And Twitter. And Flickr...

I'm often asked how one goes about changing culture to the point where draconian rules on filtering social networking sites might be lifted for use in the classroom or even in the office space. The ever-innovative New South Wales have just legislated to allow teachers to access social networking sites, through a mix of consultation and bottom-up involvement, and top-down legislation to make those discussions effective.

Involving community and professional groups as well as experts in learning and technology is a vital part of making guidelines that stand the test of time. This is the same approach we adopted with vigour six years ago in East Lothian when we kicked off the wiki-based consultation on our own social media guidelines.

The benefits are clear:

"A Department of Education spokeswoman said the change would help improve communication between schools and their communities.

"It would also give staff a ''greater understanding of technology being used by students''.

"A spokesman for the Minister for Education, Adrian Piccoli, said the change would also help teachers combat cyber bullying.
...

"With careful use, social media should be embraced as ''part of the 21st century and something students and teachers need to be aware of'''.

These days technology is often the last thing I'd recommend schools bother with when trying to engage students. There's plenty else we can invest time in before technology will achieve even a fraction of what it can in an engaged school. And now a set of action research reports in the UK is showing the path many schools might wish to take.

I'm working with several primary (elementary) and secondary (high) schools at the moment in England, Australia and the States. All of them face the same daily and long-term strategic challenge: students have never been so disengaged. Many have seen technology as a principal hook to reverse this disengagement, which is why they get in touch with us, but quickly on my initial visits to schools I'm keen to point out the other steps that we need to get through before technology will add what it could do. Otherwise, I'm just a tools salesman, selling tools that the owners don't know how to harness.

The journey is a complex one, and one that, in my opinion for what it's worth, most of the 'big' eduction commentators in North America still fail to recognise. I've complained numerous times before about the fetichisation of 'tools' and 'edtech' by those who work with and in schools where other elements of the teaching and learning process clearly deserve fetichisation first.

What are these elements?

A unique and undervalued research project based in the UK, with partners in the US (including High Tech High), is discovering, analysing and sharing those elements through its regular pamphlets, blog and, above all, grounded practice across nearly 50 schools.

It's our job to help scale this ambition to other schools around the world.

Learning Futures' The Engaging School: principles and practices has some choice quotes amongst the practical steps school leaders might take to begin turning this apparent tide of disengagement. Here are my favourites:

The irony, for commentators like Alfie Kohn, is that invariably, “when interest appears, achievement usually follows” (2000, p. 128).
…
It is almost as though we have accepted the inevitability of learning as a cold shower: you’re not expected to enjoy it, but it will do you good.
...
We have recently seen a large number of students becoming disengaged achievers, performing well academically, keeping out of trouble, but rejecting further and higher education.
…
A second problem with the traditional model of engagement stems from its predominantly instrumental applications: engagement as a vehicle to improve student performance or discipline within school. Inevitably, such a mindset constrains success indicators within a compliance model. Students are deemed to be engaged, for example, when/if they:
    •    attend regularly
    •    conform to behavioural norms
    •    complete work in the manner requested and on time
    •    are ‘on-task’
    •    respond to questioning
If we have greater aspirations for students—beyond compliance and toward a commitment to lifelong learning—then the conventional concept of engagement is inadequate.
...
While project-based learning and activities that go beyond school can be liberating for staff and students, it is important that activities incorporate a sense of bounded freedom—that students are given a clear set of guidelines, procedures or protocols within which they can make choices. As one Year 9 student put it: “I’d like to have a little bit more of a say, but...I think you need the teacher there to sort of guide you.”
…
Students are absorbed in their activity: anyone witnessing a young person playing, say, on-line role playing games will know what this looks like. It is rare, however, to see such depth of absorption in school-based work. Munns and colleagues (2006) at the University of Western Sydney (2006) have quantified the difference as being in-task, not just on-task. Other indicators of high absorption would be students wishing to continue beyond the end of a lesson, or not even noticing the lesson had ended—what Csikszentmihalyi (1990) has described as being in ‘‘flow’’.

Picture of engaged gamer from Mr Toledano.

