Synching feelings

A lot of time has been spent studying the impact of user generated content. You know, all the stuff that gets posted up onto the web, and whether it is at all useful to us as teachers and educators. Some of the best content is often provided by amateurs - people who are not necessarily specialists or qualified in their field of interest, but who are never the less passionate about their subject. This is also the ethos of sites such as Wikipedia, which rely heavily on 'the people' and 'wisdom of crowds' to create and maintain the content held in its pages. Blogging has emerged in recent years as a strong contender for the number one spot as user generated content, driven as it is by people who are both passionate and knowledgeable.

But it's not plain sailing. Influential commentators such as Andrew Keen have sniped consistently against such amateur content, suggesting that it is not only dumbing down society, but also eroding the authority of professionals and scholars, and denigrating knowledge.

And yet where is the first place students will go when they want to glean some facts or information about a subject? A lot of academics and scolars scoff at Wikipedia and forbid their students to reference it in their assessed work. Even more anathema are the many thousands of specialist blogs that are written by avid fans of topics. I must agree that quality across such sites is variable, but I also point out to the critics that just like Wikipedia, there are real experts out there writing these blogs. What if these blogs did not exist? How much poorer would we be in terms of knowledge of the world? There is a criticism that blogs are not peer reviewed, contain mainly opinion and have no credibility when compared with peer reviewed journal articles. Let's examine each criticism in turn.

Journal articles are usually double reviewed by people who are deemed to be experts in their field. Once reviewed, articles are sent back to the author for correction and revision before they are accepted for publication. Such tasks are usually performed by editorial teams. Blogs are peer reviewed, not necessarily in a formal way, but certainly informally through reader comments. I certainly think long and hard about what I write on this blog, because with between 1000-2000 views per day, and a stream of comments coming in from those who either agree or disagree with my views, I sure feel as though I am being peer reviewed. The difference between journal articles and blogs is that blogs are peer reviewed within minutes of being posted. They can also be adjusted, revised and corrected quickly, and re-posted instantly on demand. There may be typos and spelling errors in blogs, but who can honestly tell me that they have never spotted an error in a peer reviewed journal article or book chapter?

Blogs contain a lot of opinion, whereas journal articles are usually based on empirical evidence and research. But what is research anyway? We can no longer argue that research is all about statistical analysis, because there are so many qualitative, narrative and experimental forms of methods available to us as researchers, so who is to say that blogging is not a valid means of research? But how often do we read and take in the editorials in popular newspapers, which are also opinion? I have even read peer reviewed journal articles that are openly 'fictionalised' in their methodology. Opinion is also an excellent trigger for discussion. How will we learn if we don't discuss ideas and negotiate meaning between us. How can we synchronise our activities if there is not a common understanding of what needs to be done? We don't have to agree - in fact it would be a boring, colourless world if we did - but we need to be able to understand each other to get on together.

Blogs are gaining credibility, particularly those that are being followed and read by many people, and those that attract awards and plaudits from peers. They have credibility in a different sense to peer reviewed journal articles. Blogs can become a rallying point - a tribal totem - around which people can come to terms with ideas, change their approach, exchange best practice, and generally engage with their community of practice. It is a lot more intimate than the community that gathers around a peer reviewed journal article. Journals perform a different function entirely, and are less immediate, more slow burning in their impact. Blogs tend to be transitory and ethereal in their presence. Although the archive of a blog is there for people to revisit if they wish, generally it is the article at the top of the stack that is most visible and therefore most visited.

You may already have noticed that blog addresses are beginning to appear in the reference lists of peer reviewed journal articles. This is a trend that I predict will increase as blogs begin to achieve a more respectable and accepted position in the academic world.

One final word: We need to remember that professionals built the Titanic, but an amateur built the Ark. It's not always about expertise - sometimes it's about passion.

Image source Wikimedia Commons


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

Learning in the palm of your hand

Last year I wrote extensively about learning using Web 3.0 and Web x.0, which after much discussion across the network, was renamed the eXtended Web. Later I suggested in a presentation in London that we should call it the Smart eXtended Web, due to the high profile smart mobiles will undoubtedly play in the future of learning. For me, learning will need to fit into the palm of the hand if we are to grab the attention of younger students. Ever since I wrote about it, I have been thinking about what such a Smart eXtended Web might look like. Tomorrow I get the chance to speak a little more about the Smart eXtended Web when I address the ICS Skill's National IT Training Conference here at the Northwall Quay in Dublin. I took a photo of the Convention Centre today, which you can see is quite futuristic, so it's a great venue to be talking about things to come. Here's a reminder of what I wrote in a blog post last year:

