Tag Archives: ELearning

#LWF11 – Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia – Evolving The Dream & Final Questions

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Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.

Another presenter who is challenged by presenting ‘in the round’!

Seeing a massive change in the quality and quantity of informal learning.  Talk about the dream of free knowledge for everyone.  Free access to the sum of all human knowledge.

What is free access?  Free as in speech, not as in beer.  Something more fundamental.  Free to redistribute and re-use all of Wikipedia.

What is the sum of all human knowledge? Wikipedia is not an archive or library, nor a textbook, can be an adjunct to a textbook.  Not designed to lead you through the learning.  Not Youtube, no funny cat videos, try to keep things serious.  Encyclopedia offers a summary of human knowledge.

Joked about being sick of seeing his face on the website calling for donations to the charity.   Around 50 employees and a budget of $21million.  It’s the 100,000 contributors who make it happen.  All design and content is done by the community.

16 million articles across 270 languages.  199 languages have at least 1000 articles.  Over a million in English German and French.  Abandoned China for 3 years due to censorship.  But was made accessible again around the Olympics, just with certain pages e.g. Taiwan, Tianneman being filtered.  But only ranked around no.50 in China as a website.

Showed some funny Chinese menus translated into English and ended up with Stir Fried Wikipedia, probably due to it being first entry for every search on the internet:

Global content comparisons using a graph of % of page hits for the top 100 topics:  Similar written content across countries.  But readers vary more.  Japanese love searching for pop culture.  Germans most interested in Geography!  Sex very popular except in France and Spain - because they are actually having sex while the rest of us just read it on the Internet!

Wikipedia has 408 million unique visitors (per how long?).

Who is writing Wikipedia?  Important to know for young people as it is such a dominant source of information for young people.

  • 87% male. Too many computer geeks!  Want to simplify the editing interface.  Excluding women but also elderly and other less confident users.
  • Average age 26.
  • Double % PhDs – geekier crowd than normal
  • People at the intersection between intelligence, obsession and free time!
  • Invitation is in the edit button to allow people to take part – nice quote from a ‘user’ in a video Jimmy showed

What is beyond the encyclopedia?  Encyclopedia is just the start.

Library is much much bigger.  Wikia is Jimmy’s next project to take over the rest of the library.  Place for people to dig deeply into, used example of comparing the entries for Twilight the novel.  No need for the ‘source’ in Wikia, more opinions and discussions.  Went on to talk about Lostpedia, which was created on Wikia to write about Lost the TV programme.  Believe that the writers took great inspiration from the fans documenting it, the show was something of a wiki in it’s self.

Jimmy’s final point: How can we get the learners involved in the creation of their learning?

As big a sales pitch as some other talks today, but enthralling.  If only because of the influence it has on our learners, it’s so often their number one source.  Who needs to know the dates of Kings & Queens when it’s a search away?

Final questions with Jimmy, Lord Puttnam & Graham:

Good point in the questions that the whole idea of Wikipedia was seen as complete madness beforehand.  Which feeds into the ideas from Stephen & Lord Puttnam of this next multi-billion making innovation potentially being in the sphere of learning.  Lord Puttnam later added that he thought that great innovation would stem from the games industry.

Great anecdote from Lord Puttnam about someone challenging a member of parliament in parliament as they searched on their phone about a speech from the week before and pointed out that what they were saying was not true and that they were contradicting themselves.  Something that happens more and more in the classroom.

Great question asked of Jimmy as to whether a step by step learning based wiki could be built that would transform free education with a crowd sourced curriculum.  The foundation have tried a variation with wiki-books but it has struggled as software not suited to assessment etc..  But also problems with fragmented educational standards.  One of the big things that inspire people to take part is that they know someone will use their contribution.  Jimmy thinks that people would feel that schools couldn’t use their content in the classroom -I’d disagree with this quite strongly.  So many of us blog about our teaching BECAUSE we hope someone else might find it useful in their classroom.  However he does think it should be possible.

Final question was about what 3 things you’d have in a new school.  Lord Puttnam points out that it’s easy to do great things in a school but it’s really difficult to scale to every school.  Jimmy would want to see increased teaching of media competence and the ability to assess the quality of a source of information, in context of Wikipedia – how do you use it as a starting point to go deeper into a topic.  Fantastic point to finish on.

And that’s it – battery nearly flat on the laptop, and internal batteries exhausted – interesting day of live blogging, will read back later and see if there was any quality to it or if I just missed the salient points through distraction!

#LWF11 – Lord David Puttnam of Queensgate

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Lord David Puttnam, man of many hats, but perhaps pertinently Chairman of Futurelab:

Joked that Stephen Heppel and he had have achieved so little in the last 20 years!  Not yet a state where what’s best for the child is also what’s best for the child.

Left film industry as it had ceased to be inspirational in it’s use of tech and thought more could be done in educational policy.  Sadly was wrong in hindsight.

Barely begun to explore how technology can transform education.  Digital creation economy is fastest growing.  PwC report shows us as poor exporters of our services.  Education has prospective growth as an industry for the UK.  Could be a driver of growth in modern & competitive world.  More dignified than Financial Services!