Twelve years after graduating in European Union Studies I finally made it to Brussels this week, as one of the EU Commission Vice President's "Digital Angels", advising on how she and her senior staff can help create a Europe of equal digital opportunity.

Across 27 member states, encompassing nearly 600m people, this is no small order. The debate rolled on for a whole day, with Vice President Neelie Kroes, who is also Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, staying with us and pushing us the entire morning, before her senior advisors dived into more detail with us in the afternoon.

I've described some of the outcomes of the day over on the company site. However, my most passionate interventions were, of course, around the role of education in providing the basis for

• basic internet skills and a positive understanding and attitude towards privacy, public life and security;
• the vital role of education in fostering a sense of curiosity amongst youngsters - and the adults who deal with them;
• the need for increased professional development in how we move from an industrial revolution era of understanding about information, learning and organisation, to a 21st century understanding of flexibility, learning how not what;
• the need to communicate with citizens in a language and in a (digital) space that they already inhabit, drawing on some of the phenomenal online success we've seen with the Scottish National Party's digital campaign, that we are helping to direct over at NoTosh.

Read more over on the company site, especially if you're interested in the intersection between education/schooling and the world of design and entrepreneurship.

Twelve years after graduating in European Union Studies I finally made it to Brussels this week, as one of the EU Commission Vice President's "Digital Angels", advising on how she and her senior staff can help create a Europe of equal digital opportunity.

Across 27 member states, encompassing nearly 600m people, this is no small order. The debate rolled on for a whole day, with Vice President Neelie Kroes, who is also Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, staying with us and pushing us the entire morning, before her senior advisors dived into more detail with us in the afternoon.

I've described some of the outcomes of the day over on the company site. However, my most passionate interventions were, of course, around the role of education in providing the basis for

• basic internet skills and a positive understanding and attitude towards privacy, public life and security;
• the vital role of education in fostering a sense of curiosity amongst youngsters - and the adults who deal with them;
• the need for increased professional development in how we move from an industrial revolution era of understanding about information, learning and organisation, to a 21st century understanding of flexibility, learning how not what;
• the need to communicate with citizens in a language and in a (digital) space that they already inhabit, drawing on some of the phenomenal online success we've seen with the Scottish National Party's digital campaign, that we are helping to direct over at NoTosh.

Read more over on the company site, especially if you're interested in the intersection between education/schooling and the world of design and entrepreneurship.

Clayton Carson is Principal of a Primary school on the East coast of Australia, and a living legend of most Microsoft Partners in Learning events (Australian PiL ; the US site ; the UK site). He's one of these people who is at once totally down to earth in the way that he runs his school and talks about learning, and inspirational to the point of bringing your aspirations up to stratospheric levels.

Way back in January, at an education research event supported by the PiL programme, he outlined 10 "Claytonisms", rules by which he and his school live in order to sustain engaging learning with the students:

1. Mutual trust, between leadership and teachers, teachers and students, parents and the community.
2. Deal with data, not emotion, to improve learning.
3. Operate with a clear vision, one that everyone knows
4. View the parents and community as your employers, listen to them, work with them, respond to their concerns in your actions.
5. Admit that perception is reality - what they say is the way it is.
6. Develop two great, ambitious projects every year - students don't want lots of small projects that last days; they want beefy projects to get their teeth (and their brains) into.
7. It has only happened if people know about it (my personal fave). If a tree falls and no-one sees it, did it really happen? That's probably the wrong question. If a tree falls and no-one sees it, does anyone care? Absolutely not. You need to share great learning out to the world. If you and your students aren't proud enough to share it then it probably wasn't worth learning.
8. Every teacher is a leader - empower them to be one, (and support those who are not harnessing that opportunity).
9. Do it well.
10. Just do it. (similar to John Hunter's "Don't Think Too Hard. Just Try The Experiment".)

The company I founded 15 months ago is growing, and who else better could I have asked for as a partner in this than Tom Barrett, teacher, inspirer (through his blog, his talks and workshops) and insanely communicative Twitterer? Since announcing yesterday we've had a slew of wishes from across t'interwebs.

