Being Negroponte

'Learning when there is no school'

In 1995 I read a little black paperback book that changed my view on the world. The title of the book was 'Being Digital' and the author was Nicholas Negroponte. Several key elements of Negroponte's book stood out for me and challenged my thinking. Firstly, he talks of a time when all media will be transformed from atoms into bits. This premise, written in the middle of the 90s, looked forwards to a time when newspapers, movies, music, television, photography, and a host of other media would reside exclusively within the digital domain. The repercussions would be that large businesses who relied on shipping 'atoms' would go out of business, whilst those who sent bits would thrive. Negroponte is a gentleman and doesn't have the hubris to declare 'I told you so', but a quick look around at the world of business will tell you that he was right. Large photographic companies, the music industry, book and newspaper publishers, high street chain stores and even the mighty Hollywood film industry are struggling to adapt, survive or maintain their preeminence in a world where everyone has a mobile phone with a camera, downloads of e-books exceed print based sales, iTunes is the favourite method of purchasing your favourite music, movies can be streamed online, and people are migrating en masse to online stores such as Amazon. Negroponte's vision was prescient indeed, and we ignore the man's ideas at our peril.

Secondly, Being Digital featured further predictions about touch screen computers, artificial intelligence and convergent technologies such as TVs and computers combining their functionality. The entire book is crammed full of these instances, and it is not hard to see why it had such a huge impact on me and many others like me almost 20 years ago.

It was a delight and a privilege to be invited to meet Nic Negroponte over dinner in the run up to the Learning Technologies Conference. I sat and chatted with him for more than two hours as he regailed me and my co-diners with story after story of his many exploits. Negroponte established the now legendary MIT Media Lab, and was also founder of Wired Magazine. I first became aware of his work by reading his then regular column. He is well connected too. Close friend and LOGO inventor Seymour Papert married author and cyberspace researcher Sherry Turkle in the living room of Negroponte's home. Negroponte and his then wife met with Alan Turing's mother and brother, and were given all his 'baby photographs'. He worked alongside legends such as artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky and in so doing, became something of a legend himself. In his opening keynote speech at Learning Technologies, Negroponte stalked across the stage reminding his audience that it is a big mistake to assume that knowing is synonymous with learning. 'We know that a vast recall of facts is not a measure of understanding,' he declared, 'and yet we subject kids in school to constant memorising to pass tests.' His answer? What we need to do in schools, he said, was to find ways to measure curioisty, creativity, imagination and passion, as well as the ability to view things from multiple perspectives.

Negroponte is now celebrated for his high impact initiative to provide children in poor countries to access learning through laptop computers. His One Laptop Per Child project has now given children from Ramallah to Rio access to the learning they previously never had a hope of having. The total number of laptop computers distributed through the 1LPC project now exceeds 2.5 million in 40 countries, and there are many heart warming stories to be told. Children are now teaching their own parents how to read, using the laptops as tools. In Ethiopia, over 5000 children are learning to write computer programs using Squeak. Plans to begin distribution of touch screen tablets are well underway, and it won't be long before we are talking about One Tablet Per Child. All of this is run on a charity basis, and is philanthropic to the core, with supporters including the Bill Gates Foundation and Salman Kahn's Academy.

If we have learnt one thing from the 1LPC project, says Negroponte, it is that children learn a great deal on their own, with little or no help from others. This echoes the work of pioneers such as Sugata Mitra, whose 'minimally invasive education' was demonstrated by the 'Hole in the Wall' experiments. Negroponte said that Mitra is now working with him and others at MIT - they have joined forces to advance these projects further. Children have a natural curiosity, Negroponte is at pains to point out, and discovering, making and sharing things is second nature to them. We should nurture these characteristics he warns, rather than stifling it in rigid school systems.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


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

Changing the world

It's not often you get to talk with someone who has changed the world. That's exactly what I did this week in a glittering lounge in the Carlton Ritz Hotel, when I sat down with Steve Wozniak, co-founder (with Steve Jobs) of Apple. Wozniak designed the first Apple computer, and together with Jobs, set in motion a company that continues this day to mould our use of digital technology. If you use an iPad, iPod or iPhone, if you have an Apple Mac computer or laptop of any sort, you undoubtedly have Steve Wozniak to thank. Apple, and its co-founder Wozniak have shaped our desires and crystallised our dreams with innovation after innovation. Steve Jobs may be no longer with us, but Steve Wozniak - 'Woz' - lives on, larger than life, and as effusive and buoyant as ever about the future of technology and its role in education.

This week, Woz and I were both invited speakers at the 3rd International Conference on eLearning and Distance Education in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was already sitting in the speaker's lounge, ready to present his opening keynote, when I wandered in, unaware that he was there. There was no-one else in the room. I walked over. We shook hands. We sat down. Then we talked.

The world according to Woz is one of sustained wonder at the many ways technology can be made to do our bidding. As a young boy growing up in the 50s and 60s, he told his father that he would one day own a computer. His father laughed and told him a computer would cost more than a house to buy. Computers in the 50s and 60s were indeed expensive. They were also almost the size of houses. But Woz's dream of one day owning a computer was realised when he began work for the Hewlett Packard computer company. Within a short time he was taking computers apart to see how they worked, and had soon had drawn up the plans to construct his very own computer - the Apple 1. He met Steve Jobs, who said 'we can sell this', and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now aged 62, and with a life time of achievements behind him, Woz has a great deal to say about schools and education. He even became a school teacher for a few years after he had made his fortune and had put Apple behind him. He believes that computers and digital technology are now our prime scientific and academic tools, but balances this with the view that regardless of the impact of technology on society, we still need rich personal and social interaction for effective education to take place. Hence, he says, teachers will always be needed. He is very determined to enforce the idea that children learn best when they are interested. When you have the desire to learn, he says, no-one can take that away from you. And yet, he argues, school is the one environment that currently teaches children that taking a test determines how 'intelligent' they are, but cramming for that test it is certainly not learning. He asks, are schools sending out the wrong message to children, when we ask them to study for test after test? Children are born curious, he says, and all of us - teachers, parents, society - should keep it that way.

