Ewan McIntosh | Digital Media & Learning

For all the social networks, people still want us to jump on planes

Every year that passes, I like to see what my toll on the planet has been in order to make some carbon amends and try to better understand this curious equation: for every year that social networks grow, the amount of travel to see people face-to-face increases. We were all promised something different, I'm sure, but the fact remains that our little business needs to jump on planes to continue to grow:

• 45,000 miles in 2006,
• 52,000 in 2007,
• 82,000 miles in 2008,
• 42,000 miles in my super-commuting year at Channel 4 in 2009,
• 106,000 miles in 2010
• 128,555 miles in 2011.

That means that this year I've had to go around the world just over 5 times. Two of those times were actually around the world, as our growing base of Design Thinking Schools in Australia hits tipping point (more news on that in 2012). But that means the other three times around the world has been spread between a growing desire of Nordic countries to make their high quality learning ever more inspiring, and the beginnings of United States schools seeing that there are ideas elsewhere that might help mend some of the damage done to their system over the past decade.

There have been some inspiring moments this past year, too many to count, but I've particularly enjoyed:

• chilling with my adopted homies Alas Media and Alan November in Boston;
• finding the clarity for a forthcoming book on Alan's veranda overlooking the Atlantic in Marblehead;
• exploring an in-revolution Cairo and relaxing with my family at the end of the hectic year on the Red Sea;
• hearing from Brisbane teachers on how their teaching lives have been transformed by the Design Thinking Schools we're kicking off there;
• letting my daughters giggle nervously on their first gondola expedition in Venice;
• sitting alongside the Vice President of the European Union in an expansive chamber at the Commission to work out how we get 650m Europeans better connected;
• staying at home in my own city for most of the late Winter and early Spring to help return my Government to power through our direction of their digital campaign, and pave the way for a vote on independence from the UK in four years time.

I'd love to say that there will be less travel in 2012, but we've already got three turns around the world booked between here and August, with more UK and European work beginning to develop. The little enterprise I started two years ago has flourished this year, with more excitement to come in 2012 with my not-so-new-now colleague Tom Barrett, and other new faces likely to appear in the New Year.

We're busy to bursting point, and in these times that is a Good Thing.

We're also making an effort in our company to travel with more efficient airlines who run more green aircraft, meaning that despite the extra 22,000 miles we've emitted 3,000 tons less carbon into the environment. We'll just have to continue working as hard on mending the damage we're doing to the planet as we are on creating excitement and change in schools around the world.

Happy New Year, fellow travellers, virtual or alongside us on Seat 53F.

Coming up at #BLC11 from Ewan

This week is, ahem, a busy one at Building Learning Communities (#BLC11) in Boston, MA. I'm getting a chance to hear plenty of other talks, seminars and keynotes and will do that now seemingly old-fashioned thing of live blogging each session as it happens, as is my wont.

I'm also offering up a fair few sessions in this packed week:

• Design Thinking: A 4-hour Sell-Out Pre-Conference
• Data Reveals Stories: A 4-hour Pre-Conference on Tuesday with some limited spaces still available
• Managing Risk-Reward with Digital Media in Education
• A wrap-up keynote on Wednesday with Cisco's Director of Global Education, which the BLC in situe and online audience is helping to write
• Celebrating the Speech: the TEDxKids @ Sunderland story
• Augmented Reality and Learning in the Ether

Most of these, including the keynote, are real hands on, brains on workshops, and I want to be aiming, in fact, to be talking as little as possible, providing some great frameworks for people to play and learn something new for themselves, with prompts and support to take them further beyond the often brief sessions we have together.

