Upstairs downstairs

The gulf is widening between the vendors and the practitioners. It was never more apparent this week than at Learning Technologies - one of the largest events of its type in Europe. The conference attracted over 400 delegates, the free exhibition downstairs several times that many punters. But something was seriously amiss. Several people remarked openly that the 'downstairs' learning technology and skills exhibition was the 'same old same old' and that it contrasted sharply with the practices that were being debated, disseminated and discussed 'upstairs' in the main conference venue at Olympia 2, in West London.

So I went down to see for myself. What struck me about the downstairs exhibition which took up two floors and consisted of over 240 company stands was that it really hadn't moved on from last year. It was just as busy, with plenty of potential customers wandering around. As usual there were plenty of chocolates, pens, mouse mats and squeezy toys being given away for free, and lots of colourful lights and backdrops. There were the same polished corporate presentations. The technology was just as shiny and so were the salespeople, but looking past the veneer you could see that many were offering the same tired old fayre as last year. This exhibition was very much about the technology, very little about learning. Again, these were the observations of several people.

I did no better down on the ground floor where the 'learning skills vendors' were plying their trade. In the first two conversations I had, I was asked if I wanted to know more about learning styles and if I was interested in a course in Neural Linguistic Programming. Whilst the first has absolutely no scientific basis, the second is so unsound and risky it is tantamount to dark ages shamanism. I almost started looking for the chicken bones. I didn't waste time telling the vendors what I really thought about their 'products'. I just politely but firmly told them that I wasn't the right person to be asking. I then shook the dust of my shoes, and smartly returned back up the stairs to sanity. But think about this for a minute. If training companies are still peddling such unsound, unproved and frankly dangerous concepts after all these years, what kind of a future can we expect for learning and development in the corporate sector? And who is driving change in education and training? Let's hope it's not the vendors. For some very good reasons.

Fortunately, returning to the upstairs conference venue, it was possible to hear sensible, visionary and practical stories from many of the excellent speakers at the Learning Technologies event. The likes of Jane Bozarth, James Clay, Craig Taylor and Cathy Moore regaled their audiences with inspiring and challenging talks. My own talk was packed out as I talked about Web 3.0, Web x.0 and the future of web based learning. My new best buddy Clark Quinn (pictured - who at the last minute stepped in to replace Mark Oehlert) was excellent value with his own personal take on games based learning, and Olympic Medal winning high jumper Steve Smith also shone with his motivational speaking on - motivation. I had the pleasure of meeting and spending time with Itiel Dror, and although I failed to find time to hear him speak, we did have the dubious honour of sharing the experience in the small hours of Thursday morning standing outside shivering in the sub zero temperatures, while the Novotel staff and London Fire and Rescue Service tried to discover what had triggered off the fire alarms at 3.30 in the morning.

All in all, and the interrupted sleep aside, LT11UK was a great event, well organised, and replete with great speakers, all thanks to the talents of Donald H Taylor and his excellent team. But for me there was only one floor in the building that mattered. It's clear that the practitioners, the L and D professionals, have moved on and advanced their agendas from last year. But not so the vendors. They appear to have been stuck in a time warp. I'm sorry to report that the exhibition downstairs was lagging so far behind the times it could quite easily have been located on another planet.

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

Where is the road map?

