Push on the door

A man checked into a hotel for the first time in his life, and went up to his room.

Five minutes later he called the reception desk and said: "You've given me a room with no exit. How do I leave?"

The desk clerk said, "Sir, that's absurd. Have you looked for the door?"

The man said, "Well, there's one door that leads to the bathroom. There's a second door that goes into the closet. And there's a door I haven't tried, but it has a 'do not disturb' sign on it."

Often we make it very difficult for ourselves. Sometimes the answer is staring us in the face, and we can't see it due to all the complexities we impose upon our lives. Just like the man in the hotel room, if we are unfamiliar with the context, we can easily overlook the obvious. While using the Smartboard during one of my teaching sessions at university this year, I was trying to erase part of the work on the screen. I was struggling, trying to erase each word as if I had an old dry wipe board in front of me. I was making the classic mistake of trying to use new technology as I would use old technology. It took one of my students to point out to me that circling the appropriate text with the wiper and then tapping in the middle was a great short cut. It seems obvious to me now, but at the time I didn't know.

The same thing happened to a lot of people last week when I tweeted that in PowerPoint's presentation mode tapping the B key blacks out the screen, and tapping the W key makes the screen go white. There are many technology shortcuts similar to these, but most of us don't know about them. More often than not it takes a friend or colleague - or more likely, a student - to point out a better way to solve a problem. That's the great thing about social media - it connects us to all kinds of useful expertise and great ideas. But for social media to change our behaviour, we have to be open, and amenable to correction. Life is an adventure, and one in which we need to be willing to take a few risks. We have to swallow our pride now and then, and admit that we don't know it all. Once in a while, we need to try all the doors... and we especially need to push on the door that says 'Do not disturb'.

Image by Steve Wheeler

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

Learning in a Digital Age: The myth and the reality

I recently gave a keynote at the eLearning 2.0 conference held at Brunel University, in West London. The presentation was a reworked version of one I gave earlier in the year in Tallinn, Estonia. In Learning in a Digital Age: The Myth and the Reality, I present a number of widespread beliefs about elearning, and challenge the provenance, reasoning and application of these theories. Learning styles, digital natives and immigrants theory, and the arguments that you cannot personalise learning in large organisations; or that SMS txting is dumbing down language; are all scrutinised and challenged. Brunel University did an excellent job of recording my voice and the slides, and synchonising them, probably using Camtasia or a similar tool. Here it is in full, for those who want to follow the arguments and discussion that ensued.



Learning in a Digital Age: The myth and the reality by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Manufactured education

In 1980, sociologist Alvin Toffler described a third wave of civilisation, the first two 'waves' of the agricultural, and the industrial civilisations would be swept aside by a greater, technological wave. Describing the disruptive and transformational impact of this technological wave, Toffler wrote:


"The emergent civilisation writes a new code of behaviour for us and carries us beyond standardisation, synchronisation and centralisation, beyond the concentration of energy, money and power. The new civilisation, as it challenges the old, will topple bureaucracies, reduce the role of the nation state, and give rise to semi-autonomous economies in a post imperialist world" (Toffler, 1980, p 24). 


This prescient view of the future of society has largely been realised. Toffler envisioned a world in which centralised power was dissipated, and where control was firmly in the hands of each individual. It is clear that technological developments have radically transformed the structure of society over the last few decades. As it accelerates further, and pervades more deeply into our world, technology will continue to disrupt our way of life. The advent of the World Wide Web has changed forever the way we communicate, share ideas, buy and sell, are entertained, and conduct our relationships. But technology has reached farther into our society still. The use of mobile telephones and social media has also promulgated democratic change and political upheaval in recent years. Social media played a vital role in Barack Obama's election success, and was instrumental in overthrowing governments in a number of countries during the Arab Spring. Technology can liberate ideas, amplify content and reach far into previously information poor regions of the world. The issues of standardisation, synchronisation and centralisation Toffler identified - the bastions of previous industrial age processes - are indeed being challenged as individuals within society carve their own niches in business, entertainment, government, the media and personalised learning. Very early on in the short history of the Internet, sites such as Napster began to erode the power structures enjoyed by the elite music industry giants. Similar events occurred in the film and photography industries. Nic Negroponte's prediction that atoms would be transformed into bits was realised when music and book sales flipped from CDs and paper based to downloads and e-books. Even the long lived postal delivery service has seen declining popularity as a result of the increased accessibility of e-mail and social networking services. 


