Yesterday, an email dropped into my inbox which grabbed my attention. It was the link to a film short which, although not intended as a film with an educational purpose, is one that I really want to write about. It’s called simply Mum and is written and produced by talented duo, James and Christopher Norton for Monkey Dribble Films.

At first it all seemed quite simple. The synopsis said it was about a mother and son relationship, about memories and road trips. But nothing quite prepared me for the expression of the deeper theme – the urge to cling to life and those we love; how to say goodbye and what to do when time has run out. The film lasts for just under seven minutes, but they are seven minutes packed with such thought provoking poignancy that I reckon this would be a very powerful film to use in the classroom.

It’s great strength lies in its understatement; I was almost half way through the film before I actually realised that it was a retrospective. Then the images and symbols suddenly made sense – I was being given a poignant glimpse into the suffering of someone who had just lost his Mum and she was clearly a very special person in his life.

There are all sorts of ways that this film could be used as part of a PSHE programme, for example on relationships, memories, special places or bereavement. Although the film itself doesn’t give any answers, Mum does remind her son to ‘love, cry, laugh, share, give’ after she has gone. So in one sense, it provides a positive framework for dealing with death, but it also poses plenty of questions to promote discussion about a topic which is often avoided in contemporary society.

But I think this film also has potential as a stimulus to creative writing. For example, what genre is suggested by the first 15 seconds of the soundtrack alone? And what is suggested by the first 15 seconds of sound and vision? How does this view change by watching the first 29 seconds? How is relationship portrayed by the use of camera close-ups on the faces of the actors? There’s no better way to get children writing in close descriptive detail than to ask them to think about the effect of camera close-ups on their perceptions.

Then move on to consider plot structure. What, for instance, is the effect of all the open, empty space around the son when he gets out of the car and starts walking? Contrast it with the much more enclosed shots of the scenes with his mother. How do the two settings portray contrasting emotion? How can the alternating time shifts be portrayed in a story (children, by the way, automatically understand where to paragraph if they think of a new paragraph as a camera cut)?

Think about setting. What is the special place of this film? How do special places contain meaning for us? How could this be used to create a story setting?

Think about language – how can less say more? How can emotion, which can be seen on screen, be represented in words? One particular aspect on which to focus (and which children usually miss) is sound - it can be useful to listen to the soundtrack without any visuals, particularly with the emptiness of the howling Dartmoor wind.

Whether you decide to use this film for a factual discussion or to stimulate story writing, it will be a powerful tool. And I hope that there are plenty more such films to come from the Norton brothers!

Apparently, writing is the new black.

Wikipedia defines this phrase as ’the sudden popularity or versatility of an idea at the expense of the popularity of a second idea’. Let’s start with the second idea. It goes something like this.

The younger generation (anyone under about 25, I guess) can no longer write intelligible English because their experience is so totally dominated by, like, Heat magazine and stuff. The muscles that they need for writing have atrophied to the point of becoming vestigial - in just one further generation we will have evolved nothing but opposable thumbs with which to text. Even the two fingers which we currently use to enter text on a keyboard will soon only be needed to perform the much simpler pinch-and-swipe action required of touchscreen technology.

Standards are falling, writing is fast becoming a cultural artefact, nobody can understand what young people mean any more and we’re all doomed to a dystopian future of cauterised communication via Twitter and text.

Not so, argues Mark Forsyth in his new book The Horologican: A Day’s Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language. His argument? That ‘far from destroying literacy, the social media have given writing a new importance’. His evidence? OkCupid, one of the largest online dating agencies, conducted a survey in which they found that mis-spellings affected your chance of success more than any other factor. U instead of you was a significant point against you and (imagine this) omitting the comma from can’t is now one of the worst writing sins you can commit.

Second idea – people today have no idea when to use an apostrophe of omission. New idea (the new black) – failing to use an apostrophe correctly socially stigmatises you, even to the point of affecting your life outcome (well, in romance anyway). Forsyth goes on to point out that for every person who writes your in a YouTube comment, there will be a grammar Nazi correcting it to you’re. We are living, he thinks, in the golden age of the written word.

