Video for assessment

I have always believed that assessment should be primarily for the benefit of the student, not the teacher. I concede that teachers need to know how their students are progressing, and this is very much a part of the assessment process. However, assessment of learning is not as important as assessment for learning. When it comes to supporting a student's progress, showing them what they can do to improve, or perform better is the key. Formative forms of assessment are therefore more important in the process of learning. As I have previously argued, I believe summative assessment methods are only useful to mark an end to a specific period of learning, a gateway into the next stage of the learning journey (and I'm not convinced we should even be doing this in many cases).

In my teaching I have therefore focused on assessment as a means of scaffolding student progress, and I employ a variety of methods to achieve this end. I don't like end of module assessments much. They are there to confirm the level the student has achieved, but more importantly, they should be used to inform students how they should proceed to achieve higher grades next time. This can be quite a superficial exercise, especially if the student learns nothing from writing the assignment.

One recent assessment method I have used is to get students to make videos. Here's the process: Students are introduced to a new concept, presented with some basic content and guidelines, and asked to go away and research more deeply around their topic. Each student in the group is given a different topic to research. They are then asked to create a video (or other form of presentation) and show it to their classmates. What ensues is an open discussion, with tutor participation, to explore more deeply the topic in question. In parallel to this, the student presenter is challenged to defend their perspective, to think critically about their own views, and to discuss the process they went through to create the video. The latter promotes metacognitive processes, because the student has to reflect upon how they have learnt what they know, and to examine their own thought processes. All the students learn about all the topics through watching the presentations, and asking questions. Student presenters receive feedback on their work from their peers, their tutor, and ultimately when they publish their video on YouTube, from viewers who are beyond their own learning community. This forms a very powerful mix and progression of learning through making, thinking, questioning and interaction.

Below are a small selection of the videos my own second year teacher education students have made this week around the theme of learning theories. In this instance, these videos represent the next level of learning to that described in the process above. They have already blogged about one specific learning theory, and have then combined it with another theory to create their own synthesis of understanding about how theories relate to each other to better explain learning. The videos depict this synthesis in a variety of styles. It goes without saying that your constructive feedback to my students on their work would be very welcome.

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                        Stories without words

This week I gave my first year education students a new project. In pairs they were asked to produce a short video - without words - to tell the story of a part of the history of Plymouth. They were given two days to complete the project, and the first day involved a 6 hour history walk around the city, where they were given opportunities to capture still and moving images and do some research. On the second day of the project they assembled their images and videos together, added sound effects and music, and then presented their videos to their peers and the module tutors for feedback.

Plymouth has a rich heritage and is steeped in history. There are many iconic places and buildings that speak of this history including Plymouth Hoe, where Sir Francis Drake reputedly played bowls before sailing to do battle with the Spanish Armada in 1588, the Mayflower Steps in the old part of town, where the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for the New World in 1620, various sites commemorating the Blitz of the Second World War, when the city was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe, and many famous figures who lived in Plymouth or were associated with the city, including Nancy Astor (first female member of the British Parliament, explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Captain James Cook, inventors William Cookworthy, Charles Babbage and John Smeaton (Smeaton's Tower is pictured), artists including Sir Joshua Reynolds and Robert Lenkiewicz, and writers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The students produced several videos varying in format and style, each focusing on a different aspect or age of Plymouth's history. Although they were deliberately given few guidelines, the students were able to interpret their brief successfully, fill in the gaps, and reported learning many new skills, some technical around the use of their cameras, editing and the use of MS Moviemaker, iMovie and other tools; problem solving and creative skills, learning to work in a team, decision making, negotiation of new ideas, and researching the sites they visited. Essentially, the product was less important than the process by which they reached their goal. This method of minimal instruction, maximum participation, was appreciated, and several thought they would apply similar methods with the primary age children they will soon be teaching. Below is a fine example of the work they produced in their Stories without Words project.

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                       Vlogging and learning

Hawaiin educator Amy Burvall is well known for her series of videos in the History Teachers series. They are well worth a view, even if you are not that much into history.