And yet standardisation, synchonisation and centralisation stubbornly persist in a few notable enclaves. Perhaps the most notorious resistance to the technological wave comes from the state education systems. Synchronisation of behaviour was required in the industrial age. Industrial processes such as ship building, mining and manufacturing required workers to arrive at the gates together, work beside each other in teams and operate in specialised compartments to get the job done. It was little wonder that the schools tasked to train these workforces emulated these practices by requiring children to turn up to the gates at the same time, work together in rows, supervised by a teacher (representing the foreman), and be delivered curriculum subjects that were compartmentalised with little or no explicit linkage. Sound familiar? Well, this scenario will be as familiar to those who went to school in the 1950s and those who attend school today. Little has changed, even though, ironically, the world of production and manufacturing has gone through radical change and is now but a vestige of its former self. Technology may be in the schools, but little has changed in terms of the pedagogy practiced in many. The factory model of education persists, because in the mind of its proponents, it is still the most efficient, cost effective way to train the workforce of the future. And yet, according to critics such as Sir Ken Robinson, this is not the way forward. In e recent speech, Robinson intoned: 


"We still educate children by batches. We put them through the system by age group. Why do we do that? Why is there an assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is their date of manufacture?" The entire video can be viewed here.     


Michael Shaw, editor of TESPro, suggests that a new form of teaching - vertical teaching - can be an improvement on the failing state school factory model of batch processing by age. He does caution however, that extreme versions of the 'stage not age' education approach can result in "16 year olds being sent to university and infants sitting GCSEs." He doesn't elaborate on why he thinks that would be such a bad idea though. Shaw argues that schools continue to teach children in year groups simply because it is practical. Yet batch processing children by age leads to the inevitable issues of differentiation such as having to maintain ability sets within year groups. It also leads to demotivation, stress and a number of other negative outcomes. Whichever arguments we subscribe to, it is clear that children deserve to be educated according to their abilities, not according to their age. As it stands, the factory model of education little to provide for the needs of society, and it certainly fails to provide personalised learning for the children in our care.


Image by Freefoto


References


Negroponte, N. (1995) Being Digital. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Toffler, A. (1980) The Third Wave. London: Pan Books. 


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

The industrialisation of learning

The industrial model of education that has such a strong grip on schools has been critiqued by a number of high profile commentators, from Ivan Illich (1970) and Paulo Freire (1970) through to contemporary commentators such as Stephen Heppell and Sir Ken Robinson. Indeed, Robinson's 2006 TED talk video goes as far as to say that current schooling is stifling innovation and creativity, and squandering talent. The video has been viewed over 11 million times, which shows that the message clearly resonates. Robinson argues that children are educated out of creativity. He warns that if we are not prepared to take risks and get it wrong occasionally, we will never come up with anything original. The education system, he complains, is predicated on academic ability to the detriment of art and creativity. Watch this entertaining and challenging video to grasp the full value and impact of Sir Ken's message.

Alvin Toffler (1980) describes a number of features that maintain the status quo in society, including synchronisation of behaviour, standardisation of content and maximisation of resources. Robinson talks of 'batch processing by age', another erroneous strategy schools still employ for convenience rather than for the wellbeing of individual children. It is a mass production of education, or as Noah Kennedy once put it 'The industrialisation of intelligence.' A closer look at school systems reveals that these features remain central to the management of education. These were ideal features to prepare children for a future of work in industrial settings. But time has moved on and schools have not. We now work in fluid situations were more often than not, there is no 'job for life' and portfolio careers are dominant.  

The future of work is more uncertain now than it has ever been. We are preparing children for a world that we cannot yet clearly describe. It makes sense for schools to reappraise their mode of operation and decide what to change to engage children with learning in new ways, to develop them into independent learners, agile thinkers, creative and innovative in all they do. Only then can we be assured that we have done our very best for them.

NB: In my next few posts, I'm going to critically explore several of the school strategies Toffler and Robinson have identified, and offer some alternative approaches to promote independent learning and creativity.

Image by Steve Wheeler

References

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin.

Illich, I. (1970) Deschooling Society. London: Marion Boyars Publishers.

Kennedy, N. (1989) The Industrialisation of Intelligence. London: Unwin.

Robinson, K. (2006) Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity. TED Talk Video available online at http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html (Accessed 29 June 2012).

Toffler, A. (1980) The Third Wave. London: Pan Books.

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

Stuck in the past?