But there is evidence beyond a mere online dating site. Take a look at what is happening at Heathfield Primary School in Bolton, where blogging has opened the floodgates of writing engagement – the new black in writing which is spreading rapidly, in no small part due to the work of David Mitchell (school deputy head, not comedian).

People everywhere, including young children, are writing. That can only be a good thing, can’t it? Well, maybe that depends on perspective. Alexei Sayle thinks not – commenting on the Twitterati he observed that, ‘There is this idea that the public always has something relevant to say. The fact is, they don’t: they’re just full of incoherent rage.’ (At risk of being labelled a grammar Nazi I feel I must point out that public is a singular noun so in the cause of agreement the following sentence should read, The fact is, it doesn’t.)

Content and grammar apart, news of the death of writing is, it seems, greatly exaggerated -  and of that, I’m sure Mark Twain would approve.

Apparently, the need to punctuate accurately is no longer just an issue for teachers – the Evironment Secretary Owen Paterson weighed in to the fray recently, seemingly discerning that officials in his department need further education in basic punctuation.

Did you understand that opening sentence? Because if you did, it goes a long way to proving the point which I am going to make, viz. that punctuation and sentence structure exist to serve meaning, not the other way round. This may not, however, be the case at DEFRA following the appointment of their new ‘Minister for Semicolons’.

Their new 10 point list of Punctuation Rules contains information which, in fairness to teachers throughout the country, should be made fully available to Michael Gove so that SPAG can be revised before it’s too late. For example, the guide allegedly states, ‘the simpler, the better’ and ‘all sentences should be as short as possible’. So, teachers, out with complex sentences, embedded and subordinate clauses and in with simple sentence structure. Oh, hang on. It also says that ‘and’ and ‘but’ should only be used once in each sentence. So compound sentences are OK, then. Just a point of clarification needed – is that ‘and’ and ‘but’ once each in a sentence or either ‘and’ or ‘but’ can be used once in each sentence, but not both. Sorry to be pedantic, but one does need to get it right.

Next, avoid brackets at all times (whew, one less piece of advanced punctuation to remind Year 6 about next term)  and the use of dashes – in the cause of simplification – should be limited. Less to teach for the SPAG test next summer then. Simple sentences and only one conjunction per sentence. Well, honestly, who would use two conjunctions in one sentence?

But I do have to admit to a significant misunderstanding over the following rule which states, ‘Try to maximise the use of semicolons to link related clauses; there should be a verb either side of the semicolon’. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I think ‘clauses’ is the plural of a common noun rather than a verb. I puzzled over this one for a while, as there is clearly not a verb either side of the semicolon. Then, of course, I realised that what this rule actually means is that there should be a verb contained within each clause on either side of the semicolon. But who writes verbless main clauses anyway? Well, OK, admittedly inexperienced writers do while they’re learning, but they would hardly be working at DEFRA, now would they?

And then there’s the beloved Oxford, or serial comma, which is apparently a source of much irritation to said Minister. And perhaps more than anything else (I don’t think he included the rule about starting a sentence with a preposition so it’s just the brackets that are wrong in this sentence) that highlights why punctuation needs to be responsive to meaning. Take the following example: I was introduced to a strange man in a tatty coat with a white beard and an elegant lady. The elegant lady is clearly accompanying the strange man. But insert a serial comma and the meaning changes completely:  I was introduced to a strange man in a tatty coat with a white beard, and an elegant lady. In other words, I am introduced to two, probably disconnected, people.

Ergo, pedants, punctuation serves meaning. That is all.

A few days ago, I received an email from a US developer, whose apps I love to review. During the exchanges, he asked about the use of apps in UK education as part of his thinking about future marketing strategies. One of his comments really shocked me – the UK has one of the poorest take-up rates of his apps of any country worldwide.

This started me thinking – the apps in question are universally applicable and would form a really valuable part of any Early Years curriculum. They are entertaining, full of activity and extremely well designed, making full use of the available technology to create a rigorous learning opportunity which is also great fun. So why isn’t the UK buying into this opportunity at the same rate as other countries?

Is it the cost factor? It’s certainly true that iPads are an expensive resource at a time of tight budgets – we all need to balance expenditure requests against learning outcomes very carefully. But there are cheaper android alternatives for which many apps are increasingly being marketed and it is not necessary to equip each child in the class with a device in order to use it effectively. 2 devices are a good place to start, using apps for individual or paired work – in the early days of BBC microcomputers, there was only one computer per class (or less); children learnt to wait their turn and teachers organised carousels of activities which included computer use.

