"New technology is the devil incarnate. We should go back to the good old days"
"New technology is the panacea we've been looking for."
The reality is much more nuanced than that. It's not about the good or the bad (it's not about pedagogy vs technology, the unfortunately entitled panel session I'll be on later).
danah boyd is talking about teaching young people to think, by taking a look through the viewfinder of social networks and the mobile devices we are already and will increasingly use to access, connect and share on.
It's about teaching young people to think. The reason we taught literature, film, mathematics in the past was to provide a reason for people to think. The introduction of technology alone will not necessarily help young people think. Worse still, technology is seen as a means of unleashing new cash, in a cynical way ("we have all Macs")
We don't just teach algebra to teach algebra. We teach it to help understand the world around us. When we think about teaching (with) technology we have to think about how it fits into this world around us.
That's hard.
Technology is fundamentally taking apart the world around us. Technology opens up the potential to access much stuff around the world, with the teacher and their rear view mirror allowing the context and meaning of that to be brought to light.
The contexts of social networks
Social networking sites have three core structures that make them work:
1. Profile
When we enter a room we tend to take some thought about decorating ourselves: what we wear, do we put on that tie...? Online we are an IP address, a rather undecoratable unappealing code. Therefore, where we create a SNS profile we're taking some care to create a presentation of ourselves within a space. Bedroom culture is the same, but on social networks it's amplified.
2. Friending
There are three clusters of behaviour: 30-40 friends, worried about their nearest and dearest. 300 friends are all the people they met at school, at church at the youth group. Very few teenagers collect Friends (politicians, music), reaching into the hundreds of thousands of friends. Mostly they're boys, collecting "hot girls". They're creating that list that, apparently, lots of boys used to make on paper.
But whether someone is your friend or just your Friend becomes socially awkward. In girl culture girls grew out of the habit of exchanging friendship bracelets to work the equivalent online.
3. The Wall
Comments, testimonials, the wall... in the early days of SNSes, people spoke in the third person about their friends (and still do on LinkedIn, inhabited by older professionals). Later, it began to be used as a space for conversation that complimented other places where conversation was going on (IM, chat).
Looking at it as a stream of text one could be mistaken as meaningless "how are you", "fine", "you?", "OK"...
What's going on is "public social grooming": it's a way to upkeep your social status as friend which, after all, is only a check box at the beginning of the online Friendship.
Why are young people spending so much time on MySpace?
We used to have permission from our parents to roam really far. Nowadays, the circle of navigation has been greatly reduced to the garden, out of public view. We've also tended to programme the lives of our young people more than we ever did, meaning we leave less time than ever for them to socialise.
Other characteristics of online interaction
danah reckons than social network structures will go mobile soon, within two years. I would bank on them coming a lot sooner than that, given that many of those with the better phones can already and do already interact on their various SNSes through mobile. In the UK, 3G is cheaper and more ubiquitous than most places on the planet, so we can expect it sooner here.
Location-awareness is increasing, making the network part of social networking even stronger.
Knowledge is online, and when we don't know it first time around we access just in time when we're mobile.
Notes of her talk, as usual, riddled with errors and unreliability.
One of the challenges of 4iP is to create some projects that help us all get more direct democracy than current 'democratic' systems afford. Apparently we needn't try too hard: YouTube's doing it already.
The systems have been unable to change quickly enough (or at all) beyond the 'safe' model that encourages elites to represent us (as Billy Connolly has said: anyone who wants to be a politician should, as a consequence, never be allowed to become one). Social media means we don't have to continue down the path of this elite choosing which issues are important enough to take on; we can use the wisdom of the crowd to filter and prioritise issues, and even get around to sorting some of those out amongst themselves.
The new fascinating read from Demos on the "Video Republic" shows just how far YouTube and other video sites have gone in opening up alternative democratic routes for youngsters. And, true to form, there's a YouTube video explaining this, too.
John Connell picked the item up from this parish's online bookmarks and has speedily summarised the main issues, all of which touch on areas that still require development, though, or just cogniscence by those in positions of power to do something about it. Basically: there's more to be gained from us all, foot soldiers and political or decision-making elites, harnessing the power that online video has unleashed:
All of these could be met with "it's easier said than done"; it would be rather cool for 4iP to just do it rather than talking about it.
