Glasgow Art School graduate James Houston's Big Ideas (Don't Get Any) on CentralStation.

Every day our brains deal with 34 gigabytes of information. But, contrary to what technosceptics will lament as we enter the decade of who-knows-what, scientists in California and England don't believe that this will have any negative affect on our brains. Indeed, it might be changing them to cope better with handling increasing amounts of spoken and written clues. In the Sunday Times:

"The speed of modern life is 2.3 words per second, or about 100,000 words a day. That is the verbiage bombarding the average person in the 12 hours they are typically awake and “consuming” information, according to a new study.

"...We are faced with the equivalent of 34 gigabytes of information each day — enough to overload the typical laptop inside a week.

"The total amount of words “consumed” in the United States has more than doubled from 4,500 trillion in 1980 to 10,845 trillion in 2008. Those estimates do not include people simply talking to one another. Total information consumption from televisions, computers and other media was estimated at 3.6 zettabytes (3.6m million gigabytes) in 2008.

"...Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at the universities of Oxford and Warwick, said: “One of the things we have learnt over the past 20 years is that the brain does have a capacity to grow and increase in size depending on how it is used. Perhaps the personal experience of having to deal with all of this information will cause new nerve cells to be born and create new nerve connections in the brain.”

"It may be infuriating but it is no threat to the brain itself, say experts.

"In some ways, he adds, what has changed is the nature of information more than quantity. Where we now stare at a computer screen, once we studied faces, which may involve absorbing just as much data."

Just bear that in mind when your inbox is labouring under 300 emails, 1400 feeds and relentless Twitter friend requests.

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.

Could it really change anything?

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?