Warning - this is a rant. On the day the UK government announces its new 'slimmed down' curriculum, here's my personal view on the current situtation in schools: Guy Claxton once remarked on the complexity of life: 'We have to learn to make our own way through a complex world without the benefit of an accepted trustworthy route map.' In a climate of constant change and disruption, this is more pertinent today than the day it was first written. Disruption is not a bad thing. An enormous amount of things need changing and a great deal of reform needs to be done, particularly in the compulsory education sector. We need to deliberately disrupt what exists to achieve any positive change or meaningful progress. But we don't have a road map. So education sits where it is with little or no forward movement and it stagnates. No matter how much successive governments pontificate on 'the way ahead' and no matter how much (or how little) money they throw at the problem, the fact is - we are standing still, because no one really knows where we are going. Anyone who claims they know the way forward is either deluded, or lying. Yet we do know this: Education needs reform, because far too many young people are being let down by the current system. My wife, who is a secondary school teacher of English informs me that each year, in every new year 7 intake, there are children who enter secondary school unable to read and write properly, and there are always a few who are completely illiterate. Some go all the way through secondary school, still unable to effectively express themselves in writing. This is completely unacceptable of course. Forget the demographic variables of gender and ethnicity - they are socially constructed anyway - and think about some stark statistics. In March 2010 the Telegraph reported that the number of schools placed in the lowest category by OFSTED had doubled over the previous year. These statistics were published before the change of government. The present economic crisis has prompted the new government to impose deep funding cuts. We don't know what OFSTED's statistics are going to be this year, but with fewer resources available, you can bet your bottom copy of the TES that the new figures won't be an improvement on those of 2010. Will the academy scheme move us forward? I very much doubt it. What they will do in most cases will be to widen the gap between those who are priviledged and those who aren't. It doesn't matter which government is in power - the scheme will continue regardless. The present government wants academies to use as a weapon to force schools to improve. But throwing a lifeline only to those who can actually swim seems like a ridiculous rescue plan to me. And as the BBC News site warns, in 2011 we are already sinking fast, with only one child in six actually attaining results that measure up to international standards of education. You see, there is a cycle of failure that is perpetuated by the formal schooling culture and the legislation surrounding it. A child gets poor grades, and the school reacts negatively (as do the parents). This causes the child's self-esteem to suffer a blow. He performs poorly again, doesn't want to do any homework or put any effort in, and struggles to catch up. Perhaps he is dropped down a set. Another blow to his self esteem. His performance drops further and the school and parents react negatively again - it's affecting the school's reputation and may even influence their league table position if the child's performance is reflected in poor exam grades. The child doesn't care anymore. He's apathetic now and just wants to leave school. He becomes a truant. He gives up, saying that school is 'rubbish'. More negative reactions from the school and sanctions taken ... and on it goes, an ever downward spiral. Don't even get me started on post compulsory education. We'd be here all night... What I think we need to move forward is a change in culture and a change in governance. We need to move away from the standardised testing (and the resultant league tables) that are so needlessly punitive. All standardised testing ultimately achieves is a measure of how successfully a school can get it's children to comply with the rules needed to pass standardised testing. It's tautological. And it's part of the problem rather than part of the solution. When are we going to free up the curriculum to give teachers the freedom to teach in a way that personalises learning and unleashes creativity? When are we going to start assessing children to encourage better, deeper learning? Why do tests have to be used as a political weapon to show how well government funds are being used to educate the next workforce? Will technology provide any answers? I don't think we'll have the answers to any of these questions until we deliberately disrupt and radically reform the tired, outmoded and hopelessly inadequate systems that currently exist. I made my own views on alternatives to the current system in a recent blogpost - outrageous alternatives. Sorry, there is no roadmap, because we are still building the road. And we are rapidly running out of construction materials. What we now need is knowledgeable, passionate and fearless outriders who will forge ahead to lay down a pathway for us. They need to be allowed to do so without fear and without sanction. Rant over. Image source by Boekmania Where is the road map? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The social impact of disruptive technology

Steve Wheeler, Associate Professor of Learning Technology at the University of Plymouth, will give a public keynote on February 2 at the LEARNTEC Bildungsforum, in Karlsruhe, Germany. Being a self-declared 'disruptive activist', the subject of his speech 'The Future of Web 2.0 Technologies in Learning' is very close to the core of his professional interests and endeavours. In the following interview he talks about the necessity of harnessing the potential of Web 2.0 for education and training.

Prof. Wheeler, which technologies do you consider "disruptive” and what has Web 2.0 to do with it?

Disruptive technologies are game-changers, they fundamentally change the manner in which things are done. Let me give you the example of digital photography: Today there are only a few places left where you can buy non-digital cameras. There is hardly any need for them. The same can be applied to Web 2.0. Just take Wikipedia: Technically it is a collaborative work space for creating content. In fact it has thoroughly overturned the idea that you need to consult a printed encyclopedia to get expert information. If you find a mistake, you can instantly correct it yourself, you do not have to wait for the publishing house to decide on an updated next version. The internet has literally changed our lives.

Why do you think it still necessary to push for further change and to pursue "disruptive activism”?