"...it's not only Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 we need to consider, but extensions beyond these into a truly integrated, fully responsive and entirely personalised learning environment that fits into the palm of your hand. This is my vision for the future, but as I continually warn - predicting the future can be hazardous. I wrote about this problem in a recent post entitled 'Seeing the future'. The U.S. Mayor who in 1880 announced that one day every town in America would have a telephone was right, but also so far wide of the mark, it's almost laughable. So when people ask me when we will see all of these tools being used for learning, I simply smile and say - "we'll see". We know the tools exist (see: The Future is the Web) we just don't know when they will become economically viable enough for institutions to begin investing in them wholesale. Perhaps they never will. Perhaps it will be down to individual learners to purchase their own devices and applications. Perhaps this will be another aspect of the 'do it yourself' personal learning environment ethos we are all talking about."

Talking about the future has been one of my recurring activities recently, with several blog posts published right here in a series entitled 'Learning 2020'. Since I posted these, there has been much debate on this site, and the high view rates on all of the posts suggests that many people are interested in what the future holds and want to engage in discussion about it. But we are not just discussing it. I firmly believe that we can also help to shape the future, and tomorrow I'm going to speak about what we might expect to see in (and outside of) schools and universities over the next few years. You can follow the conversation on Twitter via the hashtag #ittc11

Learning in the palm of your hand by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Dropping the 'e'

Look above at the title of this blog. Yep... Learning with 'e's. The 'e' seems to be in front of just about everything now. Not just e-mail, but also e-commerce, e-tickets and of course e-learning. Someone pointed out to me recently that if vetrinary surgeons went 'e' then it would be my name backwards - e-vets. On it goes.

The 'e' used to stand for 'electronic', but now that such practices have been so deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness here in the Western Industrialised world, there is debate about whether the 'e' should be dropped. Well, if we drop the 'e' from e-learning, that signifies that all forms of learning are essentially the same, whether they are mediated through technology or not, and I suppose that is the main idea behind the argument to drop then 'e'. But the argument then moves to whether we should also drop the 'e' in e-mail. Is mail correspondence sufficiently coalesced that e-mail is now blended with traditional mail? Or are the two still distinctly different? I get as much junk mail as I do electronic spam.

So if we keep the 'e' in e-learning (which I suspect we will, because we are all used to it now) what should the 'e' represent, at least conceptually? Should it represent 'enhanced' learning perhaps? Or is there scope to see the 'e' as 'extended' learning? Some might see the 'e' in e-learning as representative of 'exotic' forms of learning if they are learning in technology poor environments. For the cynics perhaps, the 'e' in e-learning would probably stand for 'expensive', because whatever we do with e-learning, it doesn't come cheap in terms of equipment costs, and time spend developing, learning how to use it and replacing it when it goes wrong.

What are your views on the 'e' in e-learning? Should it be dropped, and if so, will it make a difference one way or another? If we keep it, should it still represent 'electronic'? Or should it really stand for something else, some other emerging properties of technology enhanced learning? I think you're itching to have your say in the comments box below...

Image source

2020 teachers

What kind of teachers will we see in 2020? Will they be any different (and will they be doing anything different) to what they are now? It's hard to say, because we can't predict the future. But can we help shape it? Take a look at what has already appeared on this blog in my 2020 Vision series, and there may be some clues. I have written about 2020 learners, 2020 classrooms and 2020 curriculum (focusing mainly on assessment of learning), and also touched on what we might see with 2020 learning technologies. Much of what I have written has been informed by crowdsourcing conversations with teachers on Twitter and other social media, as well as face to face. Those who are currently at the 'chalk face' will tell you that teaching at the moment is fraught with all sorts of difficulties. Many have already left the profession or are planning to, because they feel they don't have enough room to breathe - the restrictive practices and oppressive levels of performativity required by governments and funding bodies is driving many from teaching, often never to return. This is a tragedy. It's also unnecessary. All that talent lost to education, simply because education has become management heavy. We could easily do away with standardised testing, overcrammed curricula and league tables - we don't need them, and they do little to help learners - and concentrate instead on personalised forms of learning, open and relevant programmes of study, and a celebration of what each individual school does best and excels at. Most teachers would agree with this as a definite and positive future for schools. So what might teachers be doing in 2020?

I will predict this: there will still be a place for teachers, because teachers are irreplacable. It's still true that any teacher who can be replaced by a computer - should be. No amount of technology, self-study or user generated content can ever replace teachers. They will still be there to motivate and inspire, and they will still be there as pedagogy experts to facilitate and support learning. What they may do less of is - teach. There will probably be less 'front of the classroom' activities and more drawing alongside learners in project work, small group activities, problem based learning and technology enhanced processes. Most importantly, teachers will need to work more in partnership with their students. Finally, teachers may not actually be physically present in some classrooms, instead, taking on a virtual presence, particularly in places difficult to reach - a view endorsed by Spanish educator Jose Luis Garcia.