On computers and design, Woz is adamant - he is only interested in designing devices that are interactive. 'They need to respond when I use them', he said, 'otherwise I lose interest'. On the nature of knowledge, he told me, all of us need to gain some 'fact' based knowledge, but that this is only the starting point, as we gain skills that will enable each of us to take our place in society. The man is insightful, inspirational and iconic. Yes, it's not often you get to speak to someone who has actually changed the world.

NB: The above content is taken from my conversation with Steve Wozniak, and also excerpts from his Keynote speech in Riyadh on February 5, 2013.

Photo image courtesy of Steve Wheeler


Changing the world by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

We need a rethink

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image source


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

Pelecon flies higher

Those of you who have ever attended a Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference, or even followed from afar via the social media channels will know that Pelecon is an extraordinary event. Since attaining international conference status and extending its programme to 3 days, Pelecon has become one of the must-attend European learning technology conferences on the calendar. The event attracts learning technologists, lecturers, researchers, teachers, learning professionals, health and medical staff, private trainers, and just about anyone who is interested in the very latest in digital pedagogies, literacies and technologies. In previous years delegates have enjoyed listening to high profile and diverse keynote speakers such as Stephen Heppell, Keri Facer, Gilly Salmon, Graham Attwell, Sherry Terrell, Jane Hart, Josie Fraser and Alec Couros.

This year the conference takes place between 10-12 April. For 2013, we have lined up a veritable feast of leading speakers, all of whom are featured on the Pelecon conference website, and this year promises to push the boundaries even further than before.

#pelc13 is set in the delightful South West coastal English city of Plymouth. The surrounding Devon countryside is stunning as it unfolds in springtime, the towns and villages are steeped in history (the Mayflower Steps and Plymouth Hoe are a must for all tourists to visit) and the culture is rich. The Conference social events including a Wednesday evening Teachmeet, are guaranteed to be fun, entertaining and engaging.

This year the Pelecon Conference dinner will return once again to the visually stunning surroundings of the National Marine Aquarium. Located in Sutton Harbour in the historic Plymouth Barbican area, the Aquarium is the largest in the UK, and is one of the premier tourist attractions in the South West of England. Delegates who enjoyed the conference dinner at previous Plymouth eLearning Conference events in 2009 and 2010 were unanimous in expressing their praise for the evening.
The Dinner starts on Thursday evening, April 11th, at 7.30 pm with welcome drinks and an exclusive tour of the entire aquarium by official guides. Delegates can watch as the sun sets over Plymouth while fishing boats and other marine vessels arrive and depart from nearby Sutton Harbour. The three course dinner will be served in the Atlantic Reef area of the Aquarium, where diners can watch the sharks and other large fish swimming in one of the largest glass tanks in Europe, whilst they enjoy their meals. The company will be great, the food will be excellent, and the live music will be splendid. The price for the evening isn't bad either - at only £40.00 per head. The bar will be open until 11 pm, and then afterwards, the nearby Barbican and Coxside watering holes will be sure to offer a warm welcome to any delegates who wish to linger to explore Plymouth's nightlife a little more. The Conference Dinner has only one drawback - there will only be about 110 dining places available at the Aquarium, so please book your place for this exclusive event soon to avoid disappointment!

The Pelecon Conference organising committee look forward to joining with delegates at the Conference Dinner at the National Marine Aquarium. We hope you can attend the conference.

Photo by Jose Luis Garcia

Pelecon flies higher by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Touch and go

This is part 9 in the series on the future of learning and technology. Everything it seems, is being disrupted. By this I mean that new technology is arriving all the time, and much of it is changing forever the way we do things, the way we think about things, and the way we use things. The reason technology has the capacity to be so disruptive, is that it moves more quickly than industry, business, education, health, entertainment, in fact just about every part of the society we live in is constantly struggling to keep pace with it. As Larry Downes wrote recently: 'Social, political and economic systems change incrementally, but technology changes exponentially.'

In these exponential times, we can expect new technologies to emerge with increased regularity, and we can expect more and more to find ourselves scratching our heads, figuring out how we are going to harness their strange power and potential within familiar situations. Disruption occurs when we introduce new technology that impacts so dramatically upon previously familiar practices, that it changes them irrevocably. Stephen Heppell remarked that technology radically changes everything it touches. We will never return to the days of linear tape machines. Audio and video tape were replaced by digital media. The physical presence of music media is being rapidly eroded by digital media. The vinyl discs I used to buy as a teenager are already curios, and CDs will also become collector's items as they slowly begin to disappear from our high street shops. High street shopping itself is in very real danger of disappearing too, as online stores strengthen their grip an on entire generation of consumers. Photography, telephony and telecommunications, travel, leisure, commerce, news gathering, marketing, movie making, the list goes on of hundreds of industries that have been forever disrupted by technology. Digital skills are at a premium. If you don't possess the skills to use a computer or other digital device, you automatically exclude yourself from the majority of jobs currently available.

In a recent blog post, I wrote about the Internet of Things - a world where every object is connected to the Web. I wrote that 'Once upon a time, objects were simply objects. They only came alive in Disney cartoons'. Now, the announcement of a new technology called Touché has the potential to change forever they way we interact with everyday objects. And ironically, it has emerged from research by Disney Corporation. Touché uses a Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing technique to make just about any every day objects 'aware' that users are touching them. From door handles to sofas, once connected, objects will be context aware, and respond to our natural gestures. The manufacturers claim that using the technology may ultimately render keyboards and other peripherals completely redundant. Touché can detect whether humans are present or absent, and a variety of multi-touch gestures can be programmed to be recognised. Watch the video below to see for yourself the full potential and fascinating implications of this technology. Ask yourself how it could be applied in your own area of work. And then prepare yourself for disruption ...




