The hidden audience effect

A splendid time was had by all at yesterday's bMoble12 event. Held in Bradford's prestigious National Media Museum (more on this in a future post), the day was packed full of quick fire workshops, seminars and plenary presentations. The conference was enhanced by the presence of several very tech savvy young students from primary schools, who took a full part in the proceedings, tweeting and live blogging from the event on their mobile devices. Speakers included Derek Robertson, Steve Dale, James Langley, Chris Mayoh and Julian Wood, who presented variously on games based learning, e-safeguarding, embedding the iPad across the curriculum, the use of QR codes and mobile devices in education, and how to engage readers with digital texts.

Headteacher Karine George's post lunch keynote was one of the highlights of #bMoble12, and included a great first section from two of the children from her large school, Westfields Junior School in Hampshire. They had been up since 6 am that morning to travel for 5 hours on a train to arrive in time for their presentation, and had to travel back that evening. It must have been a very long day for the kids, but they performed very well, and were very entertaining and raised a few laughs too.

Karine George's presentation was one of those keynotes that raises the eyebrows and gets you thinking. It must be the first time a keynote speaker has appeared on stage accompanied by a toilet seat, but I think we were all relieved when she made a point about emerging technologies, featuring the Japanese Washlet 'intelligent loo' as an example of how technology can improve lives. You can see video of Karine's keynote and many of the other bMoble12 sessions on this website.

As I looked around the room during Karine's keynote, the audience was transfixed by the volume of new ideas that were being applied at Westfields School. She reported great learning results through activities supported through the use of games, mobile technology, video, music technology and other specialised software. One great innovative idea Karine talked about was particularly useful at engaging kids across the entire curriculum. Their learning activities are scaffolded through their own internet radio channel S'cool Radio. The children take turns in operating and hosting the radio channel, working in pairs. They take on the responsibility to write and produce their own shows, and in doing so they are able to reach out not only to their own peers (the radio shows are broadcast over public address systems during break times) and their parents, but also the wider community, and ultimately, to a worldwide audience.

In effect, S'cool Radio is taking a similar approach to Dave Mitchell's Quadblogging concept but developing it in another direction. What both projects have in common is their capitalisation on the 'hidden audience' effect. Dave Mitchell stresses the importance of providing an audience for young bloggers, who then 'perform' their ideas and writing skills, receiving feedback from their peers. It is highly motivational to know you have an audience. Performance levels are raised as extra effort is made. The meteoric success of Quadblogging lies in its organisation of 4 school clusters, which provide a guaranteed audience to read and comment on every post the children make. Evidence from earlier studies I conducted with my own researchers in Plymouth in 2007 revealed that the 'hidden audience' who read  my own students' wiki content, encouraged them to raise their game in terms of improved academic writing, greater accuracy, deeper critical analysis and thinking, and a more polished presentational style. The entire account of that research can be found in the 2008 British Journal of Educational Technology article The Good, the Bad and the Wiki.

Clearly, the hidden audience effect is only one of the components that make projects such as Quadblogging and S'cool Radio a success. For Westfields Junior children, the ability to communicate clearly, self-organise, self-broadcast, express ideas, work in a team, problem solve, plan ahead and think on one's feet, are all brought into play when they plan, present and perform their shows on their internet radio shows. The Westfields internet radio project is therefore destined to be a great success, because not only does it provide learners with a ready made audience, it also gives them space to practice and acquire these key transferable skills - skills they will certainly need to use when they enter a world of work that is uncertain and in a constant state of change.

Image courtesy of Westfields Junior School


The hidden audience effect by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Learning on the move

It was nice to be invited to present a session for Sheffield Hallam University on mobile learning earlier today. The university has quite a strong research group in this area, and my talk, presented online via Adobe Connect had to be on point. Mobile learning is going to be very big indeed. One report suggests that as many as 8 out of every 10 people now having access to some form of mobile communication device. Whatever source you trust, mobile device use is high and rising, leading to the conclusion that mobile learning is clearly an area of development that will  have a massive impact on society in the coming months and years.

Where to start with a subject such as mobile learning? I decided that rather than merely cover practical issues (the 'how to do mobile' approach), I would try to take a more challenging approach, and explore social, pedagogical and psychological theories that relate to mobile technology, and present some of the issues that mLearning practitioners are currently facing. I used several images I have recently captured to illustrate the presentation, including the one above of the free Xbox 360 Kinect areas at Prague Airport, Czech Republic. I predict we will see more of this in public places.  It's interesting, because what we see here is a form of mobile learning without a mobile device. I suggested that mobile learning doesn't necessarily rely on carrying a device around with you, although it is the norm. Perhaps we need to reconceptualise our idea of what mobile learning is really all about.

There are many social implications of mLearning, some of which I covered in my presentation (slides below). I cited Puro (2002) who declared: 'The mobile phone ... is a new kind of stage where the mobile information society is acted out'. This echoes Goffman's (1967) drama theory where individuals manage their impressions in a kind of performance in social contexts. Puro's perspective is that the mobile phone evokes performances from users, but what is in question is the extent to which these performers manage their impression, and how much of this management is conscious effort. Fortunati (2002) speaks of the alienation and isolation that sometimes comes from mobile phone use, and comments that some isolation can be self-imposed, particularly when 'defending the space within which one would like to isolate one's voice'. Anyone who has sat next to someone loudly talking on their mobile phone in a confined space will see the truth, and Puro's expression that - 'the social distance on the mobile stage is small, but the emotional bond may be weak. [The] mobile phone ... may increase contact, but also increase loneliness' - will resonate with many.