For the teachers who responded to my Twitter questions, there seemed an unanimous view that there will be a sea-change in the way teachers conduct themselves in education, and that teachers will drive these changes. Heidi Siwak, a Grade 6 teacher in Canada predicted: "I'll spend very little time designing lessons and more time assisting students in meeting their own learning goals." These sentiments are echoed by several others. Martin Homola in Slovakia, said teachers will pay "more attention to specific needs and interests of pupils. Less authority, more friendly older sibling approach. More discussion." Jack Beaman from the UK wanted to see small groups and a scenario where top experts would "use technology to reach masses allowing people to dictate own learning." He envisaged an education provision that would be "less top down and more social." Another UK teacher, Sonia Cooper, believes there will be a more dialogic kind of pedagogy, with teachers "hopefully talking less to the class, not imparting knowledge, but guiding learners by asking the right questions." She sees teacher tasks such as assessment (marking) being "very different with verbal feedback recorded and recognised as vital." She thinks that feedback to students will be given using other ICT tools too. A UK Headteacher, Andy Hampton, believes that teachers will teach and promote "Junior PLNs" (Professional Learning Networks) as university style teaching filters down to schools. Ben Jones sees the vital importance of learners taking centre stage, but warns that we should not confuse personalised learning with individualised learning.

From these views, it would appear that future changes in education will come from teachers adopting new practices, where social learning comes to the fore, and there is more negotiation through dialogue with learners. Teacher Linda Barron in Australia even goes as far as to suggest that collaboration should be so entrenched in future learning that it will be difficult to tell the teachers apart from the learners. Changes will need to come through flexibility and personalisation of learning, which will also bring new technologies into play. Changes are coming, and we will need to wait to see what they are, but we need the right changes. It is best that the future of learning will be shaped by teachers and their students in partnership, rather than by governments. Let's start now, shall we?

Image source


2020 teachers by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Imagined worlds

One of the new skills that teachers will need to master in the future will be the ability to manage virtual learning spaces. Learning always takes place in the mind of the learner, but the formalised activities of learning have never been confined to the classroom. The use of web based resources and networked computers enable students to enter worlds previously inaccessible, allowing them to explore within that imagined world we call 'cyberspace'. These virtual learning spaces are often shared spaces, enabling symbolic interactions of all types to take place, the simplest through text alone, the most exotic through a combination of text, icons, sound, graphics, animation and video. Such imagined worlds can also be very flexible, in that they represent spaces where the student is not constrained by the traditional boundaries of space and place. Ultimately, virtual learning spaces can be very different from anything the teacher or the student may previously have encountered, and the management of these spaces will depend to a great extent on the imagination and flair of teachers.

And yet the management of learning environment is already a core skill practised by all teachers in schools and lecturers in colleges and universities. Learning spaces in conventional education are the classrooms, laboratories and libraries that are located in the physical boundaries of the parent institute. They are bounded by walls, rules and conventions. In the virtual learning environment, there are no boundaries, because there are no physical classrooms, laboratories or libraries. Although in spaces such as Second Life, we see constrained thinking in the form of virtual classroom and lecture halls, with doors, windows and roofs, this need not be they way we represent learning spaces in virtual worlds. Creative and disruptive educators can think of much better ways to represent learning spaces. They refuse to perpetuate old ways of thinking in new environments.

Management of the virtual learning space then becomes a more esoteric proposition. Students may be studying in a variety of locations, such as their bedrooms, the launderette, the bus, train, or even on a submarine in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean! Wherever they study, the management of student activities, learning resources and technologies will be of fundamental importance to the success of any online learning. And we all have our own notions of personal space and place.

My sense of place is centred upon the spaces that are familiar to me, especially those over which I maintain some ownership. These include my home (very much so, especially my bedroom!), my car (about two or three times each day during travelling), my office (probably less so - I moved my office a mile across campus recently and it's surprising how many items you lose!), and the classrooms and teaching rooms I work in. The latter is perhaps the place that offers me the least sense of personal place and ownership, but when I am leading a teaching session I am never the less operating within very familiar territory and this gives me a sense of comfort and ease. Erving Goffman's ideas about the presentation of self are useful here to aid our understanding of place and space: I will have a defined area to operate within, including a kind of script to follow (lesson plan, aims of the session), a role to perform (teacher, facilitator, mentor), and a set of props that I can call upon to assist me in this role, (white board and pens, projector and laptop computer, my slides and games, and a range of other technologies and audio visual aids). These help me to maintain my sense of space and place, as well as allowing me to perform my role effectively within this location. When one or more of these is not accessible, or broken, I tend to lose a little of the sense of space I normally occupy!

