Telling your story

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

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

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

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

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

 Photos by Steve Wheeler


Telling your story by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Reusable cooking objects

Recently a lot of emphasis has been placed on sustainability. Sustainable this, sustainable that. Here at the University of Plymouth we had a CETL - a Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning - dedicated to Sustainable Futures. We have also seen a movement toward 'reusable learning objects' (For many teachers, sustainable education might simply be about actually keeping students interested for a full hour). I guess it's not simply about being 'green' or environmentally conscious. It's also about minimising effort of the creation of learning resources, and adapting existing content into new contexts or for new groups of learners. It's about sharing. It's about common sense. I just don't know why we had to invent a name for it.

I was fascinated last year, while walking around the huge sprawling open market of Serekunda in the Gambia, to see a huge 'cottage industry' dedicated to recycling old aluminium, tin and other metals into really useful objects. The picture above shows some of the products of this labour - salvaged aluminium from old cars, refrigerators, cola cans and other household goods that have lost their inherent value. We walked into one of the market stalls, and out through the back into a yard which resembled Dante's inferno. Everywhere we looked there were smelting furnaces, and all around in the smoke, people were melting down metal and remoulding it into useful cooking utensils. The picture below shows a guy fabricating a cooking pot. Got me thinking about education.

How much content do we actually waste, and how often do we 'reinvent the wheel'? I remember a few years ago having 14 cohorts of students, all studying the same content. I simply set up a wiki and populated it with a set of learning activities. I then replicated the wiki 13 times more and let it loose. The result was that the students were each contained in their own little groups, studying the same materials but enjoying small group conversations that were unique and relevant to their own cohort. It didn't take long to do once the first wiki had been established, and in a sense, I re-used the same content over a dozen times. It should only be a small step from there to reusing other people's content. But it's actually a huge step, because many teachers want to protect their own intellectual property and are not willing to share their ideas or content with others. The Creative Commons movement is going some way to challenging this mindset, and we are also seeing the rise of open scholarship, where teachers and academics are willing not only share their content, but also to open themselves up to constructive criticism from their peers on the web. I share all my slideshows and papers on Slideshare for free, and only ask for acknowledgement. (Go on, click on the link and help yourself. You know you want to).

After witnessing the collective actions and sharing culture that exist among the poor people of the Gambia and realising that they are compelled to take this approach simply to survive, I am even more determined to share my own content and encourage others to do the same. Seeing how the people of Gambia use everything and throw nothing away makes me very conscious about our own wasteful consumer society and how selfish I can be with my own 'property'. Reusable learning objects....It makes a lot of sense to me now.


Click here for more pictures of Gambia.


Reusable cooking objects by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Living in our global village

When I reflect on my visit earlier this year to the Gambia, and my trips to other poor countries, I tend to gain some real perspective on my life. I'm left asking what will the future hold for the Gambian children in this picture? I spent some time with them all, and they are certainly as bright and enthusiastic as any kids I have met in my own country. How many of these children will survive to adulthood, how many will enjoy happy lives and achieve their dreams? None for sure will have any of the opportunities I had when I was their age. You see, in the Gambia children are forced to leave school when they reach 11, unless their parents can pay for their secondary education. Most cannot.

I can't help but feel extremely privileged to come from a part of the world where electricity, water and gas are all piped to my home, and where education is free for all children up to the age of 18. Even healthcare is free at the point of delivery to all British citizens (and of course to anyone else who is visiting the UK and gets taken ill) courtesy of the National Health Service. Hell, I even have broadband wifi in my house, and enough to feed and clothe my entire family. If I want fresh, clean water, I have simply to walk a few metres to my kitchen sink. The children in the picture have to walk several kilometres every day to fetch their water from a well in a bucket. Yes, I'm very, very fortunate indeed. I have always been affected by the following scenario, ever since I first heard it several years ago. If you want some perspective on your life, read on....

If we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this:

Our village would be populated by 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans,
8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific....