Digital Futures: Innovations in Mobile Learning

View more PowerPoint from Steve Wheeler

There is no denying that at its heart much good learning has a social component. Earlier today in a meeting with one of our training staff, I argued that e-learning needs a social learning element. I suggested that he consider introducing some social media tools into the mix, so that the somewhat 'flat' two dimensional rote learning normally presented was bolstered by some deeper thinking supported by discussion, the creation of content and critical engagement with learning. I believe that mobile devices can help to achieve this mix of content and context based learning.

I explored the question of whether txting is 'dumbing down' language and causing problems. Does SMS text (the unorthodox spelling, or 'squeeze text' imposed by a limit of 160 characters) cause informal language to spill over into formal contexts? David Crystal (2008) says it doesn't. His argument is that in most cases, young people know the differences between communication modes, and that the ethos of language has changed with the introduction of new communication technologies, to the extent that there are now lots of acceptable versions of English. In effect, habitual use of a variety of tools (Facebook, Twitter, SMS, MS Messenger, YouTube, etc) is ensuring that this current generation is more versatile in literacy skills than any previous generation.

Finally, I discussed some of the practicalities of establishing mLearning strategies at an institutional level. There are many constraints, including small screens (a problem for those who require larger screens due to visual impairment or different expectations), bandwidth and connectivity problems, problems integrating mobile devices into institutional VLEs, and compatibility issues across multiple devices. A great article covering these and other issues by Edudemic is entitled How to develop your own mobile learning tools. Each institution has to decide on what basis (if any) it will implement mLearning strategies, which include the need to improve quality of delivery, widening access and participation, and tapping into the huge potential of mobile devices to maximise the study time that is available to each student.

References

Crystal, D. (2008) Txting: The gr8 db8. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fortunati, L. (2002) Italy: Stereotypes, true and false. In J. E. Katz and M. Aakhus (Eds.) Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Provate Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goffman, E. (1967) Interaction Ritual. New York: Doubleday.

Puro, J-P. (2002) Finland: A Mobile Culture. In J. E. Katz and M. Aakhus (Eds.) Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Provate Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Learning on the move by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Net worth of the iPad

Much interest was shown in yesterday's post iPad or iFad? It focused on whether schools should provide iPads for all their students. In the UK several schools are already doing this, and all have received great criticism from pressure groups who claim that it is an expensive gimmick. All down through the history of technology, as each new tool is introduced, there are those who will resist and complain, usually without any real evidence to justify their complaints. The main objection against one iPad per child projects is that there is little evidence to show that the new devices actually improve learning gain. The schools counter this argument by saying that with projects in their infancy it does take time to set up research and gather data, interpret it and discover whether an affect is in evidence.

The discussion on iPad or iFad was very interesting and thought provoking and I would like to express my thanks to all those who participated. The gist of the discussion centred not so much on the technology (and rightly so) but more on the pedagogy. You can follow it for yourself here, but generally, those participating agreed that if a new technology such as the iPad is introduced into the classroom it will only be effective if the the teaching and learning changes to harness the power of that technology. Too often we have seen new technologies placed into the classroom, and then used in exactly the same way as the old technology they are meant to replace. This video shows what not to do with an iPad:

One school I featured in yesterday's post was Mounts Bay Academy, near Penzance, Cornwall. Mounts Bay is one of the secondary schools in the UK that has adopted one iPad per child, and at the cost of over half a million pounds, has been the target for a lot of flak from groups such as the Tax Payers Alliance. Sara Davey, head teacher of Mounts Bay was yesterday interviewed on BBC radio, and reported an initial set of results from their school-wide iPad project as follows:

In a recent student survey 90% of Mounts Bay students agreed that iPads were very useful for their learning, especially in Science, English, Religious Education and History.  They reported that they made personal learning gains by working faster and getting more done. The students found the iPads very useful for their research and homework and they liked the fact that it is inclusive with a personal device for every student. Teachers observed that there were gains in Literacy learning, with communication now excellent between staff and students and improving greatly with between the school and parents.  There is a report on the website of a visit by teachers from nearby schools Penrice and Callington yesterday with comments, and an iPad showcase section. Data collected by the school indicate that Year 11 achievement looked very promising this year with a possible 10% increase in students gaining 5 GCSEs (including English and Mathematics).

As Sara Davey herself warns, these results cannot and should not be solely attributed to the introduction of the iPads. Yet it is significant that students have reported that they revise earlier because they are more interested in studying using the iPads than they are using text books.

Image courtesy of Fotocommunity

Net worth of the iPad by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

iPad or iFad?

In 2002 I was so enthused by the idea that a school could provide one desktop computer for every child, that I launched a research programme to study one of the first schools in the UK to achieve that goal for each of its 41 Year 6 pupils. We placed a research assistant in a classroom for several hours each week, over an entire term at Broadclyst Community Primary School, near Exeter in Devon, to observe and record what happened. The results were later published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, and the 1:1 ratio certainly made a difference to learning engagement, but not necessarily to learning gain. Our major findings were that the 1:1 ratio of laptop provision encouraged greater creativity from the children, and improved their levels of engagement and enthusiasm across subjects.