I can't wait to catch up with so many people, including the chaps and chapesses at AlasMedia, with whom I first sailed up the Charles River four years ago as they toyed with the idea of setting up a film, media and education company. They're a roaring success and steal the show every time they come to BLC. Their FlickSchool is a delightful place to learn how to make some great films and shoot super photos. Above all, their friendship over all those miles means  a lot to me, and the connection I feel always makes me stop off in LA when I'm off to New Zealand or Oz to say hi, eat some (too much!) great food and trade stories. They also caught on camera the first time Catriona was ever really scared of something (it was a microphone windshield).

And that's what BLC is about - connections. I'm grateful to Alan November for his invite which, after a three year break, I'm finally able to take again. He's the only person I jump onto American Airlines for, in the hope that I might catch even just one fish off the shore at Marblehead. And I'm grateful beyond words to Jennfier Beine who took over the task of organising the event, sorting me out for tickets, hotels, round tables for my pre-conference in a room that shouldn't really have them, and introducing me to the world of Kinko's. 

Enough of the politesse, and on with the show! Fasten your seatbelts, fire up the aggregator and get ready for some good, old fashioned reflection and reportage on the blog.

In a classroom near you soon: Tom Barrett joins NoTosh

The company I founded 15 months ago is growing, and who else better could I have asked for as a partner in this than Tom Barrett, teacher, inspirer (through his blog, his talks and workshops) and insanely communicative Twitterer? Since announcing yesterday we've had a slew of wishes from across t'interwebs.

Far from 'leaving the classroom', Tom will be continuing to grow the work we've been undertaking in classrooms around the world, making a difference to more educators, face-to-face, as well as developing some cutting edge research into what we might be using and how we might be using it next in our classrooms. If you want to work with Tom and me in your own school, district or State, just drop us a line and be part of the action.

Merlin John broke the news on his education news site, MJO, with these remarks:

"Two of the UK's best innovators of learning with technology are joining forces to develop projects and services for schools...

"With its two principal figures so steeped in pedagogy, NoTosh appears to be defining a new breed of education companies – ones that start out with the learning and pedagogy, and partner in the technology. Education is more used to working with technology companies that buy in the learning, and that has produced some rather difficult fits...

"With two key education practitioners at its heart, the potential of NoTosh in a UK education landscape where national interventions and policy are disappearing is obvious. There will be no shortage of schools and organisations wanting to make their learning more engaging for young people. And the same applies overseas."

Tom will continue to be based in Nottinghamshire, England, and like all our work will be in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Asia and the Middle East on request. As a rule, we don't charge extra travel or accommodation to work with us, so regardless of where you are you can work with us closely.

The full news is over on the NoTosh website.

I will act now: Happy New Year 2011

I've sat for just a little bit this afternoon marvelling at the velocity of shared links, blog posts penned, conversations raging on the Twitterverse about all manner of things: the future of education, coding hacks, social media marketing, Google analytics. And I once more leave the iPhone aside with a feeling that either

• I'm either missing something by not engaging with this helter skelter chat 24/7 (for that is what it would take to keep up with everyone, across timezones);
• not doing my job by ignoring most of it completely, or
• neglecting my family; or
• admitting that any potential I might have for flow in my work will disappear if I even try to engage more frequently (what do I really believe about assessment, about learning, about social media, about journalism in a new age, about communications with those who are not on Twitter, about...?)

There are so many people thinking about some great things in great ways, so many giving their local angle, and their world view, so many options to consider, that there must come a point where we stop thinking, stop speaking and take actions.

So that's my 2011 resolution, and one I'm going to enjoy keeping. I'm going to swallow more of my own advice, and that of Dr John Hunter, and not think so hard, just try the experiment.

From Euan a quote that sums up the urgency I feel to abandon the torrential streams flowing on this holiday of holidays:

I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person. -  Og Mandino

Pic of people really doing stuff, in the Loony Dook, from Gareth Harper.

Happy Christmas: A Digital Nativity

It made me smile. I hope 2010 has been as good to you as it has been to the McIntosh Family. Best wishes to you all from a freezing Edinburgh, and see you for some more exciting projects, inspiring encounters and new friends in 2011!

