Search Smarter

If you ever hear 'boolean operators' mentioned in a sentence, you could be forgiven for giving this whole rigamarole an eye roll and moving on—which I must confess I used to do, but DON'T, if you ignore these fabulous little functions you are missing out; you don't need to use all or even most of them, but you won't go wrong with these...

Just remember when using an operator, this is not an essay, so NO SPACE after the colon or it won't work! 

Six Scintillating Search Strings

So yes, most 'boolean operators' are extremely geeky and only really relevant to highly specialised search gurus, but there are a handful that are useful to anyone, yes that includes you, if you can use Google you can use these; they are:

define: 

Get a dictionary definition not just a webpage with the word in 

“search term here” 

Use quotes to search for a specific term or phrase with exactly those words in exactly that order eg “halt and catch fire“

site: 

eg site:ie to just return websites that are based in Ireland, especially useful for research where you want the perspective of people of a certain nation not just the most popular websites on the Internet. 

intitle: 

eg intitle:gaming will only give you websites where gaming is in the title of the page not just a possibly fleeting reference within an article that is primarily about something else completely different. 

NOT or - to exclude a particular term that keeps messing up your search results, eg maybe you’re searching for Koala, but you keep on getting websites that include the phrase “koala bear“ which you know means that they can’t be particularly authoritative, then you just add the search term -bear now any of the results that included the term “bear” will be excluded, refining your search down to a much better selection of sites. 

Search for transparent images for your Google Slides 

Search for images with other images… 

Mix & Match! 

And of course don’t forget your combos, any/all of the above can be combined to extremely powerful effect, eg

intitle:”halt and catch fire” site:ie  

This will return websites that are based in Ireland that are all almost certainly about the TV show ‘halt and catch fire’ ... 

Internet Filtering & Parental Controls

I am regularly contacted by parents for advice about software they can install on the devices their children use at home that will enable them to filter out or block inappropriate content, usually based on the assumption that we must use some sort of monitoring software on campus. Often these parents are surprised to discover that while we do have filters to block the most egregious of content, it is fair to say that our college filters are not as strict as many might expect. We do use a commercial filter on our internet traffic to block inappropriate sites, however, such filters work on the basis of keywords and blacklists and neither of these methods are foolproof. So why do we take the risk?

Our college policy regarding parental controls goes a long way to explaining this:

In general the College has an ethos of developing personal responsibility in students and ultimately we believe that it is essential for students to develop the skills and attitudes necessary to survive and then thrive in a digitally connected world.

The sentiment behind this policy statement is very similar to the description of 'e-safety' as defined by Becta:

The term e-safety covers a broad range of issues around the need to ensure that children's and young people's experience and engagement with technologies is a safe and positive one. While parents, educators, government and industry all have a role to play in keeping children and young people safe, supporting them to become independent in online environments is critical to nationwide, effective e-safety. ‘Independence' does not mean here that they are expected to deal with every incident themselves: it means that they develop social skills (including resilience); that they know how to identify and manage risk; that they understand their rights and responsibilities and know how to access help and advice if needed. (Becta's Contribution to the Rose Review, 2009)

When we teach our kids how to use the internet, we do so from a position of preparing them for the 'real world' of internet access that most will encounter at home. While there are a minority of families who use some form of filtering software, the reality is that few families have internet filters of any kind on their home connections. This is not a criticism, I have not installed any filtering software at home either. This situation reflects the norm in my experience, a norm that we need to be teaching our students to operate effectively and responsibly within.  For example, you cannot guarantee that even walking down Orchard Road you are not going to see images or overhear a conversation that you feel is inappropriate for your children. So in addition to the filters, arguably, more important than filters is the need to teach our children the skills they need to navigate the internet safely, and how to react appropriately if, or should I say, when something occurs.