Of all the gaming consoles out there the one I always come back to is the Nintendo DS. It's small, its touchscreen means I don't even need to use a stylus, and the battery life is astounding. The new Nintendo DSi which has just been announced in Japan, due for launch in Europe in the Spring of 2009, opens up the potential even more for the use of gaming consoles as part of a one-to-one computing initiative, for the same price as the current model.
At the recent Emerge 1-2-1 Conference in Calgary, I made the point that I didn't feel the future was in laptops, despite the strong belief from other speakers that the laptop was the only "spread bet" option for learning, able to cope with the maximum demands of the classroom and home. I've always felt that mix and match is the best way forward, much in the same way as we tend to use technology in 'real' life: the right tool for the right job.
Cue the new Nintendo, with its built-in camera and web browser. For most web browsing a small screen and awkward navigation is fine, because most people are not blogging 1000 word theses, but they are Googling and then reading. For most photography in the classroom you don't need high-spec cameras. Learning logs need quick snapshots of progress, and the 0.3 megapixels of the DS, while paling in comparison to most camera phones, will suffice for this purpose.
Wiiwii have a really complete rundown of the new Nintendo DSi. The pic is from Wired, and therefore used illegally here, but I'm going to pay for it with a link to the shovelloads of liveblogging goodness of the moment the new model was unveiled.
A fascinating and personal insight into the Long Tail in action. Earlier this week I appeared alongside illustrious company in the Wall Street Journal. However, I can't even find the referrals from there in the first few pages of my stats, with links from Google search, other educators and, lo-and-behold, Twitter, knocking the American giant of the printing press off into stat result obscurity.
There are, as usual, a lot of people typing the address into their browsers directly, but no discernible difference from normal numbers. Indeed, there's even been a 400 person decline in my subscription numbers since starting work at Channel 4 (evidently there's a great mistrust of thoughts coming from those who turn to the dark side of the media), a figure that's not buoyed by the one-hit clickers of the WSJ readership.
Conclusion? It's more worthwhile cultivating online and offline relationships with people than relying on large institutions' pull of strangers with no tangible digital breadcrumbs of their own. Here endeth the lesson.
Pic from Superamit
New research from Scotland and the UK Government shows that Web 2.0 and gaming can and do make a difference to educational attainment and student experience.
Since the birth of most "web 2.0" technology in the past six years I've been there gathering and even doing some of the research into whether it offers up any improvements on pedagogy and/or student experience in the classroom. It's not stopped healthy questioning of the validity of data, normally in midflow during a keynote, but there has always been a layer of distrust in stats and research that has not been peer reviewed, to the extent that there has been a great excuse for the lack of change by haughty educators and States that don't want to make the effort.
So I'm delighted that colleague Derek Robertson and University of Dundee researcher David Miller have, through their large-scale study, found that playing 20 minutes of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training every day is much more likely to improve attainment and speed of calculation in mathematics (up to 50% faster than the control group). Their results are to be peer-reviewed, hence the frustrating but necessary wait for the graphs, stats and data.
Furthermore, Becta's research into Web 2.0's impact in the classsroom, for which I presented the opening keynote at the expert seminar earlier this year, has just been completely published, and shows
You can read the full research report online, which includes some input from myself and colleague Matt Locke at Channel 4. The recommendations state that all teachers need to be given more significant time to do more complex work with Web 2.0 in their classrooms, directing students learning in these tools. It also, thankfully, helps us see realistically what students do with technology.
Above all comes the caveat that we must not over romanticise what young people are capable of doing with technology without the structure of learning and teachers acting as guides on the side.
Fascinating stuff on which to start building more daring policies. Essential reading for all those who lament the lack of interest in new technologies from "those up top".
Pic from David Muir, his blog is here.
"Hunt for Bin Laden: Experts Agree: Al Quaeda leader is Dead or Alive". Yossi Vardi's photoshopped CNN reportage was certainly amusing but was, above all, a completely accurate forecast. What forecasters mustn't do is try to eliminate the uncertaintly from our futures.