We have to realize that the way teaching is conducted in many schools and universities is actually outdated. It no longer applies to the current world of young people and does not answer to the needs of society anymore. But change does not happen by itself. I am very much interested in learning psychology, in the way people behave, how they perceive technology and how they use it in teaching and learning, and I have learnt from my research that there are and always will be many people who are resistant to change or reticent about it, because disruptive technologies challenge their social and professional roles. This is also my personal experience, from the very first time I used computers to train nurses in hospitals in 1986.

There are around 7.000 authors for the German Wikipedia edition. Do you think this has a big social impact?

The basic idea behind Wikipedia is that everybody can be an editor and a commentator. This idea sways the balance of power between experts and non-experts, between teachers and students everywhere, because it rejects the privileged role of former knowledge mediators and contradicts the traditional idea that knowledge can only be generated by certified experts. People who take an interest in a certain subject are able to generate knowledge about it - and consider themselves capable of doing so.

Are these changes mostly discernible for internet researchers like you or do you think the people involved - teachers and students - are also aware of them?

The reactions are different. There are many who embrace these changes, probably more in the educational and academic sector than in corporate training. But there are also ostriches that put their heads in the sand and don’t want to see what happens around them. Others don’t accept the idea that students have the same status as lecturers. They don’t like Wikipedia to be referenced (in academic assignments) because they don’t trust anything which has not been formally peer-reviewed. Of course, what I write on my blog is not institutionally checked, which is different to a publication in a scientific journal which may go through two blind peer reviews. But in fact my readership reviews and comments on what I write, and this in a way is more valuable to me than a formal review. There is more immediacy to it and there is a personal bond between me and my readers. Wikipedia and weblogs were two of the most important applications of Web 2.0, when Tim O’Reilly coined the term in 2004.

Today everybody talks about Facebook and Twitter. What do they offer for learners?

Facebook is very interesting as it attracts a wide variety of people from teenagers to older people. But we should not confuse Facebook with formal learning. Some people try to harness it for this purpose, but I think the potential is quite limited. Twitter is less distracting, it is more streamlined and has a more appropriate range of features that makes it a better teaching tool than Facebook. You can share conversations and knowledge, but you cannot play. You can use filtering tools, if you do not want to read everything written by all the people you follow. If I want to know something about a particular topic, I go to my Twitter account and put a short message on the screen, asking for information. Within minutes I get some very clear answers. I get information fast and I get in contact with people who are experts in this particular field. You have mentioned a lot of disruptive software applications.

Is there also hardware with similar effects?

Smartphones are disruptive. Of course they can be used inappropriately, e. g. for cyber bullying. But imagine 30 children in a classroom, every one with a mobile phone: Why not use it in a controlled way, for example as a voting instrument, as a tool for messaging, or in order to link up with media that you cannot normally access in the classroom? Cell phones seemed to be a tool for talking to anyone in any place. But today they are much more: You can send text, gain access to the net, use your camera, orientate yourself by using GPS systems, capture augmented reality. We would be very stupid to ignore these possibilities.

The future of learning is about the mobile phone?

Definitely. It will be a platform for many future developments, such as context-aware technology. You will see more virtual content around you: overlays on billboards, in airports, on sightseeing venues. If you take students into a museum, the virtual information about the artwork, the artist etc. will be embedded into the painting you are looking at. At the end of the day you go back to your classroom and you download the complete information about what you have seen and decide what you are going to do with it.

What is the future of Web 2.0?

Well, this is the subject of my LEARNTEC lecture. Let me just tell you that the transition into Web 3.0 will be very semantic, very meaning-based. It will lead to the classification of knowledge through folksonomies and to the extended web which combines social and information richness. The future is very exciting.

For further information on Steve Wheeler see his weblog. Presentations are available here at slideshare. Vorträge: Public Key Note: The Future of Web 2.0 Technologies in Learning (Messebereich) 02.02.2011 13:45-14:45

The social impact of disruptive technology by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Our viral web

We are all Big Brother now. Not in the Orwellian dystopic sense of course. But we all have access to the power of social media, and with appropriate use, and with enough of us involved, we are all watchers - and we can all make a difference. Reading a blog post by Jonathan MacDonald today got me thinking about the vast, untapped potential of the social web to inform, challenge, educate and motivate. MacDonald witnessed a tube train guard threatening and verbally abusing a passenger. He reported it online, sharing his outrage with his social network. The story went viral, spreading rapidly across other networks. YouTube, Twitter and the rest of the social media family were quickly unundated with comments and views. Within 24 hours, the story (and others of a similar nature) had made it into the mainstream on traditional mass media, where it was covered by the likes of BBC TV News and Sky TV News, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail. Even the Mayor of London joined in with the discussion. The guard was subsequently suspended and is under investigation.

