Should we start burning our curricula and nationally managed plans, as Chris Woodhead, below, suggests? Pic CC
Changing anything is tough, but it's even tougher if the management in your organisation, be it a school or corporation, don't get passionate about the change as much as the innovators. Over the past decade, formal education has mostly got the mix terribly wrong.
Clay Shirky understands the challenges faced by innovators when, in an abstract, he points out the political power-play that can occur over the transition period from The Thing That Went Before to The Thing That Cam Along Right After:
When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.
I have been a member of at least three innovation departments in the past four years. Make of that what you will. We've had some big successes. We've killed a lot of puppies the bosses didn't want, too.
But in education, ironically, the biggest challenge of the day is not burying the remarks of innovators or observers of technology's effects on our life and learning. It is not gaining buy-in from top management to programmes that seize changes happening 'on the outside' of the classroom. No, the biggest challenge is a lack of understanding and passion in the teaching and parental trenches behind the ideas that some of our leaders, élites and management teams have concocted.
I don't often agree with Chris Woodhead's takes on education, but this from a couple of weeks back just rings 'fact' to me:
"In Scotland, as in England, the lesson of the past 10 years is that the top-down imposition of progressive child-centred education does not work.
"Head Teachers should be freed from all central political prescription. They should be allowed to determine what their children learn, how much their teachers are paid, how resources in their schools are to be deployed.
"Different teachers will come to difference decisions, and the concept of parental choice will begin to have meaning."
("Scrap all this top-down nonsense and set our teachers free to teach", article non-retrievable: Sunday Times Scottish Edition, December 6th)
Scotland, like many countries striving for educational change at the moment, is not getting the mix right: you get the distinct feeling that there's almost too much buy-in from the top to a hyped ideal, and too little comprehension of the means of reaching that ideal amongst the very people who have to make it happen: teachers, yes, but also students and parents.
Is he right? Should we, as Woodhead suggests earlier in his article, "burn" the Curriculum for Excellence and other similar documents that appear in our various districts, countries and kingdoms? Should we re-professionalise the professionals working at the whiteboard face?
Would the criticisms of overzealous centralisation stretch as far as a school district or Local Authority's virtual learning environment, as they currently stand and are used? What about the concept of national intranets - is that a centralisation that will serve us well into the next more distributed decade?
Or is the alternative that he suggests merely a path to further confusion amongst parents, presenting a terrible paradox of choice most would rather do without?
I genuinely don't know if we are heading too far in one direction in this tricky pushme-pullme game of managerial and political jockeying. Your comments, answers, solutions welcome...
Scotland's games industry makes more cash for the UK than the film industry. My six-figure investments this year in the sector seem small-fry when held up against the seven-figure investments made by independent companies themselves in the hope theirs will be the next big hit. Dundee's Realtimeworlds has had to attract over $80m to produce its 2010 release, APB, above.
Yet, as Jack Arnott points out in his Guardian column, the daring and skill demonstrated in studios around the world is barely honoured in our annual plaudits. You rarely see end-of-year "best of" or "top ten" lists in your glossies that include video games:
For games, however, [these end-of-year lists] acquire some extra significance. The lists you may find dotted around national newspapers this Christmas reflect an increasing slice of cultural cache for a still emerging medium. For a lot of people, arts critics especially, video games are still very much a poor relation to their more well-established siblings.
Even in its own media-luvvy domain, games are still looked down upon by those who see the craft of film-writing or programme-shooting as more, well, 'noble'.
The same snootiness is still visible in education despite the work of dedicated, tax-payer funded units like the Consolarium and legions of empassioned expert teachers like Mark Wagner. Video games are on a joint-pegging with the television and the internet in children's media habits, yet tend to feature only on the last day of term for most youngsters. The potential to learn in the game, as well as learn from their production, is lost to all but the most culturally open and connected of educators who want to expand their students' understanding of gaming beyond simply picking up another coin.