Is it the prescriptive curriculum emanating from central government? Maybe so – it’s certainly the case with phonics. Although school leaders are supposed to possess freedom of choice in how the journey is made, negotiated discounts on (government) favoured resources make its a no-brainer decision in the current economic climate. Except, of course, there are always ways around prescriptive edicts, with a little creative thought . . .

Is it to do with ICT policies? That is certainly part of the problem. Let me illustrate with an example from my own classroom. I planned to use pictures of Greek vases for an Art/English/History project. I found the links I wanted to British Museum images, saved them on the VLE and went home. The next day, each link carried a little message telling me that the link had been blocked because it contained an indecent image. My project was wrecked and I was reduced to saving images on a flashstick and uploading them individually to the VLE – time consuming and annoying. This isn’t an isolated example – I know plenty of colleagues who have circumvented blocking by using dongles at their own expense. (For any reader outside of the UK, blocking is a full time occupation in some schools. For some of us, all social networking sites are blocked, including those like Twitter with immense learning potential). With this blinkered view of ICT, what hope is there for the use of mobile technology?

Or is it the view of teachers themselves that’s the problem? I’ve written before about technology being viewed as the province of the school technogeek, with everyone else quietly creeping around them in the staffroom hoping not to get drawn into conversation. How many teachers rely on their pupils to show them how to use technology rather than learning to use it themselves? Based on my experiences in trying to encourage VLE usage, a lot. That is selling pupils short – get with the programme, as they say.

And what of the role of parents? iPhones are commonplace, but there seems to be limited interest in using the facility as a learning tool for children. Why? The cost of an app is usually considerably less than a DVD, yet iPhones are more often used for gaming or internet access.

Good quality digital learning resources provide an opportunity that cannot be found in any other medium. Letting the opportunity go is to deprive children of an immersive, multimodal experience that motivates and enthuses. Whatever the reason for poor take up of apps in this country, it’s time, UK, to wake up and smell the coffee.

A few weeks ago, apparently exasperated with me, a friend asked if I was ever going to stop asking questions. I think what she meant to ask was whether I was ever going to grow out of it, which she clearly felt, by my age, I should have done. In fact, I’m getting worse. Why? Because in the digital age, the answers are always satisfyingly to hand.

Last night, I wanted to watch CSI. But I also wanted to know if Michael Phelps (the embodiment of Olympic values) was going to win his 15th gold medal and become the most decorated Olympian of all time. So I watched both simultaneously, one on the TV and one on my iPad. And that set me thinking . . . .

When my family is all together, we have between us 5 tablet devices. My children and their spouses also have smartphones (because of my age and lifestyle, I favour a geriatric single-function device which just does phone calls and the occasional text message when my opposable thumbs are co-operating) and when we’re together, the devices are never far from their owners. And I guess that their owners are all as curious (or nosy, depending on perspective) as I am, because when we are talking or watching TV, one or other of us is sure to be looking something up online whilst also joining in with the conversation. It doesn’t matter what our interest – political, social, economic, media, gossip, it’s all there.

So, do these instant answers to my questions make me more knowledgeable? In some cases, maybe. For example, I’m known in my family as something of a grammatical purist (yes, I’m right there with Morse every time he intones ‘With whom, Lewis’). The other day my son generously pointed out the solecism in one of my blogs in which I started a sentence with ‘and’. And because I’ve committed the same sin both here and in the previous paragraph, I checked it out on my digital device. And apparently it’s fine these days in informal writing. So that is a useful piece of information, as is knowing when, in a wet summer, to harvest the garlic crop and why the tomatoes are late. Whether it’s so important to know that Joe Swift is A S Byatt’s nephew is doubtful (but interesting).

Is it changing the way we use information? Well, in my case, I think so.Samuel Johnson said that the next best thing to knowing something was knowing where to find it and having access to digital information 24/7 definitely lets you find it, whatever you want to know. I also find it useful having reached that age when names elude me with infuriating regularity. And that, of course, provokes even more questions.