Beating the recession by working internationally: 2010's Travel in Review

A year ago yesterday I started NoTosh Limited, a to-the-point, action-based consultancy for digital media and education arenas, which has proven far more successful than I had hoped. Here's hoping 2011 is just as successful (actually, no, our target is to double revenues with some new stars on our team).

Crucial to this velocity has been the acceptance of overseas clients (thank you all so much!) to take a risk and have us over to inspire, cajole or troubleshoot. Plenty of their stories will appear on a new NoTosh.com site in the New Year. Exporting our skills makes up around 65% of revenue.

But this has also meant a fair level of travel; the last quarter of the working year saw me personally undertake 56 flights, covering the world two and a half times. This year, I've travelled 106,372 miles on Seat 53F (big, modern aircraft), compared to a much more tiring 41,902 miles of Extreme Commuting that I did while working for Channel 4 in 2009 (on seat 23C -smaller aircraft, less efficient, more carbon). The nature of that travel wasn't easy to handle, and noted when I was leaving the company last year. 2008, back when I was doing more educational stuff, saw some 82,000 miles.

A colleague told me that every time you do a transatlantic flip you experience the same radiation as a chest x-ray, so neither I nor my current or future colleagues leave our families and jump on a plane lightly. We do so because we believe in our work, that it will make a difference to thousands of students lives and that this will far outweight the environmental impact we're having.

Not content with that, though, we're announcing a pro bono project in the New Year which will more than make up for our own airmiles (and probably all of yours, too, dear readers). Planting trees with Carbon Credits doesn't solve the problems we're creating today at all - it's going to take 20 years for their impact to be felt. So we're planning something far more here-and-now, that will take the edge of all those miles.

Until the New Year, and notwithstanding a blog post or two inbetween, best wishes for the festive season from a thankfully Edinburgh-based, airline-free Ewan!

Get your education discussion on your Kindle

I'm delighted to announce that Kindle users have another blog they can add to their reading shelf: this week edublogs hit the Amazon Kindle store in glorious greyscale, free for two weeks and then charged at just $1.99, or £1, a month. Amazon claim 70% of the revenue. I'm really not doing this for the dosh as much as for the excitement of playing with other spaces in which people might read and reflect.

If you're into reading on planes, trains, automobiles or Starbucks for all things work, learning or design, then please: fill your boots.

Thinking our way out of over-engineering solutions

Free and unregulated cycle schemes sound like an impossible nightmare that we could never really make happen: someone will steal the bikes, they'll end up all over the country. Institutions therefore rally around and make it their business, quite literally, to provide secured bicycles for rental so that people cycle more.

It all seems so logical, but it's the kind of (successful but expensive) thinking from an old model of paternalistic "what can your country do for you", while some of the most exciting ideas, web platforms, institutions and technologies in the past five years have been all about "here's a platform, now what can you do for your country/peer group/friends".

I wanted to explore what a new business model around the old problem of bike sharing schemes might look like.

The $10,000 bike, versus the $150 bike

London's "free" bike scheme cost the locals and sponsors Barclays £25m for a programme that will run for x years. The cost per bicycle is therefore £4166. It's been a hugely successful scheme, with its millionth ride clocked up in just 10 weeks, and hardly any have been stolen (the bikes are a good bit heavier than Paris', where nearly 70% have been stolen or vandalised and required replacing).

But £4166 seems a lot for one bike, with Mayor Boris' £25m giving him only 6000 or so bikes. How much more powerful could things be if we did away with the expensive secutiy measures, expensive (heavy and cumbersome) bikes, big IT that supports such a project (and breaks down) and replaced them with the cheapest bike we can find, no security measures and a good dose of trust in our citizens, providing 163,000 bikes instead?

It wouldn't work here [insert any Western country].