This policy very much underpins our approach and throughout the Primary School, where, even from K2 (in K1 teachers use Guided Access), all students are effectively 'administrators' of their devices. This applies all the way through the iPad grades (K1-G3), and then on through from Grade 4-5. All students receive their own laptop in G6, where we leave the decision about admin controls up to parents, although we encourage parents to make their child admin if at all possible—or at least to try it. From G7—all the way through to grade 12 we expect all students to have admin rights on their laptop. This means that for most of their school years our students are already accustomed to using and managing their laptops as an 'administrator' whether or not they were even aware of this, which is possible, as we treat this as a 'normal' operating environment. This is an arrangement we encourage all parents to maintain, unless of course a situation arises where you feel that you need to withdraw the privilege of an admin account, in this (hopefully rare) situation, we encourage parents to ensure that this is a temporary arrangement.

"Nearly half of 10 year olds say they have the skills to hide what they're doing online from their parents." (Sky News, Swipe, 2017)

It's worth noting as a practical point, that the process of imposing parental controls is not a simple one, this is mainly because the process of setting the 'tightness' and 'looseness' of controls is a tricky balance to find. If your main concern is distraction rather than access to inappropriate content, there are a range of strategies we encourage at school that you can also model at home, and encourage your children to practise as well. The other critical consideration is that if you are not very careful, you could end up effectively creating an unhelpful dynamic where you effectively teach your child that they are not trusted, at which point you may well be encouraging them to find ways to subvert your attempts at policing their online activity, then when they do encounter problems they are unlikely to come to you for help as they will have to confess their nefarious scheme... For more see this short video on the 'the secret cyber life of young people'...

Road Safe, Web Safe

This is where the analogy of road safety that we use with students comes in. Roads in every country are commonplace, and at some point everyone of our children will need to learn how to navigate them safely and independently. The same can be said of the 'wild wild web'; like roads they are a modern and essential reality, and while they can be dangerous, they shouldn't be treated is if they are inherently dangerous places—although they can be very dangerous places. The solution to both is very similar: education and supervision. Like roads, we expect kids to be able to navigate the web from an early age, but never alone; although any wise parent should be modelling for their kids how they navigate the web, when they are using it together. Just like road safety, there are some basic rules we expect all young children to follow, to make these effective we've kept them simple:

1. Only search the internet with a responsible adult present.
2. If you see something that makes you uncomfortable, show the responsible adult.
3. If you need to search online unsupervised, use a search engine designed for kids like Kiddle or Safe Search Kids.

About point 3, we liken these 'child safe' search engines to playgrounds, spaces that are designed especially for children, this doesn't make them harmless, after all, kids in playgrounds can still get hurt, but it does make the likelihood of this less likely. In the same way we liken searching using Google as tantamount to walking down Orchard Road, not an inherently dangerous space per se, especially in Singapore; but clearly the possibility of encountering something or someone inappropriate is more likely. As children we did not grow up with the dangers of the internet, but we did grow up with dangers, and our parents, in my experience were quite comfortable with allowing us some controlled exposure to risk situations, precisely so we could learn from them. I fell out of several trees, and off several bicycles during my childhood, not to mention the stairs I fell down. Stairs, now those are really dangerous, but I doubt anyone is seriously considering preventing children from using those... So we're not looking to create a zero risk environment for our students, but a managed risk environment, this distinction is essential. This last point is one I've written about before, but a recent article from the Washington Post, entitled, 'Why I don't monitor my kids' texts anymore' does an excellent job of articulating this tension, along with some practical parenting advice.

"As a young and socially inexperienced person, I was sometimes mean, sometimes gross, and sometimes way out of line. Every kid tests his or her own boundaries. That’s how they start to grow up. The queasiness in my stomach or the ache in my heart when I crossed that line is what helped me learn from those mistakes. 

When we hover over our kids’ social interactions, on high alert to catch each mistake and steer them back on course, we squelch their internal barometer for embarrassment and guilt. Had my mom listened to all my conversations and called my behavior out into the light, I might not have learned to read my moral compass."