Significant division within government on the role of technology in education.

Platforms and technologies have become embedded in the daily lives of teachers, they too are now digital natives.

How did we get ourselves into this mess when BETT has 70 education ministers from around the world?

Digitising old practices seeks to simply get the old outcomes only faster.

What would a digital curriculum look like if disruption did take place?

Apple re-imagined the computer and phone. Disrupted those markets.  Even got a joke about Flash in for the iPad 2!  The App economy has consequentially changed the landscape for software.

Mobile tech is close to reaching every single human being on Earth.  So where is the specific disruption that will change the way we learn?  When will we recognise the learning that takes place in creating a Youtube video or collaborate within an online World?  Our job is to build ontop of these experiences and develop them into learning opportunities.

Worst possible moment to abandon use of tech within learning, but exactly the right moment to re-start the discussions about technology in learning.  Need to talk about what the World of work will look like in 2020-2030 when the students of today begin work.

Next multi-billion invention may be in the field of learning.  Fitting in with Stephen Heppel’s evolution from earlier.

Imagine being able to lower the amount of time spent in school, increasing the productivity.  Would allow us to revisit the economic discussions around school.  Higher productivity, higher skills, higher wages could let the teaching industry enjoy higher prestige.

Young people have less time to listen to ‘corporate speak’, dialogue makes online connections work.  Expect to be active participants within a discussion.  To win back their trust we need to engage effectively with their World.  Need to move technology to the core of their learning.

No matter how gifted or charismatic you are you will never effectively teach someone who does not relate to and respect you.

No education system can be better than the quality of teachers.  Teacher training in digital age has to be continuing. With paid time out for development.

We have to become far far more persuasive in getting our message across.

Another impassioned and inspiring call to action – I think he and Stephen may have been talking before today!

#LWF11 – Stephen Heppell – What’s on the horizon?

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Stephen started with a nice anecdote about starting his career asked a tough group of students to help him out by getting teaching tips from other teachers in return from him teaching them the content.

Be Very Afraid programme.  Students taught themselves to play an instrument in a month.

Evolution of tech in our lifetimes: Hardware -> software -> databases -> searching -> socialising -> learning next.

Learning will happen where we least expect it.  e.g. subtitling Bollywood movies in other languages in India; superclasses – 3 teachers, 90 kids, 5 terms learning in 3; Sugata Mitra – hole-in-the-wall.

Spent a few minutes tearing apart teacher training, if you don’t have the very best schools in that area then what right do you have to teach teachers?!

Should be ashamed to be at the top of Gove’s English Bacc league table – child cruelty!  We can do better.

People plus technology breaks cartels – education is a cartel that will be broken by people and technology.

Interesting to hear that Stephen is planning a free school, taking advantage of Gove’s policies to push his own way of doing things Academy!

Pupils need to prepared for the uncertainty.  The reason we are in the vanguard is because we’ve lived through the endless surprise of technological innovation in our lifetime.  We haven’t articulated how good this could be.

The World is broken, learning can heal conflict and suffering.  We have the chance to do so.  Make it loud make it heard!  A proper call to arms.

A captivating talk, Stephen showed how easy it can seem to present when you know your subject matter so well, no notes, just a series of images and a belief in your argument.

#LWF11 – Keri Facer, Prof of Education, MMU

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Keri Facer.

Can’t continue to argue about whether we focus on the individual or whether we use technology to bring learners together.

We need to learn to live with connectivity that we’ve never imagined before.  Evolution of non-human-like intelligence.

Need a curriculum for collaborative and collective intelligence.  Diminishing economy and rapidly changing aging demographic.  Need to understand the relationships between generations.  Beginning to see education become divided by wealth.  Changeing environmental situation.  Responding to refugees, water supply issues etc..

It’s all doom and gloom, but truly passionate!

We need to develop spaces where we can all come together and solve these issues.  Can’t continue the lie that  a 1st class degree will be the ticket to immunisation from these issues.  Education needed that is engaged with it’s communities.

Cooperative education movements, democratic education movements, small schools, sustainable schools and education justice collectives are all helping to bridge these gaps.

How do techs build communities and enable learners to think about their futures?  Need to start shouting about these projects and values so that the next Government might support this movement.

A highly passioned, and not surprisingly well received argument.  Graham chose these two contrasting viewpoints well, certainly enlivened the debate.

#LWF11 Katharine Birbalsingh, Teacher & Author

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Katharine Birbalsingh, the former Head Teacher famously sacked following her outspoken speech at the Tory Party conference.

Started with the story of challenging behaviour in Secondary Schools.  How have we got to this point, a dark age of education?  How can we move schools on into the 21st Century?  Need to equip children with a bag of goodies to enable them to thrive in the World.

One thought is to stop teaching so much content and to concentrate on skills, group work etc..  Basic knowledge though is necessary to be able to be creative.  Need to move back towards a more traditional form of teaching.  A middle class child already has this as they pick up so much at the dinner table, from the Maths tutor or from Dad reading at bed time.  Not so from less advantaged children who rely entirely on their schools.

Many reformers went to Grammar school and mistakenly think that most children are going through a similar education system.  Creating a system where children do not get access to the ‘bag of goodies’ that they themselves received.

