I have battled for a while with this blog for writing, and then life got in the way as I moved countries and schools. Two years later - I have the writing itch again but I have decided not to battle the inefficient blogging site I have (note I will still keep it for my resume+) and instead I am going to go with the new trend of a SUBSTACK!

The Digital Society course is now two years old, and students received their first set of results this summer. So I would like to send out a huge congratulations to all of them including my trailblazing six students - well done! (I believe the milestone is important enough for me to trial my new LinkedIn plugin as well hope it works.) However, I just recently checked the IB statistics for numbers entering the Digital Society course and they are a huge disappointment. The last year of ITGS 2275 students took the course (May 2023), and for Digital Society the first cohort 2360 students took the subject (May 2024.)

Only 85 new students, when the course was specifically designed for specialists (e.g. IT and CS teachers) but also non specialist Individuals and Societies teachers to be able to teach? Over this blogpost I will talk a little more about the subject, its brilliance but also some of the problems that I believe can easily be surmounted; so that hopefully some of you in IB schools may make the decision to add Digital Society to your curriculum offering.

Its forerunner ITGS always had its heart in the right place as a course, but its assessments, age and conceptual underpinning was somewhat lacking. The design of the new course and publicity by Joel Adams from the IB was key in making sure the course was different enough to lead to a successful new pathway for many more students.

As zeitgeist would have it, first teaching in 2022 came at just the point that generative AI and ChatGPT3 boisterously announced itself to the world. I remember starting the units of Media and AI, and focusing on 'synthetic digital media' and showing students a number of uses of large language models to their surprise and wonderment. Guess who were the early adopters of AI in my school! I loved my inquiry based formative activity where, unknowingly to them, I placed the coders and the non coders into competing teams and then gave them two lessons to complete a quite complex coding problem in Python (while telling the non-coding team secretly that they could use a LLM to help them.) Guess the astonishment of the coders when the non-coders were declared victors, and then the groans when they realised why.

'Every IB school, in every context - come on start offering Digital Society NOW, you know it is the right thing to do!

The importance of this course in the IB should not be underestimated. It is an option that I believe each student should consider carefully as they choose their Individuals and Societies subject(s), and if necessary persuade the school to run it!

Take image generation, who could believe at the start of the course that I would be able to place in a text prompt and produce a multitude of creative images to enliven this blogpost. But Digital Society is not just about the 'tech' it is about the multitude of ethical and social impacts that arise from almost every context in which technology is used. Around this area a student of DS would immediately consider:

• Power - Intellectual property, who and where does the data come to train this model
• Values and ethics - Creativity, is the use of generative ai image generators a concern for artists and their future employment
• Systems - How biased are these image generators if the datasets underpinning are biased e.g. are students always white
• Expression - is this really art, without 'emotion' or 'feeling' are these images just empty and generic
• Identity - as these image generators get better and better, and are used everywhere how can we judge what is authentic and how does that impact areas such as deepfakes and misinformation

Prompt for Ideogram - "A captivating cinematic photograph of a monochromatic cityscape, with a dedicated student studying diligently at a table. The student's laptop is open, displaying a digital notebook filled with meticulous notes. An AI robot sits attentively beside the student, seemingly engaged in the learning process. The background features bold, eye-catching graffiti that reads "Digital Society is BRILLIANT," blending urban culture with the scene. The atmosphere is a harmonious blend of technology, education, and artistic expression, creating a futuristic yet grounded ambiance."

Note I use Ideogram - as it is one of the only image generators that can truly spell at the moment. A fabulous discussion for DS students to engage in as they unpick the technology behind the 'magic' apart.

So you guessed it. This is a superb course, which is authentic and deals with real world problems and issues and gets students thinking of ways to intervene; and then make a difference in their use of technology alongside understanding its impacts in areas such as politics, business and knowledge. Its is academic, but practical; it is inquiry led (the multimedia video Internal Assessment is excellent) but really tests a student's critical thinking - what is not to like!

Well hear are those surmountable issues and personal thoughts:

So this post is a call to arms for every headteacher to think seriously about adding this course to their curriculum offering, for every student to consider this as a choice and teachers even if you are not a CS/IT teacher to see that this course is simply great fun and inspiring to teach.

