Open door classrooms

It was always the case, in every school I ever attended (9 in total) that once the door was closed, the lesson began and the teacher was in charge. Even now, as a classroom practitioner myself, I sometimes joke - 'close the door so people outside won't hear the screaming.' The connotation of closed door classrooms is that no-one sees or hears what goes on except the teachers and the students, who are all locked in, until the bell sounds. But this literal expression of a closed classroom can also represent an underlying philosophy. And I ask, are classrooms in schools, colleges and universities as closed conceptually as they are literally?

I have written and spoken in the past about openness and the need for open educational practices. I have enthused about the benefits of open scholarship, and the ability of all teachers to share their resources, knowledge and expertise without cost to others, to promote free exchange of learning. My last two posts have focused on the use of student owned devices in the classroom, and the fact that the use of sharing technology can extend your teach reach to a worldwide audience. It's clear that we need to open up classrooms in a different way. I'm not talking about taking the door off its hinges, or even taking the class down to the seaside for a lesson (although I would really have enjoyed that in school ...) No, I'm talking here about opening up what is happening in classrooms, so that others who are outside the immediate zone of learning can also participate.

It is happening in some schools. Many schools are using videoconferencing links to connect with schools in other countries to facilitate cultural exchange and language learning. The next step would be to enable live web streaming, dynamic social networking and Twitter backchannels to operate while classroom sessions are in progress. Think of all the archived learning resources that could be generated for later, on demand use. Think of all the live interaction, dialogue and discussion that could take place during such lessons.

What would be the barriers that would prevent this from happening? Teacher insecurity would be one (I don't want people from outside seeing what goes on in my classroom - particularly the parents!). Most teachers are used to people coming into the classroom to observe though - throughout their careers, from teaching practice observations during their initial training, to the head teacher dropping by to have a look at how their most experienced teachers are working in the classroom. Should this be a barrier?

Child safety/privacy is another concern. What if nasty people are watching in - what personal details might be inadvertently divulged? What if remote viewers start taking photographs? That would depend I guess, on where the classroom cameras and mics were pointed/situated.

One other issue I can think of is whether some schools might want their classrooms opened up for the world to see. Are they proud to showcase what goes on in their classrooms, or would they rather hide away what takes place? That depends on the teacher I guess, and the school, er.... and the behaviour of the students...

Here's the bottom line... with the advent of personal handheld devices, how long will it be before classroom learning is streamed out into the world regularly? How long will it be before open, worldwide classrooms are the norm rather than the exception?

Image source by Jack Hill

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

Wild west show

I learn a lot from taking part in international projects, and I am currently involved in several which are occupying my mind. By far the largest project I was involved in though, was a $90 million Star Schools Project in South Dakota - the Digital Dakota Network - in 2001-2003. It all started when I was invited in July 2000, all expenses paid, to make a trip across the pond as a guest of the then Governor of South Dakota, the Hon. Bill Janklow. I arrived in the small sleepy, state capital of Pierre (pronounced peer) and booked into the local Ramada Hotel. Pierre sits straddling the Missouri river, and is therefore in two time zones. When the bars shut east of the river, you walk over the bridge and into a bar on the west of the river, and get an extra hours drinking in (if you like that sort of thing, that is).

I was driven by my hosts to the Capitol building and ushered into the Governor's conclave where I gave a speech to a gathering of around 100 guests, many of whom were either working in the government or were school superintendents. My talk, about the current state of distance education, was well received because the entire Star Schools Project the state was about to embark upon was premised on distance learning. Every school in the state (and their libraries, colleges and universities too) were being cabled up with broadband, and equipped with full motion video conferencing, digital satellite reception - the whole nine yards. I later met up again with Bill Janklow over breakfast in Washington D.C. in April 2001. He was just about to go off to the White House to meet up with President George 'Dubya' Bush, but said he needed a few minutes with me to talk over a proposition. He offered me a job as his 'Digital Network' Ambassador, along with a house, schooling for my 3 kids and a job for my wife, if I would up sticks for two years and join him. It was a tempting offer, but I had to refuse due to a number of intractible issues. We compromised, and I later joined his team as the part-time lead evaluator for the project. Over the next two years I jetted back and forth across the Atlantic, gathering data, meeting and working with my team of researchers (pictured above), conducting interviews, collating data and generally trying to make sense of all that we were learning about this vast, sweeping, state-wide project. At the time the Digital Dakota Network was the largest distance education project of its kind, and we had a great opportunuty to discover how learning would be affected by the new technology. However, it was often the anecdotes rather than the hard data that were the most illuminating...