We know that exams are being dumbed down. We are letting down many many pupils.

Many believe that an injection of tech is needed.  But this is reformers again misunderstanding what is needed.  Eton has only 2 interactive whiteboards.

Katharine continued talking along these lines, pointing out that Eton etc are very different to main stream schools, but without really going anywhere with her argument.

Argued that lack of technology not an issue as children are already skilled to the hilt from their own use.

“The education that is best for the best is the education that is best for all”.  Need to be educationally Conservative.  Argued that main stream schools reject what is successful in the likes of Eton.

There is no hiding from negative feedback in this room, the Twitter feed on the hashtag #LWF11 throughout this talk was cutting in it’s criticism.

SSAT #NC10 – Sugata Mitra

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Bio

Sugata Mitra is currently Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University.  He has spent many years in a huge number of research posts.  With regards to education he is most famous for his Hole In The Wall Experiment whereby he put an Internet enabled PC in the wall of an Indian slum in 1999 and left it there for anyone to use.

You can see the talk here, or watch his similar TED talk here.

Reflections

Sugata was charming and engaging.  The driving message that he had was that given some time and an Internet connection, children are quite proficient at teaching themselves.

He first discovered this in his now famous Hole In The Wall experiment.  I won’t go over the details of that here as you can watch the videos above or read about it in detail on Wikipedia or it’s own dedicated website.  Sugata explained that he did not go looking for this effect, however his experiments demonstrated that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Sugata calls this minimally invasive education. Continue reading →

SSAT National Conference 2010 #NC10 – Initial Thoughts

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The SSAT National Conference took place last week at the ICC in Birmingham (a venue rightly compared to Escher’s Relativity!).  I was fortunate to be able to attend as a punter on the Wednesday and as a presenter on the Thursday as we launched the SSAT National Digital Leaders programme!

The theme of the conference was ‘Excellence for All’, and I have to say that the SSAT delivered , each aspect of the conference itself was excellent.

Wednesday started for me with Dylan Wiliam extolling the importance of assessment being the key to good teaching.  He was as inspiring a speaker as ever, as those of you who watched his recent TV program would know.  In particular I was impressed with Dylan’s ability to demonstrate his techniques within a ‘classroom’ of 400 educators, and also his incredible use of research evidence to support his teachings.

Wednesday Keynotes came from David Hemery, former 400m Hurdles Gold medal winning Olympian, he was telling his story and promoting www.21stcenturylegacy.com , part of London 2012′s legacy programme for schools.  He was followed by Sugata Mitra, telling his engaging tale of children teaching themselves using the Internet, from his hole-in-the-wall Mumbai slums experiment to his recent work in Gateshead.  This was an engaging tale that at first seemed to question the need for teachers at all!  As with all the speakers, more to follow in a future blog-post.  I would add that I was fortunate enough to chat to Sugata over coffee following his talk, a charming man. Continue reading →

A Progressive Approach To The Internet In School

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A post I’ve been meaning to write for many months…

Battles:

I have had my battles with Internet filtering in the past, but I’m now the man in charge.  Every school I have worked in so far in my opinion has had an old fashioned ‘head in the sand’ view to filtering and acceptable use of the Internet within school.  I’ve ranted about this in the past.

Reversing a Head In The Sand mentality. CC licensed image from David Barrie at Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/addictive_picasso/

Battleground:

I would estimate that 95% of our pupils now own a mobile phone, and that 80% of these have unrestricted access to the Internet on these devices.  This doesn’t factor in devices such as netbooks, iPod Touches and PSPs that are also brought into school.  What this leads to is unrestricted, unfiltered access to the Internet within our school, and at a pace and quality that is ever increasing.  I also regularly receive requests from teachers to block this that and the other as a classroom management tool.

Battle plan:

I strongly believe that in response to this situation we need a new approach to Internet access within schools, something that still protects our children but also that prepares them for the World in which they live.

This comes in 3 parts:

  1. An Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that is relevant, understood by all parties and linked closely to general school behaviour policies.
  2. Relatively unfiltered Internet access.
  3. Quality monitoring solutions.

Continue reading →

Facebook Groups in School?

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Facebook recently updated their Groups feature.  Allowing finer control over groups which you set up, who can join, who can post, who can share etc..   Their are also improvements to how you are notified about group updates and a new feature called ‘docs’ that provides a Google Docs-esque shared notepad / document. Group chat is also built in allowing you to talk to everyone in that group at once. For a demonstration head over to Mashable or watch this video:

So, the million dollar question… Could this be used in education? Could it be part of a VLEesque home-school link? Continue reading →

Frog Learning Platforms Conference 2010 – Digital Leaders – The Story So Far

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Embedded below is the presentation that I will attempt in the Pecha-Kucha style on Tuesday 15th June at the Frog Learning Platforms Conference 2010.

For further information on Digital Leaders check out the following links or get in touch with me on Twitter or via the comments below.

http://www.mrstucke.com/tag/digital-leaders/

http://kristianstill.co.uk/wordpress/category/curriculum/digital-leaders/

http://digitalleaders.co.uk

http://vital.ac.uk/