The Cognitive Apprentice must die to save the princess.

Introducing more technology at any price does not predict pedagogical change. Adoption of new theories, methods and tool sets are needed. Going from cognitive apprenticeship (the dominant school model) to project based learning changes the use and purpose of technology by changing the pattern of learning. If you haven’t noticed the pattern – its the social move from formal learning to informal learning. You are unlikely to come across Seth Godin for example in a Masters of Education course, but as an educator online you will – I’ve just told you, and that changes a pattern.

“how will using technology narrow the transactional distance the internet is creating between teacher and students?”

The learning pattern isn’t a  theory, as you can be a constructivist in both. The problem is that informal learning is a pattern that is being denied and blockaded from formal learning – Those running the bubble are busy crowing about the size and investment of their digital Maginot Line. They are unable to conceptualise the power of informal networks because even their advisors can’t predict (but try) what comes next. Bubble-people like the status-quo, so tend to build scenarios for the future that support one ideology, hierarchy and process.  Bubbles can be joined or burst. I’m working on the former.

The last 20 years has seen an explosion in multimedia and graphic design applications. Design studios had almost no access to the internet in 1990 – yet the studio-system was still revolutionised. I say revolution; as there was conflict and socio-economic change inside the bubble.

Typesetter’s we’re given the Macintosh in the late 80s, but saw it the same way they have saw their Varityper (yep, it had a keyboard and a screen too). They used it to do what they had always done – set type for printing presses. They did not see the bigger pattern. The demise of print media itself.

The Macintosh began killing photo-typesetting  roles and methods almost immediately and in under 5 years had decimated the repro-graphics industry too – as there is chain reaction.

By the beginning of the 90s, as software evolved, designers were increasingly able to set their own type, bastardise it and play with layout at speeds and ways impossible only a few years before. Typesetters were ejected, and desktop-publishing was born. By 2000, designers were all over the internet, and spilling into new roles as illustrators, animators, software developers and game designers – no one remembers the typesetters, but the smart ones are now still working – but not as typesetters – they are building virtual worlds. We still print things and print didn’t die. It changed how we want to use it. Personal cards, books, magazines, short runs on colour copies. What died was the revenue streams and incumbent media structure that saw people as ‘our readers’ and not ‘our publishing partners’. Whenever this happens; what replaces it does not support the structures and salaries of those that came before. Internet advertising doesn’t even come close to replacing newspaper revenues lost.

But is society worse or better? Are we more distant or closer to better learning? I’m sure these questions will be debated endlessly inside bubblecon 09/10/11 – but by 2012 … I suspect uncon2012 will be dominant and education will have been transformed. [optimism is great huh?]

At the top of the post is the question I ask all the time. “how will using technology narrow the transactional distance the internet is creating between teacher and students?” - My belief is that we have to unlock cognitive apprenticeships – not destroy schools or libraries – but you can be damn sure it will change their purpose and will re-define not just the roles of teachers, but the role of formal education.

Press [deny] or [ignore] now user.

Spy Class – Orientation

ORIENTATION for the super-secret spy class (I still have no idea what they do) was held in Evergreen tonight for distance students preparing for a role-play assessment task. This is actually the space for Scott Merrick and Co’s MUVERS activities in simulations and assessment. It’s got this great feel to it and has very simple, but effective instructional design. It took only a few minutes to get off the landing area and to a point where the students had configured their audio, learned how to move in the space and interact with the environment. The session then moved to Jokaydia to the role-play area and students were able to walk though the actions that they will soon be doing under assessment.

Like the rest of the internet, Linden has made massive leaps forward in terms of functionality and reliability this year. Macquarie University has access to all the usual video conference tools – so there has to be a pedagogical reason to choose Second Life!. That becomes obvious when students are engaging with the environment that has been designed specifically for a purpose, not repurposed. There is a purity in Educational Second Life away from the duplication, and noize of the 2D web.

The ability to conceptualise yourself in spaces and situations that are impossible otherwise provides a clear focus, and readily allows the alignment of outcome, activity and assessment. For distance learners; this is affords an opportunity to experience a ’shared reality’ – and has been warmly welcomed. Of the few comments the spooks made “this is so much fun”, and yet they were learning. The level of stress and effort to get them here and prepared for their assessment has been absolutely minimal. Perhaps the game-like space brings an assumed understanding that not everything will be explained or prescribed. Seriously if all you are using in distance education is a forum – you are at the telegram level of engagement with learning online.

