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.

Michael Gove has unearthed an unpopular policy from 2007 with his plans to ban mobile phones in the classroom from this summer. It's a daft policy, reflecting a small (minority) group's gut feel and no research or reflection, and below is a classroom example showing - simply - why he's wrong to consider it.

We'll no doubt see forthcoming policies banning the use pencils (you can flick 'em across the desk and poke kids in the ribs with them, you know) and we'll stop teaching children how to read the poetry of Wilfred Owen, lest they get upset at the gore of war, despite the fact they see it every night on the television. The rationale for all such anti-mobile, anti-internet, anti-anything policy is "safety", but its implementation creates a false sense of security in school, further growing the bubble in which schooling lives while the real world races by youngsters unprepared to deal with it.

The Scottish Conservatives have this week also revealed where Tory policies actually originate from: circa 1948, I believe (and so do the press). They'd have disengaged youngsters leaving school at 14 years old to learn a trade, despite the fact that in Scottish schools there are already ample opportunities for youngsters to focus on vocational skills, and 25,000 new apprenticeships were announced just before the closing of this Parliament.

A simple classroom example: students know how to harness mobile for learning

Politics over, though (and I've got some inherent biases, like everyone), there's a more serious point here about how wonderful mobile phones are becoming for learning, and how we're merely scratching the computer power they offer. That computing power is often superior to that provided by billions of pounds worth of Dell, RM or other well-known brands of black boxes thrown into schools each year. But the high-computing potential of mobile phones may be lost on Gove and his Ministers, so I'm going to pick a much simpler example.

I've been thrilled with some work I'm doing in Hull this past week, and have seen some stunning enquiry-based learning in the secondary school where I'm working on technology integration.

But it was in a science classroom, with students needing to keep time in a heatloss experiment, where they came into their own. Schools, when I was a pupil in one, invested a relatively high sum in 'scientific' stop clocks - these single-purpose devices come in at about £10/$20. But students have no interest in using these when they have a more accurate stopclock, and a host of other tools, sitting in their pockets. Having cleared it with the teacher, students unearthed a wide array of wonderfully accurate kit: iPod touches, shuffles, iPhones and, in huge numbers, Blackberries (above).

12 minutes to Google, or 40 seconds?

In another area, a student conducted a quick Google search to seek out the image she wanted to work from in a design and technology class. Students in other classes, using laptops provided by the school, took about 12 minutes to get them out, get logged in and get searching. Students on their cell phones took about 40 seconds.

Write to Mr Gove - and your government, too

Doug Belshaw and others have launched an open letter to Mr Gove - and other Education Ministeries, too - to explain why mobile phone technology, far from being banned in schools, must be embraced, and teachers and parents equipped with the intellectual, pedagogical and societal skills to harness their potential with youngsters. I encourage you to add to it.

Most school management teams glaze over when you talk about cloud computing. But if I told you that one science test, administered across New South Wales, was delivered for $199,995 less thanks to being hosted in the cloud for one day, rather than on dedicated servers in the education department, would you be interested?

That's exactly what happened, and it sets on a grand scale why the relatively small student-by-student savings we see from digital material being held on a server farm in Texas, rather than a server in the school grounds or Local District offices, are so important in these straightened times.

Such services might be Google Apps being introduced to schools, and the use of web-based "software as a service" (SaaS) programmes such as Every1Speaks to capture and share learning. If schools can look after these pennies, then tens of thousands of dollars and pounds are freed up for teaching and learning.

Using the cloud to cuts ties with out-of-date learning environments

And as more schools feel tied to wonky learning environments that don't really serve their purposes, feeling tied more to the email services provided therein rather than the learning resources themselves, there is a super opportunity to cut ties and bring in the best of breed in email, shared platforms, communication tools and video conferencing on an 'as-needed' basis. This cuts not only the actual cost of services to near nil, but also cuts the educational cost of students using quickly outdated online tools that a school paid for upfront.

Here is the blurb from the Microsoft site, as they explain how their Azure service cut the bill:

The New South Wales Department of Education (DET) is the largest department of education in the southern hemisphere. They wanted to improve the way they conducted Year 8 science tests to replicate what students did in the laboratory and believed interactive online science testing could test a wider range of skills than just pure scientific knowledge. However, DET estimated for them to host an online test for 65,000 students simultaneously would require a A$200,000 investment in server infrastructure. With the help of their partner, Janison Solutions, DET launched its Essential School Science Assessment (ESSA) online exam. In 2010, they trialled an online science exam hosted by Microsoft Azure that went out to 65,000 students in 650 schools simultaneously. Paying A$40 per hour for 300 Microsoft Azure Servers, DET estimated the cost of hosting the online exam for one day was just A$500.

Not only that, but the maintenance and robustness of those servers is handled by the experts, rather than an education department, and if more scale is needed, it gets added on without anyone ever needing to know.

It works on a State level. It needs to start working more on a school by school level.

Pic from Sugree

This is one of a six-part series on how to harness data to reveal stories. It represents notes and follow-on links. If you want to take part in an exciting workshop to get your hands on real life data sets, create your own visualisations and learn how to share them, you can join me in Boston at Building Learning Communities for my pre-conference workshop this summer, or ask for it as one of our masterclass sessions. Many of the examples cited are from the information visualiser's Bible, Information is Beautiful: buy the book (in the UK | in the USA) or visit the blog.

Use one chart for a new purpose
Example:
A Periodic Table of Visualisation Methods:

Charts and time
Combine time, bar charts and graphical punch to show impact on complex stories.
Example:
The rising sea levels as they consume cities over time.

Charts and image
Interesting charting effects can be gained by superimposing one chart on top of many, many photos through Microsoft's Deep Zoom Composer software (free).
Example:
Winston Churchill Deep Zoom

Colour swatches
Use the metaphor from pantone cards from the painters' shop, or military ribbon bands, to transfer new information.
Example: Military ribbons as a means to explore the debauchery of rock bands, Information is Beautiful book.

Scattergraphs 2.0
Don't just plot dots on a scattergraph. Plot graphics that make your point.
Example:
Caffeine versus Calories: Buzz vs Bulge

Abstract geneology
Make a family tree to show the relative links between abstract concepts
Example:
A family tree of Britain's musical heritage (Information is Beautiful book)