Now, ten years on, more and more schools are finding the resources to offer their students a laptop each, and some schools are trail blazing by providing iPads for each of their learners. One such school, Cedars School of Excellence, in Greenock, Scotland has discovered that providing an iPad for each of its children has many benefits. Fraser Speirs, the teacher primarily responsible for the roll-out almost two years ago, argues that what attracts children to using the iPad to learn is its portability, accessibility and intuitive touch screen interface. The touch screen enables users, teachers and students, to get very quickly to the heart of learning by using natural gestures, without having to spend time discovering which key to press, how to navigate around, or start up a particular software tool. The school treats the iPads as 'everyday' rather than special, because when students leave school and enter the world of work, technology will surround them. Speirs claims that the iPads facilitate learning that is 'more flexible, engaging and interesting.' He says that it is too early in the project to report if the iPads have made a significant difference on achievement. You can read more about the Cedar School iPad project on Fraser's blog.

Another school taking the plunge into 1:1 iPad provision is Mounts Bay Academy, a secondary school near Penzance in Cornwall. Headteacher Sara Davey is a visionary who wants to transform learning in the school and facilitate world class learning. She is not short of critics, many of whom claim the scheme, costing just over £300 for each of its 900 students, is little more than a costly gimmick. She counters these criticisms by arguing that in the long term, iPads will be more cost effective than purchasing expensive books which go out of date. It will also be an improvement on the ICT suite, which takes up valuable space and resources and can only be used by small groups of students at a time. She sees learning on the move for all as preferable, because each child can take their iPad into lessons, use them across the curriculum, and take them home to continue their learning seamlessly.  Similarly to Speirs, Davey argues that the iPads will improve student engagement and make learning more interesting. Again, this project is at an early stage and time will tell whether there is a direct impact on the quality of learning.

What are your views about one iPad for every child? Is it innovative and far-sighted, or just another gimmick with little evidence to justify the cost?

NB: You can read more on the debate about whether every student should have an iPad here.

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iPad or iFad? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

The enemy within

For many years, e-safety education in schools has focused on raising children's awareness of the 'stranger danger'. Campaigns dwelt on the dangers of talking to strangers, and since the age of the internet and mobile phones, the focus has been on warning children against sharing their photos or personal information with people they don't know. There has also been an emphasis on stamping out cyberbullying - the use of technology to invade a child's privacy, threaten, cajole or otherwise exert power over them. The use of videos in the so-called 'happy slapping' incidents in the UK was one of the first high profile incidences of cyberbullying, but as I have written in previous posts such as Textual Harassment, it can be much more insidious than that.

Now a new report written by a team of academics from the Institute of Education, London School of Ecoconomics, and King's College London, has thrown new light onto problems of cyberbullying. Entitled A qualitative study of children, young people and sexting, the report suggests that the biggest threat to e-safety comes from within. Professor Rosalind Gill, one of the authors of the report, said that whilst we have been concentrating on protecting children from contact with strangers online, we are losing sight of a new trend - peer pressure. "Our report suggests that the focus needs to shift to include the much more complicated issue of peer-to-peer communication and the difficulties and isolation young people experience in negotiating this," she said (source: BBC News).  The report shows that the worrying trend of 'sexting' - the sending and receiving of sexually explicit messages and images via mobile devices - seems to be something that children in school accept as a part of their daily life. Even more disturbingly the report features interviews with children as young as 8 years old who have been pressured by their classmates and others they know to take and send 'special images' of themselves. The executive summary offers seven key results from the study. 1) Threat comes mainly from peers 2) Sexting is often coercive 3) Girls are most adversely affected 4) Technology amplifies the problem 5) Sexting reveals wider sexual problems 6) Ever younger children affected 7) Sexting practices are culturally specific. 

The report summary also points out that the study, conducted in partnership with the NSPCC, was a small scale study with only 35 participants, and that caution is needed before any generalisations are made to larger populations of school children.

Image by Freefoto

The enemy within by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

The fame monster

Do we really need measures of online reputation? Can our worth be measured by the amount of Twitter followers we have or by how many +1s we receive on Google+?

Klout, Peerindex and other social reputation measuring sites are constantly bombarding web users with statistics about their 'true reach', 'amplification' and 'influence'. It all sounds very grand. And yet what is the actual value of these metrics? What does it mean that I currently have a Klout score of 60? This number is calculated among other things, on an analysis of my recent web activity on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ over the last 90 days. But just how accurate is it? And what happens to all the other web activities I participate in on sites such as Flickr, LinkedIn, Youtube and Slideshare? On Peerindex my influence score is only 51, so Peerindex must be measuring different activities to Klout, or has a different scale. I have to ask - is a single figure adequate to describe all of the complex interplay and relationships we have on the internet? Some commentators such as Brian Solis don't think so and point out that Klout scores simply measure the capacity to influence, and cannot represent true influence.

My Klout score of 60 is based on my number of retweets (3.4 k), mentions (3 k), followers (12 k) and those I am following (1.5 k), as well as how many comments I have received (220), how many likes I have received (623) and how many wall posts (17) on Facebook. Just how accurate these are is not in question. What I am yet to be convinced about is what the figure actually means. Does it mean that I am an influential individual online, or does it simply mean that I tend to spend a lot of time posting stuff up onto Twitter and Facebook? To be honest with you, I'm not that fussed about Klout scores, and 'reputation' isn't that important to me either. Those who are connected to me tend to stay connected because we have an online affinity, and are interested in the same stuff. I send people links, people send me links, and we all read, and we all learn, together. That's the bottom line for social networks. It's about mutual support and sharing, it's about reciprocating with help when it's needed.