51 would be male,
49 would be female.
82 would be non-white;
18 would be white.
67 would be non-Christian;
33 would be Christian.
80 would live in substandard housing;
67 would be unable to read.
50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation;
33 would be without access to a safe water supply;
39 would lack access to improved sanitation;
24 would not have any electricity (and of the 76 that do have electricity, most would only use it for light at night).
7 people would have access to the Internet;
1 would have a college education;
1 would have HIV.
2 would be near birth; 1 near death
5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens
33 would be receiving (and trying to live on) only 3% of the income of “the village”

Information source

This post is a revised version of Our global village, first published on this blog on February 27, 2010.

Living in our global village by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

OER the seas and far away....

I'm packing frantically to travel down to South Africa and onwards to Namibia tomorrow, volcanoes and strikes permitting. My destination is first Johannesburg, and then a short flight onwards to Windhoek, capital of Namibia, where I will be giving an invited presentation to the UNESCO Open Educational Resources Conference organised in conjunction with the Commonwealth of Learning.

I'm looking forward to attending the conference, and visiting another African nation. I learn so much every time I venture out of my own country, and often use the things I see in my writing and presentations. My last trip overseas a few weeks ago was also to Africa, to the Gambia, on the West coast, where I saw a lot of stuff that really opened my eyes to the incredible poverty most of the world's population live in. If you ever get complacent about life, go to Africa. My thoughts about education and its purpose changed radically as a result of my one week's stay, as you can see if you read my post What Price Education?

Namibia is not such a poor country as the Gambia, but I anticipate that I will once again be challenged by the places I visit, and the sights I will see. I had never dreamt I would go to Namibia - it was just another place on the map. But the invitation came out of the blue last month and so I jumped at the chance. My talk, mainly courtesy of Ulf-Daniel Ehlers (and also with thanks to Carmen Holotescu) is based loosely around the question: 'What's so Good about Open Educational Resources?' In it I will try to outline some of the benefits I can see in its use for individual learners, teachers, institutions (schools, colleges, universities), professional networks, and communities of practice. I will be interested to hear the feedback from my audience when I present on Monday.

I will say more about my Namibian excursion when I return, hopefully in time to cast my vote in the UK General Election on Thursday.

(The picture above is one I took of an old fisherman, looking out over the sea in the Gambia).


Learning with 'e's by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Our global village

When I reflect on my recent visit to the Gambia, and on other trips to poor countries, I tend to gain some real perspective on my life. I'm left asking what will the future hold for the Gambian children in this picture? How many will survive to adulthood, have happy lives and achieve their dreams? None for sure, will have any of the opportunities I had when I was their age.

I can't help but feel extremely privileged to come from a part of the world where electricity, water and gas are all piped to my home, and where education is free for all children up to the age of 18.

Even healthcare (we pay our taxes) is free at the point of delivery to all British citizens (and of course to anyone else who is visiting the UK and gets taken ill) courtesy of the National Health Service. Hell, I even have broadband wifi in my house, and enough to feed and clothe my entire family. I'm very, very fortunate indeed. I have always been affected by the following scenario, ever since I first heard it several years ago. If you want some perspective on your life, read on....

If we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this:

Our village would be populated by 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans, 8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific


51 would be male, 49 would be female
82 would be non-white; 18 would be white
67 would be non-Christian; 33 would be Christian
80 would live in substandard housing
67 would be unable to read
50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation
33 would be without access to a safe water supply
39 would lack access to improved sanitation
24 would not have any electricity (and of the 76 that do have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)
7 people would have access to the Internet
1 would have a college education
1 would have HIV
2 would be near birth; 1 near death
5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens

33 would be receiving (and trying to live on) only 3% of the income of “the village”

Information source

What price education?