Paul Saffo, formerly of the Institute of the Future, shares some of his secrets and insights from his main job: forecasting the future.
The Information Revolution is over. This is the Media Revolution
Everything in the knowledge and information world is uncertain. The information revolution is done, gone, in the past. We are now gripped by a media revolution - media is information that goes deep down and makes a difference in our life. It's also a shift within this field, from mass media to a very strange new world of personal media. Indeed, it's what my new job is all about - making the convergence of media count and make amplification have a new, almost reversed sense.
Even the information devices of old are now media devices. 1998 saw the first ring tone sold, and 2005 it had become a $2b business, accounting for 10% of the music business. Cell phones are entertainment media devices that happen to be communication devices. They are not information devices.
As Jane McGonigal, still at the Institute of the Future, has repeated: you need to look back twice as far back to see what's ahead. It might not be repeated, but the future will rhyme with it. If we peer back to the 1950s we see huge experimentation in mass media, in ways the television could be used, developed, enhanced. Today's use of the web is probably not even a bump on the landscape compared to what we will use our discoveries today for tomorrow.
When television emerged in the 1930s, it took some 20 years until it began to take off. Time-sharing (through email) took time from its first developments in the late 70s to become accepted in the 90s. Technology takes time to take hold, but in recent history technology is taking less and less time to make an impact:
This means that email and internet apps are nowhere near the peak of their activity.
Never mistake a clear view as a short distance
The challenge for those trying to predict the future is that, at one stage on the uptake curve you're made to look foolish as no-one joins you in the adoption of the technology. After a while, you give up on that bandwagon and think about what is worth betting your efforts on next. Just as you give up on it everyone else starts to adopt. You therefore look foolish twice over. I've written off many a fashion faux pas on that S curve theory.
SecondLife is one such maligned technology - I've managed to hit the middle part of that S Curve about a dozen times in the past three years, and have kept on it; something's afoot in this space. Paul believes it has a smell of the 20 year S Curve in it. He mentions the Cisco SecondLife meetings that my now-Cisco colleague John has talked about before. Likewise, in the nineties publishers would have scoffed if you said that something like the MacBook Pro Nano would make reading books online or on a computer doable - and enjoyable.
The changing nature of innovation
The next big thing is not the semantic web - it's sensors and robots
1950s TV - Broadcast
1980s Time-sharing - Email
1990s Cient sharing - WWW
2000 P2P - Napster
2010 Sensors - Smartifacts
Sensors will lead to smartifacts, robots that can make life easier, more enjoyable, more connected... Think of the current indicators: Roomba, the first robots to kill a human in the war on terror in Yemen in 2002, Nabaztags, robots that drive cars more safely than us... The indicators are already in place, though I think we're probably missing it for the immediate ideas and opportunity that the web is offering in 2008.
We're moving from TV to the web, from the living room to everywhere, from watching and consuming to participating and creating, from few and large organisations to many and small individuals.
We are moving at a tumbling rate from the Consumer Economy where buying and selling rule, to, markedly in the past two weeks, an economy where there are new actors in a Creator Economy. Google makes the perfect example of the success of the Creator Economy. It costs $0 to subscribe to Google, the usage charges are $0 and every time we use it we make it better. That last part is the cost - our search string contributes to the richness of what, in days past, would have been the Manufacturer. The question is, do we care if the $ cost is zero and the [heart] cost is information?
One forecast is looking a dead cert: the future's looking like one heck of a ride.
Paul Saffo speaking at the ebic Thought Leader conference, Berlin, at which I am later speaking on the futures panel.
AB has just told us about the new 'viral' games of Glow. Of course, whetherh it's viral or not depends on whether folks like me blog about it. So there.
Education is a core part of Channel 4's business and, for the past couple of years, the Channel has been a major sponsor and supporter of the Scottish Learning Festival and TeachMeet, the unconference, as well as producing its highly innovative web 'programmes' like Battlefront, Year Dot and The Insiders that educate and inspire.