Her recent keynote speech in Texas was entitled 'Leveraging for legacy and cultivating new literacies' and was replete with great, and some might claim, radical ideas. One slide in particular resonated with me, and that was her notes on vlogging. Vlogging - or video blogging - has been a growing trend, especially among the twenty-something age group, and is defining itself as a new genre of self expression in the digital ecology. Even my eldest daughter, also called Amy (Amy Hacks Life - not the name on her birth certificate) has created her own YouTube channel and is regularly vlogging on a range of topics including how to hack life. Amy Burvall outlines 7 great reasons why vlogging is a useful method of reflective learning for students. Here ther are with my own annotations included:

1 - It is personal and facilitates the student voice. It supports personalised learning through self expression, and through the act of thinking out loud and performing one's learning for a public audience.

2 - It is a natural part of the confessional culture. The current generation self discloses a great deal more than those in previous generations, and can be brutally honest in telling of their personal stories. This is clearly becoming a key part of the new digital cultural capital and feeds their perceived need to connect through reciprocal disclosure of personal details.

3 - Vlogging is easy, cheap and fun. All you need to begin vlogging is a video camera, such as the one included in all smart phones, and an topic to talk about. Many vlogs are unedited, recorded in real time, and posted direct to YouTube.

4 - It is less stressful for some. I recall several of my own students recently choosing a video as their preferred format of assessment, because I offered it as a legitimate mode of assignment. They said they felt more comfortable expressing their learning in video format, but of course, as a teacher, one should always ensure that students are assessed in as many different modes as are available. And remember, vlogs can include text in the form of subtitles or overlaid commentary.

5 - Practice new literacies. For those less familiar with vlogging, creating your first can be quite a challenge. A number of new literacies need to be learnt, including video camera use, editing (possibly), audio production, presentation skills, reflective communication and posting content to the web. This is not an exhaustive list, but reflects the extent to which new ways of working need to be learnt to vlog successfully.

6 - Vlogs are hard to plagiarise. It may be easy to copy the ideas found within some vlogs, but the personal signature of a vlog is virtually impossible to duplicate. Many well known vlogs attract parodies, but these in themselves could be seen as original works, with creative merit of their own.

7 - Dynamic - vlogs can be augmented. In this statement I believe Amy means that vlogs can be just the start of self expression through video, and can be supplemented with music, animation, editing, remixing and a host of other additions which can enhance or even transform the messages found within them.

I can add number 8 to the list, by suggesting that vlogging can be very expressive and can unleash the creativity of the person creating it as well as capturing the imagination of those watching it.

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                           Digital habitus

The writings of philosopher and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu focus predominantly upon the power structures and dynamics of society, and highlight the importance of cultural capital. Cultural capital can be described as the human assets each of us owns, including our intellect, personal navigation of society and its artefacts, our cultural awareness and even our sense of style and the manner in which we publicly present ourselves. Whereas capital (in a monetary sense) is the accumulation of the fruits of labour, cultural capital is the accretion of all that has been learnt through immersion within a specific culture. Education has been described as the social transmission of this learning to younger generations. Cultural capital is premised upon shared symbolism, acting as the social glue that binds a specific society together.

One of Bourdieu's better known dimensions of cultural capital is habitus - the process through which the activities of everyday life shape and order our values and expectations. Habitus is a useful explanation of the way we live our daily lives, including the habits we acquire, and the manner in which we conduct our behaviours.

So what of our habitual use of digital media? What are the effects of our fearsome fascination with mobile phones, our predilection to video games, our inexorable gravitation toward social media? Do these constitute a digital habitus? When we observe our digital representations, our lives portrayed on screen, and our ideas played out in a virtual simulacrum of reality, what do we see? Does the digital trail we leave online represent any part of our real lives? Does our digital presence accurately represent any aspect of the self? In the view of Jean Baudrillard, a simulacrum is a copy that has no original. This is representative of the manner in which we habituate into digital media, believing that we are laying down versions of our thoughts and behaviour from real life. In fact, it is possible that the digital versions of ourselves that exist online are in fact original and have never previously existed. We shape our technology and then it shapes us, suggests Marshall McLuhan. If this is the case, then our simulacra might indeed represent new and emerging versions of ourselves, versions that would be impossible or improbable without the affordances of our technologies.