Touch and go by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The foresight saga

Vuzix M100 Smart Glasses

This is part 8 in the series on the future of learning and technology. At the start of each year everyone it seems, goes into the prediction business. The first week of 2013 saw many articles appearing on what we can expect to see this year. A large number of the articles were about new technology trends, and there was much speculation about how certain technologies might transform our mundane little lives. With the massive Consumer Electronics Show CES 2013 opening its doors last week in Las Vegas, technology news was making prime time TV all across the globe too. The stars of CES 2013 were the Vuzix M100 Augmented Reality Smart Glasses (pictured), Samsung's new ultra thin bendy phone screen and the 4K ultra high Resolution television screen. These are not future technologies. They are technologies for today, 2013. 4K resolution is not enough it seems. Already there are articles predicting beyond 4K into the exotic TV world of the future where transparent televisions (what the...?), and even 'choose your own size' projected wall TVs will roam majestically across the prairies. Entertainment will literally go to the wall.

But what of the future? What are the tech-gurus saying we should look out for this year? The BBC's New Year's eve article 'Who will call it right in 2013?' seemed to hold a competition amongst the illuminated ones, the technology soothsayers of our age. Peering into their digital chicken guts, each gave it their best shot (without sticking their necks out too far, thus avoiding any potential damage to their stellar reputations) predicting what we can all expect to bump into as we turn that chronological corner. The article should perhaps be re-titled 'who will call it at all in 2013?' because many of the so called 'predictions' were banal to say the least.

Robert Scoble (the celebrated blogger) stayed safe and on piste, predicting that 2013 would be contextual. He talked of heads up displays (Google Glasses and the Vuzix M100 are already gearing up for mainstream release) that we could use when we all go skiing (yes, we can all afford alpine holidays in today's burgeoning economy. I'm just nipping off to Gstaad), to brag to your friends through the gift of video evidence just how high you climbed before you fell drunk from the ski-lift, and how long was your 'hang' time on your latest jump. That's if you have any friends left. How's that for context?

Dave Coplin, chief envisioning office at Microsoft (every company should have one) was even safer in his predictions, suggesting that 2013 will be about mobiles, data and trust. More and more, he suggests, data are (he says is) going to be the lifeblood of all our activities. And mobile devices will offer personalisation and  will become the first point of contact for everything we do. Well, who knew?

Mark Cook, chief executive of Getronics UK and Ireland (yep, a household name) takes the prophet's mantle for the safest prediction for the year. He reckons that many companies will move away from BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to CYOD (Choose Your ... etc). Interesting, as many companies don't even have a BYOD as a policy yet. Cook thinks that CYOD will place the initiative back in the hands of the organisation,  offering employees a device of its own choosing. That's novel. Now why didn't I think of that? I guess you will be able to choose any colour you like, as long as it's black.

So the future is much the same as the present then. I think I'll stick to CES in the future.

Image source


The foresight saga by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Global learning collectives

This is part 7 in a series of posts on the future of learning and technology. I spent the last two years of my school life at AFCENT* International School, in Brunssum, Holland. There was one word to describe AFCENT School - diversity. I remember how culturally rich the experience was, because children from all of the NATO** countries attended, and I often sat alongside American, German, Canadian, French, Norwegian and Swedish classmates.

I discovered that this school's education was far more than just the three 'R's. We learnt phrases from each other's languages (slang and swear words were particularly good fun to practice), heard about unfamiliar customs and practices, and sampled strange and wonderful food and drink from other countries. I should point out that in the 1970s Britain was far less multi-cultural than it is today. This was the age of the cold-war and our parents were serving in the military. We took part in multi-national games that went on all day, where we played the roles of politicians and generals, as we tried to avert a nuclear war. We produced and performed in musicals such as Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar and Fiddler on the Roof in the school assembly hall. We learnt to play the games of other countries. It turned out that Baseball and American Football were less of a mystery for us Brits than Cricket was for our American counterparts. Who knew?

We learnt traditional songs and stories we would never otherwise have encountered, because each child could not avoid bringing their own personal stories, history and culture into the classroom. German Christmas, Canadian Bring 'n' Buy sales, and American cheerleaders were not something I had encountered in any English school. Believe me, if we'd had American cheer leaders at school in England, I would never have missed a lesson. At AFCENT School we literally had the best of both worlds by attending an international school. Not many school students are as privileged.

Some years ago, I saw several schools try to replicate this cultural richness through the use of video links to connect two (or more) classrooms together across distance. It was a great step beyond the pen pal letters we used to write when I was in secondary school in the 1960s. Then we had to wait for days or weeks for a reply. Now whole groups can meet and converse with each other in real time without travel. Language learning, cultural exchanges, personal stories, preparation for overseas school exchange visits and a whole host of other benefits can be realised when children collaborate and share their learning across language and cultural divides. The excitement of connecting with children in schools in other countries was tangible. Some schools who connected using videoconferencing manage to project the live video images onto big screens so that large groups could participate, and the kids loved it.

Video conferencing was just the start. We now have several alternative technologies that will allow schools to connect cheaply and easily with school children in other countries. One of the futures of education will be greater connectivity between schools around the world. Through the use of social media meeting tools such as Google Hangouts, video sharing tools such as Skype, and even massive online open games, students around the world already enjoy better chances to learn from each other and with each other, regardless of their geographical location. How will this develop? I foresee the emergence of global learning collectives where children will learn together across schools and time zones, collaborating on projects and other joint activities, and where technology will help us to once and for all bridge the great divides of geography, culture, creed and ethnicity.

*AFCENT = Allied Forces Central Europe. NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

Image source


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

Where AR we now?

This is part 6 in a series of posts on the future of learning and technology. Technology is great for many things, but perhaps its most useful application is enabling us to do things better, faster, smarter. Augmented Reality (AR) is one such tool that has a lot of potential to enhance our senses, but to date has had poor uptake and real life application in the world of learning.  AR typically provides the user with additional information than can be obtained naturally. It takes live views of the real world around you and augments them with computer generated sensory information such as graphics, data, video or sound.

Examples in include smart phone applications such as Layar, which use the GPS and video camera tools to position the user in an information sphere, and feed them contextual information related to that specific geographical location. This can include information about local environment, navigation of complex transport systems (see the embedded video below featuring Acrossair's New York subway app), weather, news and  amenities, as well as cultural or historical information, and even social information. You might for example, wish to discover who else in your location is using Twitter or another social media tool. The opportunities to use such applications in education are fairly obvious, but not everyone has access to the technology, and it can be quite difficult to use effectively if you are able to gain access.  Part of the problem is the inconvenience of having to hold your phone up if you wish to interrogate your environment. A better, more intuitive application of AR is the use of large screens (see the image above, taken in a Westfield shopping centre, London). Better vision, and a more natural means of interrogation of one's surroundings can be achieved using this technology, and objects can be rendered in 3D using simple marker technologies (see BBC this video for a vivid demonstration of some upcoming AR features and uses).