This year, in a nod to the Channel's ongoing Sexperience campaign, the education commissioning team will be holding a free lunch and set of seminars on how we can engage young people online in sexual education. Sex Ed Up is just one of the places I'll be hanging out over the coming few days in Glasgow at the Scottish Learning Festival. Sign up, and I'll see you there.
Wednesday:
12h30: Language, learners and the ower of new technologies
Looking forward to hear Ollie speak - someone I've never seen out of the confines of the 7-minute TeachMeet presos.
13h30: Thinking Out Of The (X)Box
You can find the notes for this presentation on my blog already, and take more time over the vids and games.
15h00: Discovery Hour: Inspiring Stories of Technology, Education and Design
Some of the highlights this year, told in short, entertaining stories. Includes an amazing SecondLife project from New Zealand. This is in the large expo area, so please drop in.
16h45: BBC Scotland Learning: Preparing learners for 21st century life
Wondering what our friends at the Beeb are going to do over the next few months.
18h00: TeachMeet08
My last TeachMeet for a while, and my last (ever?) as compère, it looks like I'll have to leave around 8pm for a working dinner.
Thursday:
09h30: Can Nintendo's Dr Kawashima impact on mental maths? An extended study
I'm keen to see the results of LTS's 500-Nintendo DS experiment across Scotland.
10h30: 21st Century Teacher: Your personal professional development network
Find out what basic online skills you need to acquire to understand
this virtual Web 2.0 world, and learn how Ewan created a personal
network of peer support across every continent. Importantly, learn some
tricks about how to cope with the rapid innovation on the web in 2008.
12h00: Discovery Hour: Inspiring Stories of Technology, Education and Design
Some more highlights of this year.
13h15-14h15: Sex Ed Up
How and when should we teach our children about sex? Earlier this year the FPA (formerly the Family Planning Association) and Brook - which provides sexual health advice to under 25’s - called for sex and relationship education to become compulsory in primary and secondary schools.
It sparked off huge controversy with critics arguing that this would compromise childhood innocence, encourage underage sex, increase rates of teenage pregnancy, abortion and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Sex Ed Up! will allow you to debate these contested issues and see some of the programmes and projects in the season.
14h30: Channel 4 Education Showcase
Showing off some of the amazing (and free) projects you can get your students involved in.
Pic 1: Misty Morning | Pic 2: SECC
I've had an all-too-brief time in Shanghai with some inspiring folk and vibrant sessions. Their notes can often be found in the conference ning, after each topic, but I've also got some notes crafted over time on the blog which run along some of the lines discussed. My website 'Strategy' page will lead you down into more detail on other tangents we covered, but the main points would seem to be covered in:
I've not had time to see the city and have been pursuing some 4iP stuff (though I'm technically "on holiday" for these two days) in the wee small hours after midnight as colleagues finish up their days in Glasgow. The time zone is not kind, which only makes me lend more admiration to the organising team, led by Jeff. Collaboration across time zones, regardless of the nings, Google Docs and good ol' email you use, doesn't take away from the fact that you have to be awake to deal with it.
Pic: David Warlick
Former colleague Penny Sim was quick to spot the connection between my predicament in Shanghai, its quaint resolution and the credit crunch cartoon from Alex in this week's Telegraph. I just thought it was a novel way to get three seemingly unconnected words together in one blog post title.
It's true. I could have come half way around the world to Shanghai with nothing but carry-on luggage and the saintly wife of Mr Thinking Stick, who went out this morning to get some boxer shorts from Carrefour for me. Jolly nice they are, too. Something to remember the trip by, if you will. Former colleague Penny Sim at LTS was quick enough in her Twitter and newsreading skills to find the Telegraph's topical cartoon that might just go someway to explaining my predicament. Thankfully, I have the Utechts to get me out of this particular crunch.
The thing about social media is that you have to be, ahem, social. That means you have to be in it, not anti-social by ignoring people or trashing others' work. It's a shame that one of the largest ad agencies out there, McCann Erickson, feels the need to rip-off others' work, without even a casual link out to the people they're attempting to copy.