As we hurl ourselves into the last days of learning this decade, we might not see top ten lists of computer games in our holiday special bumper magazines. It is with hope, though, that more educators will realise: videogames are not just for Christmas.
A parent learns to blog on East Lothian's eduBuzz blogging-for-learning platform, alongside her daughter at Humbie Primary School. Pic: David Gilmour
Today, in a world of social networks young people have never written or read so much. And now, a new more robust survey in the UK shows conclusively that social networking, blogging and generally publishing writing online does improve students' attitudes to writing by about a sixth. I'd add that, in the hands of a good teacher's structured approach, the quality of that writing itself should be seen to improve, too.
Action research of mine that got published almost exactly four years ago showed that blogging within a structured learning environment improves writing in a foreign language, by providing an audience - and would help improve reading, too. Last year, Becta's Web 2.0 research showed that the increased use of social networks in itself didn't necessarily correlate to more creativity or better production of media, but that the role for mentors (e.g. parents, teachers) was still paramount in eking out the most constructive use of technologies.
From the BBC this week:
A survey of 3,001 children aged nine to 16 found that 24% had their own blog and 82% sent text messages at least once a month.
In addition 73% used instant messaging services to chat online with friends.
...Of the children who neither blogged nor used social network sites, 47% rated their writing as "good" or "very good", while 61% of the bloggers and 56% of the social networkers said the same."Our research suggests a strong correlation between kids using technology and wider patterns of reading and writing," Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, told BBC News.
"Engagement with online technology drives their enthusiasm for writing short stories, letters, song lyrics or diaries."
Mr Douglas dismissed criticisms about the informal writing styles often adopted in online chat and "text speak", both of which can lack grammar and dictionary-correct spelling.
"Does it damage literacy? Our research results are conclusive - the more forms of communications children use the stronger their core literary skills."
It's good to see some balanced journalism from the Beeb this yuletide, pulling in the pantomime "boos" of the National Association for Primary Education to cast a de-professionalising spell over any enthusiastic educator:
"Most primary school teachers are doubtful about hooking children up to computers - especially when they are young," said John Coe, general secretary of the National Association for Primary Education.
"They see enormous advantages in the relationship between teacher and child. Sometimes the computer is closer to the child than the teacher by the age of 13."
Nonetheless, it's vital that research like this being taken on board by those making purchasing, training and pedagogical approach decisions.
A question, then, to those in the higher echelons of classroom practice decision-making: will over four years of conclusive research tip you into overtly supporting the use of web publishing in your school environments, from elementary through to secondary and higher education?
TwitterPicture was quite a feat for a young artist: Aberdeen-based artist Johanna Basford made £15,000
(about $892,000 ;-) in the space of 48 hours of twittering, by inviting
normal untalented folk like me to suggest what they wanted drawn by her
famous black pen.
The lovely Damien, Suzy and co at the wonderfully cool, hip and talented ISO Design thrust a stocking filler under my arm this evening. And I'm now the proud owner of Twitter's first piece of crowdsourced art, made by Aberdeen-based artist Johanna earlier this year.
In theory, at least, I've also helped make this masterpiece, as mine was one of 230 tweets that fed the end-result - an A3 line-art collage, of the distinctive style that will make Johanna a Turner-winner one of these days (I hope). It now takes pride of place in the living room, where I am reminded of contributions made by quite a few of my twitter buddies.
At the end of Day One, the Central Station arts platform, on which I've been working with ISO, joined the push to get as many people as possible to promote the project and chip in with their own ideas for inclusion. The result is fascinating and beautiful, with "any dinosaur in casual attire" resting next to my own "a baby's first laugh". You can see all 230 suggestions on the artists' certificate of authentication, and come around to mine for a cup of tea to find them all.
It's a beautiful living room piece, and the first original artwork I've ever owned. But it strikes me that this could be an almost weekly occurrence in art and design classrooms around the world - it's Twitter storytelling for artists.