What changes has technology made in schools? In 1970, sociologist Alvin Toffler predicted: 'Within thirty years, the educational systems of the United States, and several Western European countries as well, will have broken decisively with the mass production pedagogy of the past, and will have advanced into an era of educational diversity based on the liberating power of the new machines.' (Toffler, 1970, p 251) By new machines, Toffler was clearly referring to computers and their associated tool sets. By mass pedagogy, he referred to the factory production model of education that schools have been caught in for over a century. More than four decades after Toffler's book was published, there is conflicting evidence that technology has actually delivered any significant change to the pedagogy practiced in school classrooms. The answer to the question for many schools, is that technology brings very little change to the way teachers educate. The mass production pedagogy model stubbornly persists, and personalised learning seems far from the reach of many young people.

Technology (in the form of mobile telephones) has changed the way we communicate with each other, and social networking services such as Facebook have made similar advances in the way we relate to our friends and family. Broadcast media are ubiquitous, with television in every living room, on our hand held devices, even on large screens in the public areas of major cities around the world. Our leisure, economy and social lives have been transformed by the impact of the World Wide Web, and arguably, we are a lot better of because of it. In fact advances in interactive, personalised technologies are so prominent that hardly a day goes by without some new innovation being trumpeted by the media. So why has technology wrought so few changes in the school classroom? Why was Toffler's prediction so far off the mark, when many of his other, contemporary predictions were clearly realised?

One reason there has been little change in schools is that many continue to operate on a factory production system that belongs in last century's industrial age, and new technology is not permitted to disrupt it. Schools continue to jealously protect a conservatism that resides in few similarly large-scale institutions. Even when new technologies are introduced into classrooms, they are often used in a similar manner to the older technologies they replace. Disruption of old practices is unwelcome in school. A classic example of this is the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB). Over the last few years IWBs have been installed into many classrooms in the UK with little impact. Teachers continued to use IWBs as though they were standard dry-wipe or chalk boards - as presentational tools or slide projection screens. 

The pedagogical opportunities the new tools afforded (such as interactive touch surfaces on which children could experiment, create and manipulate images and text) were largely ignored because a) teachers were concerned about damage or b) disruption or c) lack of knowledge and fear of exposure to new ideas. Often the failure to adopt new practices arising from new technology provision can be blamed on a lack of good leadership. Sometimes it can be the result of lack of knowledge, but more often than not, teachers fail to develop new pedagogies due to a lack of time or resources to be able to do so. This is where good leadership intervention could benefit the entire school. One of the greatest barriers to innovative practice in schools arises from the ban many place on the use of mobile phones in their classrooms. Place this in the context of local education authorities concertedly blocking social media services due to 'safety' concerns, and there is little wonder that schools struggle to capitalise on the technological benefits being enjoyed by the rest of society. It is an abysmal situation.

And yet there are pockets of inspiration and innovation in the schools sectors. What kind of new pedagogies are emerging as a result of technology provision in classrooms? Firstly, we are seeing children being encouraged to improve their writing and reading through the use of social media such as blogs and wikis. They are being encouraged to communicate more effectively through podcasts, videos and on social networking sites. A great deal of creativity is being unleashed through the use of image sharing sites, touch screen tools and new dimensions to learning are being realised through game playing. Mobile learning takes the experience of discovery outside the classroom into the community the children will eventually work within. IWBs, when used effectively can enhance and enrich the entire learning encounter, with students as actively involved in knowledge production as their teachers. None of this has been achieved without some self-sacrifice by educators, some visionary leadership, and a large amount of disruption. If these three elements are present, innovative pedagogical practices will begin to spread, and we will see a realisation of Toffler's prediction. If not, we will be stuck with the mass production pedagogy of the past.

Reference
Toffler, A. (1970) Future Shock. London: Pan Books.

Image by David Wright

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

Blogging as literacy

The advent of the social web has given people everywhere a virtually limitless new territory to discover and explore. Many millions of people worldwide are enjoying sustained connections with their peers, family, colleagues and friends which they would never otherwise have experienced. Content too is being prodigiously generated, remixed, organised and shared on an unprecedented scale. Current figures suggest for example, that between 40 to 60 hours of video is being uploaded to YouTube every minute. Facebook is already the world's largest photo repository, and with almost 850 million accounts and over 100 billion connections, has to be one of the most influential communications devices ever created to bring people together.