In an interesting episode last year, I personally experienced the power of the viral web through Wikipedia Commons. I took several pictures of Punk Godfather Malcolm McLaren when he spoke at Handheld Learning 2009 in London. The next day I posted his picture onto my Flickr account and licenced it under Creative Commons for free sharing and re-use. Subsequently others loaded it up in several versions to Wikimedia Commons. None of us were aware at the time, but Malcolm's speech was to be one of his last public appearances before his untimely death in 2010. The media went into overdrive, and of course, searched around for images they could freely use to illustrate their stories.

Many journals and newspapers found and used my image of McLaren, with me duly credited as the photographer. My photo even graces his Wikipedia page (in all language versions). My name is now forever linked to that of Malcolm McLaren. A simple search on Google using his name and mine together will deliver you hundreds of hits. Try it. It's an example of a picture going viral on the web. There are many other examples of the viral spreading of images, videos, sound bites and ideas - some are legendary. They become memes as people pass them on quickly across the social web from one to another. There are also many examples of citizen journalism, where those who are actually present at the scene of an incident can upload their images quickly, or can tweet their observations instantly, for sharing to a potentially world wide audience on the web. The truth of what is happening becomes common knowledge, even before the press can get there to report it, or in some cases edit, sanitise and filter it.

I don't believe we have even begun to tap into the true potential of social media yet. As more and more people connect with each other in different ways, across a multitude of platforms, through a bewildering array of devices, I think we are going to see some extraordinary things happening, socially, culturally and politically. Communities are going to be transformed and our society forever changed by the use of these tools. Let's hope it will be for the better.

Image source by Ocean Flynn

Our viral web by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

See-through learning

One of the things I dislike greatly about many online learning environments is poor design. Students often complain that they cannot navigate easily around VLEs to find the links, tools or resources they need. They have to spend time thinking about how to get to a discussion group, or how to save content, when their energy and time should be spent learning. Some platforms are better than others of course, but generally many institutional managed learning environments suffer from the same problem - opacity.

I sat in a planning meeting today for our Faculty of Health at the University of Plymouth and one thing we were all agreed on was that courses delivered using any form of technology needed to be designed in such as way that students didn't have to struggle to make them work. In other words, students needed to 'see through' the technology and get to the learning quickly. Essentially, the more transparent the technology is, the easier the learner will be able to use it. The more opaque it is, the more difficult it is to navigate and therefore the harder it is for the learner to use.

In 2008, in partnership with Peter John, I published a book called 'The Digital Classroom'. I elaborated on the notion of 'opaque and transparent technology':

Technology that is opaque and requires a lot of investment in time, mental energy and effort will be rejected in favour of something easier. On the other hand, technology that is transparent is easy to use and has little demands on the cognitive energy of the user. Transparent technology is often referred to as 'user friendly' in that it allows the user to 'see through' the device into what it is able to do for them. (John & Wheeler, 2008; p 96)

We are talking here about minimising effort for maximum pay off - simple design of spaces such as ensuring that all links, guidance and information are in the same place, easy to see and easy to use. Now, that can't be so difficult, can it?

Reference: John, P. D. and Wheeler, S. (2008) The Digital Classroom: Harnessing Technology for the Future. London: Routledge.

Image source

See-through learning by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Who are the Wikipedians?

I doubt if there is anyone reading this blog who has not used Wikipedia in some way in the last 12 months. The free online encyclopedia has become such a part of our daily lives I sometimes wonder what we did without it. And we all have one man to thank for it (all right, two if you also count Larry Sangar. Well, OK - also one or two others...).

The final keynote speaker at Learning without Frontiers was the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. He started with a statement that very few changes seem to be happening in the world of education. The most important changes, he argued, were happening in the world of informal learning and this was being led by technology, and particularly the web. And that is where services such as Wikipedia come in.