I heard one story that I would like to share here. It says a lot about the human condition, and a lot more about the impact of teachers on the young mind. In fact it follows on from yesterday's blog post. Janklow was a clever guy, and to cut costs, he enlisted the help of a number of residents of the state penitentiary, who he sent out in supervised road gangs to wire up the schools across the state. In one school, one of the convicts, dressed in the obligatory orange overalls, was up a step ladder, running cables through the ceiling of a classroom. A young lad walked in, saw the prisoner, and asked him. 'Mister, what did you do to be sent to prison?' The convict looked down as the little boy and with a straight face said: 'I didn't listen to my teacher...'

Image source

Wild west show by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 International License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

A JISCy Business

There are a number of conferences I plan to attend this year, so I can find out what the latest is on e-learning and how it is being embedded in education. If you bump into me, do say hello ..... I haven't bitten anyone in over a year now. I have also been invited to speak at several conferences, and will do my best to report back from as many events as I can over the year, right here in this blog.

One particularly interesting fast approaching event is hosted by the JISC South West Regional Support Centre in Bristol, on April 8th, four days after the Plymouth e-Learning Conference. Entitled Innovation through partnership, the one day event will showcase several recently funded projects. Mobile learning will feature, as will videoconferencing. Shibboleth will rear it's head, and digital repositories will put in an appearance. My two (yes two) papers will feature our CETT funded projects on blogging for mentors and wikis for delivery of the minimum core delivery. You'll be hearing so much about these two studies from this blog over the year that you will probably sell up house and move somewhere where the internet isn't... Mars is a possible option.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to attending, and hearing some interesting, kind of JISCy stuff. See you there maybe...?

Making a MUVE

If it's Wednesday, it must be Berlin. I'm off in a few hours to catch that old orange and white bird again, this time to the heart of Germany, to speak at Online Educa Berlin. It's been over 8 years since I last spoke at Educa, when I gave a live demonstration of the then fairly new web streaming kit that multimedia company PictureTel had introduced. I did a live video link to London and spoke about the pedagogical potential of the system. On a wing and a prayer, the whole session went perfectly - and delegates crammed into the room to see it and ask questions. And of course, streaming media and videoconferencing are now a part of the fabric of many education institutions.

Online Educa is a much bigger affair now than it was in 1999, and most probably the largest e-learning event in Europe. I'm on a specialist invited panel with Graham Attwell, Steve Warburton, Helen Keegan and David White, all of whom are probably a lot more expert than I in the ways of Second Life. But, I will give it my best shot, and tell those assembled about our sexual health education and public information SIM. We will of course, be talking about whether MUVEs (Multi-User Virtual Environments), like previous innovations, will one day become common place in education. Time now to make a MUVE...

The Good, the Blog and the Wiki

I'm going to present a research seminar tomorrow to my own Faculty of Education, here at the University of Plymouth. I will be talking about the research I have done recently with wikis as a collaborative tool. The entire session will be video linked from Exmouth (where I will be) to the main campus at Plymouth. I have entitled it 'The Good, the Blog and the Wiki'. We will be video recording the session, and then making it available as a streamed media on demand. It will be accompanied by associated documents, PowerPoint presentation and a discussion group on a newly created web site. It has the potential to be either a technical disaster, or a huge triumph.

Then we are going to do it all over again. At least another 9 times, with guest speakers from other universities around the UK. The schedule for the research seminar series is available for all to see.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed and leaving the technical details in the hands of my technical colleagues. I hope I don't have to go looking for a tall building....