And yet in some corners of the web world, reputation seems to be very important indeed. Wired magazine is running an article (issue 06.12) on the power shift that is currently happening in the world of entertainment. Although most traditional modes of advertising are still hanging on for dear life, it seems that social media endorsement by celebrities is becoming the next big thing. Lady Gaga has a larger digital footprint than any individual on the planet, and the metrics are staggering: She currently has nearly 51 million Facebook fans, 21 million Twitter followers, and her Youtube video channel has to date received over 2.3 billion views. Cashing in on this huge fame monster is not going to simple, but if anyone can turn social media into big bucks, Lady Gaga will. But she won't be the only one.

The BBC News website suggests that gaining a significant score on your reputation may result in you receiving reward from certain manufacturers who wish their products to be endorsed by high profile individuals on the web. You don't have to be a celebrity, but it helps. Actor Charlie Sheen may have a poor reputation in one sense, but because he is famous he has lots of Twitter followers (nearly 7 million and countring). This means some companies are prepared to pay him a small fortune for a few well placed endorsement tweets.  He has so far been paid over 50,000 US dollars for mercenary tweeting, whilst Kim Kardashian has received $10,000 and Snoop Dogg has already earned $8,000. These sums may be small beer if you are already earning millions from a TV or recording contract, but it's not bad for a few seconds of work each week on Twitter. These celebrities are invited to endorse products not only because of the size of their celebrity fan base, but also on the basis of their huge follower numbers on Twitter (the two tend to correlate). The advertising companies recognise that because stars are famous and have lots of followers, many fans are going to read the celebrity tweets, and many will also amplify the messages by retweeting them to their own followers. If you are a celebrity and you want to earn a living from social media, then it appears that social media influence, reach and reputation do count.

If on the other hand, all you want to do is your job, and to help you to do it, you network online with your colleagues around the world, does reputation really matter all that much? I choose to follow people on Twitter on the basis of their biography as well as occasionally checking out who else follows them. I may also visit their website to see whether what they are talking about interests me. But it's not that exact a science. I normally follow people on Twitter purely because they look interesting or are tweeting interesting things. Why do you follow people on Twitter? Is reputation to you?

Image source


The fame monster by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Trying to stop the tide

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the UK government's Chief Inspector of Schools and head of Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) has courted controversy from the moment he first stepped into the job. Although he himself has previously served as a Head teacher, he seems strangely unsympathetic to the plight of the teaching profession and has today dismissed claims that teaching is a stressful profession by simply telling teachers to 'roll up their sleeves and get on with it'. Fair enough. Teachers go into the profession with open eyes, and know more or less what they are getting in to. It's not an easy job but it can be very rewarding too.... if you have good leadership, and the appropriate resourcing. The problem is, schools in the UK are under the cosh. Ofsted is one of the worst nightmares a teacher can have. Wilshaw's storm troopers can inspect any school at any time, with little or no warning, and the outcome can be punitive, causing even more stress for a profession that is already in crisis. Ofsted's inspection model is biased toward deficit, tasked to seek out problems and weaknesses, with less emphasis on strength and achievement than there should be. Most teachers will tell you they dread the very thought of an Ofsted visit, and that it is one of the most stressful things they have ever experienced.

Wilshaw is not an easy man to like. Making public remarks such as 'teachers don't know what stress is' is certainly not going to endear Sir Michael to the body of professionals he is tasked with regulating. Now he is courting further controversy. And he has also been heard on live TV today calling for a ban on mobile phones in schools. For those who missed it, here is the full transcript of his Sky Television News interview at lunchtime today:

Interviewer: Mobile phones have become ubiquitous and schools are no exception. But now schools will be penalised if they fail to tackle the low level disruption that comes when pupils are texting, taking calls or updating their Facebook status in lessons. It’s being proposed by Sir Michal Wilshaw, the Chief Inspector of Schools and he joins me now live from Brighton. Sir Michael, thank you for being with us. Some schools are already tackling this. Why does Ofsted need to get involved?

Sir Michael: Well, Osted is going to be commenting in its inspections on the quality of provision in the school, looking at the culture of the school, looking at behaviour, to see whether in fact the culture of the school and the behaviour of the students is promoting good teach and good learning.  And what we’re saying is that it’s up to schools, it’s up to headteachers, it’s up to governors to make decisions on mobile phones and texts and so on and so forth. But it’s really really important that when inspectors walk into a class they see children being attentive, focused on their learning, making progress and achieving good outcomes.

Interviewer: Is there never a place for a mobile phone in a classroom? Can it not be used as a calculator, as a homework diary for example by a pupil, is there never a positive?

Sir Michael: Well as I say, it’s really up to the leaders of our schools to make decisions on this. Certainly when I was a head in East London, I made a very clear and unequivocal decision that I didn’t want mobile phones brought into school - they cause too many problems, youngsters were bullied in school through text bullying, .... often when they left to go home they were picked upon by others and their mobile phones taken away. So we made a very simple rule that we didn’t want mobile phones in the school. If the youngsters wanted to phone home or use a phone in an emergency, they could use the school phone.

Interviewer: Isn’t this adding just more pressure to the teachers who say they are already stretched to their limits. How do they police this? How do they go about it?

