NMC Horizon Report 2014: A must read

Recommended by Richard Elliott in an eLearning Watch 'extra' (which you can subscribe to on his site), is the The NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition.

A review of the report can be found by clicking this hyperlink . A brief highlight of some of the key aspects of the report is:

"The experts agreed on two long-term trends: advancing learning environments that are flexible and drive innovation, as well as increasing the collaboration that takes place between higher education institutions".

"Regarding the challenges for universities and colleges, improving digital literacy is considered one of the solvable challenges". 

"Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and the flipped classroom are expected to be increasingly adopted by institutions in one year’s time or less to make use of mobile and online learning. The time-to-adoption for makerspaces and wearable technology are estimated within two to three years, while adaptive learning technologies and the Internet of Things is expected to be mainstream in universities and colleges within four to five years."

Well worth a read.

In spite of everything: Learning against the odds

Barriers are often thrown in place when eLearning is mentioned. Access, cost of owning a device, safety...the list goes on. However, when solutions are sought to issues, rather than accepting what may appear to be the insurmountable status quo, learners can take things way further than educators may imagine.

Sugata Mitra (whose video is included at the end of this post) is one such person. Sugata addressed a wide range of issues to put in place an initiative that had many nay-sayers. The ‘Hole-in-the-wall’ initiative is now widely known, as are the results. By addressing issues that were pretty much insurmountable for the local children, Sugata empowered young learners to figure out the technology by themselves, and in turn opened up a world of learning to them. These learners were able to creatively select, evaluate, internalise and externalise the information they found online and own it as ‘knowledge’.

Learners teaching learners

Since the first initiative Sugata’s vision has emerged as a global one where he calls for the development of cloud based schools (see video below) and a Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLE). (You can find out more about SOLE and download a toolkit at the TED site.) What is more, Sugata has, through social networking and the ubiquitous nature of the Internet, inspired learners and educators around the world.

What this can look like in a school facing ‘barriers’

One such example; I was inspired by a story shared by Helen Martin toward the end of last year: How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses. I had read it before and it had stayed in my mind, so re-reading it was a reminder as to why it had been so powerful the first time around. Imagine you are a student or educator at the following school:

The school serves residents of Matamoros, a dusty, sunbaked city of 489,000 that is a flash point in the war on drugs. There are regular shoot-outs, and it’s not uncommon for locals to find bodies scattered in the street in the morning. To get to the school, students walk along a white dirt road that parallels a fetid canal….Some people here call the school un lugar de castigo—“a place of punishment.” (source)

And then consider whether you might have moved from teaching “the government-mandated curriculum” that you feel is a “a waste of time”, to start researching and trialling different approaches that could empower and engage your students. Sergio Juárez Correa was one such teacher. Inspired by a video describing the work of Sugata Mitra. One of the first things Sergio did was group the desks and sit down to learn with the students - he also set the expectation with his students that they had potential, and that they could rise to this potential.

For the study of maths Sergio Juárez “began experimenting with different ways of posing open-ended questions on subjects ranging from the volume of cubes to multiplying fractions”. The resulting collaborative learning was “noisy, [and] slightly chaotic….the opposite of the sort of factory-friendly discipline that teachers were expected to impose. But within…[a short time], they had come up with the answer” (source).

The next step was to implement Sugata’s suggestion that children learn most effectively when they have access to the Web - not an easy task in the environment Sergio and his students worked in. Unfortunately, there was no resource for the school to access to the Internet directly.  “As a result, Juárez Correa became a slow-motion conduit to the Internet. When the kids wanted to know why we see only one side of the moon, for example, he went home, Googled it, and brought back an explanation the next day” (source).

The results?

“The previous year, 45 percent had essentially failed the math section, and 31 percent had failed Spanish. This time only 7 percent failed math and 3.5 percent failed Spanish. And while none had posted an Excellent score before, 63 percent were now in that category in math” (source).  Also incredibly exciting was the fact that one of the students, Paloma, achieved “the highest math score in the country, but the other students weren’t far behind. Ten got math scores that placed them in the 99.99th percentile. Three of them placed at the same high level in Spanish” (source).