Designing assessment is Second Life is possibly the most rewarding and creative parts of instructional design for me. Watching avatars interact and explore puzzles and problems, talk and work together to solve them in real time is amazing. Even if they won’t tell you anything about their course or what they do. Spys are not the most sharing people to teach. I’m looking forward to the role-play sessions.

The whole world in our hands

This video appeared last week, vanished and has now returned. Laptops (Netbooks) in schools are a welcomed investment and if nothing else will finally driving some modern infrastructure in schools. It is unknown how many laptops, when or if there is on-going funding to reach year 12. Elections will probably have a lot to do with that. So is this a public information film or advertising. It obviously cost a lot of money, and is that where public money should be going? It presents like Huxley’s Brave New World, mixed with edgy sound track, cross-processed images and plenty of handy-cam angles, complete with Nathan Rees in a school at the end reinforcing the message of who made this happen. It reminded me more of the ‘you wouldn’t steal a car’ anti-piracy ad than information – it  offers mixed messages and assembled by a committee, not a creative vision.

Students are script-reading to their peers is pseudo ‘cool’ tones.

“No cyberbulling, no sharing of personal information, pictures or emails without permission” say the students also pointing out it has security features so the school can shut it down and take it off students who are not using it correctly. Apparently it is bye bye paper and hello music and games at lunch.

To me this kind of spin-doctoring that puts public education at a disadvantage and does not reflect reality and the viewer assumes this aligns to outcomes, pedagogy and professional development of teachers.

And then comes the hookline of assurance.

“We’ve got the whole world in our hands” and ”technical support comes from schools”

Quite clearly they are net books not laptops, students won’t be playing games at lunchtime on a DET network anytime soon as access to the new world is though the filtration system. It seems likely that most students will break the ‘rules’ in lieu of any formal ‘digital citizenship’  or educational programme (they don’t recognise the same boundaries). The technical support needed to maintain this fleet of laptops is going to be epic. Anyone who has experienced 1:1 knows just how hard it is to scale and maintain over lengthy periods. It seems much of the effort will be applied to ’securing’ them, nor exploring. Yet the ad presents as if this is all a given and Mr Rees is unleashing something really innovative. It has the potential too, but no certainty.

This is what irks me – not the machines or the opportunity but use of this media to deliver a clearly political message, which is less than the whole truth – either as an ad or public information.

I am not sure who it is aimed at, and I’d love to know how much it cost. I don’t want ‘better than nothing for my children’ and I want them to stay in quality public education and no amount of post-production is going alter the reality that this is a futurists view, not a realists. I want to love it, but I can’t – there is a long way to go and this is quite simply premature and misleading, high on rhetoric and low on evidence. I notice that comments will of course be moderated until someone re-posts it.

++update++

I just read Shelly’s post about Blizzard deciding to blow up it’s entire World of Warcraft game in order to make a new one. Well worth a read if you’ve not been to Teach Paperless before.

“For thirty+ years, we’ve treated schools like boardgames. And every few years, we’d announce that the game was changing, but we kept using the same board and the same pieces. We changed the rules, but forced the players to use the same old dice”.  He goes on to explain why fundamental change is needed “Because our kids are dying to take on new adventures. After all, they live in a world where they expect upheaval and change; they don’t understand why so many of us are so afraid of it.”

Never mind the learning, heres the policy

RESOURCES may bring people to to start line, but won’t motivate them to take part in what they often perceive to be a marathon. Most teachers consider themselves busy and time poor. They are already providing many hours free to deal with expanding workplace demands. Teaching is a complex juggling act between academic, discipline learning and activities leading to student engagement, support and community. Teacher, friend, mentor, fan, supporter, bus driver, coach etc., Parents want academic success, but they increasingly want their children to be happy, active and experience diversity though social action and interaction. We want it all, and no one wants to pay for any of it.

Education is organised by the time-table, ruling supreme over formal subjects, spaces, students and staff. Extra-curricular is now used to describe learning un-accommodated and informal. From and early age a we learned to be organised by it. But the factories are gone along with bells, sirens and production line management.