This does beg the question, "at what age is it okay for my child to browse the internet unsupervised?', and the answer is very similar to "at what age is it okay for my child to cross the road unsupervised?", which is, when you have taught them how to navigate it safely, and what to do if things go wrong. In my experience this is unlikely to be until grade 4 or 5, which is, incidentally, when students are allowed to make their own way home (with parental permission, of course).

Not all families or children are the same, and the home environment is not one that is necessarily conducive to ensuring that young children are never able to go online unsupervised. Given that our policy is to teach responsibility, we'd like to think that even if unsupervised, our students would still make the 'right choice' and either stay offline (working within an app for example) or use one of the child safe search engines that they are encouraged to use in school.  However there are clearly scenarios where this is not a realistic option, in which case you may want to consider some digital tools that can assist with this, but bear in mind these are unlikely to be free if they're any good, for example a one year family subscription to Azoomee costs £40, " No ads, no in-app purchases. And a PIN lock to keep kids inside the app and take away the worries."

As of iOS 12, all iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) now have built in options for parents to monitor/restrict screen time.

When you open Screen Time for the first time, you can specify if you are a parent setting up an account for a child. Then you set a parent passcode that will be required to alter the Screen Time settings. From your device, you can also select “Set Up Screen Time for Family” to set up Screen Time with Family Sharing. You’ll be able to access your child’s Screen Time reports and set controls from your own device. When a child reaches the end of a time limit on the app, they can request more time; the request pops up as a notification on the parent’s device. 

Finally, Screen Time allows parents to set restrictions on downloads, privacy, and other settings. By default, Apple won't set these restrictions, even if it knows it's a kid's phone. Parents will have to manually make these adjustments in Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions. (Wired Magazine) 

This article contains some very practical advice, over and above the 'unplug the router' (one I have to say I like; simple but effective!) strategy, along with some wise caveats,

"While we can certainly recommend a bunch of apps and devices for you, this is more about your approach than the tools you’re going to use. Kids generally don’t like being spied on and dislike being spied on without their knowledge even more. While a number of monitoring tools can run without children knowing about them, we strongly recommend being transparent with your kids about when and how you’re tracking them. 

You know your kids better than we do, and we can’t prescribe the right approach for every type of child, but whatever your situation it pays to be open and honest about the dangers out there on the web and in the real world."  (David Nield)

To Skill or not to Skill?

Teaching ICT skills ...

Pickering (2007), found that a focus on skills and fixed knowledge to be acquired was criticised by the teachers in his study, although Daly et al (2009), citing his findings, conceded that:

“Clearly, ICT use demands that teachers acquire certain generic skills (p 27).” 

Understandably, there is a general hesitancy* by tech integrators to embrace ICT skills teaching, as it tends towards,

“superficial, one-off and ‘box-ticking’ approaches which emphasise the development of functional skills and relegate pedagogical development to teachers’ ‘spare’ time (Daly et al, 2009, p 41).” 

Now, somewhat ironically, the situation seems to be becoming reversed – with the emphasis very much upon the development of pedagogical skills and the relegation of ‘functional development’ (skills) to teachers’ ‘spare’ time.

So teachers are now effectively expected to acquire skills,

“by studying manuals, talking to each other, talking to the instructor, and seeking out other locally available experts” (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p 1038). 

The problem is this ‘grappling experience’ (ibid) or ‘productive failure’ (Kapur & Bielaczyc, 2012), while a powerful way to learn, if not managed carefully, can become a tedious, frustrating process. "Good pedagogy should challenge not frustrate" (ibid) but it is difficult to judge when it is better to let people ‘wrestle’ or to mitigate the potential tediousness of a long process of discovery, by providing a ‘short cut’. The challenge of managing this ‘zone of proximal development’ (Vygotsky, 1987) is significant, the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by their need to engage in independent problem solving (trouble shooting) and the point at which they know they cannot proceed any further without ‘expert’ guidance, or collaboration with more capable peers, a 'knowledgeable other' (ibid) – or even, or perhaps more likely, students.

