edublogs

Sir Ken Robison's The Element - on RSA Vision

Having blogged some of the key points I picked up from Ken Robinson's The Element, you can hear some of them from the horse's mouth from the film quickly chucked up from last week's lecture at the RSA in London.

Ken Robinson's The Element: reincarnating creativity

Ken Robinson's "The Element" gets launched in the UK this week. It's a superb tome, and one that every educator, employee or entrepreneur should read, if only to check that they themselves are in the right place personally and professionally. Do your natural talents and passions meet at the same time and place, or are you plugging away at the wrong thing completely? Ken's book contains no simplistic lists of things one must do to survive the 21st century - it's Johnny Bunko for the over-educated.

Update: The RSA have now featured a film of his Element Lecture from February 2009.

Many of the messages will be familiar to those who have viewed his famous TED talk which proclaims, rightly in this blogger's opinion, that schools kill creativity. Why? Here's some of the stimulus from Ken's book along with some of my own observations, thoughts and inaccurate takes on the world of education.

Schools are built for, and in the image of, the industrial revolution
Schools are not only built for an industrial revolution past but also in its image - my first ever teaching placement in the most deprived area of Scotland was marked by every period of learning being 53 minutes long, something more like a chicken processing plant's shifts than a stimulating learning environment, with students batched by age and subject to standardised tests for quality before shipping to the real world. Conformity has thus always had a higher value than diversity. Disciplines on offer are subject to a hierarchy (maths and native language, followed by the sciences with music and the arts chasing the coattails).

Creativity and standardised testing can't share the same bed
We know this set of unchanging givens is killing creativity not just in high schools, though generally to a much lesser degree in primary schools, but also in Higher Education establishments. As the number of school leavers not in employment, education or training (NEET) creates a political headache for governments around the world, they are failing to tackle the continued problem in universities and colleges where the numbers also falling into the NEET category are surpassing the figures for high schools.

From recent personal experience of the 'creative output' of some UK Higher Education institutions I can vouch for a killing of creativity, independent thought and entrepreneurship, as hoardes of undergraduates and MScs fight to conform to what university markers want to see and take advantage of the spread of 'cramming courses' at the expense of pursuing personal passions at their best effort. When working on personal projects that are put forward for commissioning (i.e. asking for several £00,000s from the likes of 4iP) or for national and international media and technology prizes, the constraints of the learning environment ("a one-month unit using only x or y software") are used to justify downright poor propositions. Where's the passion that makes them stay up until 11pm and be up at 5.30am to work on their Big Idea? (These are the times 11 year olds at the New York KIPP schools regularly keep to tackle their learning, something about which they, at least, are passionate).

I said earlier that elementary schools have largely escaped this struggle for conformity, but even this elevated position is being gnawed away by standardised tests and curricula. Nothing in the past three years has made me more depressed about the state of education in England than hearing a young Wolverhampton child, part of a PDA-in-the-classroom project, saying that his prime goal from learning was to "get a five" - I still have no idea what "a five" is, but I have a feeling that it's not something that inspires me.

The death of entrepreneurship
This desire to "get a five" or to gain the best possible SAT test result is based on a wrong assumption, both in the creation of such tests and their perceived value in the wider world, particularly in the growing creative sector (worth £50b a year in the UK). Malcolm Gladwell's (right) Outliers, which I read immediately after Robinson's Element, offers a great counterpart in where creative success comes from in the first place. It explores the element of chance, background and opportunity in one's success, but also the need for a serious superhuman degree of practice at something before you reach the beginning of your prime, somewhere, that is, in the region of 10 years or 10,000 hours of passionate practice.

In the schooling environment we still see in most countries' high schools and higher education establishments, it's rare that the personal passion of a young person is given the chance to steer activity, resource and time in order that they might get close to achieving that 10,000 hours quicker. But it's not all the fault of institutions' structures and strictures.

More often than not, the successful student pictures themselves working in the 'safety' of faceless institutions rather than taking their passions and ideas to market themselves. History shows more entrepreneurs who were not successful students making it in the relative unsupported privacy of their entrepreneurship. Most students fail to realise, as Robinson puts it so well, that a degree these days is not so much a passport to a good job and salary, but a visa, something that needs renewed on an ever more frequent basis. But institutions and Governments are not particularly vocal in promoting this fact, thus encouraging the self-perpetuating myth that going to univesrity is better than going to college which is better than following a passion that, while you're willing to spend every waking hour working on it, might not lead to anything.