'Here is to more than five thousand Digital Society students by 2026!'

Oh! those Obama summer reading lists, or are they Christmas reading lists! Well I definitely got Chip War off of one if his lists. And maybe for this reason last summer on my normal reading binge, i picked up (well browsed) and bought the book "Why we sleep" by Matthew Walker. It may have been those constant unhelpful mutterings in my ear from fellow colleagues "...those sixth formers are always asleep in that Common Room, I wonder how that is helping with their studies?"

Well what a read it was, and it simply made me consider and reflect on how little over 15+ years of supporting sixth formers had I not in anyway (besides the occasional comment) focused on sleep having such a dramatic affect in almost every area of our lives, and so teenagers lives. By luck I was rewriting my Core curriculum with a strong emphasis and focus on metacognition, self regulation and felt immediately this would help fit in and support my wonderful sixth formers.

Shocking quotations like the one to the right I thought would jump them into action, and so I went through a plan to introduce the science behind sleeping and then to monitor our students and their sleeping habits.

As always with any new initiative it was crucial that the process to introduce, monitor and ultimately change students behaviour' s was well through through and really did make students over the whole year think and reflect on their habits.

“If you don’t sleep the very first night after learning, you lose the chance to consolidate those memories, even if you get lots of “catch-up” sleep thereafter. In terms of memory, then, sleep is not like the bank. You cannot accumulate a debt and hope to pay it off at a later point in time. Sleep for memory consolidation is an all-or-nothing event.”

The presentations were quick enough to bring together using information from why we sleep (including Matthew Walker talking to Cognita Education) and another book Life Time, alongside other resources I will share below.

"Chronic sleep deprivation impairs our memory and learning abilities."

First workshop - to introduce the importance of sleep...

Second workshop - to reinforce connection with learning..

Over the following weeks with tutors and student - we looked at their circadian rhythms, we did a survey on their sleep habits using the Munch CQ (see below) and we got them to journal for two weeks individually any differences or issues.

• Munich Chronotype Questionnaire
• Sleep Foundation Log (used to journal)
• Learn then Sleep Research (used with second presentation)
• Top Tips for getting 7-9 hours a night

All worked well anecdotally , data was shared with students; showing how much sleep on average they got, whether they were an owl or a lark, and tutors had individual conversations with certain students whose data was concerning, or shared signs of lethargy in and around the school. But as always it is difficult with such a complex system such as a school, to see if the initiative had any effect on their sleep until late in the year we looked at the four check-in surveys they they had done. results are below:

Fascinatingly enough, and to my surprise there was some evidence of change:

You may say inconclusive with gains in the 6 to 7 hours range of 8%, and a reduction in the 5 hours or less by 8% with not much movement in the greater than 7 hours. Anecdotally (and I will not mention the year before we had an Armenian student that was renowned as sleeping each and everyday) there was a definite drop off (sorry!) on those students found napping during the day. Success maybe - but also room for reflection and thought on some wider issues raised, and what to do the next year to continue the fight. See my thoughts below:

As a lonesome IB Coordinator mostly working in the Diploma and CP realm I have always found methods for authentically embedding the IB Learner profile in 17/18 year old's minds slightly problematic. There are many approaches that have always seem like 'bolt-ons' whether posters around the classrooms, assemblies focused upon different profile words, reports that mention the learner profile words and much more.

In fact at my current school we did a 'student takeover' of the IB learner profile to place in our context (we are a Round Square school as well so students have to manage the Discoveries and the IDEALS as well - don't get me started in the overload sometimes these students feel,) something that the IB tolerates and it is a great activity to give students supposed agency. Here it is to the right in all its resplendence!

Did it make any difference, did any student or teacher or even me refer to it during the rest of the year - NO WAS THE SIMPLE ANSWER!

So after however many years as an IB Coordinator, I had had enough what could I do that really embedded the skills, attributes or ways of being that I knew could so easily have an impact. I must emphasise that there is nothing wrong with the IB Learner profile (I promise IB...) however it just seemed to not work for those final two years, especially in a non-continuum school.