Frustration is common with digital technologies,

“any given technology is not necessarily appropriate” (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p 1040). 

The plethora of software available to do even the most basic of tasks, means that even choosing an inappropriate tool can turn a task from a challenge to a crisis, like attempting to using Photoshop for image cropping, which is tantamount to using a Ferrari to deliver milk. What is likely to occur, is a situation where,

“teachers were so caught up in learning how to use the tools that they lost sight of the design tasks.” (Angeli and Valanides 2008, p 10). 

The “cognitive load” (ibid, p 9) imposed by learning how to use the tools was so high, that teachers were left without enough “cognitive resources” to attend to the actual exercise.

Although skills training is clearly vital to being able to integrate technology into teachers’ practice, more often than not teachers are plagued by an unconscious incompetence - they ‘do not know, what they do not know’.  Despite the proliferation of literature expounding the virtues of an integrated model, mention is rarely made of any consideration of a prerequisite skill set, one of these rare examples follows:

“The model assumes the existence of ICT standards [...] At a basic level these would include: basic ICT literacy, such as familiarity with and confidence in using the Windows operating system, basic word processing, PowerPoint and data software such as Excel and SPSS, software installation, and knowledge of the Internet such as how to use the Internet for resource searching, downloading and uploading files, communication via emails, video calls or web cameras.” (Hu & McGrath, 2011, p 54)

Balance is clearly critical here – one where an articulated skill set is defined that can be acquired within an authentic, integrated context. How much teachers know about technology makes a big difference in their uses of technology. Once technology is truly integrated, teachers and beliefs and knowledge are changed as well (Fisher et al, 1996). New pedagogical knowledge and practices emerge from the integration of technology, but only when teachers reach a certain level of technological understanding.

Unfortunately with the pendulum swinging well and truly away from a skills focus, we are in danger of throwing out the proverbial baby with bathwater, an issue alluded to in the recent Nesta report,

“…the lack of emphasis upon [ICT] skills, is a concern (2012, p 55).” 

When considering what teachers should know about technology, we must consider how much they need to know to even be able to begin.

Skills mapping and audits

"A potential barrier to ICT CPD is staff not knowing what the gaps are in their own ICT knowledge. Many schools have found an ICT audit mapped to the curriculum a valuable tool in helping staff to gain a clear indication of the ICT skills, competencies and pedagogies they need to have." (Becta, 2009, Point 81)

In order to avoid the skills element having a negative impact on learning, at the end of a unit of study, or even the end of the academic year, the teachers ‘traffic light’ the ICT core skills matrix to identify which skills have, or have not, been acquired, in order to determine which skills may have need to be focused on explicitly in other authentic contexts in the future.

Example of a skills audit - post reflection

This is not a question of skills vs pedagogic integration. Teachers and students need to acquire ICT skills before they can start to harness technological expertise for the purposes of student learning. This re-purposing of the TPACK  (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) framework, ensures that the focus remains pedagogically centred, but balanced and facilitated by clearly articulated ICT core skills.


The continued reluctance to engage with this issue should be resisted, as Becta's contribution to the Rose Review (2009) emphasised,"[ICT skills] should be regarded as an essential skills for learning and life, alongside literacy and numeracy." (Point 91) With warnings regarding the possibilities of neglecting this vital area:

“… there are two significant dangers: the first is that young people will develop an incomplete and unreflective capability, unsupported by adult guidance, with risks both to their learning progress and their safety. The second is that a digital underclass, lacking opportunities for wide-ranging use of technology, will be permanently excluded from a world mediated by ICT." (Point 94)

NETS - are not enough.