   

 Interestingly, it is reported that Juárez Correa, while pleased that his students had done well, had mixed feelings about the fact that the students “had distinguished themselves because of a conventional multiple-choice test”, indicating that the exams limit the teachers and “test what you know, not what you can do, and I am more interested in what my students can do” (source). 

By shifting the approach he was using for teaching to one that was focused on group work, creativity, and a student-led environment, his students thrived and grew, and that was what interested him. Not their achievement in standardised tests. Sadly, nothing has changed in the way of support or funding. Francisco Sánchez Salazar, chief of the Regional Center of Educational Development in Matamoros, is quoted as saying that “Intelligence comes from necessity” and that the students “succeed without having resources” (source).

Take aways?

This is a post that has been a long time in the writing, and I think, in part, it’s because I was trying to make sense of what the key take aways are - without being reductionist. There seem to be several things at play here:

1. Students can learn even when faced with issues such as lack of resources and funding
2. Regardless of location and education background, given time and access to basic resources, many students will grasp any possible opportunity that comes their way to learn...they are curious, applied and filled with wonderings. Often, these students will help each other to learn.
3. Many students learn well when encouraged to be creative, collaborative, and to take ‘ownership’ of the learning
4. Teachers who are global in their outlook, and self-directed in their own professional development and inquiry, can make major shifts in their own practice if they are open to changing their role and beliefs about how people learn
5. National standardised testing appears to be something that restricts, and possibly even negates, 1 to 4 in the list above.

I wonder then, when there will be fundamental shifts in the way we test whether the education system is working - given that it appears that the testing itself is possibly undermining the system.

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Images

• International student. CC licensed Flickr image by Penn State: http://www.flickr.com/photos/53130103@N05/4947783158
• Veda Pathashala students learning. CC licensed Wikimedia image by Rhariram: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Veda_Pathashala_students_learning.jpg
• Come with Us/The Test. CC licensed Wikipedia image by Chemicalfire 07: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Come_with_us_the_test.jpg
• Students; captivated by a movie of themselves. CC licensed Flickr image by eltpics: https://www.flickr.com/photos/54942754@N02/6711545545

 

Creative and Critical thinking: Creating space for innovation

Ewan McIntosh's session on Monday was so inspirational we rocked up 45 minutes early to ensure we have a seat for his second session today. The room is completely packed with people sitting on every available floor space, propping up the room at the back and around the sides, and standing outside the double doors craning their necks to see in. The place is a sea of mobile devices, and the wireless is groaning as the Tweets flow. Great stuff. (But maybe a bigger venue...?)
The last Ewan did this session was with 6 people in Texas...and if it fails it's our fault :-). Some of the reasons innovations tend to get blocked are those folk who have leader in their title tend not to be the innovators, and (along with many other things), there is negativity around and dismissal of ideas. On the other hand for innovation to happen it is important for active listening, people who will join in, assume valuable implications, deal with you as an equal, and support ambiguity.

>>>Click here to read the rest of the post.
Images:

• 'arne jacobsen, aarhus town hall 1937-1942' - Found on flickrcc.net

One thought to rule them all: The most powerful force in the world

This was the keynote presentation on day 4 of ICOT.  Kerry Spackman, opened by saying that you can work really hard but if nothing changes you are wasting your time. And making a small difference, even if you don't know about it is more important than winning a gold medal. What is the biggest dent you could possibly make in the world? Changes can be from the bottom up, or from top down.

"Thoughts, beliefs, and ideas are the most powerful forces in the world. The champion often wins because the thoughts they run through their mind, whether during training or competition, are better than the loser’s thoughts. At the lowest level, it is our thoughts that separate us from the apes, and give us dominion over the world—a truly remarkable transformation given we share so much physiology in common"(source).

Thoughts can be both positive and negative, but are always powerful. We care very much about who controls for example, nuclear weapons, but do not seem to care about the thoughts that run through our society.