What is it that needs to change? Clue: It isn't curriculum or assessment
Nearly every country I've worked in for the past three years, from India to China, New Zealand to the states and provinces of Canada and the USA, from my native Scotland to our neighbours in England and Wales, is fiddling with two things: curriculum and assessment. Technology is often seen as the means of making teaching and learning better. I don't want to tackle here whether it does, but one thing is sure, as Arthur C Clarke (via Sugata Mitra) put it: "If a teacher can be replaced by a computer, then they should." This doesn't mean that all teachers should be replaced by computers, of course. It doesn't even mean that poor teachers should be, really. What it does highlight is that the myth an education system has no poor teachers or even a large hump of mediocre teachers needs to be met head on.

We also need to recognise that, largely, those teachers who use technology the most effectively and lead the way with its use are also, by and large, excellent teachers with or without the technology.

This helps us see what many of us appreciate already: the one biggest element of improving education, making learning more creatively inclined and entrepreneurial, is the teacher. It's not curriculum, class sizes (though smaller class sizes make the teacher's life easier) or even assessment. This is something I've been reporting back from research for two years (and which I've been blown out on more times than I can count). It's not about letting students lead the way with technology and "show us teachers" how it's done. Students are generally quite narrow in their knowledge of how to harness technology or creative venture.

No, it's how teachers and parents teach that is important. It is, to use a piece of edu-jargon, pedagogy, both at school and at home.

Yet no national strategy - and I would love to be corrected - headlines pedagogy as the key factor. Think about it: A Curriculum for Excellence (Scotland); No Child Left Behind (assessment: USA); New Zealand's curriculum is about values, competences, subject areas... Also, there's no large educational business à la Pearson that places its centre of gravity around pedagogy forcing the issue with superb pedagogy-based programmes of change, and with good reason - the business of standardised testing, where pedagogy must play second fiddle to cramming and passing the test, is worth in the USA between $1.2 and $5 billion per year per state. How much is teaching the teachers worth? Currently, a lot less.

Fundamental change through Brains Trusts
When I was having a post-panel-session chat with Clay Shirky (I was on the panel and he was the first question-asker of the day) he talked about my current place of employment not in terms of what it was, but in terms of who was in it: "What a brain trust you guys have there", he said. What did he mean? He meant that the organisation employed what it felt were the best people for the job of moving its business forward, and left them to get the hell on with it. The result of feeling that you're part of this brains trust is that you strive more than you ever have to be the best in the world. How many times has someone called the teachers in your school a "brains trust"? Or, for that matter, the management team? Or the parents? Or the students? How many times a day are you aware that you're goal is to be the best in the world?

When we were developing eduBuzz for students and teachers in East Lothian, we centred it around the people, not the platform or the politique of the education authority's management (who, in some schools and particularly in the early days, riled against what we were doing). In a LIFT talk last year, I made the point of saying that its success as a project was probably down to the fact that it offered an immediate change from the importance placed on the school - school boards, school achievement, school councils - and moved it instead onto a level where individuals - people - were the focus. People, not institutions and paper-borne structures, are the sole way to help individuals find their element, nurture it and take advantage of that for the greater good. It's just that most people who have ound their element have had to go and create their own institutions or projects to find a like-minded tribe - education institutions where one is packed away by age and ability, ability determined through standardised tests, are not the place to find fellow tribesmen and women who want to be the best in the world.

It's the nurturing of the brains trust in one's place of work or place of learning that counts the most if we are to improve learning. Schools are pretty poor at identifying talents that are not testable, yet alone nurturing it (this happens thanks to the actions of individual teachers rather than a systemic ability and framework to nurture talent, in the same way as, say, a broadcaster like Channel 4 does; there, the raison d'être is to nurture alternative voices and new talent, with a budget and infrastructure built more or less solely around this. My own department, for example, manages some £50m of public and private money to nurture new talent in online, mobile and gaming media alone.).

Making sure that our current and future students in schools and higher education establishments are capable of entrepreneurship in many areas of their lives, of coming up with solutions that marry new technology (bringing with it new possibilities we could not have before thought through) with strong understanding of design to tackle issues that really matter is the number one task to ensure that they can fully participate as citizens. Simply providing access to part of that equation is not enough: broadband for all without understanding for all, community without happenstance on a global scale, a child's creativity without understanding of the potential technology brings.

Pic: How Intelligent Are You? |   Malcolm Gladwell   |   C4 Offices

Ken Robinson's The Element   |   Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers

John Cleese on time, place and flow of creativity

John Cleese provides a ten-minute insight into what many of us know already, but fail to acknowledge:

1. We do not know where we get our ideas from (but we do know we don't get them from our laptops).
2. Sleeping on an idea can help make its reappearance later so much better.
3. Ticking things off and keeping all the balls in the air means you will not have any creative ideas.
4. In our frenzied connected world we need to make some time to make some mood for creativity: a tortoise cocoon from which we can check it's safe to come out into a self-created oasis in our lives.
5. We need to set aside time and place where interruptions are not allowed - we need to create boundaries of space with a starting time and a finish time, separate from ordinary life, and only then creating a space and place where we can play.
6. The problem with some teachers is that they may not know that they are not very creative, and therefore they may not value creativity even if they can recognise it.
7. If those in charge are egotistical and wish to claim credit for the work of others, then they shall directly or indirectly discourage others from being creative.