Paris shows us that vandalism and theft of their cute with-basket model was a costly mistake. London has "beaten" its Gaullic neighbour with its highly secure and tech-ed up solution. Countless others, including some who've already tried totally unregulated free cycle schemes, have floundered, seeing all their bikes stolen in months.

But then Mountain View, California, sees its streets relatively free of the automobile (we are in the land of the automobile, after all). Most people opt to take one of the free red-yellow-blue-and-green bikes their main employer leaves unlocked, lying around. Why is Google able to do what entire Governments seem unable to achieve?

Is it cultural? It's partly that, but Google have done something that Governments are notoriously poor at: it's generated the culture it wanted, a culture of mutual respect, a culture of the gift economy, both through its business model, large free lunches and orange juices for visitors, staff and the visitors' taxi drivers, but also through its bike sharing scheme. We'll gift you this bike - and keep replacing them - but in return we ask you not to take us for a metaphorical ride.

And it works. It works, I think, because these bikes are everywhere and they're fun. They've been gifted by a neighbour of yours in the city, not provided for you.

So, if we were to take the Paris or London models, what is the answer to stopping people stealing bikes and having them appear all around the country? I'd argue that if Governments want people to take the bike and not the car, that's no bad thing. In fact, if we can harness thiefs as the distribution network for one bike per citizen, then I'd see more cash heading into the core solution to the problem: more bikes for people who don't yet bike.

As in Mountain View, there comes a point where the proliferation of an idea or an object turns it from scarce valued thing into a commodity. It lets everyone know where the bike came from - it's been beautifully painted in the company colours. Let's get our nations cycling to work (and cycling for play) by making cycling a cheap commodity. We used to give £250 for every child that was born. What would happen if we give a £100 bike for every adult who wants one?

More importantly, though, how could we harness the Google lesson I think I've spotted, in making public services gifted to people, rather than provided for them? What would the social fall-out be in terms of changing this language? What would the advantages be?

Nick Hood suggests that one of the education assumptions we have in the Western world is that education is a right; he asks "what would happen if we said that education was a privilege" or, in Google words, a gift?

 

Related articles

• In praise of Boris's bikes | Editorial (guardian.co.uk)
• Cycling surges in the land of the automobile (bbc.co.uk)

Ewan McIntosh eduTour 2010

This summer and autumn I'm embarking on an eduTour of proportions that are slightly scary, but I hope you'll join me on the journey, keep me right, contribute your own glowing examples of interesting practice and let me know how I could be doing things better as I seek, after two years of feeling out to pasture in medialand, to find my education voice once more. I'm lucky enough to be doing large parts of this with some of my best friends in the education world.

Six months ago I wanted to see if it was possible to bring the lessons I had picked up from the world of digital media investment and product management back into the classroom, the school leader's intray and policymaker's desk. I've been working with a few teams of brilliant educators in the UK this Spring, testing ideas, hypotheses, practices and concepts from one world transferred to another. It's time to give those ideas a bigger airing.

It's a chance to take our messages to a wider, fresh group of participants who will help emulate and expand upon practice that many of us have been developing for nearly a decade - or longer. It's also an enviable chance to learn from the amazing practice in all the countries that I've chosen for this initial tour, places I believe there is the best in schooling, informal learning, digital media development and investment.

Here's the schedule of meetings, rencontres, masterclasses and keynotes that I'll be working with over August, September and October. Many are open to those working nearby or can be ticketed by the organisers. I'm looking forward to meeting as many educators as possible, sharing stories and approaches across a wide array of activity.

This blog and my other websites will be getting a 360 degree overhaul this summer to make the experience delightful for you, too, with the help of amazing graphic designer David Airey and NoTosh developer Fraser Waters. I'll be capturing daily photo stories, videos, audioboos and, of course, blog posts of what has struck me most. Please join me!