A ’student free day’ is often more about ensuring central-policy has been issued to teachers than learning, and even then it is organised for us. We however have been transformed by the informal immediacy and abundance of information today. We are less interested in structures where information is scarce and requires time to access at the discretion of a few. Banks, shops, telecommunications, politicians have all learned that we don’t want to wait, to queue up, to be offered a limited choice – because we are quite capable of seeking alternatives.

When we talk about professional development of teachers we need to explicit about what is being asked of them. Extra-curricula and informal learning has led to most teachers working one day a week unpaid. It appears the digital education revolution is based on the notion that teachers will now move into a 7th day – unpaid. There is an epic difference between how we approach formal and informal professional development – there is stagnation in one and over-reliance in the other. Equiry is still considered ‘best’ for informal problem based learning where as didactic/rote/exam learning better for formal assessment (and reporting).

It is often these extra-curricula activities that drive students and teachers to explore their passions and strengths. We have less power in formal learning or formal structures, and so are less interested in them. Extra curricula activities become significant differentiators between qualifications and attaining something more. Film, computer, drama, debating, band, radio and sports ‘clubs’ have been the informal motivators of many people’s career paths. Many parents are as interested in these as they are in formal classrooms. Choice is a driver of change – right now there are few alternatives to formal public education, but that is not to say there are none.

How to assess international spys

DISTANCE students in an International Security course at Macquarie University are about to play games. The are playing the roles of people who might potentially be making some of very important ones for real. It seems that the chances are, many conversations will happen over great distance as well as in the conference room. While on campus students can role-play their assessment in the comfort of the super-secret high tech lair, those distance students might have previously been given some alternative task. No fun in that, so now there is a weekly task held in world with their teacher.

Second Life is incredibly flexible in assessment of this kind. The course designer can create a ’shared reality’ by role-playing and facilitating an engaging environment for the students. Progressively over a two weeks; students have waded into virtual worlds – using online resources. The space is designed to be a ‘three click deal’. As they enter the space; they are automatically given note cards.

1. Click to arrive in-world in a realistic room with simple props. An automated note card pops up to give the student instructions on what to do next. It logs their attendance automatically with time and date.
2. Click the folder on the desk, marked top-secret. It provides some tips on effective role-play and presentation, so there is additional motivation to get some extra help that is normally shared or observed in physical space but not online.
3. Click to sit in the chair, read the briefing – and the assessment is recorded in real time; then given back to the student so they can reflect on their performance after grading. They are given a notecard at the end of the session with further reading and instructions in the main MQ building via a landmark and leave.

The instructional design for this was developed using simple storyboards in Apple Pages; and gradually we explored and expanded on the functionality and environment needed to bring absolute newcomers into a virtual world and undertake a very real assessment task. Each week, the students will get watch a video briefing from SL (we film them all in 15 mins in one session). So far, this has been met with real enthusiasm by the distance students and will be interesting to evaluate. In getting the solution for the students, the teacher has had to do some work too – and already has forgotten about trying to using …. I can’t say too much more …. I hear footsteps heading my way.

What if I look up more and inward less?

Woodstock is a now a vintage soundtrack.

NOTHING stays the same it seems, yet education follows familiar annual cycles. There are signals of change in  Australia and schools will see a flood tide of new technologies and values appear in classrooms in 2010/11. These are likely to be tampered by continued frustration around filters, opaque policy, premium-economy schools, inequity in funding,  new curriculum, league tables and professional development. We are all somewhere on the continuum between ‘nothing will change’ and ‘everything could change’ from in-active observers to critics, enthusiasts, explorers, followers and leaders.

In 1963, Dylan sang about not “standing in doorways and blocking the halls” but today the Hill Top Hoods urge us to “stand tall above ridiculous under-achievers and constant non-believers”.

Woodstock was a signal of social change 40 years ago; and today it is signaled by the rise of YouTube; remixing; gaming and social networks. Parents and students are increasingly interested in more post-modern if not post-materialist attributes. We want our children to value social commitments, digital citizenship, environment and safety as well as academic attainment. We know that school can only only one part and place of learning if all it offers is a formal activity driven by provision of required formal qualifications. We know that we are more than ever involved in informal learning and networks online – and this represents a change in social values. What happens when qualifications are no longer the predominant indicators of creativity, potential and employability? What will drive the change that makes your LinkedIn profile more important that your graduate exam scores? What were the drivers that placed Bored of Studies as being more important to students than Board of Studies?