Derek Bok once said: "If you think education is expensive, you ought to try ignorance." Yes, education is expensive, but in spending public money on teacher training, salaries, professional updates, school and university buildings, technology and learning resources, we are investing into the future wellbeing of our own society. My recent trip to the Gambia, one of Africa's poorest and smallest countries, showed me that failing to invest in quality education can be disasterous, and that ignorance is indeed costly on a number of levels.

State funded education in the Gambia covers only lower basic (primary) education. You may have read in a previous post that the government only supplies the buildings, the teachers and the chalk. Anything else must be paid for by parents. They need basic things like pencils and exercise books. I used an old shirt to clean the blackboard during a lesson because their was no board cleaner. The walls need educational posters. Coloured chalk, crayons, text books. All of these are relatively inexpensive to us. To the Gambians they are luxuries. When a child reaches the age of 11, if his parents do not have enough money (and that would be quite a high percentage), that child has to leave formal education. But what can they do next?

I saw many young teenagers simply hanging around on street corners, kicking their heels, trying to earn a living any way they could, selling small items, panhandling, dodging the traffic, living off their wits. Some are lucky enough to go out working on the flimsy fishing boats, but this is a very dangerous occupation. Many of the young girls we saw were tasked to look after their younger siblings. I saw one 6 or 7 year old girl carrying a new-born baby around, tied onto her back with a cloth.

Several times we were approached out on the streets by young men who tried to glue themselves to us in the hope of relieving us of some of our cash. We witnessed the 'Bumsters' working the scene - young males who wait for female travellers to pass their way who they then follow remorselessly in the hope of earning a little money for their 'services' rendered. This is just one of the many humiliating occupations young people can fall into, and believe me, there are some even worse. Unemployment is high in the Gambia, but it would be a mistake to blame this solely on a lack of education. The economic circumstances largely dictate the number of jobs available. It does seem sensible though, to conclude that if the standard of education was higher, and there was more opportunity for children to stay in school for free until they at least reached the end of their teens, that they would be so much better off. It is also inescapable that any society's wealth relies greatly on the standard of its education provision.

So what price education? Well, above is my idea of what this month's National Geographic magazine should be featuring. Yes, it's one of my own pictures, taken of a young girl in the Gambia last week (original here), and the magazine cover is one I created myself, but I hope I have made my point. We all need to care more about how the children of the world are being educated. To my mind, we should invest as much in education as we can afford, because failing our children in their formative years is storing up a shed load of trouble for the future. Let's hope the world wakes up to this fact, stands side by side with the poor nations of the planet and invests more in their future, and in their richest natural resource - their youth.

Very basic school

This is a continuation of the story of my recent visit to the Gambia. The previous blog post was entitled Gambia Maybe Time.

On day 3 we took our students to visit the Mandinari Lower Basic (primary) School, which is located out in the countryside along the banks of the river Gambia. We arrived in our minibuses on a sandy compound, with low tin roofed buildings on two sides, and were greeted by the smiling teaching staff. The school was founded in 1964, a year before Gambia's independence. We were informed that there are 783 children on roll, assigned into 19 classes. Because there were only 15 classrooms and the same number of teachers, school hours go on until 6pm each evening, to accommodate all the pupils. I was appalled to hear that 4 teachers were absent that day due to Malaria sickness. As a result some classes were doubled up, with 50-60 children in each small room. English is the language by which all lessons are taught, and maths and English are the main subjects on the timetable, with other subjects including the Koran, science and physical education.

We went in groups of 3 or 4 into the classrooms and took the lessons. We saw right away that the children were very bright and inquisitive. They stared long at our white faces and strange clothing as we sang songs, read them stories and told them about England and the children there. These children come from an oral culture, with a focus on story telling and music, so when it came to singing, they were almost deafening. They sang and danced enthusiastically for us, and then crowded in on us as we were leaving, simply wanting to touch us.