August: New Zealand, Australia, San Francisco, Los Angeles

August 9, Nelson, NZ (Link Learning)
August 10, Christchurch, NZ (Burnside High School)
August 11, Christchurch, NZ (Breakfast Masterclass Christchurch: Book Now)
August 12, Queenstown, NZ (e-Central)
August 13, Christchurch, NZ (Papanui High School)
August 14, Auckland, NZ (NEAL)
August 16, Wellington, NZ (Aotea College/PoriruaNet)
August 17, Wellington, NZ (Loop Cluster)
August 18, Wellington, NZ (Breakfast Masterclass Wellingto: Book Now)
August 18, Hamilton, NZ (Tawa College)
August 19, Hamilton, NZ (Coalface & King Country)
August 20, Hamilton, NZ (Breakfast Masterclass Hamilton: Book Now)
August 20, Hamilton, NZ (Southwell School)

August 22-24, Lorne, Victoria, Australia (Expanding Learning Horizons & SchoolTech - Book Now)
August 25, Adelaide, South Australia (Learning Technologies Masterclass)

August 27, San Francisco, USA (Private Event)
August 28, Los Angeles, USA

The New Zealand breakfasts, masterclasses and workshops are being organised and hosted by my great friends at Core Education; Bruce Dixon, the Expanding Learning Horizons and SchoolTech conferences in Lorne, Victoria, Australia, and the South Australia Learning Technologies Department have helped take me to Australia

September: Canada, USA

September 12-14, Toronto, Canada (IN|10 - Book Now)

September 15, Boulder, USA
September 16, Denver, USA
September 17, Bozeman, USA (Hatchfest)
September 19, Seattle, USA
September 21, Portland, USA
September 23, San Francisco, USA
September 24-27, San José, USA (Conference Talk tbc)
September 28-29, Los Angeles, USA
September 30, San Diego, USA

UK Trade and Investment are helping take me to Interactive Ontario in Toronto, which also kicks off my participation in the BeCuriousTour, with two of my best friends (who're going to be a lot better friends after two weeks sharing cars, vans, trains and planes). There's lots planned for that which cannot be made public quite yet.

October: Middle East

October 7-10, Manama, Bahrain (The Education Project)

The Education Project Bahrain takes me for my first foray to the Middle East, as I seek to broaden the horizons of my own understandings and share some of our own vision: that it's not how you build an education city with bricks that is important - it's who and what you put in them that counts.

All photos Ewan McIntosh except for Lorne [bleamo], San Francisco [vgm], Toronto [dexxus], Manama [Hussain]

Games Based Learning Conference: book your earlybird rate with me

I'm delighted to be speaking at The International Game Based Learning Conference in London, March 29th-30th. But you've only got until January 31st until the earlybird rate - saving you at least £200 - runs out.

Games Based Learning is one of the fastest growing conferences focused on the positive impact that video games and social media are having on learning.

It will be one of the first major events at which I'll be speaking as part of the wider work of my new digital media and education company, the straight-up and no-nonsense NoTosh. More on that at the end of this week.

There's already a fascinating mix of speakers, from such a wide variety of backgrounds (education, military, healthcare, entertainment, corporate training) that discussions are bound to be outstanding:

• Ed Vaizey, Shadow Minister for Culture and the Creative Industries
• Siobhan Reddy & Kareem Ettouney, Co-founders, Media Molecule
• Matt Mason, Author, The Pirates Dilemma
• Alice Taylor, Commissioning Editor, Education, Channel 4 [blog]
• Michael Acton Smith, CEO, Mind Candy
• Derek Robertson, Learning & Teaching Scotland
• Stephen Heppell, heppell.net
• Ewan McIntosh, CEO, NoTosh [website coming soon]
• Jonathan Stewart, Director, Hollier Medical Simulation Centre
• Major Roy Evans, British Army, Ministry of Defence

If you'd like to be included in this line-up please submit a proposal or you may wish to participate in the international research strand. Submission deadline is January 31st.

In the meantime, make sure you book your tickets before the end of the month to get the cheapest rate possible.