Catriona's already started trying to emulate Johanna. She's got a bit to go, but she'll get there one day. You can see some of the detail in it on my Central Station art profile, and follow CenSta on Twitter to catch the next time there are fun happenings like this.
Media Guardian reports on a service due for launch in Spring 2010 from British Telecom (BT) and Google, allowing Internet Service Providers to host and stream video from their own networks, rather than using the network which is increasingly over-burdened by high quality streaming from BBC iPlayer, 40D, Hulu and, of course, Google's own YouTube and video services:
BT Wholesale is working with BT Retail and two other ISPs – understood to be Orange and Virgin Media – as well as the BBC, Channel 4 and Five, on a network called Content Connect. The idea behind the service is to store popular video content on an ISP's network, rather than relying on the internet, which is becoming increasingly congested, for the delivery of online video.
A logical extension for those in education who can turn the vision into reality, is that schools and education authorities are or can be Internet Service Providers to their institutions. In the same way as Scotland national intranet, Glow, hosts content on a network of cache servers throughout Scottish schools, a Local Authority or small country could ramp up the potential for downloading and sharing high quality video 'online' by not going online at all. Use overnight downtime to download prime learning content overnight to a local area network, and then deliver it quickly at the point of need during the day.
Previously, only large-scale enterprise could envisage this way of borrowing content on the cheap to serve it later at faster speeds. As a service provided by a larger scale programme such as that proposed by BT and Google, the economies of scale they will earn let the rest of us enjoy fast video at a reasonably priced premium.
But, given that television was promised (wrongly) to be the saviour of learning in the 60s, how would you change things in your learning and your students' learning to take advantage of such an opportunity? Are classrooms full of plugged in kids, akin to the average open-plan office of iPod-entangled drones poking at Outlook, what we're after? Or would fast-streaming video be a significant enough innovation to change pedagogy, curriculum and school spaces beyond recognition?
Photo CC Kevin Steele
OK, so the headline lied. As we approach the annual crush to listify the world in terms of the top stories of the year, the top pop divas and even the top education bloggers, top Umberto Eco talks to Der Spiegel about the world's fascination with lists.
Lists are a particularly important part of living life as a Bebo Boomer, filling hours of social network use by their users. Lists are also the part of our online life that is most derided: a waste of time, a feckless use of time by feckless people. Yet, lists have always been crucial to our existence and way of organising thought and acting out our intentions.
In the interview, Eco refers to the most common list of all: the one Google churns out after a search, and phrases in an interesting and most simple of ways what media literacy is all about:
Eco: [...] Google makes a list, but the minute I look at my Google-generated list, it has already changed. These lists can be dangerous -- not for old people like me, who have acquired their knowledge in another way, but for young people, for whom Google is a tragedy. Schools ought to teach the high art of how to be discriminating.
SPIEGEL: Are you saying that teachers should instruct students on the difference between good and bad? If so, how should they do that?
Eco: Education should return to the way it was in the workshops of the Renaissance. There, the masters may not necessarily have been able to explain to their students why a painting was good in theoretical terms, but they did so in more practical ways. Look, this is what your finger can look like, and this is what it has to look like. Look, this is a good mixing of colors. The same approach should be used in school when dealing with the Internet. The teacher should say: "Choose any old subject, whether it be German history or the life of ants. Search 25 different Web pages and, by comparing them, try to figure out which one has good information." If 10 pages describe the same thing, it can be a sign that the information printed there is correct. But it can also be a sign that some sites merely copied the others' mistakes.
When "old people" (he said it) like Umberto Eco get it, I'm reassured. But when was the last time you saw a teacher in your school be quite as explicit, though, in how students should run a basic search?
This is great if you are a researcher and, I'd have thought, indispensable if you're a researcher in academia. Make sure your papers are included in this prediction engine of research papers, helping users find academic friends-of-a-friend and papers they might otherwise have missed. It also allows an academic or groups of academics to annotate the reports they find.