This discourse is highly relevant in the context of education. Such questions can relate specifically to both the nefarious use of technology, including cyberbullying, sexting, illegal hacking and trolling - and to more appropriate uses, including the creating, repurposing and sharing of content and the use of technology to connect and build new communities. They also speak to us of the means through which schooling has been used to convey to each successive generation the values, belief systems and behaviours of those preceding. Might the digital habitus explain a significant interruption of that age-old transmission process? Exactly how the use of digital media might influence the emergence of new social identities and the acquisition of digital literacies is a subject in need of deeper exploration. As ever, your thoughts and comments are very welcome.

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                    A little more conversation

I went on public record several times this year to say that the best continuing professional development (CPD) I have ever received has been through Twitter. Now it depends on how you define CPD, but for me it is the personal learning you require to sustain, enhance and extend your own capabilities within your professional practice. This learning can come in many forms. My Personal Learning Network (PLN) is the vehicle that carries me to this learning, and social media is the highway that enables me to get there. All of my learning right now, at this stage of my career, is self determined. It is informal by nature and is essentially conversational.

The dialogue I enjoy is accessed via my PLN, often through Twitter, but can also come from LinkedIn or Facebook, Google Hangouts or even YouTube and any number of other of the social media platforms I use. What strikes me most about learning through PLN conversations is that the topics are always fresh, the discussions are on point, and the subsequent outcomes continue the learning process, through blogging, videos and other activities, leading to further dialogue. Blogging as conversation is increasingly popular and there are now numerous global chats on Twitter, many of which identify themselves with exclusive hashtags. Here's a short video I made about three reasons why Twitter is important for educators.


This is Learning 2.0, learning that involves self determined forms of education, the creation of new content, peer production of learning, and of course the widespread sharing of this back into the global community of learning. This ever virtuous circle of learning as dialogue through creating and sharing is what has propelled countless numbers of communities of practice to higher levels of understanding, and is a valid template to also apply to the compulsory education sectors and other formal learning ecologies.

We don't know what the future will bring us, but we can be sure that this kind of learning will continue and will gather impetus, discovering new ways to do things, new ideas to apply, new explanations, and of course - new people to connect with and with whom to enjoy new conversations.

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                   The unGoogleable question

Are there any questions that you cannot Google? It's a provocative question I have asked several times to audiences in the last few days. It's a tough question to answer, as my audiences in Amsterdam and Dublin discovered this week. Try it yourself and see. What is there that is not discoverable, if you know what questions to ask?

If we can search for and find just about any knowledge on the web these days, the key question must be: what is left that we cannot search for? This question has huge implications for education, for schools, colleges, universities, indeed any organisation that has learning at its heart. If all knowledge is now available online, what place is there for formal education processes, for academic courses, for classrooms, indeed... for teachers? One response of course, is that formal education will always have some relevance in human society, and there will always be a place for teachers. This is because education is, and has always been more that simply content. Learning involves a process that is lifelong, incorporating a great deal more than the acquisition of knowledge. Formal education is partly responsible for helping us to learn what it is to work together, and it is where we acquire many of our (transferable) skills, develop specific attitudes and beliefs, and where we are inducted into some of the specific roles we need to play in society.

The unGoogleable question never the less raises some hugely important philosophical questions however. One relates to the nature of knowledge, and how we come to 'know'; another is how we manage and organise knowledge once we have it. There are at least two specific areas of questions that are unGoogleable. In future blog posts I intend to explore each of these and draw out some important principles about how we are living our lives, and learn about our world, in this century. In the meantime I would be fascinated to hear about what you consider to the the 'unGoogleable questions', and what they mean to you. The comments box is open...

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        Preparing our children for the future

In my last post I asked if there were any unGoogleable questions. This was not actually a question about search engines or the power of the Internet. It was a question about the fundamental nature of knowledge. I was interested in exploring how we learn in the digital age and specifically, the constantly shifting nature of knowledge.