I have learnt over the years to say it is okay that these IB learner profile characteristics at the core of the IB are fine to be implicit rather than explicit. But is it really okay?

What was bugging me is I had had much more success with some 'cheesy phrases' over the years, some of which had stuck with me through different leadership positions. The above trusty phrase was so successful but disliked, that a group of sixth formers all made T-shirts with these words on for their graduation! Did it make a difference, yes, does it still make a difference yes - as it easily identifies a key characteristic of a learner in a really catchy difficult to forget phrase. Which IB learner profile attribute well that could be argued - balanced, open minded, reflective and I wish this one was included resilient.

"Fail well, Fail early and Fail often..." - Lance King

My email signature has also had two or so phrases attached; one from Gladwell and one from Ken Dodd's teacher (and on occasion one from David Hockney) - that i regularly mention, in assemblies, discussions with students. And I know anecdotally had had a lasting affect at least on some students.

“No one - not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software’s billionaires, and not even geniuses - ever makes it alone.” - Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers)

"Just because I'm cheeky, doesn't mean I'm not serious" - David Hockney

“You have not come here to be educated – you have come here to have your minds opened.” - Ken Dodd’s Headteacher (Supposedly!)

At the beginning of the 2023 this made me reflect on what was the best way to transfer habits, attributes and it reminded me a little of the "Habits of Mind" tool I had seen a few years ago, where attributes were linked to simple phrases that had that same catchy bite to them.

Such as 'Laugh a little' knowing that every situation is not the end, and that most important skill of being able to laugh at yourself. The tool is a little old, but it linked well with the thoughts discussed by a very current author Daniel Coyle in his book 'The Culture Code.'

"Don't be an ostrich" - Wikpedia (Apologies I was amused it had a page!)

I won't review the book but he talks about what makes successful companies, and one of the obvious areas is the success of the culture of that company (just as with schools!) Anyway he discusses the difficulties one restaurant owner had with trying to get consistency of service in two restaurants, to such an extent a once successful business was about to go under due to the poor service. The owner looked at priorities and what made them successful in the past:

'He already had an assortment of catchphrases that he used informally in training—he had a knack for distilling ideas into handy maxims. But now he started paying deeper attention to these phrases, thinking about them as tools.' - Daniel Coyle (Page 151)

Some of the catchphrases were excellent '...Read the guest, Finding the yes, Skunking, Put us out of business with your generosity, To get a hug, you have to give a hug...' and you get the idea of the attributes and actions that his whole staff needed to portray to make the restaurant successful again. Surprise surprise it was a success, '...a simple set of rules that stimulate complex and intricate behaviors benefiting customers.'

So as you can imagine this led me in consultation with the tutor team to see if we could emulate this idea, to improve the success and wellbeing of each and every student. Our initial set of 'cheesy phrases' are below:

Here are the posters, which were used in all presentations...

These were introduced to the students, but most importantly were continually used with students in assemblies and in one to one conversations. Each of the phrases, was linked to metacognitive processes and/ or self regulatory strategies through what we call 'Core' periods that all sixth form students are involved in each week. I will hopefully cover more regarding this in another blogpost soon! But was it a success, could like my initiative on sleep be able to show through data any improvements? Well the short answer is no, at this stage their use shows anecdotal signs as my initial 'fail well' phrase that it has become part of the students ' vocabulary.

Can you guess which are favourite? 'Don't be an ostrich' of course, and 'Habits not motivation' - why well I think they were used most and struck true when it came to the ways of working of an IB student. So a mild success, with I think much to do to improve and actually find and judge the ideas success in the future. Here are some thoughts and reflections:

Thanks to VESPA, who through there books and activities also inspired some of these phrases and the associated Core lessons and assemblies.

Thanks to Wisdom Made Easy for some of the graphics for fair use, I hope to have sixth formers create some better graphics this year!

Chance discussions are never to be missed in terms of how they can make us reflect on our practice as teachers and leaders. One such morning recently, a member of the senior leadership team popped by my office to discuss how they had been surprised with the focus on professional reading and theory in recent job interviews they had been having. Their perspective was their experience, not recent educational theory or fashionable books were more important to their ability to excel at the role applied for.