Perhaps the most promising and intuitively easy to use AR version is the wearable (or eye wear) application seen most recently in Google Glasses. A simple heads up display (HUD) is located in the upper right quadrant of one lens of a reasonably normal looking pair of spectacles, and users can control what they see with their mobile phone. Eventually, natural gesture control (such as a head tilt, wink of an eye) or voice control will be developed to enable even more natural and unobtrusive AR use. It has had its problems and suffered a few teething difficulties, but I believe that AR is on its way to a learning environment near you and it will catch on quicker than we expect. Our desire to learn more, and to learn while on the move at any time and in any context, will ensure that the wearable AR device will be available for an affordable price very soon. What educators do with them next, is really down to each individual's creativity and imagination.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Where AR we now? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital classrooms

This is Part 5 in my series of posts on the future of learning and technology. A few years ago Peter John and I wrote a book entitled 'The Digital Classroom'. It was published by Routledge in 2008 and is now also available as a Kindle reader version. It wasn't the first published under that title, and it probably won't be the last. The idea of a 'classroom' (regardless of how anachronistic that may sound) is appealing when it is 'digitised'. It's the old, comfortably familiar territory embellished with the new. Everyone in the world of education it seems, has an interest in how technology is going to influence what we do in the classroom. The book was received well, and we received some positive comments and feedback. Although the book is probably a little dated now, with technology advancing at rapid pace, it still set a benchmark for some of the things we could expect to see in the coming years. We talked for instance about how technology would streamline assessment, and how the curriculum might be impacted by new technologies. There were sections on digital literacies and mobile learning, both of which we considered to be important for the success of education and learning in the future. Blogs and wikis and other social media made an appearance, even though at the time they were still fairly nascent in compulsory education. We even mentioned the Semantic Web (or Web 3.0) as a potential horizon technology for learning. We spent a lot of time talking about digital cameras and interactive whiteboards, both of which have had dubious success in the school classroom.

Ultimately though, we could not have predicted the new tools and technologies that will become very much a part of normal school life in the recent and coming years. We did not foresee the touch tablets and their rapid success in schools, nor did we predict the rapid rise of smart phones and apps, or the potential of augmented reality. The non-touch motion sensing gestural interfaces now emerging (for example the Xbox 360 Kinect) and the voice activation applications were still just a gleam in the eye for many of us. Perhaps we should not have titled the book The Digital Classroom, but simply Digital Classrooms, because now we know that there are many possibilities, and that classrooms that have digital capabilities are many and varied. If I was to take a risk and suggest possibilities for the next 5 years of development, I might be right on some of my predictions, and hopelessly wrong on others, but here we go...

The signs are there that in the coming years, more gestural interface technology will be available for learners, and that advances in manufacture and design will enable the installation of screens on walls, desktop, in fact on any flat surface. The screens will be resilient and high resolution, but as thin as a sheet of card. The mouse, and keyboards such as the one in the image above, may disappear completely in favour of voice and gesture activated tools. For students with mobility issues in particular, this may turn out to be an important leveler. Smart touch devices will continue to develop too, so that every student will have the means to access all their learning resources right there in their hand, wherever they are, and whenever they need them.

Much more learning will be done outside of the classroom. Digital classrooms will become the place where learning is performed, celebrated and assessed - on large wall screens for all to enjoy. For many teachers, learner analytics will become an indispensable tool for tracking student progress and intervening when necessary. Many governments will probably insist on it and legislate accordingly when they realise just how much data can be mined from personal activities across the web. Eye tracking and attention tracking will also emerge as useful behaviour management tools for teachers in the next few years. Gamification and games based learning will establish a stronger foothold in classrooms as teachers realise just how powerful self-paced, self-assessed task oriented and problem based learning can be.

Probably the most important development I foresee though, is the emergence of student developed applications. As technology increasingly takes its hold on the school classroom, so students will become increasingly adept at coding. There is more scope than ever for children to experiment with computers. The Raspberry Pi is just the first of many tools to support this. The result will be the creation of a vast array of student games, mobile apps and eventually new forms of hardware (See this TED talk by 12-year old app developer Thomas Suarez). Many of the new apps and games will be made commercially available. Schools working in partnership with commercial companies will ensure it happens. We may even see some children achieve millionaire status before they leave school, and it will become commonplace for young people to be entrepreneurs before they reach higher education age. Now there's incentive.

A lot of learning comes from doing, making and problem solving. One of the most important contributions technology has made to education over the last decade can be found in its provisionality - that with digital, nothing is necessarily graven in stone, anything can be changed, upgraded, edited, revised, deleted. Learning in digital classrooms will be much more exciting, because learning through failure and experimentation will engage learners thoroughly in the right conditions.

Finally, a word of warning. We don't know how long these developments will take, nor do we know for sure  if they will materialise, because it is very hard to predict the future accurately, and schools are conservative places where change can be very difficult to achieve. What we do know is that the future will be very different from anything we can imagine right now. As ever, your comments and views on this article are very welcome.

Image source


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

The future of classrooms

This is Part 4 in my series on the future of learning and technology. What will be the future of school classrooms? It is unlikely that we will see the demise of the classroom in the next decade. Those who study the future of education often suggest that the demise of traditional classrooms is not only inevitable, but imminent. This is due to the rapid proliferation of mobile technology, the disintermediation of traditional teacher and student roles, new trends such as MOOCs and the upsurge of user generated content on social media sites -  all of which take learning away from previously familiar territory. The argument that these tools and trends are removing the need for classrooms and 'schools' in specific geographical locations is a strong one, but also has some flaws.

In a recent article, Larry Cuban attempts to gaze 10 years into the future, and makes the case that classrooms will stay very much the same during this period. Firstly, he argues, teachers tend to use new technology in much the same way they used old technology, and that as a result very little has changed in terms of pedagogy. Secondly, he suggests that technology is overhyped and is not future-proofed, especially against 'major unplanned events', although what these might be, he fails to elaborate. Anyone who is familiar with Cuban's work will think 'well he would say that, wouldn't he?', but is he right?