My focus turned to what we don't yet know, and how we discover what we need to know, by asking the right questions (I expand on this theme in this post). I would argue that the best, and most powerful forms of education are based on asking questions rather than being given answers. Learning through conversation has always been more powerful than learning by rote or instruction. No matter how clever or persuasive certain so called experts' arguments appear to be about the need for children to memorise facts and receive their knowledge from teachers, we should not be taken in by such rhetoric. We need to see these people for what they actually are. They are dangerous individuals who are trying to prevent progress by perpetuating a restrictive method of schooling that ultimately, will rob our children of their futures. They are self acclaimed experts who wish to maintain control over our education system by perpetuating standardised testing, rote learning and whole class instruction, while demonising alternative approaches such as personalised learning, games playing and problem solving.

They wrap up their ideas in a cloak of respectability and present them exclusively as the answer to today's education crisis. They snipe and sneer at those who advocate progressive approaches to education, as they fight desperately to preserve what control they have over schools. In so doing, they are depriving an entire generation of children the right to discover for themselves just how wonderful learning really is. They rob this generation of students of their human right to receive a good, dynamic and relevant education.

They are like King Canute trying to hold back the tide. Given time, their ideas will fade into irrelevance, because there is a dynamic alternative. If we concede that transmitting knowledge is no longer the sole function of education, if we believe that schools should not be training children exclusively for the workplace, we will see it. Children need to be prepared to live and work in a rapidly changing world where they will be employed (or even employ themselves) in many new and unfamiliar contexts. Children will need to gain a wider and deeper appreciation of their changing world, and need to know what questions to ask when they are met with previously unknown challenges. This cannot be founded solely on the knowledge we already have. It requires the ability to create new knowledge, and the development of new skills, competencies and literacies. The problems our students will encounter when they reach adulthood will be unique to their generation, possibly created by the new technologies they use, and no amount of knowledge acquisition from today's curriculum, nor teaching from today's experts, can prepare them for that. They will need to be entrepreneurs and innovators, problem solvers, inventors and creators to survive.

How can you educate children to be entrepreneurial or innovative? You might do so by creating learning environments in which they can safely take risks and experiment, and where they can fail and learn through that failure. You work with them to create their own curriculum, one that is relevant to their future needs, and one that exploits their current skills and interests. The success of this will be based on being able to frame the right questions to meet the demands of future society.

When my students do their research projects they start with questions, and invariably end up with many further, related questions. In my classes I practice a Socratic method of pedagogy, which includes the setting of challenges. Inquiry based learning is the foundation for deeper understanding. It is the prime ingredient in all progressive learning methods. It is the essence of knowledge production, and the thread that runs through all entrepreneurial and innovative behaviour. It is also the only hope we have for the future. May the coming year be a successful one for all those educators who see children as creative individuals rather than as commodities.

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                        What we don't know

In February 2002, at the height of media speculation over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld made the following statement:

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones".

To some it was a clever statement that encapsulated the confusion and lack of certainty of the situation, while for others it was simply the worst kind of political doublespeak, verging on absurdity. Regardless of the judgement on Rumsfeld's rhetoric, it serves to illustrate an important point about knowledge - that there are many things we don't know, and there are even more things that we are unaware we don't know. The quest for knowledge is a never ending human endeavour, because ignorance is dangerous. Without adequate knowledge we are unprepared for life, fail to capitalise on opportunities when they arise, and there may even be fatal consequences. That is why it is so important for all of us to share what we know and share it freely on social media. As I have previously opined, knowledge is also continuously changing, sometimes on a daily basis as scientific breakthroughs and new data bring fresh insights. The amount of new knowledge generated on the Web alone is staggering beyond belief.

It's actually quite easy to list what know we don't know - there are many websites detailing many of the areas of knowledge in which we are lacking. Cosmology is replete with such unanswered questions: How, for example, do we explain gravity? Why is the sun 400 times larger than the moon and 400 times further away, thus appearing to be exactly the same size and producing perfect solar eclipses every time? Is there life on other planets? How large is the universe... and how did it all begin? Here are five more questions that might keep physicists awake at night. There are many theories, but no definitive answers. Psychology also has many unanswered questions, such as how memory and recall works, or what functions certain areas of the human brain perform. Again, there are many theories, but we lack definitive answers.