Sir Michael: Well the greater pressure, in my experience as a Head, is on teachers who try and teach and lessons are disrupted by mobile phones going off, or children trying to text each other in the class. Certainly the staff in schools I worked in welcomed this sort of blanket decision to ban mobile phones. Teachers want to focus on what’s really important – which is teaching well, making sure the children learn and are making progress. They don’t want lessons interrupted. It’s really up to the leaders of our schools, Head teachers and governors and senior staff in our schools to make this decision. If they want to carry on with mobile phones and giving pupils permission to do that, that’s fine as long as they don’t disrupt lessons.

Interviewer: Does it say something about teaching itself though, because if the pupils were engaged, they were feeling a part of that lesson, they were concentrating, they wouldn’t be a texting or updating their Facebook status?

Sir Michael: And that’s absolutely fine. And then the Head can make a decision on that. If it’s not an issue in schools and it’s not interfering in education and in lessons then the Head can make the right decision for that institution. I’m simply saying that I think low level disruption in classes, and in schools is a bigger problem than the punch-up in the playground actually. So it needs to be cut out. Low level disruption needs to be addressed by teacher and Head teachers and if mobile technology is getting in the way of that then it needs to be sorted out.

Interviewer: Since you’ve come into the role as Chief Inspector of Schools you’ve made a number of announcements and a number of proposals to try and improve standards in schools. Not all of them have been welcomed, you’ve found yourself in conflict with teachers and Head teachers. As a former Head teacher yourself, do you understand where they’re coming from?

Sir Michael: Well I want, and good Head teachers want, good schools. I want all children to go to a good school. Parents want their children to go to a good school. Children want to go to good schools. That’s the intention behind the reforms I’m introducing, to say that ‘satisfactory’ isn’t good enough, that the only acceptable provision is ‘good’ – and those schools that aren’t ‘good’ need to work towards that. That might take time to do that, but we’ll be backing and supporting the good Head, the ambitious Head, who wants to get to a ‘good’ state as soon as possible. So that is a central focus of our reforms.

Interviewer: Sir Michael, you’ve given a speech today, you’ve talked about teachers complaining about the job being too stressful, not enough support from parents, disruptive pupils, do you think teachers have got it too good, they’ve had it too good for too long?

Sir Michael: I think the great majority of teachers that I have worked with, over many many years, over forty years - are very hard working professionals who want to do the best by children, that’s been my experience. And we want to support those teachers, but we also want Heads to make sure they assess teachers, that they performance manage properly, and they reward good teachers. As I say, the great majority of staff need to be praised and rewarded - but do something about those teachers who aren’t teaching well. And so on and so forth. So, we need to make sure that performance management in our schools is robust and we need to make sure that Head teachers are ambitious for their school.

Interviewer: Sir Michael Wilshaw, live with us from Brighton, thank you.

It's very easy to see where Wilshaw is missing the point, and doing so either through lack of knowledge about the potential of mobile phones in learning, or through simple blind prejudice. He gives himself away by falling back onto the old authoritarian mantra of 'mobile phones are disruptive', and suggests that all kids want to do is update their Facebook status or text their friends during lessons. He fails to see that such tools are actually a huge part of youth culture, a means to create links to knowledge, social networks and ultimately - learning, when used appropriately. The mobile phone is purely disruptive, and as such it must be banned, removed from the classroom once and for all, and given no reprieve.

There are deeper issues at stake. Notice the interviewer's question about lack of engagement, and his response - to dance around the question, and instead, answer the question he wanted to answer.  Another intelligent question from the interviewer was whether mobile phones can be harnessed for good use in the classroom. Once again, Wilshaw skirts the question, and instead places the decision making onto the shoulders of individual school leaders. It seems that Head teachers are still in control of their own schools, but deep beneath, there is the underlying threat from Ofsted that if inspectors witness what they consider to be 'disruption' in classes they observe, then there will be punitive measures imposed. Ofsted can put a school into 'special measures' or lower its quality assessment status, usually as a result of determining that it does not measure up to the agreed standards. But is this the thin end of the wedge? How are already hard pressed teachers going to impose these rules? asked the interviewer. Surely they are already under enough pressure? Wilshaw's response was to suggest that there are far greater pressures, and that mobile phones are the root cause of those pressures. OK, so tell that to the male teacher who tries to retrieve a mobile phone that a female student has secreted on her person. Tell that to the teacher who receives threats of legal representation from parents who believe that she has broken or lost their child's mobile phone while it was being confiscated. How many schools are insured for that eventuality?

The fact is, many schools are already harnessing the creative potential of mobile phones to inspire and engage students, both inside and outside the classroom. It's also a fact that in schools where mobile phones are banned, many students continue to use them, and often for disruptive purposes. Where schools do allow mobiles as a part of their daily learning activities, the devices come out into the open, are no longer illicit, and can then be better controlled and used purposefully as a part of lessons. Which ever way we examine this issue, mobile phones are now a ubiquitous part in society, and are already playing a huge role in the culture of modern living. Simply attempting to ban them from a place young people regularly gather is an impossible task. Schools should instead consider ways that mobile devices can be used to enhance and enrich learning, for in so doing, we prepare our children for the future, instead of rooting them in the practices of the past.

The bring your own device (BYOD) movement in particular is gaining ground in education, so to attempt to stem the tide of mobile phones is schools is to emulate the megalomania of King Canute. Should Michael Wishaw (and that other Michael, Wilshaw's boss in the Department for Education) not also consider that when mobile phones are used correctly and responsibly by the 'ambitious teachers' they so value, learning can be taken to a whole new level of engagement and inspiration? Personally, I don't think that possibility will ever cross their minds. Not when they continue to see mobile phones as a threat.