I've consistently found No. 1 hard, No. 2 happens all the time and is why I don't respond well to tight tight deadlines, No. 3 is my weak spot while No. 4 tends only to happen once everything (and everyone else) is satisfied. No. 5 I achieve well and is the reason airplane commutes were invented. No. 6 is harsh on most people I know read and comment on this blog but true for oh-so-many more. No. 7 is proven every day in blog posts from some leaders and educators whose wordcount on 'me' and 'I' is top heavy at the expense of 'you', 'we' and 'us'.

And you?

From Tessy

(Reflecting in) Oscar glory - would your school be world class?

I was thrilled to hear that colleagues in Channel 4's Film4 (well, it's a table with two or three people at Horseferry Road) have had a significant hand in winning twelve Oscar nominations. All year they've been winning prizes for Hunger, and now Slumdog Millionnaire, In Bruges and Happy-Go-Lucky add to that.

Working in an organisation where every week its Chief Executive is able to send emails telling the whole staff of the latest world-class awards being nominated or won by colleagues is, I think, quite rare. But it also has the effect of raising everyone's game. How many jobs have you been in where every week, at least once, you're asking if the project you are thinking of doing or stuck in the middle of has the potential to be world class? Even the lead of Slumdog, Dev Patel, was discovered and had his first acting role on another award-winning production shown first on and made for Channel 4's teen channel E4, Skins.

If only more schools set their ambition levels at that level, not at the vagaries of "excellence" and "21st century", but at "world class". If only more teachers saw their role as contributing to the potential of their students to win the imaginary plaudit of educational Oscars or Webbys in the same way as a Commissioner at Channel 4 looks to make their independent companies' productions become the best in the world at what they do.

It's not that every idea gets there, but one thing is certainly true: We all get closer to world class by consistently working towards that level and being around others who do, too.

The film buffs amongst you might want to read more on the fine heritage of Film4. Meanwhile, I wonder whether anyone would have the guts to proclaim their Curriculum is not one for Excellence, but The Best Curriculum In The World. At least at that point, the goal is clearer for everyone involved.

Probably the best ICT class in the world. Probably

So David's school is a rather expensive one in a nice bit of the South East, but that doesn't negate the fact that his teaching of technology and the issues around it this past term has been astounding.

Students are not just using games for learning but they're thinking about it, too, everyone - including the students - reading Johnson's theories for starters. And they've had talks from half of Web 2.0's glitterati: the founding director of carbon footprint company AMEE, the creator of Pepys' Diary, the company behind Channel 4's latest games project about your genes (Routes), author and hyperlocal website founder Steven Berlin Johnson, coder and writer suprème Tom Armitage, and sci-fi writer, gamer and husband-of-dear-colleague Cory Doctorow.

If schools are worried (and they are) about how to teach technology in an age where students and their teachers think young people know it all, then engaging young people and their teachers in higher order thinking and real-life entrepreneurialism like this is a damned good way of taking the lead in creativity through technology. Congrats, David, on a superb term. Can't wait to see what's in store this Spring!

Pic of David Smith

The Alternative School: a mainstream model

"Why should I learn Algebra...? I have no intention of ever going there." Billy Connolly had a point.

Schooling, despite the concentration on curriculum and assessment reform in recent years, largely still hasn't tackled the main issue: meaningless (to young people) pedagogy. It's not the fault of teachers, of course, but of those who "manage change" not managing to give enough time for teachers to think about what they would do differently from the last 400 years. One day extra a year for "the biggest innovation in curriculum in a generation" is to ridicule the enormity of the task in hand.

Cue The Alternative School (TAS), a non-profit initiative for those kids who don't 'get' regular schooling, and is arguably doing already what most schools strive for and don't quite attain across the board. Their new blog gives a flavour of some of the activity they have been up to, and their latest post features a superb film starring some of the young people involved in the programme. One to keep an eye on and learn from as things develop more in the open with their new blog.
Bunking Off - The Alternative School from Kirsty Anne Pugh on Vimeo.

danah boyd on handheld social networking

"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

• Persistence
• Replicability
• Unexpected scalability and visibility
• Invisible audiences
• Searchability. collapsed contexts (type of audience, rules of engagement, social scripts)
• Convergence of public and private

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.

UK Government Research: Web 2.0 does improve learning

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

• Web 2.0 helps to encourage student engagement and increase participation – particularly among quieter pupils, who can use it to work collaboratively online, without the anxiety of having to raise questions in front of peers in class – or by enabling expression through less traditional media such as video.
• Teachers have reported that the use of social networking technology can encourage online discussion amongst students outside school.
• Web 2.0 can be available anytime, anywhere, which encourages some individuals to extend their learning through further investigation into topics that interest them.
• Pupils feel a sense of ownership and engagement when they publish their work online and this can encourage attention to detail and an overall improved quality of work. Some teachers reported using publication of work to encourage peer assessment.

