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


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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


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Game changers in the Training Zone

This week, ahead of my speech at the Learning Technologies Conference I recorded a 10 minute podcast interview for the Training Zone. You can listen by clicking on the embedded link below. If the link below doesn't work for you, try this one. My interview is at 18.45 in the podcast. To give you a taste of what was discussed, here is some of what I said in an excerpt from the transcript:

Q: What are the big technological developments we can expect to see implemented in 2013?

Steve: I think there are several that we have to look at as changing practice. I'm talking about disruptive technologies, things that will change probably forever - irrevocably - what we do in the workplace and in learning in particular. So for instance, one of the big developments I'm seeing happening right now is the move from keyboards and mice to touch screens and maybe even non-touch technologies.

One of the examples I've seen recently at the CES - the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas - it was reported that there was a new touch screen device which goes 'lumpy' when you want to put a keyboard up on it. The keyboard actually appears but it's through crystallisation within the screen. The keys are actually surrounded by raised areas so that people with visual impairment for instance can use the touch screen tablet. So there are really practical developments coming out which I think are going to improve working conditions for lots of people with visual impairment.

But I think for all of us touch screen technology is already revolutionising the way we do things. Some people say that you will never see the death of the computer keyboard, but I'm not so sure. I think that in a few years time maybe our grandchildren are going to sit on our knees and say 'did you really have to touch a computer to make it work?' So I think touch screens and non-touch technologies, things like the Xbox 360 Kinect, technology with a depth camera and an infra red camera, I think is going to change forever the way we interact with technology. We are going very quickly towards the Tom Cruise Minority Report data manipulation.

I think another big development is going to be larger screens, flatter screens, in fact screens that are flexible. Screens that you can stick onto any surface so that you can make the whole of the wall of your office or your workplace into a television screen which doubles up as a computer screen and for data manipulation. And I think this is coming, I think it is going to be quicker than we think as well, these are some of the developments we are looking at.

I think ultimately, the biggest game changer which has been going on for some time now, is mobile learning. Using your own personal devices to access learning, access peer groups, access social networking, access the ability to create and share content, anywhere and everywhere. As we're talking I'm watching citizen journalism going on, on the television in front of me. This London helicopter crash that has happened. Most of the pictures the BBC are actually presenting at the moment are from people who were on the scene at the time with their mobile devices. I think we're going to see that impact a whole lot more. Those are some of the trends I see happening.  

The TrainingZone podcast - January by Trainingzone on Mixcloud

Game changers in the Training Zone by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Telling your story

Blogs are not simply about text. They can also encompass hyperlinks, sounds, videos, and images. Blogging is also about telling your story. Today I was involved in teaching a session for a BA group on the use of digital photography and communication. Specifically, the session focused on images as narrative, and all of the group managed to create some impressive and in some cases stunning image sequences. I used images from a trip with my students to the Gambia in 2009 to present my own example of a narrative at the beginning of the session. I thought I would share it with you here on my blog. I hope you find it interesting.

This image is of a man looking out over the sea, in a coastal village in the Gambia. Poverty is commonplace here, given that the Gambia is one of the poorest countries in Africa. One of the few jobs most young Gambian boys can do is fishing. It's a dangerous, low paid job, and this image depicts some of the boats they use to launch themselves out to sea.

This image is of children collecting firewood for the compound cooking fires. There is no electricity or gas in most parts of the Gambia, so open fires are the most common means of cooking. Children also fetch water, sometimes from several kilometers away from their villages, and because of the necessity for this work, they often miss school. As a visiting group, my colleagues and I, along with our students, saw the need and raised money for a new well to be sunk in the village. The children don't have to walk 4 kilometers each time they needed to fetch a pail of water anymore. Now they can go to school.

I took this image of a young girl sat in a village compound. I couldn't resist capturing the photo, because it was so iconic and representative of the children in this part of the world, and it conveyed innocence and hope. I showed her the image on my digital camera, and she was shocked but delighted. She clearly recognised herself, but I don't think she had seen a camera before, and probably not an image of herself anywhere else other than in her reflection.

I decided to use a reworked version of the picture of the young girl in a blog post called 'What Price Education?' to hammer home the message that every child deserves a good education. In the Gambia, children can only go to school until they are 11 years old, because the state only funds primary education, and it's very basic. There are few secondary schools, and children can only attend them if their parents can afford the fees. Very few can. As a result, Gambian children are some of the most disadvantaged children in the world. I couldn't think of a better was to use the image than in a manipulated front cover of the National Geographic magazine. It was very easy to do. Using PowerPoint, I created a yellow background, and a smaller blue background for the frame, and then placed the image above. Finally, I chose appropriate coloured font styles to mimic the familiar National Geographic livery. I saved the image as a .jpeg file and then uploaded it to the blog like any other image. I hope you like the images and that in some way, they speak to you.

 Photos by Steve Wheeler


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We need a rethink

There's a very useful and refreshing article by Tom Barrett in this week's TES Magazine entitled 'Education needs to plug into Web 2.0'. Never before have I read an article that I agree with so completely. Those of us who are immersed in a world where the use of social media is so sustained, embedded and familiar, forget that many schools still ban the use of Web 2.0 type tools in their classrooms. Tom has some advice for schools who are in this category, and I quote:

"Perhaps one of the biggest barriers to engaging with the social web in schools is the perceived issue of safety: many teachers say they are left feeling helpless when pupils' work is available on the World Wide Web. I have been blogging with classes for eight years and these common-sense guidelines always work:

1) Be open to parents and allow them to share any concerns.
2) Moderate all comments before they are posted online.
3) Have a clear and robust e-safety policy.
4) Work within the school policy on images of children on blogs.
5) Publish a set of blogging guidelines on your site and share them with parents.
6) Make sure the whole school community is aware of your work."

Common sense indeed, but I would also add that schools should encourage and permit children to help teachers co-create the e-safety and school policies on social media use. They use these tools outside of the school on a daily basis and often have a sophisticated grasp on how social media work. Who better to inform schools than the users themselves?

I once spoke at an event where a school leader remarked that his school had banned access to blogging, YouTube and all other social media because 'they are dangerous'. I countered by asking him whether we should also stop teaching children how to cross the road, because traffic is dangerous too? I think he got the message. Where better to teach children about the dangers and risks of using the Internet, than in school? I think a rethink is very much overdue.

Whether this blog post, or Tom's article, or any number of other good pieces of advice will have an impact on the impasse many schools find themselves in with relation to social media use in schools, remains to be seen. But just a few moments thinking about the risks (and balancing those up against the clear benefits social media have in schools who do allow them) should convince most school leaders that adopting social media in the classroom really is the best way forward.

Image source


We need a rethink by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.