It's probably not too late to point out that when that asteroid hit our planet all those millions of years ago, it failed to completely wipe out all the dinosaurs.

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Trying to stop the tide by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Making your mark

I have been inside some unique learning spaces recently. I see it as a part of my job. It's what I like to do. I explore new ideas and then report on them. The Immersive Vision Theatre on the Plymouth University campus is one example of a unique learning space. It's a converted planetarium, and what is unique about it is the way it has been refurbished into an experimental area where users can have 3D immersion experiences without any eye wear. The Theatre uses expensive Blade Network technology to provide the massive rendering power needed to create realistic and real-time visual effects. The surround-sound and the fish-eye projectors together combine to create an exciting, fascinating and at times disorienting visual panorama which totally immerses you in the experience. Experiments are being done into stress and perceptual effects to ascertain exactly how this new space can be applied in learning contexts.

Less high tech, but just as impressive for me, are the spaces I have seen in 'chill out' rooms both at the University of Queensland and just up the road at our own local University College of Marjons. The walls and doors and many other surfaces in these rooms are made of material that can be written on. Similar to whiteboard surfaces, these spaces can be used by students for creating mind-maps, flowcharts, diagrams, brainstorming lists - in fact just about anything that helps them to learn. The students love it, because they can then capture their images with a mobile phone for later use. It's a simple, cost effective idea that to my surprise has not been taken up by other institutions on a grander scale (unless you know differently).

The same concept is appearing in schools, according to Stephen Heppell. In his Pinterest collection of Good Tested Ideas, he features a school that has adopted the idea of writing surfaces for its student desktops. Back in the days when I was at school, we had wooden desktops, and I remember writing my name (and several other things too) onto my desktop in ink. Some went further and carved their names into the desks. We often got into trouble. Children seem to have an innate need to make their mark, to tag, to create graffiti - and often schools are fighting a losing battle trying to stop them from making their mark somewhere in the school - on their desks, the walls, the doors or windows. What better way to capture that energy and channel it creatively than to provide children with wipeable surfaces they can use to help them with their learning. Let us know if your school, college or university is doing similar things. Creative surfaces will mean that 'making your mark' will take on an entirely new meaning.

Image by Stephen Heppell


Making your mark by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

More fabulous learning spaces

The space in which a child learns is important. If a school gets it wrong, learning can be constrained or even completely stifled. I remember the dire environment that was provided for me as a kid in one particular school. The room had bare floorboards, and the desks were fixed to the floor. The classroom echoed with every footstep, and there was no central heating. All we had was one fireplace which was never lit, due to 'health and safety' issues. The toilets were in a block across the playground, and we avoided going there because they were exposed to the elements. We therefore made sure we didn't drink at all during the school day, so we wouldn't need to find our way across to the toilet block. We were often cold and thirsty, because the environment dictated it. It didn't lead to very good learning outcomes. Recent research has shown that drinking water regularly actually improves concentration and focus. It's often the simple things that improve the learning environment, and as Stephen Heppell says, better school toilets = better results.

Last year I wrote about  some fabulous learning spaces I had seen while visiting schools in New Zealand. I wrote about the idea of knocking down walls and joining three classrooms together to provide more circulating space for students. At Albany Senior High School in Auckland, three classes are conducted next to each other, with students given the freedom to move between the classes as they wish. Last week I heard Stephen Heppell talk about another version of this, which he called 'Super Classes' where three classes join together for one lesson, and the three teachers team teach. The lead teacher (or narrator) is responsible for conducting the session, whilst teacher 2 (the 'breakdown engineer') offers the intervention when students are struggling, and teacher 3 provides differentiated intervention for those learners who require it. Conducting classes in this way drives the session forward with fewer stops and starts. Teachers can focus on their individual roles and in so doing maintain the impetus of the lesson without being sidetracked to respond to the needs of individual learners.

In Australia, Stephen Harris, principal of the Sydney Centre for Innovations in Learning has devised a range of metaphors that describe different kinds of activities that can take place in shared learning spaces.  Such space and activity juxtapositions rely extensively on the teacher's willingness to be flexible and adaptable to change and responsive to needs as they arise, but also tap into the huge potential of young people's innate ability to be agile and adept at using new technologies. Schools are often designed by architects and designers who may have spent little time in school since their childhood days. Getting those who actually use the school every week - the students - to design them in conjunction with their teachers seems to be a much better strategy and might lead to creative learning spaces.

It's clear that learning spaces are a vitally important component of the school to get right. If we don't provide the best possible spaces that are conducive to learning, we are letting the children down. It's not just what we provide in schools that make a difference, but how we provide it.

Photo source unknown


More fabulous learning spaces by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Steps reunion

How often do you see teachers giving up their precious weekends to spend time learning more about their work? Not often, because most teachers spend what little free time they have marking, preparing lesson plans and generally trying to catch their breath. And yet this weekend I was very privileged to take part in a weekend away with teachers from Saltash.net Community School at the Engage and Inspire staff development event in Bedruthan Steps Hotel, near Newquay.  The hotel plays host to the event every year, and I recall with fondness being invited last year by Dan Roberts (aka @chickensaltash) to keynote the event alongside the likes of  Sugata Mitra. Well, Dan Roberts has moved on to warmer climes, but the campaign to aspire to better pedagogy continues. Saltash.net is a remarkable school and quite unique in the ways it harnesses technology to engage and inspire. That is one reason why Microsoft has decided to sponsor the Bedruthan Steps event time after time. This year at the Steps the invited speakers included Stephen Heppell and Steve Bunce, both of whom challenged their audiences to reach further using technology to inspire and engage learners. And what an inspirational weekend it turned out to be.