"The power of an idea operates on both a personal and a social scale as we saw when Germany was divided into East and West by opposing political ideologies and the implications of those ideas were allowed to play out—one produced the Trabant and the other the S-Class Mercedes. Indeed, beliefs are probably more powerful than nuclear weapons, and yet, while we take great care to protect access to atomic weapons, we play fast and loose with the thoughts that permeate society. Everyone is “entitled to their own beliefs”—whether they match reality or not—often with catastrophic consequences" (source).

One in every 9 Americans over the age of 12 are on Prozac. Something is wrong here. Thoughts are not matching reality. Beliefs have consequences, especially if they don't match 'reality'. The messages that are portrayed by, for example the media, have consequences. The impact that the legislation around the tobacco industry and smoking has been pretty effective, for instance. Images of celebrities doing certain things shape behaviour - these are thoughts that are being put in people's minds.

The 5 levels - me, people important to me, people I know, people I don't know, and society as an institution. Violence, and hatred are both human. What are we going to do about it? Kerry announced the Knights' Institute. The Knights are influential people who have the clout to help support key initiatives that can change society. There are knights, knights' associates, and knights' agents (and the latter anyone can join). He is always working with Mai Chen.
Often we do things and we don't know the consequences. Do we see beauty any more, or are we constantly running to feed the machine of money and personal gain? Kindness is, now, possibly a path less travelled.

Some of the questions that Kerry poses are:

• How do we find the very best thoughts, both for individuals and society?
• What practical tools and techniques can we employ?

Images

• 'Let the boy earn his spurs!' - Found on flickrcc.net
• Image: 'Un cop de mà'  - Found on flickrcc.net

The Most Powerful Force in the World from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Radical Innovation for Learning (Simon Breakspear)

Simon Breakspear opened by saying that "that there is something about learning that is deeply personal". The challenges we face are worthy of our brightest minds and leadership. It has to be radical change, with a global perspective, that will enable us to explore the pressures and opportunities for systemic innovation in education systems in order to provide different, better, and cheaper learning for all.

"Skills have become the currency of 21st century economies" (Andreas Schieicher), and the ability to change and learn new skills will be a fundamental influence on global change. Some of the global drivers of disruption in education include a realisation "that incremental change in education systems is not sufficient to meet the needs and demand for learning in the 21st Century. Economic globalisation, demographic changes, environmental challenges, and new technologies are all exerting pressure on our 20th Century models of education. We now need all people to develop high-level literacies, and have the ability and motivation to learn throughout life" (source).

In Singapore and Hong Kong (countries that perform really well in PISA), are now focussing on skills that are beyond the cognitive. The narrow measures of tests are actually holding back progress and capability. People who do well in the test taking often struggle to solve problems in novel situations. The skills for learning in the future are therefore in 3 domains: cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.
The diversity of learners is growing. But, in many western countries there is a decreasing motivation to be part of education, meaning that there are empty seats in say, the UK, while there are students in India who cannot find a place to study.

"Fundamentally, trying to get something out of a broken system won't work". We need a radical new version for learning and teaching, in particular around physical learning spaces, assessment, technology and pedagogy, roles, identities, capabilities of the teacher, and lesson time and sequence. Re-framing these will help us re-imagine learning.

Four big ideas are necessary, Simon believes, for radical innovation. The first is the need to design for learning. At the moment we have the current paradigm of learning + technology. What we needed to do, Simon stresses that we need to cultivate an ecosystem for systemic innovation.  "Innovation for learning will require diverse players in the learning game: government, practitioners, entrepreneurs, research institutions, foundations, social enterprises, technologists, and developers.  We will explore the opportunities to cultivate disruptive innovation and scale up powerful new approaches, which will assure high quality and equitable learning for all" (source).

The second is a rapid prototyping approach, where there is an iterative process of re-working, launching, tweaking, and re-launching. We need to learn the art and discipline of innovation. One of the problems is that many institutions have not put in place an agile process for change. It is necessary to re-frame failure. Success and failure are not polar opposites. "What is the minimum set of features that you need in order to begin the process of feedback and discovery?" (Gomez, & Bryk)...it's smaller than you think.

The third idea is to unashamedly seek out disruptive innovations, and harness game-changing ideas, to enhance quality, equity, and at a cheaper rate than before. "When we are doing well we often ask delivery questions rather than disruption questions".