One of the future developments he is optimistic about, however, is the lightening of students' backpacks. Cuban believes that the digitisation of texts (books, encyclopedias and other paper based knowledge) will take hold and become an important trend. He predicts the obsolescence of the hard bound book, at least in the hands of school children. Automated assessment of learning through computer adaptive testing is another trend he predicts, where students are given grades based on their performance on multiple choice questions. Implicit within this scenario is learner analytics, where the data mining of all student scores, attendance levels, social media postings and discussion group contributions can be analysed to provide teachers with an overview of where the student is, and whether any intervention is required. Also implicit within this prediction is the need for teachers to adopt new roles, change their professional practice, and move from instructors to facilitators and moderators.  It also means that teachers would need to revisit their concepts of knowledge and learning, and begin to accept that often learning occurs without their direct input, both inside and outside the classroom. Many teachers would welcome such a shift in practice, whilst many others might feel very threatened by such a seismic shift in the profession.

Cuban is very sceptical of online courses, and presumably his sceptiscism also embraces MOOCs. He believes that online learning has repeatedly failed to deliver its promise. His argument here stems from the human need to socialise, to gather together face to face, and learn firsthand the cultural, moral and civic values we hold so important in today's society. Online course, he argues, fall very short of delivering this richness.

Cuban sees a place for technology in schools, but does not see it radically changing the face of the 'place for education', and says:

'...by 2023, uses of technologies will change some aspects of teaching and learning but schools and classrooms will be clearly recognizable to students’ parents and grandparents.'

Is he right? Will we see no radical change in schools in the next 10 years? Will it take longer for us to witness transformational changes in our education institutions, or are the changes above sufficient to revolutionise pedagogy? Are schools too conservative and resistant to change to be impacted by new technology? Is technology the only catalyst for change, or should we look elsewhere? As ever, your comments on this blog are welcome.

Photo by Paul Shreeve


The future of classrooms by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Is technology making us smarter?

This is part 2 of the series on the future of learning and technology. When discussing the future, especially the future of technology, there are some writers who almost always seem to be quoted. Near the top of the list is the futurologist Ray Kurzweil, who has much to say about our technological future, and also about the growth in human intelligence. His views are quite optimistic, especially around computers and the nature of knowledge. Kurzweil popularised the concept of 'the Singularity', but it was science fiction writer Vernor Vinge who originally coined it. In a nutshell, the Singularity describes a tipping point in technological development when computers exceed the power of total human capability. This will occur, Kurzweil argues, due to a rapid advance of technology and proliferation of human and machine intelligence. Whether we shall see the Singularity is one question. Whether it will have such as profound effect on our society and our humanity as Kurzweil and other predict, is an even bigger question. We simply don't know if computers can or will surpass human thought, or what the implications might be if they eventually do. Such questions have for years been a focus of the Strong vs Weak AI (Artificial Intelligence) debate.

In Kurzweil's view, technology and the human mind are symbiotic, reliant upon each other for their mutual development.  His vision of the future requires humanity to become increasingly intelligent, made smarter because of increased opportunities to connect, create and find knowledge across the network. James Flynn, (2012) of the University of Otogo in New Zealand reveals that over the last century, IQ scores have been steadily rising from generation to generation. Whether this occurs as a direct result of access to technology and greater opportunities for networking, is yet to be established. But, intuitively this seems to be a reasonable proposition.

There are those who argue the exact opposite, that humans are becoming less intelligent and more dependent upon technology. This perspective is championed by Nicholas Carr (2011), who provocatively argues that habituated use of search tools such as Google is 'making us stupid'. Carr's essential thesis is that we are bombarded with content on the Internet, and cope with this by reducing our depth of study whilst increasing our breadth of study. In other words, he argues, we tend to skim read and miss out on the richness of meaning we would have absorbed pre-internet. In his original publication, Andrew Keen (2007), was adamant that the Internet is undermining the authority of academics and is a threat to our culture and society. In his most recent edition, Keen turns his ire specifically onto user generated media such as blogs and YouTube (Keen, 2010). Tara Brabazon (2008) appears equally cynical about the impact the Web is having on this generation of learners, but provides a more measured response. She suggests that it is an error for universities to invest more in technology than in teacher development, and in so doing, opens a debate on the future of education in the digital age.

So the future of technology supported learning is uncertain and contested. Are we being made more intelligent by our habituated uses of technology, or are we becoming smarter because we have more opportunities to create our own content, and think more deeply about it? Does our collective increase in intelligence owe itself to better connections with experts and peers, or should we simply put the growth of knowledge down to a natural, progressive evolution of the human mind? Is technology actually a threat to good learning, creating a generation of superficial learners, or do interactive tools such as social media and search engines provide us with unprecedented access to knowledge?

Such questions are exactly what the study of the future is all about.  

References
Brabazon, T. (2007) The University of Google: Education in the post-information age. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Carr, N. (2011) The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains. London: W. W. Norton and Company.
Flynn, J. R. (2012) Are we getting smarter? Rising IQ in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Keen, A. (2007) The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy. London: Nicholas Brealey.
Keen, A. (2010) The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, Myspace, YouTube and the rest of today's user generated media are killing our culture and economy. London: Nicholas Brealey.

Image source


Is technology making us smarter? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Facing the future

At the end of each year many of us tend to focus on the future, wondering what it will bring. We wish each other a happy New Year, and hope that life will treat us kindly. We try to shape our own futures by making New Year resolutions, many of which fall by the wayside after a week or two. Much of our future is not ours to shape. But still we persist in trying to predict the future.