Common Craft have for years now provided the web with superb, short, witty videos explaining the most complex areas of the live web. They have been viewed millions of times, blogged by thousands. They're part of the currency of the web, appearing on Governmental and company intranets and external sites. Why, then, have McCann repackaged/stolen the idea and produced something that's mediocre at best, plain boring rather than plain English? Their version of Web 2.0 in Plain English is presented by someone with a clean corporate accent, the images used tarnished by the polish of corporate graphic artists.
Any company or organisation stands to gain a heck of a lot more linking out to the talent that's there already, employing it if it needs something more specific than is currently provided. Fair enough, McCann's corporate customers may not be connected (yet) into the world of Common Craft, but McCann are in a position to create some real change by introducing them to the real literature, rather than the York Notes version of it.
Update: Having met a nice chap from McCann the other day, the video's inspiration has since been added. Good job, guys! :-)
It's rare that I do the "parachuting into a conference" kind of thing (in fact, I've never done it) and I've oft been heard lampooning the quacks and snakeoil salesman conference speakers who do. I like to get to know a location, its people, its goals well before I open my mouth to proclaim on what I happen to think is a useful way forward.
Unfortunately, with the desire to give my all to a new job, Learning 2.008 in Shanghai, China, is just that. Mea culpa, and I hope to make up for the lack of conversations I could have had in the days preceding this unconference-y conference over the next 46 hours. I'll have spent longer getting to and from Shanghai from Scotland than I will in situe, and have relied, jealously, on the morning views, sights, smells and random foot massages of my co-keynoters to fill in the cultural gaps I will undoubtedly miss this Friday and Saturday.
I'll enjoy this trip like many I've had this year, and have a slight tinge of sadness, too, as it marks the last of my long-haul endeavours for the forseeable future. This past year has been exceptional for my young family and me, beginning with a six week old Catriona making her maiden aeroplane voyage in a 60-hour round trip to New Zealand, where I presented to some of the most innovative, homogenous groups of 1400 people I have ever met. It's the only place where a session of cupstacking at breaktime ensued, involving some of the countries most senior education officials. The team at Core Education made us feel not like visitors, but like family, and took care of us (and Catriona) as if she was their own daughter. One of them is providing full circle this weekend in coming to Shanghai.
I've seen dedication to learning like no other in India, teachers who take innovation in their stride, quickly, and see the point behind the tool in terms of pedagogy. Brains like sponges, hearts of gold. I've been daunted by knowledgeable Canadians and heartened that there's always something new for everyone to learn. Frustrated everywhere with educators who think someone else will make the changes for them. Ready to hang and quarter the guys who came up with America's assessment regime.
Holland's educators inspired me with their respect for good design principles in learning, a desire for the process to be as elegant as the final product. Florida's language teacher community took me and my family into their home, figuratively and literally, and soaked up every opportunity to make learning (for themselves as well as their students) more engaging. My work with Alas Media in LA, soon to be released through Learning and Teaching Scotland's MFLE, made my want to move my family into their studio for a whole year in itself.
Ireland's opportunity to make a difference with nearly €250m, and my opportunity to help them, made me feel that those "up top" of the system really do have the learners' needs at their heart. Slovenia's seriously strong technology infrastructure and application of this to improve literacy blew me away.
Whichever shortsighted fool told us that the world was flat, I have a message in a bottle for you: it's not just spiky. It's undulating, with more variations than an American news columnist up a skyscraper could experience in a lifetime. It's full of people who want to connect, not so much on an equal (read: Western) basis, but on an equal basis of give and take, of compromise, of sharing of cultures. Why is it that technology can, sometimes, lead us to read from the same songsheet?
Personally, I prefer the countries where the music is incomprehensible. But beguiling. For all that I love the vibrance of cities with 25m inhabitants, and I've been in a few this year, the vibrance is astonishingly samey. It's when I've gone out to the smallest (and poorest) communities in the countryside where I've had the best craic, the most enrichening learning experiences, whether that is in the plains around Agra or the pubs of Islay. I do hope that the localised spikiness continues, undiluted by the global tools we create and use.
Pic: Shanghai