I could see their point of view. Especially when they had suggested they had used Tom Bennett as an example of his professional reading in the area of behaviour in UK schools. Someone I had not heard of, but when I checked their philosophy on behaviour, someone on first reading that I was almost diametrically opposed too.

However as an avid professional reader (apologies see the scrolling list on the homepage) I obviously disagree. I professionally read around my great passions in life: education, architecture and technology. Simply because I want to know different perspectives and be able to critically analyse and if necessary change and alter my viewpoints. And this is why, however much I may disagree with Tom Bennett's approach, the reading of some articles and peer reviewed research enabled me to look and reflect, and question. This links to one of my key tenets regarding the educational world we live in as highlighted by the article on TIE The International Educator below -reading and understanding different perspectives is key!

"The problem of not reading..."

"Next time you read a newspaper headline, or a tweet, a post, a statement, especially one that goes “viral”, ask yourself what the source is and who has read the research. The truth might not be as exciting to read as a dazzling affirmative or damning soundbite, but it needs to be respected." - Conrad Hughes

I also teach Theory of Knowledge and Digital Society at IB Level and it does not take too much for us all to agree the necessity for our students to be able to read, analyse and critically evaluate sources in todays misinformation, social media led world.

This however takes me back to Professional Reading for teachers.

"How much should a leader expect teachers to read?" "How much should senior leaders professionally read?"

Well I suppose like many things each school needs teachers and senior leaders that like to professionally read and then support them in the dissemination of the reading to improve learning within the school.

So I would suggest not everyone needs to read quite as much as I do maybe, but every school should have mechanisms in place to enable this reading and current evidence based findings to be shared in a simple and efficient way to all teachers within the school. One such way is the idea of sharing key texts for those interested by the Senior Leadership team, currently "Making Good Progress: The future of Assessment for Learning by Daisy Christodoulou" is doing the rounds at my school. Another is the dissemination of some great professional reading lists - such as Edutopias 2023 best articles end of year list. Number 8 is a gem, especially as an IB educator surrounded by inquiry sceptics who as all of us need to read before they think!

Have you ever been an IB Diploma Coordinator? If so I can guarantee you one thing, 90% of your day is made up with discussing one thing?

Inquiry based learning? NO!

How to support teachers improve assessments? NO

Formative feedback? NO

It is of course the simple and easy word - DEADLINE! The bane of any coordinators life. The first thing that I thought about when I go into a new coordination role - is the culture, ethos and structure of dealing with deadlines equitable and fair within the school. However more important is the consideration of the effect from policies and protocols on each and every student; in terms of pressure, anxiety and their wellbeing. Just look at the meme image list on Google related to IB deadlines - I am sure some made by my students!

I am sure my current school will not mind me saying, but I walked into the nightmare where the culture and ethos around deadlines was lacking. Maybe it was Covid times, but something needed to be done. Why you say, well here are a few reasons that again any IB coordinator will have come across in one form or another:

Problems! Problems! Problems! At this point I was lucky enough to read the wonderful blog post from Damien Bacchoo on 'Deadlines and Taxes.' It's a great rumination on how difficult it really is with his final sentence being - 'I started this article with the promise to sleep on the issue of school deadlines.  But it seems to me that it’s going to take a bit more than that to solve this one...' He raises some excellent discussion points that we have all thought about:

• Are we really teaching about real life - another words are deadlines in the real world fixed, and the answer is often NO surprisingly
• Are all students the same, so should they have the same deadlines - its the same discussion as when teachers judge how long homework will take e.g. 30 minutes , when we all know it can take from 5 to 3 hours dependent on the student
• Are sanctions such as no feedback the right way forward - when we are trying to teach life lessons
• Perfectionism is a problem - so is it not kind to set a deadline, so students do not waste time and gain no ROI
• Is it really a deadline  - especially when there are draft, final, official and so on deadlines???
• Are we biased how we treat different students - for example those that can advocate and shot the loudest

Bearing all this in mind, and knowing I had done it many different ways before I looked at ensuring the following :