When people contribute to Wikipedia they are contributing to the entire storehouse of human knowledge, not just one encyclopedia, said Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia is not a text book, nor even a volume of content - therefore it should not be used as such in formal education, he warned. Rather it is a free online resource which is a growing treasure house of knowledge for everyone to use, repurpose and share. If you want to understand Wikipedia, he said, you need to consider all of the thousands of volunteers out there - the community of users, authors and editors, rather than the office staff - who have no direct official input into the content or its organisation. Wikipedia is a global phenomenon which means that it differs from culture to culture around the world. 408 million people each month edit and generate content on Wikipedia. For young people, Wikipedia is the prime source of knowledge for them. They don't reach for the encyclopedia on the shelf - they go to Wikipedia. It is such an important source of information today, that we should know who makes it - so just who are the Wikipedians? asked Wales. He showed a video to illustrate the diversity of backgrounds and cultures of those who are 'Wikipedians':



Two thirds of those creating and editing content are at least educated to graduate level and many contributors hold PhDs. They are sharing their knowledge and expertise freely. No-one writes an article alone, said Wales. They are collaborating with other people who have similar interest and knowledge around the same topic. That is both the beauty and the power of Wikipedia.


Who are the Wikipedians? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Disruptive innovation

Lord David Puttnam started his speech by reading a passage from a book by the British philospher Bertrand Russell who said there is no state on Earth where there is no conflict between what the child needs and what the state wants. In other words, state education is failing children. This still remains true today, said Lord Puttnam - and launched into a damning endictment on the state education system. Education could become one of the most effective drivers of economic growth - if we let it, he said. Disruptive innovations are essential for forward movement he suggested, but the opposite is actually happening when we look at current government policies. Affordable, accessible technology is now embedded in the lives of teachers, but how at liberty are they to use them effectively in the context of school?

Echoing some of Ken Robinson's recent tropes, Lord Puttnam argued that school is still based upon Victorian values and not the values espoused by the current digital cultures. What would a digital curriculum look like? he asked. Apple didn't invent the smart phone or the computer tablet. But their marriage of the two in a smart way has disrupted personal computing for ever. The mobile app economy, he said, has changed forever the way we communicate and connect with information. In his calm, and forthright manner, he asked the killer question - when will we apply the same disruptive values that are pervading every other aspect of society to the isolated world of state funded education? Times are changing, was his theme. Earlier, to pre-figure his presentation, a video was projected onto the large screens in the arena. The title? The Digital Story of the Nativity:

Children today need new skills, he argued - skills that we didn't need when we were in school. But because the world has changed, we are now needing to think about how different the world will look like when the children of today leave school and start work. His stark warning was that if we in this country don't get it right, and marry education and technology effectively to equip our young people to be competitive, then the rest of the world - those countries who have been bolder, and have taken the risks - will shed no tears. Imagine a world in which we can devise entirely new ways of assessment, experiencing new things and acquiring new skills he asked. Lord Puttnam's message was a polar opposite to the earlier, less well received (and I put it mildly) presentation by Government advisor Katherine Birbalsingh, who called for a return to the Victorian values of privately funded schools such as Eton. David Muir puts it quite well on his EdCompBlog:

"Is education insulated or isolated from the disruption the technology is causing elsewhere. We need to discuss who we can embrace the technology that is already embedded in the lives of the pupils in our schools. We need to reboot education to make sure it meets their needs and the needs of the businesses they will work in when they leave school. If the state fails in this task, private companies may step in and do it instead."

He wasn't finished and wanted to look globally. Never before in history have we been living in each other pockets, said Lord Puttnam. This means that we are more dependent on each other globally than we have ever been. We need to earn respect for our place in the world, and an online conversation between participants all around the globe, and instant access to the enabling technology, is what young people expect. Is it what we are offering them? he asked. His final comment was this: Getting education right is the most important priority for all of us. It's the whole ball of wax. No state education system will be any use, unless it trains and sustains good teachers. Teacher education in a digital age, using the best and latest technologies is a must, he said.

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

It's only natural

Speech to text. Natural gesture interfaces. MIT's Sixth Sense wearable computer. Touch surfaces and non-touch interfaces. All of them have one thing in common. They do away with the need to use a standard keyboard or mouse. Computing is changing, and the place to hear about where we are heading with it all, is at Learning Without Frontiers.