Many of our predictions about the future are based on speculation or wishful thinking. Remember the personalised jetpacks we were all going to use, and the Moon colonies many thought would be established in the 1970s? No matter what we think we 'know' about the future, we are unable to predict the future with one hundred percent confidence. Gambling casinos and bookmakers make a fortune out of our desire to guess what will happen next. On 21 December 2012, many people held their collective breaths because of a well studied, but poorly understood 'prophecy' about the ending of an age. Some sold their houses, or gave up their jobs in preparation for the 'end of the world', and were relieved and disappointed in equal measure when nothing happened. The Mayan Apocalypse did not happen. Many of us didn't believe it would. We have seen it all before, several times. Down through the ages self appointed religious cult leaders have predicted the return of Christ, or the start of Armaggedon, or some global catastrophe, largely based on their own personal interpretations of texts or 'signs'. This always spreads fear and uncertainty to many. All the modern day prophets have failed, but have ruined the lives of many gullible and impressionable people in the process.

What about teachers and schools? If we try to predict what will happen to education in the next year, we will probably have reasonable success, especially if we work within the teaching profession. Those of us who are engaged as learning professionals tend to see the trends first, and can better understand the nuances and vagaries of education better than the average 'man in the street'. This is why practising teachers are better placed than politicians to offer ideas for improving education. The caveat is that if we try to predict what will happen in education over a longer time scale, say 3 to 5 years time, we become less accurate, because there are random events, changes in policy, variations in world economy, new technologies, or other unknown variables that can happen to change the terrain.

And yet, you and I have a sneaking suspicion that if we do not try to anticipate the future, and make ready to respond to changes as they occur, we will be caught off guard. And we would be right. Anticipating change is a natural part of our survival strategies, and should be encouraged. So we have a conundrum. Do we try to predict the future and risk being badly wrong, or do we just let the future roll over us and try to adapt to it? If we decide on the latter, then we will be at the mercy of change, and not only will education suffer, more importantly, the children and young people in our care will be affected. If we decide on the former, then at least we have made a choice to try to anticipate the future, and we have an outside chance of being right. The less timescale we try to predict, the more chance we have of being right. The farther we try to gaze down the corridor of the future, the more risk we run of being wrong, because there will be more opportunities for unpredictable things to occur.

Over the next few blog posts I intend to examine some of the predictions that have been made on the future of education, with specific reference to technology and the role it will undoubtedly play.  Some of the predictions will be fairly inevitable, others will be wildly speculative, and many will sit somewhere in between, as possibilities that may or may not become reality. If we are prepared for change, then we will be less likely to be taken by surprise. We can at least prepare for a successful new year of teaching and learning based on what we believe is just around the corner.  But we still need to live and work in the present.

I wish you a happy and successful New Year.

"Learn from the past, prepare for the future, live in the present." - Thomas S. Monson

Other posts in this series
Is technology making us smarter?
The future of intelligence
The future of classrooms
Digital classrooms
AR we there yet?
Global learning collectives
The foresight saga
Touch and go

Image source


Facing the future by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Communication and learning in a digital age

The latest issue of the online open journal eLearn Centre Research Paper Series has just been published. Issue 5 considers Communication and Learning in a Digital Age, and features papers from a number of scholars in the field, including my own paper on current research perspectives on digital literacies. The papers originate from a conference held in Barcelona in the Summer of 2012. Here is the introduction, written by Sandra Sanz and Amalia Creus (Open University of Catalonia):

Experience of time and technology also has an important impact on learning. The drastic reduction on lifetime of knowledge, connected with the overflow of information and fragmentation of sources, are just some of the features that are changing the way we learn. This situation challenges us to think more creatively about the interaction between communication technologies and learning, and to explore how our educational models are being impacted by the processes of social change that come with digitalization, the emergence of social media and the Web 2.0. 

Since February 2011 the group ECO (Education and Communication), driven by teachers of Information and Communication Studies at UOC, has been providing a forum for researching communication and learning, and for sharing teaching innovation through e-learning environments based on collaboration, creativity, entertainment and audiovisual technologies. 

The five articles in this edition of eLC Research Paper Series reflect the short but intense trajectory of the group. Some of them are a selection of papers presented at the International Conference BCN Meeting 2012, organized by ECO. The other articles were written specially for this issue by members of the group and give a picture of the themes and questions we are now exploring. 

For those who may experience problems downloading my Digital Literacies paper from the site (it doesn't work well on Macs) below is a downloadable .pdf version.



Image source


Communication and learning in a digital age by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Recycling learning

"...making good use of the things that they find, things that the everyday folk leave behind..."

Yep, that's a blast from the past for those who grew up watching the children's programme The Wombles on television. Essentially, the Wombles were furry creatures who lived on Wimbledon Common and tidied up all the litter left behind by the 'everyday folk'. Not only did they tidy up, they also recycled the objects they found, into something useful. We could do with a few Wombles down our street, I can tell you.  

How does this fit into education? I hear you asking.... well, read on. 

A useful concept to aid the understanding of current web based learning practices is Bricolage (Levi-Strauss, 1996). Art students will recognise it as the technique of creating an image from a variety of materials that just happen to be available. In architecture, bricolage can refer to the seemingly chaotic proximity of buildings from various periods and styles. For Levi-Strauss, bricolage described any spontaneous action, espcially those that are steeped in personal meaning. The principal meaning of bricolage however, evokes a 'do it yourself'ethos, where each individual creates personal meaning through seemingly haphazard actions that draw together disparate objects to form new wholes.

In the UK punk movement of the late 1970s, chains, safety pins and dog collars were all appropriated as fashion items, eventually assuming additional meaning as statements of personal identity. In the context of learning, bricolage is a useful analytical lens. It was applied by Seymour Papert (1993) to explain a particular style of problem solving. He suggests that bricoleurs reject traditional, systematic analyses of problem spaces in favour of play, risk taking and testing out.  Younger users of technology tend to rely less on formal instruction or user manuals when they encounter new tools. Instead, they launch into an exploration of the device, to see what it can do. They learn to use it by testing it out, and also observing their peers. These sentiments are echoed by Shelly Turkle (1995) who argues that those working in digital spaces, such as programmers, often work in a bricoleur style, working through a 'step-by-step growth and re-evaluation process', regularly spending time standing back from their work to reflect.