Right now, to me,  it matters little that one teacher is solely active in exploring ‘read/write technology in a community of in-actives. What matters is that they spend time looking up into the cloud noticing signals and patterns with their students. That is the skill I hope my kids are able to activate through education. Not all the time; as novices I want them to feel comfortable with learning under-pinning knowledge, but also hope their teacher will take the time to engage them though shared exploration of alternative scenarios.

“What if I tried to use a game and not another Ning”, “What if I spend a week teaching outside with no technology”, “what if I make that phone call to ask why that site is blocked”. Being able to conceptualize and explore ‘what if’ scenarios to me is a key student attribute. Rather than “what if it doesn’t work”, explore more “what if it did?”.  What if students who feel unsafe in school can learn in an online school that is entirely safe. What if un-engaged kids can learn social commitments from Lily Allen videos. What if the text books is wrong, what if project based learning is not the best solution for everyone, what if I am wrong … what if no one agrees with me.

In planning the school year; it is well worth exploring the continuum of ‘what if’ scenarious with staff at the outset. What if you explored new possibilities as a community before you explore new tools?

Proximity of influence

Suzie Boss at Edutopia, posted a great article about ‘a back porch for teachers’, illustrating why it is important to create some time and space in the local community to talk about the business of learning and teaching. In this post I’d like to share how Suzie’s post aligns with some of the work I’m doing in the professional development of teachers.

Suzie reflects after meeting with teachers.

And although they took their work seriously, it was easy to see they were enjoying the extended time to talk through ideas and learn from each other. Such intensive, ongoing, and collaborative professional development is exactly what research shows to be most effective for improving both teachers’ practice and student learning. Yet for most teachers, this remains a rare experience.

How to minimise the cost and maximise the opportunity.

It seems unlikely that effective, enterprise level professional learning is about to flow into schools in proportion to the technology right now. It seems almost impossible to put a plan into enterprise action.

Professional learning:

• has to be ‘on demand’ and fit their schedule. This means that you have to prepare resources that allow them to level up their knowledge in under 10 minutes in multiple formats.
• text information has to be summised and digested in a minute, it has to lead to further action in one page or less. Video has to be 2-4 minutes, and each segment of interest (topic) no more than a minute and it has to play in their browser.
• contextual development rules. They have to use the minute resources, watch the videos and take the action in close proximity to the mentor – the same room. They have to ask the questions, you have to listen not talk, and help them answer the questions.

Here are some rules I have:

• you must be prepared to do 50% of their work for them, and in doing it, create independence sufficient for them to complete it – with you riding shot gun. Don’t do it for them.
• you must expect that most people will have less than 10 minutes to learn something, and want to spend at least half that time ‘playing’. Observing them is key to teaching them.
• If they walk out the room, and not applied what you taught them to a contextual situation (solving a real problem) – you will get a push back later and it won’t be adopted
• you need to ride shot gun on their projects as a critical friend, by working though their students and not trying to ‘train’ the teacher directly about teaching.
• iPhones are great tools – load the video – pass them the phone. People love to hold technology, not look at it. YouTube is your friend.
• more is learned in 10 mins over coffee than at that fancy seminar. Seminars are critical however – they provide community connections.
• limit the scope and tools: 2/3 tools is more than enough. Repeated bombing runs over 1 target is effective, aerobatics is just amusing.

Now forget all these rules; and re-write you own. Then break them. This is massive problem with quangos and committees; you have to re-write the rules often – but leave the under pinning theory in place for a very long time. That seems the opposite of what committees do much of the time.

You have to collect local data and information in vastly more quantities than ‘teach’ new things.

This collection can be the 10 minutes on the back porch. Just talking over coffee; pointing out things on a laptop and listening is so important in the professional development of teachers. They are after all professional talkers – and we are learning about listening. Finding ways to listen uses the same rules and ideas – no survey that takes more than a minute etc. Not only are we trying to teach new skills; we are trying to create new pedagogy – and that will not happen unless you find ways to spend very short amounts of time listening followed by similar amounts of time helping – them create. I don’t like ’spoon feeding’, but do encourage you to put all your staff on a slow drip feed.