It's challenging enough that we are aware of many questions that have no answers, but the most frightening aspect of life is that there are many things we don't know we don't know. We can't begin thinking about them, because they haven't yet emerged into existence and therefore we are yet to be aware of them. We don't know what problems we will meet in the future because the future is imaginary. How can we prepare for this? It has been said that 'what you don't know, won't hurt you,' but the thousands of people who lost their lives during the Asian earthquake and tsunami on December 26, 2004 would disagree if they still had voices. The early warning systems now operational in many ocean locations around the world might have saved many lives if they had been in place in 2004. Ignorance can indeed be dangerous, and that is the reason why education is so vitally important.

What you don't know will hurt you if it takes you by surprise. The future is uncertain, and will present challenges to future generations we haven't even begun to conceive. Preparation for the future should therefore be a prime function of all schools. Students who are aware that there are many things they don't know, tend to be good learners. Those who actively seek to discover the things they don't know become great learners. Students who seek to understand what is yet to be understood will find themselves well ahead of the field.

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                            Coming soon...

I thought it was about time that I published a new book. It's been about five or six years since my last volumes were out on display in the book stores. But what to write? I had been thinking for a while about the potential to create a book based on some of my more substantive blog posts, and so it was a serendipitous moment when I was approached by a publisher after one of my keynotes earlier this year. Subsequent meetings and conversations with Crown House allowed me to hammer out a book outline and then I got down to work over the summer break, selecting the posts, sequencing them and then writing the narrative and commentary around them. I also decided to include some of the conversations I have had around these posts, both from my blog and also on Twitter, thereby adding an element of interactivity. You will probably recognise many of those who get a mention, and you may even get a mention yourself! I'm very pleased with the result (and even the slightly trippy cover art), and I'm pleased to announce that Learning with 'e's is due to be published in early January, in time for book signings at the BETT Show and the Learning Technologies conference in London. I also have other book signings scheduled throughout the year in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as farther afield in cities outside the UK including Madrid, Istanbul, Riyadh and Brisbane.

Learning with 'e's is about educational theory and practice. It focuses on new and emerging theories of learning and pedagogy in the digital age, as well as a critical retrospective on some of the older, more established theories. It also looks to the future. There are fourteen chapters with headings such as 'The shape of minds to come,' 'Rebooting learning', 'A 21st Century Curriculum' and 'Global educators', and you can imagine that it's going to upset some of the traditionalists and delight the progressives. I don't expect everyone to agree with my ideas, but I have tried and tested all of the methods I highlight in the book and they have worked well for my students. To cap it all, I managed to persuade celebrated author and speaker (and former head teacher) Richard Gerver to write the foreword, which was quite a scoop. I'm very much looking forward to seeing its publication in 2015, and to meeting as many readers as possible during book signings, keynote speeches and workshops. You can order Learning with 'e's here on Amazon, and yes, there is also a Kindle version.

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                     A learner's curriculum

I worked for several years alongside Professor Mike Newby, who at the time was serving as Dean of the Faculty of Education at Plymouth University. After his eventual retirement, he continued his research, and in 2005 published what I consider to be one of his most significant contributions to the education literature. A Learner's Curriculum, published by the Association for Teachers and Lecturers, outlines what Newby considered to be a curriculum for the 21st Century. Almost a decade later, in a time where all school children have been born after, or have no memories of the last century, it seems an appropriate time to revisit his work to see how it relates to present day 21st Century practices.

Newby's first assertion is that in a time of rapid change, the curriculum cannot remain static, but must be responsive to the shifting needs of society. He remarks that learning will change, because in the age of the Internet, 'non-hierarchical, self-managed networks will become characteristic organisational features of the middle years of the twenty-first century, and that we must therefore prepare children and young people for a networked world.'  Clearly this has already emerged as a phenomenon in the last few years, and since the proliferation of social media and smart mobiles, seems to be accelerating.

His second assertion is that the structure and boundaries of the curriculum will need to change. He suggests that student needs are changing too, and 'if learners are to flourish and thrive in the decades to come, they will need an experimental, progressive curriculum – one focused on the learner – where moulds will be broken and traditional barriers between disciplines and subjects will start to crumble.' Again, there are signs that this is beginning to happen, but this is a slower process. Conservative organisations such as schools often resist change, and the curriculum is perhaps the most resistant stronghold of them all. Some schools are beginning to break down the barriers between subjects, and are offering cross curricular opportunities. Others are seeing the benefits of progressive methods where learning is student centred, and where experiential approaches, personalised learning and learning through making are coming to the fore.