Many of the above traits are desirable, transferable skills for 21st Century working, and can be witnessed in the daily activities of learning on the Web. As students develop their ideas, they create content, often drawn together through a variety of search and research methods that can be disparate and seemingly unconnected. Learners draw on a wide range of content, not only from the web, but also from other media and non-media sources as they construct personal meaning. Their personal learning environments (PLEs) tend to be a bricolage of free tools, handheld devices and a personal network of friends, family and peers. Haphazard their learning might appear, but over a period of time, the various sources of their content crystalise together into accessible, meaningful and personalised learning.

In essence, today's digital learners are finding content, recycling and repurposing it, organising and sharing it. They are creating their own spaces, developing and using their own tools and apps, and generally 'making good use of the things they find'. In so doing, I believe that this current generation of learners are developing into one of the most innovative, literate and knowledgeable generations this planet has ever seen.

References
Levi-Strauss, C. (1996) The Savage Mind. London: Orion Publishing Group
Papert, S. (1993)  Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas. New York: Basic Books.
Turkle, S. (1995) Life on Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Touchstone.

Photo by David Radcliffe


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

Parabolic learning

Reflection and Amplification

Now that I have some time, I can sit down and reflect on an extraordinary two hour session with my BA Education Studies students this morning. They are only a small group of a dozen students, but over the last few months, my elearning module group has created a very large amount of content, including blogs, wiki pages and videos. The group wiki is here if anyone wishes to view some of their content. We have previously explored a number of learning theories, new learning technologies, concepts around crowdsourcing, wisdom of crowds, folksonomies and user generated content, Web 2.0, mobile learning and a whole host of other themes during the course.

Today was different, because normally I prepare thoroughly for the sessions. Today, I took the risk of going  into the room with just a germ of an idea to see how it would develop. That germ of an idea evolved over the course of the two hour session into something beyond anything I could ever have planned. It proves to me that sometimes spontaneity can pay dividends. The incorporation of a number of social media tools into the mix proved to be an amazing platform from which the students and I could reflect on the process of learning, and amplify our ideas to each other and the world.

I started the session with the aim of encouraging the group to learn deeply and critically about a particular topic - MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses). I asked them to prepare for a debate next week, and put up the slide: 'This house believes that MOOCs will signal the demise of campus based higher education'.  I then divided the students randomly into two teams, one arguing for the motion, and the other arguing against. I asked the members of the two teams to research their arguments, with supporting evidence, and blog their ideas in preparation for next week's debate.

As a doorknob strategy, I asked two students to act as content curators. Their task would be to create a new wiki page, and begin to populate it with resources related to MOOCs. This would act as baseline reference materials for the two sides to incorporate into their arguments, but it would also mean that the two students would need to investigate both sides of the argument and post content related to the discourse around MOOCs.

I then tweeted (and encouraged the students to do the same) a few messages to the online educator community to ask them their views on the question of whether MOOCs would eventually replace traditional forms of education. This kind of crowdsourcing activity is always a risk and quite unpredictable, because you never know who will respond (if anyone) or what they will say. I added the hashtag #moocplym for good measure so we could track the conversation across the community. Next, I projected Twitterfall and VisibleTweets live backchannel feeds of responses on the large screen at the front of the classroom. Another task then came the way of the curator team. Their next challenge was to create an archive of all the tweets, blogs, and other content related to the hashtag #moocplym and maintain a chronological record throughout the week using Storify or some similar curation tool.

Over the coming week, the two teams (with the curation team in attendance) will therefore explore the history, culture, technology and pedagogy of MOOCs, a topic they are not particularly familiar with. They will critically analyse the discourse surrounding MOOCs, create and share content on their learning, and reflect on it. Their ideas, and their associated content will be presented and amplified through the social media channels, and the ultimate act will be the debate, followed by a discussion of the entire process from start to finish. There will be a lot to talk about if it all goes according to schedule. Oh, and why did I title this post parabolic learning? Because a parabolic reflector collects energy, focuses and transforms it, and then reflects it back with greater intensity. That's exactly what I want my students to do.

First image source
Second image by Steve Wheeler


Parabolic learning: reflection and amplification by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Making a difference

Many times I've heard it said that there is no evidence that technology improves learning. This is a vacuous claim, based on ignorance of the research literature, and possibly borne out of a fear or dislike of technology in general. My usual retort to such a claim is that children with special educational needs are a classic example of technology improving learning. For children with special needs, especially those with physical disabilities such as deafness or vision impairment, technology not only improves learning, it actually enables learning. Without adaptive technology, many disabled children could not access certain types of education. But there is a mass of evidence to show that technology is not only making the difference for all learners, it is actually creating new and previously unattainable opportunities for learning. Technology does make a difference.

A recent research study at the Durham University in the North East of England suggests that multi-touch, multi-user surfaces can improve the learning of mathematics. 400 children were involved in the study, which demonstrated that 'smart tables' enabled better collaboration and problem solving during maths lessons. Class teachers receive a live feed of output from the children's interactions on the surface, and can intervene when necessary. Research has shown that the touch surfaces enable children to discover a range of alternative solutions to maths problems, simply through interacting with each other in new ways.

Image source


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

Digital Learnscapes

It's that time of the year again where we are planning for the Pelecon - the Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference - that we hold each year in April at Plymouth University. Pelecon 2012 was probably our best conference yet. Many have said that Pelecon events inspire and energise delegates and challenge perspectives on education, learning and development, and the role of technology. Others have said that Pelecon is one of the best forums for informal debate on the learning technology conference circuit. The Pelecon conference is for teachers and learning professionals in all sectors of education and training, and attracts delegates from all over the world. Pelecon 2012 was the seventh conference, and featured invited speakers including Alec Couros (Canada), Leigh Graves Wolf (USA), Helen Keegan, Simon Finch, Keri Facer, David Mitchell and Jane Hart. Pelecon 2013 will maintain the pace and dynamism of this year's event, and already several well known keynotes have been announced. Go to this link to keep up to date as we make further keynote speaker announcements over the next two weeks. The call for papers for Pelecon 13: Digital Learnscapes is now live, and is summarised below:

We live in a period of change and uncertainty. Many are bewildered by these changes and find it difficult to keep up, particularly in the education and training sectors. The ability to anticipate and prepare for change is the mark of innovative educators, as is the skill of harnessing new and emerging tools to promote good learning.