I noticed that during their lunch break, the children only had one place to sit away from the searingly hot sunshine - under the shade of a large mango tree around the rear of the school buildings. I mentioned to the deputy head teacher that we could provide them with some more trees, and even do a planting and watering ceremony for them complete with dancing and drums. He loved the idea and so next time I am there, I plan to buy some saplings and some fencing, and do just that. In a few years time, younger children in that community will hopefully be able to enjoy some more shade from the sun.

The school is typical of many in the Gambia, with no electricity and only very basic learning resources, and where the only toilet facilities are located in tin shacks at the rear of the school, consisting of holes in the floor over a large cesspool. In the heat the fumes and flies are sickening, and the conditions extremely unhealthy, but somehow they cope with it day to day. We also noticed that apart from the chalk and blackboard, they had very few other resources - a few books and little else. Some of the children had exercise books and pencils, but many more did not. There was also no provision for those with special needs. I promised the maths teacher I spoke to that next time we visit, we will bring him some exercise books, pencils and solar powered calculators. They are the best solution I can think of to try to improve the conditions in the school.

Anyone working in a school in the UK will find it hard to understand the huge gulf that separates their school from those in the poorest countries of the world, where even coloured chalk or a new exercise book are luxuries. We have a long way to go.

Gambia Maybe Time

I learnt this week that GMT stands for 'Gambia Maybe Time' - and that about sums up life in the Gambia. Everything is done at an amble, and no-one really concerns themselves too much about time keeping. Perhaps we in the West could learn something from that. We landed at Banjul International Airport in the late afternoon in 36 degrees of heat, and were set upon by hordes of locals outside the airport, all wanting to take our bags and earn a little money in tips. Gambia is one of the smallest and poorest nations in Africa, and everyone has an angle. You can't blame them for trying. And my angle? I was in Gambia with 5 colleagues and 30 student teachers from the University of Plymouth, on a comparative study tour.

On day 2 we took a bush taxi into the centre of Serekunda, one of the largest cities in the Gambia. Bush taxis (tanka tanka) are haphazard, arriving when they arrive, and are usually battered, poorly maintained old mini-buses. They stop for people on demand anywhere, anytime, and squeeze as many inside as they can, including their baskets, chickens, goats etc, into the space that is available before driving off in a cloud of black fumes. We travelled for 20 minutes, and payed the princely sum of 5 dulasi for the priveledge - about 15 pence.

Nothing prepares you for what you see, hear (and smell) on the streets. The dangers don't come from the people, who are usually very friendly and welcoming. Rather, it's the maze of open sewerage channels and lack of hygiene that challenge most visitors (don't have ice in your drink and avoid salad). I will never forget the colour and richness of the market places, where traders can set up anywhere, usually shoulder to shoulder, to do business. At night-time, there are no street lights. The only light comes from open fires, car headlights and the occasional trader who happens to have a lamp connected to a car battery. The pungent, mingled smells of livestock, kerosene and meat cooking on open fires continually assail the nostrils, and the dust and heat are ever present.

It's easy to open up conversations with local people. They will do it for you. Anyone who looks like they are visiting is approached, and they then try to find out as much about you as they can so they can attempt to obtain your e-mail address, an unwanted mobile phone, or a handout of some kind. On my first day in Serekunda, one guy glued himself to me and tenaciously followed us around for half hour, until we decided to invite him to sit down and have a drink with us. During the conversation, we talked about religion (Moslems and Christians live side by side in harmony and intermarry freely), politics, local customs and culture, and of course education. My new friend, Al Fusainey Janh (pictured above), told me that many of the schools in Gambia don't have electricity, let alone computers. The Gambian government provide the school building, the teachers and the chalk. Any thing else has to be funded by parents, and most are too poor to do so. Most people who wish to use the Internet go to a telecenter or Internet cafe. Many people have mobile phones, but they are mainly used for talking and text, because few have the capability to browse the Internet.

In tomorrow's post on this blog I will give an account of our visit to a rural primary school, what we saw, and my conversations with the teachers and children.

For more pictures see my Flickr Photoset