So will I stop asking questions any time soon? I’m afraid not. In fact, as digital technology develops, I’ll probably ask more. The day might even come when my device can read the question in my mind without my needing to type it. Imagine that!

There has been occasional online discussion about the quality of app reviews and the need to curate review sites. The issue popped up again over the weekend, so I thought I would add to the discussion.

Reviews of apps, as with print books, offer a useful facility to consumers, but there are good and bad review sites. I have read reviews which have lauded apps which contain spelling mistakes, poor translations and an abundance of punctuation errors. I have seen apps praised to the skies as educational that I would define as nothing more than lightweight entertainment. But is site curation the answer to the problem?

If the industry (or one vociferous part of its consumer group) goes down this route, who is to review the reviewers? What will the criteria be and who will define them? How will the value judgments of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ be made? Will sites be categorised – i.e. for parents, for teachers, for general consumption? And who will make the judgements – just because a person has an opinion about a review, it doesn’t make them right. It just makes them a person with an opinion.

In my case, I review apps and print books free of charge through a mixture of altruism and curiosity. My opinion is informed – as well as being a Leading English teacher for my Local Authority, I am a past winner of the UKLA John Downing Award for creative and innovative teaching of English and I was a school Deputy Head (Vice Principal) before becoming a writer. That, I think, qualifies me to comment on content and educational value. What it does not do is give me either the right or the ability to decide what other people should be allowed to read.

What worries me about curating review sites is that someone, somewhere is making a decision about what people in a free society are allowed to read and trying to control what other people in that society write. Why not let the market decide? If I dislike a particular book reviewer in a newspaper, I stop reading that reviewer. In extremis, I might even stop purchasing the paper. I, like everyone else, have personal tastes in reading, music, film, etc. I am quite capable of balancing other people’s views against my own. Why is this not also true of app reviews?

Apps are, of course, unique in that promocodes facilitate quick and easy reviews. Well ,the answer here lies with developers – only send out promocodes to the reviewers whom you feel do a good job. And if someone writes a review after purchasing the app, then they are perfectly entitled to express an opinion about a product which they spent their own money on.

Another argument posed by the curation lobby is the need to know what the educational content is of the apps which children are reading. As a teacher, my content was defined by a curriculum which was determined either by central government or school management. My training and experience as a teacher taught me good resources from bad, whether an app, a book or a CD-ROM. I had no need of outside curation.

Whilst I understand the instinct of caring parents to know what their children are reading and learning, I do find the desire to control this concerning. Assuming that it is poor quality rather than harmful content at issue, does it matter if a child occasionally reads or sees rubbish? Attempting to control apps by controlling the reviewers is, I think, several steps too far down the road of control.

I choose not to get involved in giveaways and competitions because that could turn my site into something which I don’t want it to be. It’s free, very selective and it’s only my opinion. Judging by the number of review requests and freebie offers I receive, I guess its an opinion that developers value. But the day someone decides to categorise me and make a  judgement (good or bad) on what I write  is the day I stop reviewing.

A new post by Nosy Crow, Writing Children’s Apps,  at the weekend, followed by various tweets on the issue of digital literacy have prompted me to write another blog about apps, ebooks and all things related. I find it interesting how frequently the phrase ‘digital literacy’ is used without really defining what the term means. Does it mean reading books on an e-device? Or does it mean interacting with something which uses technology to create a total experience?

Epicturebooks, which are produced in vast quantities and classify as interactive through the use of minimal animation, are not part of my consideration. There is a place for ebooks of this kind and the pros and cons of e- versus print book reading are well rehearsed elsewhere. Some epicturebook apps are outstanding and  some work better as ebooks than they did in print, but just because it’s digital it doesn’t make it good, as some would have readers believe.

For many years in the classroom I explored ways of developing creative writing skills through the use of multimodal experience. But I met a problem – our system places such a high value on the written word alone as a benchmark of literacy that parents and some colleagues began to complain. Picture books were for children who were learning to read and the pictures should be phased out as reading fluency increased. Some even saw it as playing to image-dominated children for a quick fix.