My home town of Plymouth, in South West England, is also my birth place. I live here with my wife and three children, and there are several other close family members and friends living within a few miles of my home. The city of Plymouth therefore represents a familiar environment and affords me ownership of place and a sense of belonging, which manifests itself in a range of habituated behaviours. These include regular attendance at local events including church services; extended travel throughout the area; extensive knowledge of the locale; regular patronage of many local businesses with associated loyalty schemes; and support of my local soccer team, Plymouth Argyle Football Club (Although I have rarely attended home games in the past few years due to the pressures of work, I still consider myself a supporter). If I was forced to leave Plymouth for some reason, I would no doubt experience a sense of loss - of being uprooted, and perhaps an element of unease, or even a sense of 'bereavement' because my familiar spaces would no longer be immediately available for me. My sense of continuity of space and place would be disrupted, and for me this would be slightly uncomfortable.

Each of us has a sense of place and space which is based upon our feelings of habituation, familiarity and personal history, as well as our level of ease with the environment. As I have already said, I believe that continuity is an important factor in our sense of place. Even nomadic people who are constantly on the move take with them a range of familiar things including their tents, or caravans, in which they keep many of the items with which they are accustomed. This promotes the sense of continuity for them - a sort of constancy within an ever changing environment.

We know that for learners using technology, the learning environment is not only the classroom or library, but may also include any other location. The place where discussion takes place is no longer restricted to the coffee area or the local pub (although it might be if fellow students live within close geographical proximity to each other and can arrange convenient times to meet). In technology enhanced learning, the sense of one's space and place has shifted into a virtual learning and communication space - the imagined world of cyberspace. Some of the best multi-media designers try to make this easy for online learners, by providing them with a screen architecture that is easily navigable and attractive without being too 'fussy' or cluttered for example. The spatial metaphors such as 'room' and 'café' are used to try to bring some sense of familiar space and place to the learner. Perhaps this is why Second Life designers persist in creating classrooms as learning spaces. Still, even allowing for the guile and skill of web designers and e-tutors, for some there may remain a sense of inertia, a sense of not knowing how to belong or where to place yourself. Trying to get a handle on this can for many be quite a problem. What about social interaction? What about support for when problems arise, or if the technology fails, or if there are no obvious signposts? And of course, the question that many psychologists are interested in: how different is the behaviour of students in these kinds of imagined worlds?

Image source by Serendigity

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

2020 learning technologies

When I try to gaze into the future I hurt my eyes. It's difficult to see much beyond the end of the year, so trying to predict what technologies we might see in schools by 2020 is like staring into a very strong spotlight. We can merely speculate. It's not even worth trying to extrapolate trends based on developments from the previous 10 years. Change is not linear, it's exponential. That means that the change that has happened over the last decade, rapid as it has been, will in no way compare realistically with the changes we can expect over the next decade. But I'm going to stick my neck out anyway .... so how about this for a prediction?

It is highly likely that more informal tools and technologies, such as handheld devices, mobile phones and games consoles will take an increasing role in formal education. I can say this with some confidence, because there are already some signs of this happening in some schools. We don't know what informal personal technologies will look like in 2020. But teachers and education leaders are beginning to realise that there is a huge untapped potential in today's personal technologies. For example, the Nintendo Dual Screen and Wii games technologies are already being used effectively for teaching in some schools. iPod tools are connecting learners with content outside the walls of the school. The GPS capability in mobile phones has enormous potential for the teaching of geography, while the context aware facilities in smart mobile phones can extend the classroom beyond its traditional walls and out into the world, embracing history, natural sciences, citizenship and art/design. Imagine children using their context and location aware devices to access information about art or natural history exhibits in a gallery or museum. Imagine them capturing images of the places they visit which they can later upload onto their blogs, or videos they can create of real-time events beyond the classroom. Imagine the impact of augmented reality (AR) overlays on live images from an iPhone camera, feeding children with information about the world as they move through it, exploring. All of these things are already happening in a limited way, and we can imagine that such applications will and must spread, as smart phones become cheaper, more reliable and more powerful.

Some cynics might predict that there will be little change over the next few years in schools, because a) they are conservative organisations b) there is very little money available to invest in new technologies in schools and c) when introduced, new technologies are seldom successful in schools across the board unless a government initiative forces them to be adopted (see for example Interactive White Boards and school VLEs). Pragmatists might also point out that even if new technologies are introduced into formal learning spaces, they are often applied poorly and innappropriately, or are used in ways that fall short of their true potential. There is also the question of whether all children will have access to personal tools such as smart phones. Schools don't have budgets to ensure that all children have a personal technology. The only way this will happen is when they become as affordable to purchase and use as a ball-point pen or a pencil.