Stephen Heppell, in his inimitable way showed his audience a range of innovative new ways to engage learners in school, including shoeless education, olfactory schools, sound scapes, mirror walls and 100 faces.  Stephen talked about how mood lighting can psychologically influence learning. Provide red lighting in the morning, and it wakes students up, whilst blue lighting after lunch has a calming influence. Just changing the positioning of chairs can have a positive influence on how the students respond, he said, while converting tabletops to whiteboard drawing surfaces can raise the levels of creativity in the room. Many of Stephen's ideas don't rely heavily on technology, and we were warned that technology on its own does not solve problems, but he did suggest that where technology is involved, everything goes exponential, especially the quality of learning. Many of Stephen Heppell's tried and tested ideas have been shown to transform the learning experience in a variety of different cultural contexts in countries around the world.

A session led by James Edwards (Saltash School) and Ray Chambers (Lodge Park School, Corby) exposed the many ways in which games based learning can be harnessed in secondary education. The session became a dynamic workshop where teachers were given the opportunity to try for themselves some of the non-touch, natural gesture driven tools powered by the X-Box 360 Kinect.

The session by Steve Bunce was focused on challenge and mission, and involved the teachers splitting up into several teams as they tackled all the activities they were given to complete. One mission involved the teams trying to recreate and capture a famous movie scene and a scene from history using modelling clay, tiny figurines and anything else they could get their hands on. Links to several stop-go motion movies and digital images soon began to appear on the #saltash12 twitter stream as teachers shared their fun. Another task was to create a 1-1 scale map of a beauty spot somewhere within the spectacular surroundings of the cliffside hotel grounds. Many of the missions and tasks were taken from the Mission Explore collection of learning resources.

It was great to see teachers leaving the event enthused and inspired, armed with innovative new ideas to try out to see how far they could go in enhancing and enriching their students' learning experiences. I don't think there was a single teacher who regretted going the extra mile and spending their weekend learning a little more about how to be an inspirational teacher. Thank you Saltash.net for inviting me to share your experience this weekend.

Photos by Steve Wheeler


Steps reunion by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

10Q: David White

David White is Honourary Director General at the European Commission, and is a passionate believer in lifelong learning. Ahead of his keynote speech at this year’s EDEN conference, to be held in Porto, I asked him some questions about his life, his passions and what he believes about technology supported education. Here is the interview in ten questions...

SW: Please can you tell readers and EDEN delegates a little about yourself, your passions, your interests and perhaps one or two things you are not so keen on? 

DW: I am a husband, a father and a grandfather who grew up very happily in a relatively minor province on the outer margins of Europe and who has loved living and working in the multi-cultural environment at the heart of the EU.

Alfred Marshall described economics as the study of people in the general business of life. That is the sort of economics I like. I am not greatly impressed with mathematical models. But the general business of life lets me thrill to music and literature, be drawn to elegant engineering like steam engines and architecture, to the excitement of business, and the challenges of politics, to the history that helps us understand why the world is as it is and the political visions of how it might be. These are all reflections of the extraordinary riches and diversity of people interacting with one another.

We have the good fortune to live in a world that is full of beauty and of interest. The best fun is sharing our experience of them. When we talk about the things that are beautiful and about which we feel excited, they grow bigger.

The best education has something to do with sharing our excitement about the business of life.

SW: You have worked for a considerable part of your career in various roles within the European Commission. What important lessons have you learnt during this time? 

DW: Working for the European Commission has made me into a passionate European.

Two experiences show why.

First, when we were preparing for enlargement towards the central and eastern European countries, and while there were still many problems for the central and eastern Europeans countries as they tried to adapt to a radically new situation, I toured the capitals. In the course of these meetings, I met a lot of young officials. We had very different life experiences: I lived in a western economy with a privileged material standard, freedom to choose my own life pattern; they had been brought up in a totalitarian state with all sorts of constraints on their freedom, both material and other. Yet I found that we shared culture, approach and principles. Many of them I would gladly have welcomed into my staff team. Some of them later did join me and I was not disappointed! Europeans have so much in common: far more than we are generally ready to believe.

Second, in negotiations with third countries, I have been enormously impressed by our collective capacity for creativity. We are generally much better at finding creative ways through than others. The reason has something to do with confronting diversity. We may have much in common, but we also have different ways of seeing issues: and that is one of the keys to creativity. Often in Europe we find it difficult to implement our good ideas. We have to learn to do better at that.

I also learned a lot about people. Perhaps I would have learned that anywhere. But in the European Commission, we were working in a multi-cultural, multi-language environment. Not everyone likes that. People tell stories about national caricatures. You know the sort of thing: noisy Italians and silent Finns. Some of the caricatures are less complementary than that. At one level, these caricatures are often true. French people are keen on the vision: Brits are more pragmatic – or are they just muddled? Germans tend to be rather more structured than the Irish. But at another level, these caricatures are entirely false. Everyone is an individual, demanding to be treated with respect, to be listened to and to be understood. When you are prepared to make the effort to do that, you find that the caricatures fade and the riches of the individuals shines through. There are no good and bad nationalities: there are only people, who challenge you to relate to them. If you are prepared to rise to that challenge, it is amazing what you find. Europe is full of talented, attractive and creative people.