And when the time comes to collate your academic report or paper, Mendeley will export to Word or OpenOffice the bibliography you used, in the right format. Are you on Mendeley.com? Should be.
This week I announced my latest 4iP investment in the Northern Ireland-based political blog Slugger O’Toole, in the fund’s first co-investment with Northern Ireland Screen. The investment adds to a range of web products running along the theme of “keeping an eye on money and power”, providing a means of exploring localised political debate at scale.
Working with Belfast-based developer and instigator of beautiful things Andy McMillan (@GoodOnPaper), we're helping to revamp the Slugger site for existing readers, with a relaunch of the site planned for the New Year. The goal is to make what is currently a crowded, busy and perhaps intimidatingly quick-posting blog more accessible for newbies and more enjoyable for current readers and commenters.
The next step is to take the most influential political blog in Northern Ireland and turn it into a sustainable collaborative public service media platform, moving the means of pluralistic political debate forward elsewhere in the UK. We're also keen to explore how we amplify the voices of those commenting: the debates under each post are just as vital as the posts themselves.
Slugger is unique among political blogs for its combination of public service levels of trust with the blogosphere’s forensic and adversarial demands. According to a recent poll, 96% of the Northern Irish Assembly’s politicians read it regularly, and it's demonstrably reaching deep into local political issues. With many major political news stories being broken by its readers before the mainstream media gets hold of them, it is also Northern Ireland’s journalistic watering-hole of choice.
For politicians and the public, the value of good political blogs has never been clearer. The last twelve months have shown what the power of social media can do to inspire and engage the public in the decision-making processes that affect them, from digging though expenses claims to helping claim electoral victory for the Obama administration.
But proximity to what 'real' people think and the provision of a forum to amplify those voices is what Slugger O'Toole has been doing for the best part of seven years.
Why did I want to pursue an investment in Slugger O'Toole, though, and not any one of the other political blogs out there? Slugger's readership is large, and arguably more varied than any other political blog, especially given its geographic focus: to have both your national Assembly and a critical mass of your local councillors coming to you for genuine breaking stories on a regular basis is something that any national newspaper would be content with.
Their support was particularly demonstrable on Tuesday night, as nearly 300 politicians, journalists and readers from across Northern Ireland packed into Belfast's Black Box for the Slugger Awards. For goodness sake: even Bob Geldof joined us.
I'm particularly fond of Slugger’s ethic of “play the ball not the man”. 'People want to debate the issues, not the politicians', believes its founder Mick Fealty. Many of his political blogger compadres would and do disagree. But when we've excluded the political hacks and scandal junkies, the vast majority of us want change on specific issues and we want a place to debate them where our politicians see our view. Slugger provides that. In spades.
At a time when politicians and citizens are subject to more noise than signal in a growing web of unmoderated “citizen-produced democracy”, and national news repeatedly fails to account for local political issues, 4iP’s investment is a timely one.
In the next four weeks we will finalise a refreshed design for the site, with new functionality in the New Year which should help spread Slugger's ethic further into the mainstream, further into its already highly localised audiences. We will uncover yet more voices that need amplified for the eyes and ears of the political classes in Stormont, Westminster, Brussels and Strasbourg; we will see Slugger pushing these representatives to get more done for their people, rather than just talking about it.
Towards Spring we will see Slugger trying to replicate the same, honest "play the ball" political coverage in Scotland, and perhaps further afield. We're building some business cases around the work Slugger's authors are arguably the most capable people in the world at carrying out, having lived through Western Europe's worst civil war and come out the other side with an online forum for genuine political discussion between all sides. Slugger will help fill a significant media gap of coverage and comment on politics at local levels while having a growing impact nationally in Westminster.
This is not a 4iP 'investment' on the same level as some of our six figure sums, but with the impact Slugger-the-blog is already having, Slugger-the-platform is a win for "amplifying voices" from the word go. It is exactly where Channel 4 at its most cantankerous should be.