At Pelecon 13 we want to provide learning professionals with opportunities to explore, discover and discuss new approaches, new technologies and new ideas to enhance, enrich and extend their own professional practice. There will be particular emphasis this year on simulations and games, personal learning tools, new pedagogies and practices, learner and teacher voice, and digital literacies.

The deadline for submission of workshop, paper and demonstration proposals is January 25, 2013 and you can submit your abstracts here. We invite submissions from primary, secondary and tertiary education, as well as from learning and development and other training sectors. Just to whet your appetite and pique four interest, below is a teaser video made by our very own maestro Dr Jason Truscott. We hope to see you at the Pelecon in April!




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

Smart learning

I spend most of my time in the future, but I do go home at weekends. At least, that is my explanation about why I am so fascinated with the future. I always have been, ever since I was a little boy and started reading science fiction novels. From Asimov to Heinlein, and Clark to Wells, I hungrily devoured them all and fed my mind on what was to come.

I'm in a dream job now, talking about technology and learning, and how we can optimise one from the other. Inevitably, people invite me to speak at events and ask me to give my ideas about what is just around the corner.

My recent involvement with the New Media Consortium Horizon Report committee was another outlet for thinking about the future. That came up in today's keynote at the 15th International Conference on Interactive and Collaborative Learning (#ICL2012), here deep in the Austrian Alps, in a little town called Villach. I spoke of Learning 3.0, and speculated on what learning might look like in a few years. I proposed that a great deal of learning will take place in the future through the use of mobile tools, and that tablets, phones and other handheld devices would be just the start of our new technology enhanced learning journey.

Learning 3.0 and the Smart eXtended Web from Steve Wheeler

Augmented reality, intelligent filtering, 3D spatial interaction, enhanced vision and other seemingly exotic or out of reach technologies will one day merge to become our new reality. The technology is already there, but as William Gibson once said 'the future is not widely distributed'. Eventually, all widely adopted technologies tend to fade into the background and become mundane, as learning breaks through to take centre stage. When will this happen? We can't say for sure, because other random factors continually intervene. Pictures and quotes from the past, shown in the slide set above, demonstrate that we are not always very good at predicting accurately what our future will hold, but with current trends, we can see farther than we have ever been able to see before down the corridor of time. And we can see that technology is not slowing down, and neither is our thirst for small gadgets, smart objects and embedded technologies. Learning 3.0 will be the nexus, the meeting point of all these smart tools, where people will connect seamlessly with other people, objects and information and learn when they need to, what they need to, where they need to. We will then be tapping into the combined intelligence of the entire globe, and that will be powerful beyond measure. At least, that is my vision for the future.

I hope you enjoy looking at the slides. I certainly enjoyed presenting them today, and discussing my ideas with delegates at ICL2012 in Villach, Austria.

Photo by Joaquim F. Silva


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

The future is a big place

If I have learnt nothing else this week, I have learnt that the future is a very, very big place. I wrote recently that we live in exponential times, and this was brought home to all of us this week at The Windsor Debates. We are simply not prepared for the future. We are not ready for the rapid and wide reaching changes that will impact us all in the next few decades. But at least, if we begin to spot the trends, we can try to prepare as best we can.

The Debates are hosted at Windsor Castle at least twice each year, under the auspices of the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce, and have gained a reputation as a gathering point for the good and the great of business and industry and a nexus for grown-up debate around the issues of the day. On this occasion the economy, science and innovation, technology supported education and training, healthcare, globalisation, technology enhanced humans, world population trends, gender and race issues all came under scrutiny. It was a little surreal to be talking about such futuristic ideas in such an ancient setting as the Windsor Castle dungeon, but that simply added to the appeal and atmosphere of the event. You can view the list of invited speakers at this site. My own presentation outlined the problems of traditional education in a changing world, and called for a closer alignment of business and higher education, so that at least we can begin to understand what we need from each other. Other than that, I'm not at liberty to divulge who said what (Chatham House Rules, see), but I can summarise some of what was said for you.

Many of the speakers were interested in discussing how we can prepare for a future we cannot clearly describe. Some cited seriously frightening statistics about the trends of population growth and decline in the world. China's population will shrink by the middle of this century (to be overtaken by India) while Nigeria's and Indonesia's will rise precipitously. What will be the jobs we will do in the next few years, and where will the work be done? Will there even be a workforce in a few years time, or will we look back on the past 200 years or so and say, yes, that was the era of employment and it was merely a strange blip in human history? Organised, industrial work practices have only existed for that amount of time, it was argued. Prior to that, people generally worked for themselves or for a ruler. Global distribution of products, outsourcing of workforces, ubiquitous technology, new divisions of labour and ways of working, all are contributing to a seismic shift in the way business is being shaped. A lot of soul searching is going on inside companies. One speaker called for an end to hierarchy in the workplace, to be replaced by heterarchy (more on this in my next blogpost), which promotes a more democratic way of working, and gives ownership to all employees. Another advocated Punk HR - a quirky idea that turns out  not to be so strange after all, and may yet gain as much traction as it's pedagogical counterpart - Edupunk.

Essentially, the mood was that we are in a post-modern age, where all the rules we previously held dear are being challenged, eroded and supplanted by other, looser ideas. Many of the companies represented at the Debates are household names. Top ranking executives attended from each. Together, these people pack a big punch, and have impressive pedigrees, and each more or less agreed that we need to start moving in new directions, and do things differently if we are to survive into this new century. The demise of Kodak was cited.  Kodak was a leading global corporation that stuck to its old practices and business model, and paid a severe price, because it believed in a product that non-one wanted anymore. It didn't adapt to the trends, looked inward instead of outward, and ultimately paid the price.

Some of the futurologists present gave us insight into technological trends, and we discussed what it means to be a modified, enhanced human being. The ethics surrounding this debate were disturbing and complex, and the animated conversations lasted long into the night. Some of the statistics cited about ubiquitous computing, Giganomic trends (look it up), population growth and decline, and economic flow were as imposing as making your entry through the Henry VIII gate, past the stern armed police officers, and into the Castle compound. If you are ever invited to attend a Windsor Debate, grab it with both hands. You certainly won't be disappointed.

Image source


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