I ran workshops on visual literacy and the importance of learning to read image using the best available examples of complex picture books. I created multimodal learning experiences as often as I could, but with limited success in a world where mastering the printed word as young as possible was the objective to which all teaching should be directed. Eventually, I had pupils in my class refusing to do ‘baby’ work of producing films, digital books and ‘things with pictures.’ They wanted proper work and books with lots of words. They had lost (or had educated out of them) the ability to communicate in a range of modes.

So imagine my excitement when apps first appeared on the market. Here was a facility which balanced word, sound, music and image in equal proportion. This was genuine ditigal literacy and genuine multimodality, not confined to the narrow definition of literacy as the written word. Sadly, in the last couple of years, it has become apparent that the number of developers who really understand the power of the medium are limited. Too many developers either approach it with a print book mindset, or merely use it for lightweight edutainment.

As Nosy Crow points out, a really good app is written by a team. The idea of the writer working alone in a garret room has no part in digital authorship because the words person is not the most important player in the team; words are only one of the ingredients in the mix. Instead of being the sole purveyor of meaning, words become just one of the modes in use. I write as someone who thinks in, and works with, words. Because of that predominance, I couldn’t create a good digital learning experience, because my visual skills are poor and my coding skills nonexistent. But I do know a good digital learning experience when I see one.

Am I arguing for the end of the written word? No, of course not. But when multimodal learning works well, it is a powerful experience which will enhance word based literacy skills, not destroy them. There is plenty of room for both. One of the questions which I will have to wait 15 years or so to answer is the effect of apps on the reading choices and habits of future generations. Will reading, for them, be a richer experience as, influenced by the multimodality of their early learning,their imaginations visualise and hear what they read?

Before you read any further, you need to be aware that I know that what I have written below is controversial and will, I am sure, provoke plenty of comment. But it needs saying . . .

For several months now I have been watching the use of social media in education. This started when I was writing about the effect of blogging on learning motivation for my next book, Praise, Motivation and the Child. I have watched quadblogging mushroom, I have considered pupil comments and spent a lot of time thinking about the impact of blogging and the need for empirical evidence before impact can be effectively evaluated.

But in the course of pondering the good, I have also read a lot which is really bad. Firstly are the teachers who publicly criticise or even trash their school’s management team. Of course people need to let off steam, but the place to do that is in the privacy of the staff room, not on Twitter. And if your annoyance goes deeper or lingers, you should make an appointment with a member of the said management team and discuss it – behind closed doors, not on Twitter. I’m no longer involved in staff appointments, but if I were, I would be checking applicants’ social media posts before the shortlisting meeting. I wouldn’t want anyone so demonstrably lacking in professional respect on my staff.

But what has really distressed me are some of the comments attached to children’s blogged work. These have included words such as ‘one of our challenging pupils’ ‘special needs’, ‘tries really hard’, ‘one of our lowest achievers until recently’. Your intention might be good, but just think about what you are doing. You are labelling a child who can be identified. Medieval branding on a global scale. Self-fulfilling prophecies now available on social media. The dunce’s hat goes viral.

What right do you have to attach labels to children? What effect will it have on the child’s self-view to see a label on display? How will it affect their social lives? I once read an article written by an adult who had been badly bullied at school. He blamed his teachers for turning him into a target by labelling him ‘difficult’. He was probably right.

Just in case you are feeling defensive and to reinforce my point, here are a few comments that I could have made about staff that I have worked with over the years. How would you feel if it was about you?

‘Here’s the marking that Mrs T did yesterday. She does finally seem to be grasping the concept of feedback marking. We have worked so hard with her. Do encourage her – she really is trying.’

‘I just want to share these reports written by Mr D. He’s one of my SEN staff so the spelling and sentence structure are still emergent. His maths is improving, too. He’s doing so much better – he used to be one of our weakest teachers. Do leave him a comment – your support would mean so much to him.’

‘Here’s a lovely photo of Mrs W caught being good today – I managed to capture her controlling her class. So encouraging. Class 6 might even be ready to start learning soon if this continues.’

‘Take a look at these notes that Mr X completed for our meeting – he agreed to share them. He is one of my more challenging staff so it’s really pleasing to see that he stayed on task and finished his work.’

Offensive? Lacking respect? Patronising? Humiliating? All of the above.

So be careful what you write - the child you label so thoughtlessly might carry your label for life.