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.

Blue Sky Thinking in Canada

We're heading towards the end of a marathon week in Canada, firstly in Alberta and now in Saskatchewan, working with educators, administrators and leaders of learning to think about some new ways we could inspire tomorrow's generations.

All the links from the past week which I've mentioned, examined or peeled back in my workshops can be found under the big Canada grouping in my online bookmarks. Within that, one can just click the small + sign next to any additional category that takes your fancy to narrow down the options. Happy researching and, above all, tell us here how you get on.

Image of Saskatchewan

Remixing Cities, remixing learning: Charles Leadbeater

There's a great deal of 'play' at this year's Scottish Learning Festival, with LTS's Consolarium Challenge stretching over both days, pitching student gamers from across Scotland against each other for the ultimate accolades (and loads of free gaming kit for their school). I'll also be doing a seminar on the crossover between gaming, social media and learning, as well as leading a band of innovative educators at the Discovery Hour on Wednesday and, maybe, Thursday - come and find out how teachers have been making superb uses of Second Life, robots and new media in the classroom.

However, as always, there's at least one keynote I feel might not have the pulling power on the masses who, by the last day of the Festival, are seeking some easy takeaways for their schools and the latest classroom innovations, a keynote that promises to have several profound messages for our school leaders and curriculum designers. In fact, if the audience were not 2000 but more like 200 of Scotland's ICT coordinators, Directors of Education, Head Teachers and policy wonks I'd be quite happy. This is my appeal for you to attend or watch the video stream of Charles Leadbeater's keynote on the future of education.

To leave you in no doubt as to the thought he's given this issue, let me direct you to a paper he published about the evolution of the city. I normally abhor those who ask "What does School 2.0 look like" but, by kings, he's pretty damned close. In Remixing Cities he manages to succinctly outline what 'school' might look like. It's more like Schools, in the best tradition of Malcolm Gladwell's Pepsis and Spaghetti Sauces, because, in the future (well, the sooner the better really) there will no longer be a school that we go to, but rather schools that we go to. And, yes, play features heavily throughout. Here is a lengthy citation from his superb manifesto:

If a city addresse learning from the vantage point of these social web models, what could it offer? The outer circle would be:
An eBay for learning: a city-wide learning exchange to match learners to those with the skills to teach but who are not teachers. For example, if someone needed a tutorial in using garage band software, they could find someone with the skills who may not be a school teacher.

The Learning Game: more learning opportunities modeled on large scale, multi-player games in which players discover challenges and acquire the tools and skills to overcome them together. For example, a city-wide sustainability challenge using maths and science skills.

YouLearn: using the power of user-created video to provide learning opportunities complete with user ratings and comments.

Wiki-learning: a city based resource of facts, figures, information and insight, created by and for the city’s citizens for its curriculum.

Social search for learning: using tools such as tagging, folksonomies and social book marking to allow more structured peer-to-peer learning, so that one generation of learners can follow in the footsteps of others.

These mainly digital tools would be augmented by enhanced opportunities to learn outside schools in businesses, libraries, galleries or in settings relevant to what is being learned—the city as a classroom.

The middle circle would focus on families, learning and social networks. That might include:

Social networking for learning: peer-to-peer networks on MySpace, Facebook and other networks to link people in learning clubs to learn with and from their peers, including adults and parents, online and offline, in coffee shops and homes.

Enhanced parental involvement in schools: development of family learning centers; parents as teaching assistants.

Get Started: Increased investment in early years provision for disadvantaged families and linking them earlier to schools that prepare them for learning.

NetMoms: Using social networks to promote mothers’ clubs to support informal learning and employment.

Personal trainers for learning: Local learning support workers who would work door-to-door, similar to health visitors.

Schools would still be vital, but they would be designed to maximize the value of the wider platform. For instance:

Parents and adults might learn in the same building as children.

Schools could be productive enterprises, centers for small business clusters, in which children run real money-making businesses.

Teaching by discovery and doing to instill social skills alongside cognitive skills would be much more central.

Schools would be open longer, more flexible hours, with schedules that suit the different paces that children learn and the times that parents work.

There would be more, smaller, studio-style schools, akin to cafes or drop-in centers suited for more virtual learning communities and particularly for disaffected teenagers.

Alongside teachers would be more para-professionals, teaching assistants, business people, environmentalists and artists.

Children would learn from one another with the creation of a new generation of lead learners.

Every child would have a self-directed learning support plan to shape what they learn and from whom, in and outside school.

Download the whole document.
Picture; Sparktography