This new learning will be collaborative, social, deep, challenging and stretching. Sometimes learning is sometimes hard. It will involve free content, learning platforms, mobile, be social (platform enabled), and informed by data and learning analytics. These have the potential to re-define learning, especially for those people who have challenges with access. Neil D'Souza (Zaya) is working on solutions that helps address the problems of access across the world, especially in remote places.

The fourth part of the puzzle is the creation of an ecosystem of diverse players, and seeing government as a platform. This will bring real diversity to the greatest challenges of learning.
Simon poses a couple of questions:

• How might we harness the learning potential of game-changing new ideas in education?
• What lessons can we learn from the educational pioneers and disruptive innovators?

I was really impressed with the way that Simon (and Warren Hall...and the neat tech assistant) coped with technology that kept throwing the toys out of its cot! It was well worth overcoming the issues (a great example of persistance and problem solving!). Some useful challenges. And while Simon's suggestions are 'on a theme' (that seems to have been under discussion for the last 10++ years), it was useful to find out about his suggestions, and also to hear about some concrete examples (even though they tend, at the moment to be relatively small scale).

Image

• 'Avalanche' - Found on flickrcc.net
•  "Reservoir Dogs" debate, 3 in the morning' - Found on flickrcc.net

Change at the speed of...so, who has got it right?

There is, perhaps, a perception that change is happening at great speed. However, some of the big institutions (e.g. education, health) appear to be positively glacial with the rate they are responding to change, and what is more, there seems to be quite a bit of opposition to such change. This was brought home in a post shared by Leigh Hynes, who poses the question Well, so who has got it right, and writes "Sharing this blog by Greg Stack on Mindshift with you, not only for the blog but all the comments back. What do you think?" (source).

The Greg's post and the comments that followed certainly made for an Interesting discussion. I finished reading the blog post thinking that I agreed with many of the points he had made, and then I read the comments and felt quite taken aback.
A few things jumped out for me from the comments. The first is, those educators who have been involved in innovative practice and design (including in the Dewey era and regardless of current technologies) appear to relish the differences it has made - see for example David B's comments "We have commons areas that are used for small group, large-group, and individual learning spaces outside of classrooms that have glass for walls to eliminate that boxed-in feeling, and contribute to a collaborative environment. Now if only we could tear down all of our school buildings and start over with this concept in mind".

The second thing that jumped to mind was the socioeconomic concern. Although very much valid in itself, I wonder if sometimes it is used as a 'barrier' to change. For example, the Pt England School in Auckland is a Decile 1a school. However, working with the community and by thinking outside the envelope, they have a 1 to one laptop scheme and a wireless network that is accessible by the local community (i.e. not just at the school!), I am guessing that coverage is limited - sometimes when I cycle to the end of my road I see the kids in the house across the way sitting on the verge with their laptops so that they can get a signal!!

Finally, the whole thing about computer labs...often outmoded, outdated, dark, crowded, badly-designed uncomfortable spaces with no flexibility and limited access because one subject has booked them out for the entire year!! Yes, there are sometimes specialist software that needs to run on a grunty computer...but that is a requirement often met by a couple of well-spec-ed desktops. Bring your own, a scheme of loaning (with an option to purchase after a period of time), or COWs / equivalent mobile option has to be the way to go. The savings in the dead space, and the opening up of options for flexible learning for more teachers (and I could go on, but I won't!!) is a no brainer.

Interestingly, having worked in a place where all the labs were removed (except for a couple of specialized CAD / film labs) and a 1 to 1 laptop initiative put in place I was amazed at how, even though it was an institution designed on traditional lines, many more spaces became learning spaces. Corridors, the cafeteria, the common room, outside all saw groups of students meeting and collaborating, or individual students working away. This was something I hadn't expected.

So - in answer to Leigh's question - in an ideal world school would not be seen as the only 'place' for learning - after all, it will be tricky to design spaces that will suit the way that so many different folk will want to learn. Opening up the notion of learning happening anywhere anytime, with access to teachers (and not just school 'teachers', folk from the community who have things to share and teach) and peers in various ways, could in turn reduce the time students are physically at school...or at least in a 'classroom'. So design becomes less of a central issue, because learners have the flexibility to choose the place they learn, they aren't forced to sit in rows or at tables for hours.