My view is that in the social media universe, blogging is potentially the most powerful tool. Time and again, blogging is proving its worth in education and training, with countless learners discovering that sharing their ideas, sharing content and discussion ideas worldwide has a whole range of benefits. Blogging requires a particular set of literacies to ensure that its potential is realised. Dughall McCormick argues that in online learning environments, learners need to develop literacies that are similar to those required for letter writing or giving an explanation. I concur with these views, but would add that digital literacies are not simply extensions of more traditional literacies. They are new and agile forms of learning, because the environments are new, and constantly changing.

For me, one of the new digital literacies bloggers need is the ability to encapsulate ideas succinctly and in a form that is accessible and engaging. Another literacy is the ability to be able to devise posts that draw an audience and provoke responses. One of the most powerful aspects of blogging is its social dimension which includes open discussion. Still another is the skill of managing those responses and replying in a way that promotes further discussion and sustains the discourse. Knowledge about tagging, RSS feeds, trackback and other blogging features will enhance the presence of the blogger online.

I have previously written about some of the literary and visual devices that can be used to draw a blog readership. These include images and video that evoke or underline a message; catchy and memorable titles for blog posts; and useful/relevant hyperlinks that enable readers to drill down further into the topic if they so desire. Blogging encompasses an entire new range of literacies, and as learners get to grips with it, we can expect to see some new and powerful pedagogical practices emerging.

Image by Ed Yourdon


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

Bloom reheated

In an age of digital media, where learners create, remix and share their own content, an overhaul of Bloom's Cognitive Taxonomy was long overdue. Yesterday I posted a critique of Bloom's Cognitive Taxonomy and argued that it is outmoded in the digital age. Unfortunately, Lorin Anderson's revised model (2001 in conjunction with Krathwohl) of the taxonomy is not as great an improvement on the original model as its adherents might claim. Supposedly upgraded to take into consideration new ways of learning using digital tools, the revised model remains firmly rooted in the old behaviourist paradigm, and is just as reliant on the production of observable (and therefore) measurable behaviour as the original model. This is not surprising, because Anderson is one of Bloom's former students, and Bloom was steeped in the behaviourist tradition. However, one useful feature of Anderson's model is that it slides the focus away from declarative knowledge (knowing that) toward procedural knowledge (knowing how), and this is useful in constructionist learning contexts (learning by making - See for example the work of Seymour Papert). If students learn facts, but have no understanding of how or why these facts can be applied, or how they can be constructed into some useful form, learning is two-dimensional.

One of the gravest errors in Anderson's revised model is that it's still a taxonomy. It is flawed at that. Anderson's new categorisation simply moves the old categories around a little. He places 'Creating' at the apex of the pyramid, with 'Evaluating' beneath it. Overbaugh and Schultz (2005) suggest that in Anderson's model, Bloom's Synthesis is replaced by 'Creating', and that Bloom's 'Evaluation' and 'Synthesis' therefore trade places. This raises a question - should we really expect learners to create something and then not bother to evaluate it? So why the swap? The problem lies in the sequence. Ultimately, synthesis and evaluation, along with all the other levels of cognitive achievement cannot be represented as a single linear process. Let's suppose instead that learning processes are chaotic and iterative in nature, and that we learn through a continual flux of categories, combined in increasingly complex ways. We might acquire better knowledge while we are in the process of applying and evaluating, for example. This leads to the conclusion that the classification of 'levels' of attainment is misrepresented in both Bloom's and Anderson's models. Tim Brook makes the point that the sequence of learning categories is problematic and suggests a matrix instead. But this still fails to address the problem that Bloom's taxonomy segregates and compartmentalises activities, when often we learn across and through combinations of learning modes.

Neither Bloom's nor Anderson's models take new, fluid methods of learning into consideration. Emerging theories such as connectivism, heutagogy and paragogy are more representative of digital age learning, and for many, the future of learning through and with digital tools will rely heavily upon such explanatory frameworks. We need to find ways to nurture the agile, flexible, critical and creative learners we desperately need in our communities today. Neither Bloom's nor Anderson's taxonomies can achieve this. Patching up an old model and rehashing it just won't do. As John Lennon once put it: 'You can't reheat a soufflé.'

Anderson's Revision Model image source

References

Anderson, L.W., and D. Krathwohl (Eds.) (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing: a Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Longman, New York.

Overbaugh, R. C. and Schultz, L. (2005) Bloom's Taxonomy. Available online at:  http://www.odu.edu/educ/roverbau/Bloom/blooms_taxonomy.htm (Accessed 21 June, 2012)

Bloom's taxonomy rehashed by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.