• Equity - it had to be fair, so that all students unless there was a wellbeing issue handed in
• Keeping it simple - no google calendars, or spreadsheets
• Teachers had to follow the deadlines - only changing if there was a real issue and after consultation with the IB Coordinator
• Each and every year the deadlines are renegotiated - ensuring that teachers took notice, that they were balanced and most importantly teachers helped to spread out with more deadlines in Year 1. Thanks to Business, Geography, Physics and Business who all moved to Yr1.
• Ensure the University deadlines are within the main deadlines - so students could see fully Yr2, Term 1 as being a difficult time (oh and not forgetting SATs and other standardised tests)
• Deadlines were published for two years for each cohort - so students could plan ahead
• All work was uploaded to ManageBAC (nominally to check for plagiarism) - but also it was centralised and could be followed up easily and immediately
• Publicise to students any wellbeing issue will be taken seriously - and supported
• Explain fully to students that the deadlines are spread for a reason - to enable them to plan, and give enough time to each
• Model to teachers and students planning and scaffolding - using the Extended Essay with milestones, intermediate hand in's, expected structures etc.
• Discuss and talk to students about ROI ( Return on Investment) - to ensure students are not wasting their time
• Finally ensure teachers are moderating a few weeks after deadline, and assessing - with only then a limited amnesty for low hanging fruit for students

Fig 1 - A simple and one page deadline timeline

Fig 2 - A simple and understandable set of protocols

Fig 3 - Celebration of a deadline hand in!

Did I solve all the problems, NO but the most important thing is the ethos and culture of student cohorts is now to hand in work to deadlines. Teachers keep to the deadlines reasonably well, and take them seriously. And we are all communicating together!

We recently had a further discussion as we always do in the local Thai IB Coordinators network, and I still came away with the questions from Damien are we really teaching students about real life and have we solved the problem of perfectionism?  Probably not, but I think maybe there needs to be a system change here - shout out to the IB's workload initiative which seems to have gone quiet in recent years?

However we can say we have increased equity, reduced bias, reduced stress and anxiety (to some extent although again a systems problem I believe,) taught and modelled too students best practice, what ROI really means and how to self regulate.

However I am a perfectionist, so each and every year I will tweak the system, tweak the deadlines to try and get it better - Oh DEAR!

I recently created this online Curriculum Vitae, mainly to simplify my ability to communicate experiences for future career opportunities. But in so doing created a WordPress weblog as you can see - and immediately felt split in whether I should begin to blog and write again as I had done previously.

Don't get me wrong in the past I have been an avid blogger for courses that I have taught in Information Technology in a Global Society (now Digital Society), alongside being involved in Facebook/Twitter accounts on my professional areas of learning. I even tweet regularly on aspects of my coordinator role, my role as TOK teacher etc.

So why so divided?

This then led to a bigger question that presented itself - as my new blog had a crafty and simple feature to link to my LinkedIn account, then I should ensure to publish to LinkedIn as well. In one way I have learnt so much from LinkedIn over the last few years - in fact I would be confident in saying it is where I have learnt most professionally anywhere (and I have also recently completed my National Professional Qualification of Headteaching Certification.)

So I should obviously share my thoughts and ideas. A recent LinkedIn post also made it seem an easy decision from the Corporate Rebels shown below.

"Don't think your article is good enough, publish it anyways." - Corporate Rebels

The argument against, is simple in many ways I find especially the LinkedIn community and educational school accounts as simply a way of self marketing. I know it is obvious, but it does in some ways rankle. I remember a recent colleague whispering to me - 'that teacher tweets all the time, no wonder he is such a poor teacher he has no time to devote to his students.' I disagree, but understand the comment as it is true whatever I or anyone else writes on a weblog, twitter (now X) or through LinkedIn does not validate how good you are as an educator.

So with misgivings equal to my desire to share and publish my ruminations and reflections on education,  you can obviously see what I have decided. Not to publish to begin with!  Thanks to the Corporate Rebels and the Duke of Wellington for leading the way, but I will get there in the end and at least forgive me this is my first post - Rumination No 1!

"Publish and be damned" - Duke of Wellington maybe?