I'm going to conclude this blogpost by predicting that in school, children will one day use personal technologies in a similar way to the way they now use pens and pencils. We won't be seeing ICT suites in the future, anymore than we see pencil suites now. We need a seamless provision that blurs the boundaries between what children use to learn when they are in school and when they are outside the school gates. We need to be in a position where the excitement of informal learning and the powerful richness of social media, personal gaming and instant messaging can continue inside the formal learning space. The sooner this happens, the better.

Image source by Mac.Merc (Modified)

2020 learning technology by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The next ten years

I spent yesterday at the JISC Annual conference in the Liverpool Echo Arena. It was a day packed full of seminars and workshops, and I will report on it later, when there is some space to think. For now though, here is JISC's own report on the keynote given by Eric Thomas:

Professor Eric Thomas, vice chancellor of Bristol University, today highlighted the importance of colleges’ and universities’ use of technology in encouraging student applications. He said: “An integrated, sophisticated use of [new technology] is going to mean that the university is seen as cutting edge and more attractive. I see JISC’s role as assisting us in making the university look as attractive as possible.”

JISC’s deputy chair Professor David Baker agreed: “Over the next 5-10 years JISC will have an ever more vital role to play not just in the education sector but across the UK. I don’t believe that JISC or higher or further education can afford to slow down.”

Against the backdrop of an increasingly demanding student body, Professor Thomas predicted that within ten years there would be more students studying in their home towns to save costs, and that they would also have the choice of non-degree entry to traditional careers like accounting. Professor Thomas also highlighted recent scrutiny of universities’ connections with Libya as an example of how the public see education as operating within a different value system.

He said: “It’s essential that we see ourselves as educational institutions and that we retain our values. People expect higher education to have different value set. It’s really important that we maintain that.”

Professor Thomas’ talk opened the JISC11 conference in Liverpool today, which is attended by nearly 700 delegates from across further and higher education in the UK, China, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, South Korea, Spain and Sweden.

His keynote introduced a day of advice, guidance and future-gazing on the theme of ‘financial challenges, digital opportunities’ to help colleges and opportunities reduce costs and improve their efficiency.

Follow the conference online using the hashtag #JISC11Watch the live streamed sessions online today and after the conference here.

Press release courtesy of JISC Announce Mail Service

Image source by Eric Jones

The next ten years by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Computers are useless

The ubiquitous presence of computers in our world can evoke a variety of different emotional responses. Sherry Turkle defined this influence in 'Life on the Screen' when she stated:

“Computers don't just do things for us, they do things to us, including to our ways of thinking about ourselves and other people.” (Turkle, 1997 - sleeve notes)

The artist Pablo Picasso was a little more pessimistic when he declared:

“Computers are useless. They only give you answers.”

His meaning might be seen by some as obtuse, but to me it is quite clear. Computers can be emotive. They have the capacity to create disagreement and consternation. They are both the solution and the problem. This is because computers are electric idiots - with less brain power than a slug. They do exactly what you tell them to do with no question and without reasoning. And yet we invest in them some sort of human intelligence. We talk to the machine, we plead with it, cajole it, we get angry with it, and in some extreme cases, we argue with it and punish it with violence.

Some shy away from using technology because it is so alien and impersonal to them. Others are so addicted to their relationship with the screen they neglect their real life relationships. If we can somehow position the learner within this challenging, dynamic and baffling conceptual field, we may be able to understand why some students have problems trying to use technology successfully. Computers are not much good at teaching - they are much better used as mind tools to extend the mind's ability in terms of memory capacity and visualisation. The provisionality of tools within the standard desktop or laptop are also ripe for use as a means to express creativity. If used well, computers have a deep impact on human learning. If used badly though, all a computer can do for us is to perpetuate our errors.

"My computer may be able to beat me at chess, but it's no match for me at kickboxing..."