Far from 'leaving the classroom', Tom will be continuing to grow the work we've been undertaking in classrooms around the world, making a difference to more educators, face-to-face, as well as developing some cutting edge research into what we might be using and how we might be using it next in our classrooms. If you want to work with Tom and me in your own school, district or State, just drop us a line and be part of the action.

Merlin John broke the news on his education news site, MJO, with these remarks:

"Two of the UK's best innovators of learning with technology are joining forces to develop projects and services for schools...

"With its two principal figures so steeped in pedagogy, NoTosh appears to be defining a new breed of education companies – ones that start out with the learning and pedagogy, and partner in the technology. Education is more used to working with technology companies that buy in the learning, and that has produced some rather difficult fits...

"With two key education practitioners at its heart, the potential of NoTosh in a UK education landscape where national interventions and policy are disappearing is obvious. There will be no shortage of schools and organisations wanting to make their learning more engaging for young people. And the same applies overseas."

Tom will continue to be based in Nottinghamshire, England, and like all our work will be in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Asia and the Middle East on request. As a rule, we don't charge extra travel or accommodation to work with us, so regardless of where you are you can work with us closely.

The full news is over on the NoTosh website.

Does anyone want to join me in Canada May 17 & 18 for INPlay, Toronto? You can register now for one of Interactive Ontario's showpiece events, on whose advisory board I sit (well, mostly I Skype, actually). It's unique in bringing together such a blend of transmedia, video game producers, financiers, marketers on the one hand, and researchers, educators and policy people on the other.

The programme is superb, with keynotes from Amy Friedman on Play, Warren Buckleitner on why some highly marketed games failed so miserably, Russ McLeod on How to Build a Movement for connected youth, Alan Gershenfeld's Leveling up from Player to Designer: Empowering Youth through Media Creation and a sneak behind the scenes of Gever "Tinkering School" Tulley's journey to turn his one week summer school of student-led learning into a full school, the journey to Brightworks.

But the workshops are also thrilling. These, for me, are the main things getting me really excited about my week away:

First, a personal plug to the "Brains on, hands on workshop" that Gever Tulley and I are leading:

When Newton discovered gravity it wasn't because he was told by a teacher or even because he had the skill to look it up in Wikipedia. It was because he was provoked, deeply, and had the design skills to create a beautiful equation. Gever Tulley and Ewan McIntosh help delegates experience first hand, the durable learning that comes from deep provocation. Explore how curriculum can be turned on its head, how new skills can be learned best, how content can be explored through the same models of discovery that genuine scientists, creatives and leaders harness every day.

The Story of Siftables from their founder, David Merrill:

What some of us are planning faced with the unplannable future of technologies

An exploration of how kids really use transmedia

An insight to the school run as a game, Quest to Learn

Why so serious? Valuable play and learning with Dean Shareski and Alec Couros

Like/Unlike/Leave a Comment: Social Networks and the Online Lives of Kids

I think I'll be blogging like crazy for two days, and catching up with some great friends, old and new. If you want to join the fun and mental stimulation, with the social stimulation to back it up, register before April 14th to get the early bird rate.

I'm kicking off a new line of thought on the back of last month's Naace Annual Conference on the elements we need in a Brave New World of education.

I've written the first post over on our partner site at GETideas.org, looking at the fascinating and, yes, brave work going on in schools who are choosing to harness the RSA's Opening Minds Curriculum.

I'm hoping that apparenly embattled leadership colleagues in the US might sit up when they see the confidence of the youngsters I interviewed for the post, and feel that they can engage in a different way of doing things from the perceived norm.

I sit on the Board of Trustees for this framework that sets out competences, not school subjects, as the principal mechanism through which students learn the 'hows' and 'whats' of the world. It's not dissimilar in goal to the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence, with the RSA's Opening Minds accreditation scheme acting as a means to provide stellar professional development and coaching between schools who "are there" with those new to this way of thinking and working.

The post on GETIdeas.org features this video clip, above, that I shot at the recent Opening Minds launch event at the Institute of Education in London.