Should we be aiming for our Learning Management Systems to be 'next gen'?

I've just finished reading a blog post by Tom Vander Ark entitled "Why Aren't There Any Next Gen Learning Platforms?". As Joyce indicated in her blog post (source):

Well, I'm starting to think that most LMSs are simply not very good social learning environments. They're not even middling. They're great at administrative tasks. Most are ok to good on content management. But despite course pages, discussion forums,Jowikis and glossaries, they are just not great social environments, requiring too many hoops to jump through to create a convenient, natural, social learning experience that fits in with our information consuming, active, diverse and increasingly mobile lives.

Joyce suggests that LMSs are great for administrative tasks, and, to a certain extent, management of content. However, "LMSs should not try to emulate all of those social media, but instead become better at integrating with them" - and this requires educators to be aware of the importance of design, as well as up to speed with the many options that will make it simple for learners to collaborate and communicate.
Returning to Tom's post, he indicates that learning platforms of the future will include 6 core elements, underpinned by 4 central services (student services, teacher services, back-office services, and school services):

1. Standards-aligned libraries of open and proprietary content with search and content management tools
2. Social, collaborative, and productivity tools
3. Assessment tools and achievement analytics
4. Learner profiles and portfolios
5. Recommendation engines smart enough to build custom playlists
6. Assignment, matriculation, management, and motivational tools (e.g. achievement recognition systems, badges or other data visualization strategies) (source)

My question is why? With younger learners the obvious benefit is the provision of a 'walled garden', although that often has the effect of also shutting out parents and whanau who could and should play an important part in the learning experience. With students over the age of 13, what are the benefits of having an LMS with everything built in? It might indicate an attachment to a model of teacher-centred, institution 'owned', model of learning, which will only be addressed by initiatives such as Open Education Resources, along with a real understanding of learning as a social undertaking. Also, the notion that students are likely to create resources and records of their learning that they will want to take with them and access once they have left an institution (and I'm not going to jump into the conversation of who 'owns' these artefacts), often seems to be neglected by administrators.

So - do we really need a learning platform that has all the elements that Tom identifies, and, if developed, whose needs will it really be serving the best?
Image
Elements for constructing social learning environments by jrhode

Wikipedia blacked out to protest

Michael Winter shared the announcement that Wikipedia has been "blacked out for 24 hours to protest against proposed legislation that threatens freedom of expression on the Internet.To find out more try accessing Wikipedia as normal or go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more". Michael also indicated that he thinks it "seems like a good way to get support for a worthwhile protest".

Nick Ford added the comment "For me a locked down/user pays manifestation of the Internet rather than the Internet the world is currently blessed with is something to be vigilant against. For more information visit Stanford Centre for Internet and Society (CiS) and read 'STOP SOPA'. Lawrence Lessig is the founder of CiS and Creative Commons".

Image via CrunchBase

I wholeheartedly agree that the Internet needs to remain as open and accessible, and that the whole notion of copyright is an outmoded, artificial construct that has been placed on creativity and innovation by folk who see a direct cause and effect between the creation of something, and making a buck. The reason I feel it's artificial is that invention and art (to name but two) have always been a constant collaborative effort, where one thing builds on another - often extending it. The lightbulb could not, for example, have been invented if a whole heap of work had not been done around electricity, resistance, and the materials required to make the physical object. How can you copyright / patent that?

Image by Octavio Rojas via Flickr

The whole notion also raises interesting wider questions around what we believe to be freedom of expression, and where, if anywhere, the line has to be drawn. There is some content that pretty much unanimously human being are likely to agree has no place in society in general, and on the Internet in particular, and some forms of predatory behaviour that are also not acceptable. However, where subjects of morality, bias, and belief are 

expressed, what do we feel is 'acceptable' and why? When I find something objectionable should that mean it is removed? If the Internet is there for anyone to share their own world view, what if it seen as inciting violence by some, but as a way of promoting peace by another? And who makes the final decision? Would be great to hear what you think