Image source by Todd Stadler


Computers are useless by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

2020 Curriculum

When I talk to teachers about the school curriculum, whether primary or secondary, guess what they want to discuss the most? Correct - assessment. When I crowdsourced for material for this series of blog posts on #learning2020, a lot of the comments I received back were about assessment. It's no surprise that Teachers hate it (marking is time consuming and not particularly useful, given the effort involved) just as much as children hate it (threatening, stressful, not very helpful for their learning). Just about the only people who love assessment are the government and the organisations who ... er, organise assessment. I have ranted several times recently on this blog about the difficulties of standardised assessment, and we have had interesting and thought provoking discussions here on alternative assessment methods. What kinds of assessment will there be in 2020? Will they be different from today, or will we (perish the thought) be lumbered with useless, discriminatory and impractical testing for years to come? Here's what you said:

Madeleine Brookes, technology integrator and ITGS teacher in Beijing, China, predicted that we will move from handwritten exams to online submission, which I think is a reasonable position to take. Regardless of the issues of verifiability of students and technical issues, online submission seems to be an advance on current exam systems. Others, including Ollie Bray, Scotland's National Advisor for emerging technologies, and Adrian Bradshaw, and ICT subject leader in Plymouth, England, made suggestions that assessment as we know it will be completely obsolete by 2020. Whilst I can't second guess their reasoning behind this, I assume it's because assessment in its current form does not prepare learners for the future, and it certainly doesn't add much to their experience of learning in school. Adrian went as far as to suggest that the National Curriculum as we currently know it will face the axe - because again, it is inadequate for the needs of learners. David Truss (an educator based in Dalian, China) agreed, arguing that curricula are overload and should be changed, but admitted that it will probably take a long time.

I agree, school curricula are overloaded with too many subjects and too much content which places too much pressure on the teacher to cover everything in the available time. This tends to militate against time and space available for learners to play, experiment, and ask the 'what if...' questions. Creativity can be stifled, particularly if the teacher slips into an instruction mode as a strategy to simply 'get through' all the content. Julian Wood, a primary educator in Sheffield, England, has a solution to this problem - He suggests we should adopt 'child led learning where the curriculum is dominated by skills needed for future employment.' Too much over-reliance on grades is another problem. Why do we force children to jump through so many hoops? We're not all Physical Education teachers are we? (That was a joke, btw - some of my best friends are PE teachers). Children should not be misled into thinking that getting high grades assures them a good job. It doesn't. So who are the grades for? They certainly help the government to obtain a clear picture of 'how a school is performing'... Go figure.

I will leave the last word to Adrian Bradshaw: 'I hope in future [the] curriculum will focus on creativity and thinking and not destroy divergent thinking'. Amen to that.

Image source Exam tables in sports hall, Epsom College by David Hawgood


2020 Curriculum by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

2020 Classrooms

Will we still need classrooms by 2020? If so, what kind of learning environments will they be? Or will students learn on the move, in their workplaces, at home, and through the multiple connections facilitated by new communication technology? This is a difficult question to answer, because school and education, although not synonymous, are deeply ingrained in our culture and have become a key component of our social, political and economic thinking. Implicit in the question are a number of issues, including the relationship between teaching and curriculum, and nature of state funded education and the role of teachers. Also under the spotlight are the demands of society, work, family and community, and how these are balanced against the needs of individual learners.

I recently used Twitter to crowdsource a number of responses to what would be obsolete in education in 2020. The discussion can be found under the hashtag #learning2020. In this post I would like to present some of the tweets, and provide a critical commentary around them, in the hope that it will provide a useful contribution to the discourse surrounding the purpose of education and the future of learning.

The design and configuration of classrooms was a particular concern for several people. Melissa Brown Boyle, an elementary school teacher in the USA, predicted that school classrooms of the future will have "fewer individual student desks and more tables or open floor space conducive to discussion and movement". She also believes in moving learning beyond traditional settings: "open discussion space must be global not just local, virtual links are just as real as graffiti on desks.” She has a point, because often, classrooms are cluttered with furniture, and provide less space for creative activities to be organised. These are sentiments echoed by another teacher, Vanessa Camilleri, who calls for more creative options through flexibility - the global classroom is already there for the making. So, do we need to redesign classrooms to make them more conducive to personalised and creative forms of learning? Evelyn MacElhinney is even more radical. She envisages 'hologram rooms' where students can 'learn in the scenario' and she advocates doing away with tables and chairs completely in schools of the future.

What about the way education is currently conducted? What about the closed nature of the classroom? Mr Colley, a teacher in the UK wants to see closed door classrooms become a thing of the past. He also predicts that teachers will very soon need to determine the differences between cheating and collaboration. Martin Homola, a PhD student in Slovakia, made the prediction that education behind closed doors will be obsolete by 2020. He suggests that 'online, open channels' will be the building blocks of future education. By this, I assume he means that open content, open source and open learning will come to the fore, and schools will be less protective over their content and classroom methods. Theo Kuechel agrees, and hopes to see 'more CC' and less 'C' on learning content in the future.