Put another way, we have to gain inches not miles, and corrupt people in minutes not hours. Why – because ‘traditional PD’ smells like ‘boring’; so we have to try to find alternative strategies, spaces and times to do it. As soon as it looks like ‘PD’, you’ll get a bolt for the door – but when it looks like I’m getting help – all about me! – I am interested.

Finally, give it TIME. Lots of time. Think in semesters not weeks or even terms. It’s easier to recover from the next ‘yeah but’ if you do.

Honey, we got your report and … we need to talk.

talk the talk and walk the walk

THE SCHOOL REPORT has shown up, and well, frankly – its a bit of a broken record. Must try harder, doesn’t stay on task, distracts others, easily distracted, does not take responsibility for his own learning, often skips class and disrespects the teacher. Yep, I just read another government funded report on the state of 21st Century Education Revolution Matrix Cyber Robocop 2.0.

The solution to the incremental, unpredictable and epic changes that have occurred in technology, have obviously impacted vast sections of society, who don’t remember a world before broadband, let alone arguing with parents over phoning friends with a land line. If I can Google it, so can you -add to it, don’t just reference it. Australia is not leading 21st Century anything, unless you count committees and sub committees to form working parties to investigate blah.

Here’s a summary of what NOT to include in report – cause we can Google it for ourselves. – so take note bureaucrats and those who lurk at foot of government. We are onto you.

1. We know it’s the 21st Century, so stop making a reference to it as though it’s futuristic and don’t use it in the title.
2. Most of the tools teachers want are blocked and are not emerging at all, they are here.
3. Do not create another quango and acronym, but by action
4. Stop telling people what ‘they’ need to do and start training them how to do something to solve your problem – and recognise it.
5. Stop quoting the Horizon Report and others; and get your backside into a classroom and try some of your ideas out personally
6. Education is a political act that has social consequences this is why we elect them to do the job for us, not the other way around.

I went to a class recently (not where I work) and we turned off the spell check . People typed in their responses to a problem set on a common shared page wiki. It was quite obvious that the assembled students found this confronting, challenging down right weird. If they dont used to communicating, leading and solving, then this will be because the quangos and political courtesans have failed to provision sufficient scholarly challenges; choosing to remain risk adverse and gaze endlessly at what ‘we’ need to do.

Report writers and researchers (reference) are not longer the smartest people in the room anymore, because there is no room. Reports of not sufficient to justify your existence.

If a teacher works 4 hours a week learning technology and working after school on reports and resources that works out about $500,000 a year per school. We have noticed this.  Like the man said, dangerously irrelevant

Online School of Opportunity (OSO)

Mashable posted  “Why Teens Don’t Tweet”, giving a range of data and view on the demographics of a social network growing at +1300% a month. It made me wonder about how effective we are at competing for the attention of students, teachers and educational leaders. Are we too busy pressing the ‘Digg’ button and missing the opportunities presented?

“Twitter’s different than Facebook or MySpace because Twitter is not about your friends … Teens, more than any other age group, care about their friends. It’s the continuation of real-life friendship (and the creation of online ones) that has driven the tremendous growth of MySpace, Facebook, Bebo etc”.

To use these spaces, today’s teens spend increasing amounts of time informally online. They are using informal learning. As formal public education provides almost no spaces for this it is no surprise that teens power down between 9 and 3.30, disconnected from their informal learning networks. And it isn’t a teen sensation; social games and online networks are actively marketed to pre-schoolers. The numbers participating in pre-school social game Webkinz alone dwarfs teen blogging.

McGivney (1999) a decade ago recognised the importance of informal learning pathways.

“Informal learning generated by local people themselves often led to wider community involvement and activism, whereas learning arranged by education providers most often led to high rates of educational progression. Informal learning often started people on a continuing learning path by helping them become confident and successful learners. “

Space, time and organisation are cardinal elements of formal learning – which is the inverse of the online educational commons. Informality enables us to be successful learners in playful and social ways that we can take to new situations. Increasingly games and social networks provide this function. It is common to see two teachers talking about education online; but rare to see departmental CEO or Minister add to any authentic open discussion. They have attained their authority by abiding by the rules of formality; where as online authority is now earned through action in informal networks.