While useful as overarching standards,  I do not believe NET Standards are enough on their own - they are too generic to be of practical use in ensuring a broad and balanced curriculum; they are descriptions of (any) curriculum, not applications of digital technologies. Remove the token references to ‘digital’ and ‘technology’ and you're left with a description of curriculum, but nothing which in and of itself actually requires the use of ICTs, or more importantly, that could not be achieved without the use of digital technologies at all. For example,

“Students leverage technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving and demonstrating competency in their learning goals...” 

(NETS(S) 2016, strikethrough mine).

To use the analogy of literary genres/strands (which I find helpful, but you could use science and mathematics strands just as easily) they need to be specific to the nature of the sphere of experience. Literacy genres are, NETS are not.

They need to be specific not generic. Yes you can argue that English literature is a 'subject' and ICT no longer is; this is just semantics. Who cares what we are defining them as now, we all know that just a few years ago 'IT' was a discrete subject, and it still is based on the definition of 'subject' it's just not 'discrete' anymore…

subject: a branch of (technological) knowledge studied or taught in a school, college, or university.

discrete: individually separate and distinct.

ICT is a 'subject' that is now integrated - and should be subject (see what I did there?) to the same rigorous checks and balances of any other 'subject'. The same argument can easily be made for English language, or Science, or Mathematics - these are core competencies that are applicable and a prerequisite for success in any domain in the 21st century. So call them what you like and distribute them how you will - but a broad and balanced education requires that the essential elements of these subjects are not neglected.

Vitamin D (VITAD)

Five Essential Domains: VITAD: video, image, text, audio, data - 'Vitamin D' 

Just like all subject domains, tech has its own overarching domains or strands that are an efficient way to organise the essential skill sets needed for true digital literacy.  We should not neglect opportunities to read and write, for example, realistic fiction, or physics or shape and space in Mathematics, I believe the same applies to what could be called the 'digital domains' or literacies of ICTs, such as, text, image, video, audio and data (with coding/control waiting in the wings) - none of which the NETS explicitly describe or mandate, thereby rendering them useless as a means to articulate the effective use of digital technologies.

Digital Illiteracy... 

An easy easy way to recall these essential areas is with the acronym 'VITAD', 'vitamin digital', now when you're considering whether not you can consider yourself, your students or any 21st century citizen to be truly digitally literate, how do they measure up to VITAD?

1. Can they view, edit, create, compose with video?
2. Can they organise, edit, resize, manipulate, incorporate image?
3. Can they browse/read/search text? Are they proficient at word processing, commenting, curating  texts?
4. Can the manage audio files, organise, edit, create, compose audio using multiple audio tracks/sound effects?
5. Do they know their way around a spreadsheet? Can they organise data efficiently, perform basic calculations, use functions and formulae, analyse, synthesise, and model data?

When, and only when you can confidently answer a confident yes to all the above, then, and only then can you call yourself digitally literate!

To put it another way - we're talking about students becoming holistically literate, that literacy has to incorporate 'multiliteracies' including language, scientific/methodological ways of thinking, mathematical literacy and of course digital literacy. ALL of these can be defined as 'subjects', all of these could also be (and arguably should/could be) taught in an integrated way. Just because we've chosen to integrate a subject, does not mean it should be treated less rigorously - integration should not mean invisibility - at least not for teachers. (I'd argue invisibility would be great from a student's perspective, but so would it be for maths and science et al - they don't see it as a 'subject' it's just another natural (for them) way of thinking and working)

What gets monitored gets done

An article published in the ASCD makes this point quite powerfully,

What do we monitor?

In most organisations, what gets monitored gets done. When a school devotes considerable time and effort to the continual assessment of a particular condition or outcome, it notifies all members that the condition or outcome is considered important. Conversely, inattention to monitoring a particular factor in a school indicates that it is less than essential, regardless of how often its importance is verbalised.