Sonia Cooper, also a teacher, wanted to see learning environments where each child had one device that 'did everything' including connecting to each other, the teacher, and content for learning. The scots had a lot to say about future learning: Kenny Pieper, an English teacher in Scotland, saw a future where the classroom was replete with iPads, Kindles and other personal tools for learning. Others such as Fraser Speirs, a head of computing, at a school in Scotland, also called for 1-1 technology provision, but added wisely that children should be presented with challenge-based learning. Yet Ian Stuart, a Deputy Head teacher in Scotland, warned that perhaps the "idea of 1-1 tablets in 2020 is like man in 1900 thinking we'd have really fast steam engines by 2000". He's right of course. When gazing into the future, we should certainly not constrain our thinking to current mindsets and conceptions of technology. Instead, we should try to be like the children in our classes - to let our imagination run riot, because from this can come the creative solutions for the problems of the future. What is your vision for 2020 learning?

Previous posts in this series on 2020 Learning include 2020 Learners and 2020 Vision.

Image source by Shuichiro


2020 Classrooms by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

2020 Learners

Children who are born this year will be halfway through primary school when 2020 arrives. What will be their experience of education?

If the last few years is anything to go on, we can expect some far reaching changes between now and 2020. We will witness the introduction of many new digital tools and technologies. We will also see changes in the curriculum, teacher roles, and learner needs. But what will these changes be? Will they be good ones? Over the next week or so, I want to explore what possible changes we can see on the horizon, and how they might affect learners and teachers, school and education.

But a word of warning... Predicting the future can be a hazardous occupation. In Biblical times, if a prophet got it wrong, he was stoned to death. Harsh. When clairvoyants get it wrong, the worse they can suffer is possibly having to pay you your money back. Astrologers don't often get it wrong, because they know better than to say anything specific. Everything they predict and advise is just far too vague for anyone to detect if it's accurate. While most of these 'futurologists' are playing games, if politicians wish to decide what is best for children they had better get it right. If they fail to plan properly for the future of our schools and education, their decisions will have a profound effect on our children, our grandchildren, and ultimately on our society.

We can't accurately predict the future of course, but what we can do is watch the trends. So will learners in 2020 be any different from those we see in our schools today? Will their needs and aspirations have changed from our own? It's highly likely they will. My own children have had very different school experiences to my own. My son, who will be 16 this year, wants to become an interactive games designer - a job that was unheard of when I left school. Many of the jobs that will appear in the next 10 years do not yet exist. Most of today's jobs rely either exclusively, or to a large extent, on information and communication technology of one form or another. This trend is on the increase. It follows that children of the future will need even more digital literacy skills than they have now. Does the current curriculum cover these skills fully?

Globalisation is also on the increase. Worldwide systems, nations, communities are more interdependent than ever, and this trend is upward. Employment mobility is also on the rise as borders come down and people move from country to country for work. Whole populations are migrating across continents to seek better living conditions thanks to European Union legislation and other international border agreements. Children of the future will need to learn more about other cultures and how they can maximise their skills in other countries. They may need to learn more languages too, but with intelligent systems providing ever more accurate translations, it may simply be a case of mastering yet another digital literacy.

Children of the future will also need to learn for life - learning to be flexible, adaptable and open to changes that might - for our current generation at least - be perceived as a threat. Of one thing we can all be certain - that change will accelerate in the next few years. Change can be disruptive and can take time, energy and effort to adapt to, but learners of the future will need to see change as an opportunity, and will need the requisite skills to take the opportunities that are presented and turn them into positive and sustainable outcomes.

Finally, children will need to be able to design their own learning spaces, create their own content and learn from it. They will be less reliant on didactic and transmissive forms of teaching and will turn instead to more independent learning from the vast storehouse of knowledge we know as the World Wide Web. This does not preclude some form of 'schooling' however. The teacher's role will change to accommodate these new needs. Teachers will become facilitators, mediators, co-authors and co-producers of content, and ultimately, companion travellers with children on their road to better learning. It is already happening in some schools. In posts later this week, I will explore what possible new roles of teachers in 2020 will need to adopt to help to prepare learners for an uncertain and certainly unpredictable future.

"The arrow of time says the future will be different to the past." - Professor Brian Cox

Image source by 'Back of the Napkin'


2020 Learners by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

2020 Vision

I read a post by Tina Barseghian on the Mind/Shift Blog entitled '21 things that will be obselete by 2020' today, which prompted me to start a conversation on Twitter to discuss what we think school would look like in another decade or less. Discussions are still ongoing in projects such as Purpos/ed about what education should be for/about, and gazing into the future challenges our ideas similarly. By thinking about what the future may look like for schools, we reflect on what we would like to see. By doing this, we critically evaluate where we are and where we have come from. I took this picture at a hi-tech convention and trade fair in Germany last month. In among all the shiny technology vendor stands sat this anacronism - a replication of the school classroom that I recall from my primary school days. The only thing missing was the inkwells, knibs and paper. The organisers had obviously done this for a purpose. For me, the purpose was to cause people to remember where we have come from in our personal journeys through education. It was also to remind us never to go back to that kind of education, but instead to move forwards. I am left asking my own question - what is my vision for education in the future?