Natural user interfaces (NUIs) just happened to be the theme of an invited presentation by Microsoft's Head of Research, Professor Andrew Blake (pictured) this morning at LWF. Although, as some of the audience tweeted, non-touch interfaces are already here, it was interesting to see how Microsoft and other large corporations plan to incorporate this technology into their products in the near future. We are clearly headed for a world of intuitive computer use according to Professor Blake. He started by demonstrating how technology is capturing and recognising the shape and movement of the human body and he discussed the challenges involved in achieving this. Different body shapes, sizes and people standing in groups can all confuse cameras, because they 'see' us as flat images rather than in 3D, he said. How does the camera select human limbs from their background surroundings for example? he asked. The use of the depth camera achieves this. Using the example of the special effects in the Hollywood movie Titanic and its extensive use of matte technology (what we used to call colour separation overlay in television studio work) Professor Blake deftly applied a similar approach to visual manipulation for practical applications. This technology builds on previous research into object recognition and is used for example in games playing technologies such as the XBox 360 Kinect.

Computers can even recognise emotions now, said Blake, and this was an unexpected spin-off from autism research, where facial feature recognition software was first developed. Blake admits that all this important research is leading somewhere significant, but he admits he doesn't really know what shape it will take yet. The final summing up remark was that with new non-touch interfaces, it is likely that computers will learn from us, just as we learn from computers.

It's only natural by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Games based learning

Games based learning as expected, had a highly visible profile at this year's Learning without Frontiers festival, in London. Take David Samuelson for example. As Head of Augmented Reality development for Pearson Education, he must have one of the coolest jobs in the world. He gets to explore all the latest possibilities technology can offer to education, and to ask the "what if?" questions each day.
In his invited presentation at today's Learning Without Frontiers festival, David emphasised what his audience already believed - for children, video games are an ideal, natural medium for learning. Kids love playing games, he said, and they learn from them without effort or inhibition. They are often 'in the flow' and don't have any hang ups about expressing themselves. He is interested in mashups - where augmented reality can be embedded within games. It's a new generation of games that is emerging, but with the advancement of games console design, the new 3DS Nintendo screens, and the natural gesture controls of devices such as XBox 360, the time is right. The universal appeal of games must be a natural extension to learning in formal situations. What excites him most is the story telling that is seen in the latest games, for example Heavy Rain.

Another invited speaker at #lwf is Dawn Hallybone, the ICT co-ordinator and senior teacher at Oakdale Junior School in Essex, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the LWF teachmeet on Sunday night. She had entered into the spirit of the fancy dress teachmeet and was wearing a luminous pink wig. In a very engaging presentation today (without her wig), she talked about playful learning and highlighted how handheld devices such as the Nintendo DS (used in her school as a brain training tool) and games such as Professor Layton puzzle adventure stories can be used to inspire kids to learn a range of key skills such as literacy, numeracy, problem solving, team working and interpersonal communication.

Dawn uses an innovative combination of tools including the Nintendo Wii, to engage kids in scenarios that take on a 3D immersion effect. They become so engaged in their characters and activities, they forget where they are, she explained. Dawn also eulogised over how Twitter has enabled her and her colleagues worldwide to connect and share their ideas on how they are using these tools in new and exciting ways to enhance learning in formal settings. They have set up a games network, pooled their meagre resources, and have purchased a library of games that can then be shared across all the schools that are members of the collective. Long may it continue.

Games based learning by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Learning without Frontiers

Although I am missing being at Learning Without Frontiers, after having had a tantalising taste of it during the Sunday Service (the free first day of the festival), I am following remotely via the Twitter stream (#lwf and #lwf11) and also watching some of the keynote speeches via the streaming media channel on the LWF main website. It is very high quality, both in audio and visual terms, and there is also a separate live stream for slides. It really is almost like being there in person. Congratulations must go to Graham Brown-Martin and his team for such a well organised and dynamic conference.

I was particularly impressed by the presentation from Sony UK managing director Ray Maguire, who seems to have monitored the pulse of the UK compulsory education sector. He made several important statements about the future of learning technology. Why can't we take the best teachers and the best lessons and broadcast/stream them to all interested schools? he asked. We have the technology. (Yes, and we did it over a decade ago during the Star Schools project I was involved in, in South Dakota). We need to encourage schools to let more kids create content and share it he counselled. And on the subject of institutional VLEs, although he didn't go as far as to claim they were outmoded, he did admit that they had been instigated before the advent of social media, and VLEs were premised on behaviour and practice of a decade ago. In his concluding statement, Maguire called for collaboration between Sony and schools to extend and enhance provision for education, particularly with games and other handheld technologies. Maguire also called for decisions to be made at government level and for an operational budget to be made available for wide implementation. We won't hold our collective breaths on that one, but guess there's no harm in asking, is there?