"In Sweden, young adults ages 16–24 topped the charts in an assessment of technology skills that was administered in 19 countries. Participants were asked to perform tasks at three levels of difficulty: to sort e-mails into folders, organize data into a spreadsheet, and manage reservations for a virtual meeting room. Fewer than one-third of U.S. young adults could complete tasks more complicated than sorting e-mails, a performance that put them at the bottom of the list of performers from the 19 countries. The study underscored the need for equality of access to technology because major discrepancies were noted among the results for young adults from varying socioeconomic backgrounds.”

(March 2014 | Volume 71 | Number 6, Using Assessments Thoughtfully [paywall], p8-9, ASCD)

The use is not equity or access, it is ignorance.  With the current neglect of skills teaching in schools, despite the proliferation of screens, less and less people are actually taught skills with any rigour or balance, a generation of students could find themselves proficient with Social media, web browsing, poster making and maybe image manipulation, and that will be it!

We have these mandatory strands in each of most (of not all) subject literacies that are carefully monitored because we expect all students to have multiple experiences with these domains during their time in school, ideally in each grade, scoped and sequenced properly. I can't see how a student could be considered to be mathematically literate if, say, they had never been taught how to multiply, or in science, never experimented with forces, or in literacy, never read or written poetry, or in terms of digital literacy, never learned how to edit or use video. None of the strands in these subjects are left to chance, or to ad hoc integration. We carefully design authentic ways to ensure they are all experienced, all I'm arguing for is that we do not allow exceptions, especially not for one of the core competencies of the 21st century.

Put simply, if we believe that articulating a coherent scope and sequence of essential skills in the domains of language and mathematics are necessary, then how much more so in what is arguably THE prerequisite skill set of the 21st Century? 

For a Google Doc version of our Primary School ICT skills scope and sequence matrix that you can copy, click here, but please include acknowledgement of UWCSEA as the original owner if you do :)

An example of a section of our skills matrix

Here are some other great examples of ICT skills matrices that run K-12:

Common Core State Standards K‐12 Technology Skills Scope and Sequence

TASIS Technology Skills Scope & Sequence



*Another reason for a 'general hesitancy' is the acceptance of the myth that technology skills are changing to quickly to bother with, fueled in large part by fundamentally flawed quotes like this:

...the rapid rate of technological change ensures any knowledge gained about specific technologies or software programs would quite quickly become out of date. (Mishra et al, 2009, p 151). 

The subject of the myth of change in the domain of digital technology skills, see my other post, Keeping Pace with Technological Change - Futile, or Fundamental?

[Originally posted in 2013, updated in 2018. Changes to the matrix in the interim? Very few, which just goes to show, skills don't change that much or that quickly, people do.]

Spreadsheets Made Simple on an iPad

As part of our commitment to ensuring a broad and balanced range of ICT skills that facilitate true digital literacy, we introducing our children and their teachers to the wonderful world of spreadsheets on iPad using Google Sheets in Grade 3!

For some this may seems a little excessive, but that's because they probably suffer from a little known condition known as 'spreadsheetitus'—where individuals have an irrational reluctance to use a powerful digital tool for no other reason than they were never introduced to it when they were their age. But fear not, spreadsheets are easier to use than you might think...

Spreadsheets are wondertools, the calculators of the 21st Century, and like calculators they can do incredibly complex mathematics, or, as in this example very simple mathematics indeed.

Our approach to ensuring ICT skills are not neglected, while still using and learning these skills in an authentic, integrated learning environment is to look for opportunities within the curriculum to utilise tools where it makes sense. Finding an opportunity to integrate spreadsheets isn't too difficult. In this case our Grade 3 track their use of water over the course of a week, and use that guided enquiry as a basis for maths work, cue spreadsheets!

This example introduces the app and shows how to calculate the total of a column of figures using a Function (SUM) and how to perform a custom calculation (ie multiplying 2 numbers) by creating a Formula, which is really as simple as, "take whatever is in that cell, multiply it by whatever is in that cell, and put the answer here..."

Make a Graph/Chart

This is as simple as 'select to affect', but it doesn't work if you just select everything, you need to only select the data you need to use. The video below demonstrates how this works....