In 2020, will we wander around learning technology exhibitions (or museums) and see simulations of computers with keyboard and mice? Will there actually be any physical exhibitions and museums? Will we gaze upon exhibits of school ICT suites and smile? And will our grandchildren sit on our knees and ask us - did you really have to touch computers to make them work?

What will school look like in the next 10 years? Will be still send children to school? Will there still be classrooms? What will the roles of teachers be in the next 10 years? Will they still be doing the same things? What will assessment of learning look like and what forms will it take? What new forms will technology take to facilitate mobile, anytime, anyplace learning? What will the curriculum look like and what will it contain? Just as importantly, what will be left out? Will teachers still experience the same problems of state interference, time and space pressures and lack of resources? Or will there be other, even more serious problems? Over the next few posts on this blog I'm going to attempt to discuss these questions, and I intend to draw on the comments received from readers and those who have already contributed their ideas on Twitter. The hashtag to use is #learning2020. Let's have a dialogue which may help us to see where we have come from and where we need to go, to secure quality learning for the next 10 years and beyond.

2020 Vision by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

All together now...

Last week I sent out a call on Twitter for people to send me interesting education questions for me to discuss, or issues to expose. Over the next few blog posts I'm planning to respond to some of the conundrums that were sent back to me. The first question I'm going to comment on came via Craig Taylor who asked how we should address 'the disconnect between how learners are learning to learn during their formal education years and the lack of tools/opportunities.'

This is an important question for all teachers to consider, but before they can address such a disconnect, they need to be aware that the problem exists, and then acknowledge it. There is a divide for example, between the technology children have at home and what they are provided with in school. Often, for poorer families, there is no computer at home, or if there is, it is an old computer, possibly with no internet connection. Even for children who do have internet connected computers at home, there may be limited, or no access because their parents or older siblings may get first use. Children who can't access computers at home are often at a disadvantage because they can't complete all of their homework, or they have no connection to send their assignments in to their teachers via e-mail. At the other end of the spectrum are those children from more affluent families who have technology at home that is far superior to the technology provided in the school. This may not seem to be as much a problem as the first scenario, but it nevertheless causes problems for some children. Whenever I visiting school (in the UK or in other industrialised nations) I notice that the children greatly outnumber the available computers. It's common to see several children grouped around each computer, all struggling to see the screen and competing for the keyboard and mouse.

Another problem related to the above, and one that is rarely considered, is the issue of transition from Primary to Secondary education. If a child transfers from a technology rich primary school into a technology poor secondary school, where resources are limited and need to be shared with many more children, other kinds of digital divide are experienced. What are the answers to these disconnects? Are there any? Well, as always, we can learn from initiatives in other countries.

There have been attempts to address the problem of ICT provision in poor regions of the world. Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child Project for example, was meant to be an answer to the digital divide. OLPC was an admirable project, but arguably and ultimately, it was has been less successful than was predicted. The low cost laptop was designed from the top down, with little or no consultation with those who would be the end users. Those who would be the main stakeholders were not consulted. It was essentially one man's crusade against poverty. Units were shipped out in their thousands, and although some were used, a large number of laptops gathered dust because no-one knew quite what to do with them. Ultimately, with declining government support and loss of sponsorship, the OLPC project downsized and laid off staff. It could be argued that OLPC was too far ahead of its time, but more realistically, the failure of the project was probably down to a lack of consulting and a failure to plan ahead.

At the 2010 IFIP World Computer Congress in Brisbane, I heard former Vice Chancellor of the British Open University Sir John Daniel compare OLPC with another project aimed at children in poverty - Sugata Mitra's highly successful Hole in the Wall initiative. Sir John said that the OLPC project resulted to a great extent on solo learning and discovery whilst Sugata Mitra's project involved young people learning together in small groups. The social aspect alone, he suggested, led to more success in learning outcomes and a richer experience. Either project could result in learning with no teachers present. The motivation to learn however, came not from having access to a computer, but from the curiosity of discovery within a social context, leading to opportunities to explore and gain knowledge together.

Whilst neither of the above examples actually offers a solution to the digital divides we witness between school and home, they do illustrate a very important point. Children learn more successfully when they are in small groups, and they learn more when they are interested and motivated. Perhaps the lack of computers in schools is having positive outcomes. Although it's not an ideal situation, there may be a silver lining to the cloud - with 2 or 3 children grouped around each computer may come the possibilities of richer social interaction and better connected thinking.

Image source by San Jose

All together now... by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.