Learning without frontiers by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Hacking education

We had a great day on Sunday at the Learning without Frontiers festival at the Brewery in the East End of London. The day started well with an 'in the round' session with super geek and TV Gadget Show host Jason Bradbury who in his inimitable, mad cap style did live demonstrations of several fun robots including a flying drone he controlled from his iPhone. This was much to the delight of the many kids who had assembled (I count myself among them of course). There was also a break dance-off between himself, a teenage boy and a robot. The robot won. Must see is this video of Jason with his punk robot, which goes on the rampage and trashes his kitchen - hilarious stuff.

After a quick break for lunch it was time for Leigh Graves Wolf (@gravesle on Twitter) from Michigan State University and I to do our stuff in a hack conference presentation downstairs in the Queen Vault at the Brewery venue. The vaulted ceilings and subdued blue lighting of this subterranean venue provided a calm, business like environment for our Edupunk session. We used Txttools services to get delegates to text in their responses to a number of questions we posed during the first part of the hour long session. These included 'will we see a decline or a rise in the number of edubusinesses' and 'is the institutional VLE compatible with the PLE.' We discussed the idea of bricollage, do-it-yourself education using new tools or repurposing of old ones. The 70 plus audience was great, participating and contributing throughout. The final part of the session was a quickfire activity where small groups were asked to produce some kind of artefact to illustrate the principles and ethos of Edupunk. All of the fabulous contributions can be found on the Twitter stream hashtag #punklwf.

The day was rounded off with an excellent Teachmeet with standing room only. The teaching Twitterati were all assembled, many in fancy dress and at least a couple wearing their underpants on the outside of their trousers. Teachers are a strange bunch, and they know a) how to enjoy themselves and b) how to embarrass their kids. What a great day - meeting several Tweeps face to face for the first time, including Dawn Hallybone (@dawnhallybone), Tony Parkin (@tonyparkin), Tony Sheppard (@grumbledook) and Doug Woods (@deerwood) was another highlight. There were some great, practical demonstrations of how to spice up your teaching sessions with a variety of technologies and web tools. All too soon, I had to leave the Brewery and make my way underground across the city to catch my train home. I have to teach today, you see. But then, teaching and learning is what it's really all about, isn't it?

Image source

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

More disruption

My recent post on disruptive activism and Edupunk provoked some good discussion, not only on this blog, but also elsewhere on Twitter and on my own Facebook account, where I had shared the link.

In particular, there was an interesting exchange between two highly experienced educators Walter McKenzie and Graham Davies, which (with their permission) I am sharing below.

Walter and Graham raise a number of pertinent issues in relation to the nature of technology, disruptive change and learning, and I welcome further debate on this blog.

Walter McKenzie: I understand disruptive activism....disruptive technologies not so much. It's how we use the technologies. Technology in and of itself cannot be disruptive...
Sunday at 22:50 ·

Graham Davies: Disruptive technology as defined by Christensen is not necessarily a negative term. It usually takes the form of an innovation that we may initially resist but finally accept when it becomes clear that it works better than it's predecessors. Many new technologies are poor performers in their early stages and take a while to become stable and reliable. Some never make it, e.g. CDI which was pipped at the post by DVD.
Monday at 00:34 ·

Walter McKenzie: My discomfort isn't with the concept of being disruptive, but the personification of technology as being able to be disruptive simply by its existence. It can only be disruptive if it is applied in such a way by people...
Monday at 00:44 ·

Graham Davies: No, technology can just be disruptive. Back the wrong horse in a period of change and then you are in trouble. I'm a watch-and-wait person.
Monday at 00:52 ·

Walter McKenzie: Please explain further? I'm probably just slow....I need more context to understand what you are saying....
Monday at 00:55 ·

Graham Davies: What I am saying is that it is essential to wait until it is clear that a new technology really works better than its predecessors rather than seizing a new technology before it has settled down.
Monday at 01:02 ·

Walter McKenzie: OK I agree with that. No need to be jumping on bandwagons without thoughtful evaluation of them first. But ultimately it is how we use them and assess their use, yes?
Monday at 01:10 ·

