Being Negroponte

'Learning when there is no school'

In 1995 I read a little black paperback book that changed my view on the world. The title of the book was 'Being Digital' and the author was Nicholas Negroponte. Several key elements of Negroponte's book stood out for me and challenged my thinking. Firstly, he talks of a time when all media will be transformed from atoms into bits. This premise, written in the middle of the 90s, looked forwards to a time when newspapers, movies, music, television, photography, and a host of other media would reside exclusively within the digital domain. The repercussions would be that large businesses who relied on shipping 'atoms' would go out of business, whilst those who sent bits would thrive. Negroponte is a gentleman and doesn't have the hubris to declare 'I told you so', but a quick look around at the world of business will tell you that he was right. Large photographic companies, the music industry, book and newspaper publishers, high street chain stores and even the mighty Hollywood film industry are struggling to adapt, survive or maintain their preeminence in a world where everyone has a mobile phone with a camera, downloads of e-books exceed print based sales, iTunes is the favourite method of purchasing your favourite music, movies can be streamed online, and people are migrating en masse to online stores such as Amazon. Negroponte's vision was prescient indeed, and we ignore the man's ideas at our peril.

Secondly, Being Digital featured further predictions about touch screen computers, artificial intelligence and convergent technologies such as TVs and computers combining their functionality. The entire book is crammed full of these instances, and it is not hard to see why it had such a huge impact on me and many others like me almost 20 years ago.

It was a delight and a privilege to be invited to meet Nic Negroponte over dinner in the run up to the Learning Technologies Conference. I sat and chatted with him for more than two hours as he regailed me and my co-diners with story after story of his many exploits. Negroponte established the now legendary MIT Media Lab, and was also founder of Wired Magazine. I first became aware of his work by reading his then regular column. He is well connected too. Close friend and LOGO inventor Seymour Papert married author and cyberspace researcher Sherry Turkle in the living room of Negroponte's home. Negroponte and his then wife met with Alan Turing's mother and brother, and were given all his 'baby photographs'. He worked alongside legends such as artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky and in so doing, became something of a legend himself. In his opening keynote speech at Learning Technologies, Negroponte stalked across the stage reminding his audience that it is a big mistake to assume that knowing is synonymous with learning. 'We know that a vast recall of facts is not a measure of understanding,' he declared, 'and yet we subject kids in school to constant memorising to pass tests.' His answer? What we need to do in schools, he said, was to find ways to measure curioisty, creativity, imagination and passion, as well as the ability to view things from multiple perspectives.

Negroponte is now celebrated for his high impact initiative to provide children in poor countries to access learning through laptop computers. His One Laptop Per Child project has now given children from Ramallah to Rio access to the learning they previously never had a hope of having. The total number of laptop computers distributed through the 1LPC project now exceeds 2.5 million in 40 countries, and there are many heart warming stories to be told. Children are now teaching their own parents how to read, using the laptops as tools. In Ethiopia, over 5000 children are learning to write computer programs using Squeak. Plans to begin distribution of touch screen tablets are well underway, and it won't be long before we are talking about One Tablet Per Child. All of this is run on a charity basis, and is philanthropic to the core, with supporters including the Bill Gates Foundation and Salman Kahn's Academy.

If we have learnt one thing from the 1LPC project, says Negroponte, it is that children learn a great deal on their own, with little or no help from others. This echoes the work of pioneers such as Sugata Mitra, whose 'minimally invasive education' was demonstrated by the 'Hole in the Wall' experiments. Negroponte said that Mitra is now working with him and others at MIT - they have joined forces to advance these projects further. Children have a natural curiosity, Negroponte is at pains to point out, and discovering, making and sharing things is second nature to them. We should nurture these characteristics he warns, rather than stifling it in rigid school systems.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Being Negroponte by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Three things

There are three things we need to know about learning for this generation. The first is that learning needs to be personalised. As I argued in a previous post, learning must be differentiated, because one size does not fit all, and standardised curricula and testing are not fit for purpose in the 21st Century. Personal learning is unique to each learner. The tools and devices students choose, and the pathways they decide to take are in many ways beginning to challenge the synchronised and homogenised approaches we still practice in schools, universities and organisations.

Secondly, learning needs to be social. Much of what we learn comes from contact and communication with others. Increasingly, such contact and communication is mediated through technology, and social media tools are ideal for this purpose. The celebrated Russian psychologist Lev Vygotskii proposed the idea of learning being extended when children are mentored by a knowledgeable other person. His Zone of Proximal Development theory has been central to our understanding of how we learn in social contexts. Yet in recent years, with the proliferation and equalisation of knowledge and the strengthening of social connections through digital media, new theories such as connectivism and paragogy have emerged to challenge the central place of ZPD in contemporary pedagogical theory. We need to ask whether we now need knowledgeable others such as subject experts to help us extend our learning when we have all knowledge at our fingertips. Now many learners are exploiting the power of social media to build and engage with equals in personal learning networks.