Picture Credit: John Baucher, with permission. Blogger Alan In Belfast picks up his Martin Rowson portrait after winning Slugger Awards Blogger Of The Year for his "election monitoring" of the darker side of the EU election processes.
Becta, the UK education technology agency, has been looking into how schools communicate with parents and vice versa. Their initial research has discovered some home truths that, unfortunately, are all too recognisable:
Confidence issues: 42% of teachers said the reason so-called ‘invisible’ parents have so little contact with the school is that they lack the confidence to discuss their child with teachers - 43% of school staff admit parents might find them ’difficult to approach sometimes.’ One in five (19%) parents are worried about bothering teachers and more than a fifth (22%) say they don’t want to add to the teacher’s workload, resulting in many taking a back seat in their child’s education.
Lack of information: More than one in ten (11%) of the parents who do initiate communication said they felt dismissed by teachers as an ‘overly demanding’ parent and a further 11% commented they often feel they are imposing on the teacher’s time. More than a third (36%) of school staff encounter parents who want ‘constant reassurance’ and others (19%) who try to ‘influence everything that goes on in the classroom.’
So in the red corner we have some parents who can't get enough information and conversation about their children's learning, with teachers who resent having parents crossing some imaginary line of learning and teaching competence. In the blue corner we have other parents who the schools want to see more of and teachers who think that, actually, coming in to see a teacher must be too threatening for at least a quarter of parents.
If only more schools took a leaf out of the book that we know works. When Dave Gilmour and I set up eduBuzz.org over three years ago we had one simple aim: get people sharing what goes on inside classrooms and the learning will improve. We set up a simple-to-use blogging platform on the nascent WPMU and worked with clusters of enthusiastic teachers to get them sharing regularly - twice a week at least - on what was going on in their classrooms. We got them to get their students to take over that role. Parents loved it, with web traffic peaking just before parents left their offices to come home and then late at night when the kids were in bed (the red wine surfers, as I imagined them). I described how we did it in more detail back in 2007.
We ended up with 3m page views a month as the nodes of conversation between parents, teachers, students and managers lit up. Above all, I heard first hand how parents enjoyed being able to see in a light touch manner what their children were up to and, indeed, when they did meet the teacher face-to-face the interactions were deeper and more friendly.
In 2006, what we had achieved is effectively what users of Twitter enjoy so much - ambient intimacy. Stephen Heppell has often referred to the "nearly now" of our technologies, and I think it's the same thing.
By allowing parents to take out of their school what they want, on their own terms, at their own pace, we are almost certain to encourage more interaction from our least engaged parents. Those whom the research calls "overly demanding" will find a new quality to their face-to-face interactions; gone are the questions about what their son is having for lunch, what the next classroom project will be, and what the plans are for Red Nose Day. Instead, those "overly demanding" parents will start to engage in the whys and hows of learning, being demanding in a much more positive sense.
Is this utopic? I'd say not, because we did it. But we did it with some degree of top-down support that is not always visible in other organisations, and I'm not convinced bottom-up initiatives alone can achieve the impact required quickly enough to gain acceptance in the long-term.
A group of folk who I believe are spearheading informal learning in the most unlikely of ways are looking for some help, and edu.blogs.com readers are almost certainly likely to be able to help.
Do you undertake some informal learning already?
Do you want to do more informal learning but find you can't: lack of time, motivation or space?
If you answer yes to either question and want to help out a gang of really tuned-in people, please leave a comment on this post, making sure to include an email address, and someone will be in touch shortly. And thanks - you'll be participating in one of the most exciting informal learning opportunities going.
Picture credit: What is the mass of a question mark?
Via Euan I saw this lovely example of how we might think about changing behaviour, not always in the way we'd associate with those in positions of authority. Mind you, I wonder if only the Dutch Danish Police could get away with doing this...