Graham Davies: I agree.
Monday at 01:12 ·

Walter McKenzie: Thanks for your patience in talking this through with me.
Monday at 01:22 ·

Graham Davies: No problem. I am rarely an early adopter, but once I am convinced about the advantages of a new technology I am keen to promote it. I adopted CD audio quite early on, but held off going completely digital with iTunes until a couple of years ago. Now I am just pissed off with having to convert my huge collection of 33rpm LPs to digital format. That IS disruption :-) Maybe I'll just hang on to my 16-year-old Kenwood deck...
Monday at 01:33 ·

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

Disruptive activism

At the top end of the new year I have been reading some of the inevitable predictions people 'in the know' have been making. Some are plausible, others a little outlandish, and some downright rediculous. If I were to make my own prediction about what we can expect this year, I would say that we can expect a lot of change. I think this would be a safe prediction, because it has always been thus. We have seen a lot of changes in the last decade, some of them have been game changing. Think of the Apple iPad and other similar touch screen devices introduced in the last year and consider how they have begun to impact upon the world of learning. Think farther back to see the far reaching effects of the Social Web on learning. I'm giving a number of presentations in the coming few months both in the UK and farther afield in Europe in which I will try to outline what I think these changes will be and how technology will play its part in the future of education. My prediction is that the changes will be disruptive. My wikipedia page claims that I am a 'disruptive activist', which is quite an apt description of me - I use the term on my Twitter profile page. But just what is disruptive activism?

Disruptive technologies are those that change the market and in most cases replace an existing technology. They are characterised by their capability to do so over a relatively short period of time. Some are known as 'killer applications' because they completely wipe out the opposition due to their placement in the market, their greater appeal, availability and lower price, to name just a few of the key factors. The replacement of Betamax video tape with VHS tape (even though the latter was technically inferior) was one classic example of a disruptive technology in the 1980s. Another example of disruptive technology was the way digital photography has replaced chemical photography. In just a few years, digital cameras have improved in quality, shutter speed, resolution, and most importantly pricing, to the point that the photographic giant Kodak this week announced the last batch processing of one of its iconic products - Kodachrome film.

As David Conrad recently wrote: The speed of the decline of the traditional wet film approach to photography has been spectacular. Yet in the early days of the digital camera it all seemed so unlikely. The cameras were low resolution, often in black-and-white only, and yet even so the machine just couldn't process the end result. There just weren't disks that could hold that amount of data. The idea that resolution, storage and processing power would increase to the point where a digital camera could rival the quality of a 35mm film image was, and to a certain extent still is, ridiculous.

Digital photography, the digital darkroom and computational photography has changed the way that images are created, manipulated and distributed and wiped out the old ways of doing things astonishingly quick. (Source: Kodachrome Died)

The rapid rise of digital photography is due to the advantages of digital cameras over conventional cameras. Digital cameras are multi-functional, in some cases capable of recording video as well as capturing stills. The multiple affordance of digital media to be able to see instant results, record, delete, share and edit images on the move, and the ability to extract a great deal of information about camera source, geographical location and other useful information, are all attractions the conventional camera cannot compete with. Why wait several days or even hours to get colour prints when you can have them in seconds?

So what is disruptive activism? One of the clues lies in my presentations over the last couple of years on the ideas behind Edupunk. It's a subject I will revisit at the Learning without Frontiers conference in London next week. Along with Leigh Graves Wolf, I am hosting a hack conference session on the subject and will try to outline the philosophy behind the movement, and discuss how and why disruptive activism is necessary in education today. Edupunk is more than simply a 'do it yourself' philosophy. It's about challenging current practices, and in particular the commoditization of learning, and the manner in which edubusinesses are cashing in on gradually disappearing education budgets. Disruptive activism for me is about raising people's awareness to the alternatives that exist. It's about encouraging people to learn for themselves. It's about personalising learning. It's about finding new ways to do things that are more effective and more fit for purpose. It's not about being popular - people are free to shoot at me, and they often do. Disruptive activism is more about being dissatisfied with the status quo and not accepting that 'this is the way it should be'. Yes, we can be sure that one thing this new year will bring is change. I hope it will be the kind of change that disrupts bad practice and creates better opportunities for learning.

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