Thirdly, learning needs to be globalised. As we develop personal expertise, and begin to practice it in applied contexts, we need to connect with global communities. Students who share their content online can reach a worldwide audience who can act as a peer network to provide constructive feedback. Teachers can crowd-source their ideas and share their content in professional forums and global learning collectives, or harness the power of social media to access thought leaders in their particular field of expertise. Scholars who are not connected into the global community are increasingly isolated and will in time be left behind as the world of education advances ever onward.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Three things by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

You can't walk where I walk

Someone once told me that life is like a fast moving stream. You can put your foot into it, and even let it flow over you for a while, but you can never put your foot into the same river twice. That's quite profound, but there is something even more profound. It is this: You can't walk where I walk. In other words, you can't experience what I experience. We may be sat watching the same movie or TV programme. We may read the same book, participate in the same conversation, or sit in the same lecture. But your experience will be different to my experience. We may come away with similar messages or impressions of what we have observed or experienced, but because we are unique individuals, we are by nature different to each other, and our perceptions will also be different. That is one very important reason why in schools, standardised testing, homogenised curricula and batch processing by age need to be changed for more personalised approaches to education.

It's all down to individual perception - what psychologists call the 'representation of reality'. My reality is slightly different to yours and yours from mine. It has little to do with you and I viewing the same thing from slightly different angles, although sometimes that can be a factor in creating different perceptions. No, it's not about different angles, it's about different perspectives. A number of variables cause each of us to view life uniquely, and to represent reality from different perspectives, including our age, gender, culture, background, health, preferences, personal beliefs, in fact just about everything that wire our brains uniquely, and make us individuals. When teachers attempt to differentiate learning, they generally focus on aptitude and ability or in some cases, whether a student has a disability. Some teachers are sidetracked into considering 'learning styles' but that is a big mistake, as I have previously discussed. Carl Rogers advocated 'unconditional positive regard', a philosophy that plays out when every student is considered to be of equal worth in the classroom, regardless of their previous 'form'.

What teachers should be focused upon is the whole child, and how they perceive life and represent reality differently to everyone else in the room. Differentiation should encourage diversity not simply make provision for it. It should celebrate the fact that we are all different, and include every single voice in the classroom, giving each an equal weight. That's hard to achieve, but with some fore thought and practice, and a great deal of patience, teachers can encourage each student to participate fully and play to their individual strengths. We are not that different from each other really. We all have the same needs, to be respected, to feel we belong to the group and to have a voice. Each of us is the same, but in uniquely different ways. If you can understand that, then you will understand why you can't walk where I walk.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


You can't walk where I walk by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Changing the world

It's not often you get to talk with someone who has changed the world. That's exactly what I did this week in a glittering lounge in the Carlton Ritz Hotel, when I sat down with Steve Wozniak, co-founder (with Steve Jobs) of Apple. Wozniak designed the first Apple computer, and together with Jobs, set in motion a company that continues this day to mould our use of digital technology. If you use an iPad, iPod or iPhone, if you have an Apple Mac computer or laptop of any sort, you undoubtedly have Steve Wozniak to thank. Apple, and its co-founder Wozniak have shaped our desires and crystallised our dreams with innovation after innovation. Steve Jobs may be no longer with us, but Steve Wozniak - 'Woz' - lives on, larger than life, and as effusive and buoyant as ever about the future of technology and its role in education.

This week, Woz and I were both invited speakers at the 3rd International Conference on eLearning and Distance Education in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was already sitting in the speaker's lounge, ready to present his opening keynote, when I wandered in, unaware that he was there. There was no-one else in the room. I walked over. We shook hands. We sat down. Then we talked.

The world according to Woz is one of sustained wonder at the many ways technology can be made to do our bidding. As a young boy growing up in the 50s and 60s, he told his father that he would one day own a computer. His father laughed and told him a computer would cost more than a house to buy. Computers in the 50s and 60s were indeed expensive. They were also almost the size of houses. But Woz's dream of one day owning a computer was realised when he began work for the Hewlett Packard computer company. Within a short time he was taking computers apart to see how they worked, and had soon had drawn up the plans to construct his very own computer - the Apple 1. He met Steve Jobs, who said 'we can sell this', and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now aged 62, and with a life time of achievements behind him, Woz has a great deal to say about schools and education. He even became a school teacher for a few years after he had made his fortune and had put Apple behind him. He believes that computers and digital technology are now our prime scientific and academic tools, but balances this with the view that regardless of the impact of technology on society, we still need rich personal and social interaction for effective education to take place. Hence, he says, teachers will always be needed. He is very determined to enforce the idea that children learn best when they are interested. When you have the desire to learn, he says, no-one can take that away from you. And yet, he argues, school is the one environment that currently teaches children that taking a test determines how 'intelligent' they are, but cramming for that test it is certainly not learning. He asks, are schools sending out the wrong message to children, when we ask them to study for test after test? Children are born curious, he says, and all of us - teachers, parents, society - should keep it that way.

On computers and design, Woz is adamant - he is only interested in designing devices that are interactive. 'They need to respond when I use them', he said, 'otherwise I lose interest'. On the nature of knowledge, he told me, all of us need to gain some 'fact' based knowledge, but that this is only the starting point, as we gain skills that will enable each of us to take our place in society. The man is insightful, inspirational and iconic. Yes, it's not often you get to speak to someone who has actually changed the world.

NB: The above content is taken from my conversation with Steve Wozniak, and also excerpts from his Keynote speech in Riyadh on February 5, 2013.

Photo image courtesy of Steve Wheeler


Changing the world by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.