Europe has an immensely rich shared heritage. Alone, we are bit players in the world. Together, we have so much to contribute, so much to gain.

SW: According to your LinkedIn profile, your current role is Honorary Director General of the European Commission. What does this entail and how do you manage the role? 

DW: I am so impressed to find someone who reads LinkedIn profiles! It is a great job. They pay me nothing: and I do nothing for them in return. It is only a vanity title, like being an emeritus professor. But I cling to it, because it reminds me that I enjoyed a long and wonderful career in the European Commission, where I met great people and shared stacks of experience. And did a lot of work, some of which may even have been useful. The honour was entirely mine.

SW: You are currently a postgraduate student and researcher at KU Leuven. What are you studying at present, and how does this inform your role as HDG at the EU? 

DW: The Commission gave me a sabbatical year in Florence at the end of my career. Largely by accident, but to my enormous benefit, I spent time studying the hermeneutic philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur knows a lot about creativity and innovation. He helped me understand more about what I had been doing in the Commission. Ricoeur talks about the way that figurative language yields a surplus of information: about the way we use narrative to reconfigure the world; and about the way relationship changes us and the world.

Creativity and innovation have something to do with business and policy and politics. Even with education.

Retirement from the European Commission gave me space to do more. I combined what I learned from Ricoeur with the Commission’s slogans about life-long learning and it led me on rather naturally to studies in theology.

Theology probably does not spring to everyone’s mind as their dream of a relaxed retirement. But it is about life and its meaning, our place in the world, and our relationships. It holds a rich store of learning and understanding.

Have you ever asked yourself whether there might be some management lessons to be learned from the New Testament? Possibly not. But the man who founded Christianity had no university degree and never wrote a book: yet two thousand years on a third of the world claim to follow him. Do you know of any companies that can claim such longevity or successful market development? When it comes to using narrative to reconfigure human experience, or to using metaphor to help people grasp things that are otherwise beyond their experience, he is the master. And most people would agree that he was a people person.

Needless to say, my mind keeps harking back to my 36 years experience of European policy making. Has the one anything to say to the other?

SW: Your academic career is quite illustrious, with time spent studying at Queens University Belfast and the University of Manchester. What is your ethos on lifelong learning?

DW: Having been director for lifelong learning, you can imagine that I view myself with some interest: I am a sort of guinea pig for principles that I have advocated.

It is wonderful to study in a field of which I previously knew little. It can be challenging. Can you imagine learning koine Greek and having your homework corrected in blue pencil by a woman who is not half your age?... Or trying to register for exams using the university’s e-learning software?..

Above all it is FUN. I am among a very international set of students. They have different backgrounds and attitudes to mine, I have experience that younger students lack. So we have scope for exchange.

SW: Your forthcoming keynote presentation at the EDEN conference is keenly anticipated. What key messages will delegates take home from your speech? 

DW: I can only know about the messages I hope to deliver. What delegates take home is not entirely within my power to determine. Things that are good and true, I hope. And something that they had not thought of before.

SW: What impact do you think technology has had on lifelong learning across Europe in the last two decades? 

DW: I have lost count of the number of friends who have followed distance learning courses.

Yet neither I nor my teachers seem able to master the e-learning instruments that are available to us. We just about manage to use e-mail for document transfer.

Clearly new technology has had enormous influence. And it has a long way to go.

SW: In the age of digital media, distance education, mobile learning and open educational resources, what do you think the future will hold for traditional educational institutions? 

DW: Education is relational.

I have yet to meet anything in the humanities that quite matches the encounter between the gifted teacher and the interested student: the philosophy lecture in which the student experiences the professor’s thinking process; or the teacher whose theatrical performance captures the student with the excitement of understanding as it unfolds.

One of the dangers of our present structures is that they tend to undervalue the gifted teacher. Provided we can correct this, there will always be a role for the traditional teaching institution.

But there is so much scope for new approaches to add value. E-learning is much more than electronic document distribution. Language learning begs for interactive handbooks. It is gradually getting there. Like in any other marketplace, teaching institutions that stand still will lose out to those that are innovative.

SW: In your opinion, what are the most significant barriers or constraints to good learning in the 21st Century, and how might they be overcome? 

DW: Obstacles: motivation; guidance; cost; time.

How might they be overcome? Encouragement and affirmation. And investment in new teaching materials that are conceived for e-learning.

SW: What do you hope personally, and professionally to achieve over the next 5 years? 

DW: Professionally? Life has given me some experience of the European project and of the economics and public administration that go with it, as well as of business and education, theology and philosophy; and in working with people. What excites me is the interfaces between these fields. One of the issues that arises in the interfaces is our values. They figured large in public discussion of some aspects of the banking crisis. We confront them every time we deal with people. In our post-modern culture, the only values that we accept are those that we find for ourselves. Yet an economic or political space without values is scary. Maybe we can equip people to develop values of their own?

I am currently involved in a project to set up voluntary extra-curricular education around some of those interfaces, targeted on EU officials.

If it is to be voluntary, it has to be fun.
If people are going to give time to it, it must deliver learning outcomes that they regard as worthwhile.
If it is to be accessible to EU officials, who work long hours and travel, any live teaching must be backed up by e-learning. But it must remain relational.

Personally? To enjoy being a grandfather.  

Image source

10Q: David White by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.