or improve their quality of life. 

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What would Elon Musk, one of the world’s most successful businessmen, do with 185 free days each year? Perhaps this quote from an interview he did (video embedded below) will shed some light on things:

Interviewer:

Did you ever consider retiring?

Elon:

No, not really. I did take a bit of time off. I did reasonably well from Paypal. I was the largest shareholder in the company and we were acquired for about a billion and a half in stock and then the stock doubled. So yeah, I did reasonably well, but the idea of lying on a beach as my main thing, just sounds like the worst – it sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I’d be super-duper bored. I like high intensity – I mean, I like going to the beach for a short period of time, but not much longer than a few days or something like that.

So what can we conclude that this formidable titan? Some would say that he is an example of what we should all aspire to become, and that he would use 185 days productively. He’d take some short-bursts of time-off, but mostly he’d be working on new projects and new ideas, or furthering current ones. 

An ancient Chinese proverb that keeps me striving and moving ‘forward’ when I have free time is this:

An inch of time is an inch of gold, but an inch of time cannot be purchased for an inch of gold.

Mediocrity breeds more mediocrity?

One core philosophy that I think all teachers agree with is that with enough hard work and effort, our students can become anything they want to become (notwithstanding significant physical and psychological hindrances). 

Surely then, as teachers, we also need to be at the top our game if we are to truly live that message: that a human really can become anything with enough effort. 

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Why then do so many teachers fall short of this principle? So many of us are one-timers: we got a university degree, trained to be a teacher and that was it. Zero significant achievements since then. 

And yet, we expect our students to be excellent. We expect them to make excellent progress. We expect them to use their free time productively. We expect them to aspire, push themselves, have goals and achieve big. 

Maybe it’s about time that we modeled that process. Only then can we really know what excellence is.

As for me, I’m not perfect but I’m no hypocrite either. This Christmas vacation, for which I get three weeks off school, will be divided between a number of tasks. I’ll take a short holiday for a few days, but the rest will be spent becoming a Google Certified Educator, completing a Certificate in Data Science from Berkeley and a number of additional tasks linked to this blog, my books, a new business and things to get me ready for my classes in January (including a rigorous gym schedule). 

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If we’re not advancing personally, then how can we encourage our students to advance?

I’ll post an update at the end of my Christmas vacation, to let you know how I’ve managed. After all, if I’m going to preach the ‘be useful and be productive’ mantra to you, my readers, then I absolutely need to lead by example and practice what I preach. 

Update: August 2022

This update has come a lot later than promised (sorry), but here it is anyway:

  • A LOT happened since this blog post was published (i.e. the pandemic). However, I was able to make some progress towards my goals.
  • I became a Google Certified Educator (Level 1), and I’m now working towards my level 2 certificate. I wrote a blog post all about becoming a Google Certified Educator here
  • I stopped pursuing the Professional Certificate in Data Science with Berkeley, and opted instead for the Professional Certificate in FinTech with the University of Hong Kong. I completed this in December 2021. You can view my credential here

Overall, I would say that I was only partly successful in achieving the goals I had set for myself. The lessons I have learned from this process are as follows:

  • Set realistic goals – sometimes we can have very high aspirations, which is good, but our personal deadlines are unrealistic
  • It takes a lot of self-discipline to achieve challenging goals. That’s why there are only a very small number of titans and tycoons in the world – these people relentlessly go after what they want, and set up systems and routines to make that happen. 


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Smartphone Addiction is Destroying Children’s Lives

An article by Richard James Rogers (Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback).

Related article: Digital Disaster: Screen Time is Destroying Children’s Health

I’ve been given three Year 7 Computer Studies classes to teach this academic year. It’s been really exciting, and really interesting to discover what 11-year-olds are learning about in this important subject these days. When I was in Year 7, for instance, I learnt how to create folders, spreadsheets, word-processed documents and databases on an even-then outdated Acorn desktop computer:

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The Acorn Archimedes A3020 desktop computer: What I was using in IT class when I was in Year 7 (Image courtesy of Martin Wichery at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2190336806/)

Today, however, students are using tablets, notebooks and smartphones to learn about:

  • E-safety
  • Digital footprints
  • Cybersecurity
  • Online docs, sheets, slides and forms using Google Suite
  • Gaming addiction

That last bullet point: gaming addiction, has been really interesting to teach as a significant minority of my students are regular gamers on Fortnite and other platforms. As part of their course, I was required to show them this video which tells the story of a young boy whose life was almost destroyed by gaming addiction (very highly recommended):

In the story, the boy is given a gaming console by his dad, and his life basically spirals downwards until he is left homeless. It highlights the fact that online gaming can be really expensive, really addictive and very time-consuming. The effects on the character’s body, his hobbies and his schoolwork are all very cleverly portrayed. 

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Is he working, or gaming?

Gaming addiction is only a small part of a much larger and more pervasive problem in society, however. That problem is smartphone addiction, which has really gripped younger generations quickly, and was certainly not a problem 10 years ago. 

This week, BBC News released a shocking report entitled Smartphone ‘addiction’: Young people ‘panicky’ when denied mobiles:

smartphone addiction

The report summarizes a large study conducted by researchers at King’s College London. The research analysed 41 studies involving a whopping 42,000 young people, and was published in the journal BMC Psychiatry. It arrived at a surprising and worrying conclusion:

  • 23% of participants exhibited behaviors consistent with addiction, such as feeling anxiety when the phone was taken away, not being able to control the time they spent on smartphones and spending so much time on mobiles it encroached on other activities.

So smartphone addiction is officially ‘real’, and that should act as an immediate call-to-action for school leaders. 

As a teacher who has embraced technology for learning purposes for quite some time, I was quite the advocate for the use of smartphones in teaching. They can be used as clickers for online games like Kahoot!, and can be good alternatives when kids don’t have access to tablets or laptop computers. This research however, along with the World Health Organisation’s recent classification of gaming addiction as a mental health disorder has led me to reevaluate my stance. 

Perhaps it’s now time for schools to ban smartphones and online gaming completely?

Here is a snippet of what the World Health Organisation has to say about this new condition, Gaming Disorder:

 

Gaming disorder is defined in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as a pattern of gaming behavior (“digital-gaming” or “video-gaming”) characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.

This, I believe, should lead all teachers to a logical question to ask: What can we do about it?

Here are my suggestions:

  • Ban smartphones in schools completely, unless written permission is given from a parent. In the case where written permission has been given, the smartphones must be locked away in a central location during the day and only returned to the student at the end of the school day (e.g. for the purposes of phoning home).
  • Invest in ICT systems that are non-intrusive and non-addictive (e.g. ICT labs). Classrooms could be fitted with notebooks/laptops integrated into classroom desks, or students could be asked to bring their own laptop/tablet to school each day.
  • Schools should have bookable sets of laptops or tablets for students to use, and school libraries should have suitable numbers of laptop and desktop computers for students to use. 

The clear advantage of centralized ICT systems over studentowned devices in schools is control: school-owned devices can be set-up with gaming blockers, chat blockers and website filters. 

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I would suggest that the challenge of solving smartphone and gaming addiction (two separate, but related problems) is an urgent one, and will require:

  • Schools to work even more closely with parents, health professionals, ICT service providers and local governments.
  • Careful allocation of school budgets, with more money being funneled towards ICT systems that are usable, but safe. 

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