Teens use  mobile phones, Bebo, Facebook and MySpace – to successfully strengthen friend networks. What they don’t know how to do is apply it to the discipline needed in obtain life affecting qualifications. There is a clear role for teachers to do this, and students readily work with these teachers – who are not necessarily technocrats – but are adoptive leaders and good communicators. They talk with, not at – which is another characteristic of policy making bureacrats and politicians. You can’t co-opt your way to social change on your terms anymore. Get over it; move on. Stop building walled gardens and ignoring what is there already.

The problem with internalising everything and agreeing with yourself, is that it sustains nothing except yourself.

Seriously – why do we spend millions developing ‘closed’ applications using tax-payer money on things like a blog engine ‘pilot’, when the world is using Edublog Campus? The criteria is less than transparent and hardly going to give any real indication of pedagogical reform; if indeed there is going to be any public release of the findings. Per teacher; what is the investment?

The blog trial involves 20 teachers, each from a different school or TAFE Institute from across the State. Trial participants were selected though a variety of means but all are users of collaborative tools and are keen to use blogs for teaching and learning.

The Centre for Learning Innovation’s website (The public education tech-development arm) says “Connected learning projects allow students to engage with real-life situations, which involve communication, collaboration, self-directed learning, problem solving, researching and publishing findings.” it prompt you to download  a 1997 document which then explains what the internet is, why use it in the classroom and gives an illustration of how to use a website (Netscape 2). The link is dead, and obviously ancient history – yet is on the ‘new’ website.

Do you learn more by skimming last night Tweets than you did at your last technology ‘in-service’?

We don’t need to be at specific time or place to learn – just access the educational network commons that now exists online. We are seeing an effusion of activity in forming and joining new networks that is changing education philopshy, not technology itself. The tragedy is that teachers are often unable to benefit students from this action. It is locked stepped by political orientation to conventional, schematic discernment of the 21st Century itself.

We should be better utilising existing resources such as libraries and teachers, and investigating an ‘Online School of Opportunity (OSO) and not limiting students through long-familiar toothsome approaches to quality improvement (aka “School of Excellence” ). We need centres of opportunity before excellence can be afforded to all -  though investment in public Libraries and community spaces that encourage both teachers and students to get together and transform the way they use technology; not block it.

Ref: McGivney (1999). “Informal Learning in the Community: A Trigger for Change and Development.”  National Institute for Adult Continuing Education, UK.

Beautiful puzzles and alco foil planets

SAMOROST is a beautiful browser based flash puzzle game. The animation, illustration. sound and character development is amazing. A stand out in the genre of online games and puzzles. The basic level is also FREE, loads fast and invites exploration! It is so visually rich that it can easily be used to create a digital story or narrative well outside the computer screen. The art is engaging and contemporary in young children’s animation right now that primary teachers would have no problem in using it to motivate a range of classroom activities. (Unless it’s DET in which case it might be blocked).

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if kids could play the game and create new stories and illustrations and make a book. Send the pictures and words to SnapFish, give the URL to parents – hey presto! It would be wonderful not hard. Hard is making alco foil planets and wire figures in a 3D animated film (oh damn, that’s not hard either – you don’t need a video camera or buy fancy software). Easy activity for K6.

You’re right – Samarost is a fantastic springboard for learning in many KLAs.
Here are some blog posts I wrote when I used it first with my Year 4, 5, 6 class in 2007.

http://tinyurl.com/mkhfbo

http://tinyurl.com/mno7q7

http://tinyurl.com/ng6up9

http://tinyurl.com/6evf5d

This game really helped open my eyes to the possibilities and opportunities of using games in the classroom.

Hope you get to use this game with a really lucky class soon!

Cheers

KimP

I’m going to facilitate a discussion on using simple games to promote motivational story telling at the Jokaydia Annual Unconference in Second Life 24/6 September. I hope anyone whos interested in using games and playful learning and storytelling will join the session which is free. Check here for all the information on this event – which is always amazing.

To cook up this lesson:
Tools needed: 3  Samorost , Snapfish and a digital camera – Learning curve for kids : Nil –  Learning curve for teachers : 1-2 hours