Newby shows that there are three common curriculum types. The first, and most prevalent in state funded schools is the content based curriculum, which is premised on the belief that children attend school to learn facts. There are several problems with this approach to education, including the fact that some subjects are privileged above others and that some kinds of knowledge can become irrelevant. The content based curriculum is characterised by rapid transition between subjects, little time to experiment and express creativity, and a great deal of testing to ensure that students are as knowledgeable as possible when they leave school.

The second type of curriculum is known as the vocational curriculum, and focuses on preparing children for eventual work. It emphasises skills alongside knowledge, and attempts to support children in their progression from novice to expert status, showing direct links between what is learnt in school and what is eventually practised in the world of work. The major criticism of this approach to education is that it considers children as commodities, and assesses their economic worth in their capability to transition from learner to earner. It fails to acknowledge many of the aesthetic and philosophical aspects of learning, and can stifle creativity.

The final type of curriculum Newby features in his review is the child centred curriculum, which encourages children to question and discover. It imposes fewer boundaries and constraints than its alternatives, and is based less on subjects and more on exploration, because it places more importance on how a child learns than what they learn. Interestingly, Newby describes the child centred curriculum as 'Making discoveries, being encouraged to connect unexpected ideas, not being corralled within conventional subject-based stockades – these habits of thinking could as well describe famous inventors, explorers and university
researchers as children in primary school.' The criticism of this approach is that knowledge is secondary to experience, and that too much school time is wasted on play and experimentation.

One of Professor Newby's statements could be considered a warning to the traditionalists: 'Knowledge will no longer uniquely reside in the heads of teachers, to be conveyed each lesson to their pupils, but will be perpetually available on the internet. The content-based curriculum, such as it is ‘delivered’ in schools (for it will be available everywhere), will have to change to take account of the ready availability of knowledge of many kinds. Subjects, where these remain important, will be in a constant state of flux. Barriers between disciplines will start to crumble, as subjects begin to blend and morph into new subjects. Teachers, eager to protect the status of their subjects, will nonetheless be asked to think anew, and to work alongside others from different disciplines.'

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                            Maker pedagogy

More and more teachers are beginning to realise that creating environments and possibilities where students make things is a very powerful pedagogy. Students learn a number of skills and draw on a variety of subjects when they design and create objects. Teaching takes a back seat and product based education is sidelined in favour of process based learning. Recently I have visited a number of schools in the UK and New Zealand where children have shown a deeper understanding of their subject when they are engaged in making. Seymour Papert's work on constructionism outlines the cognitive gain that occurs when we create something new rather than simply repeat knowledge that has already been acquired. They create strong mental models of their world by engaging directly in the process of construction. Learners who produce more than they consume are generally more aware of their own learning processes and can adapt more quickly to changing environments and demands on their skills. My own students become familiar with researching, problem solving, decision making, team working and expressing their creativity. They generally work harder and also develop ability to reflect on their actions and critically evaluate their own work. They are constantly creating new content, and presenting their new knowledge in blogs, videos and on other digital media. Here's a video (made by Oliver Quinlan) of two of my undergrad students discussing what they learnt in the act of creating personal blogs:

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              Something old, something new...

Commonly, the New Year is a time when we think of renewal, look forward to the future and anticipate what might be on the horizon. It's often 'out with the old and in with the new.' What might we expect in the world of education this new year? Globally, there is the potential for a great deal of change. There is also a lot of inertia. The two are incompatible. Somewhere in the middle of this tension sits the student, who is there to learn, despite sometimes being a political pawn in the game.

There are signs that a new learning ecology is emerging. As you will see, it arises largely from the interface between humans and their technology, and is mediated through their need to connect with each other. It is propagated within the digital habitus and amplified through the free sharing and repurposing of content. It rides on the back of the willingness of some maverick teachers to practise new forms of pedagogy where learning takes precedence over teaching, and where being a content expert is less important than being a co-learner with one's students.

'I don't believe education is about centralising instruction any more.... it's the process of establishing oneself as a node in a broad network of distributed creativity.' said MIT Media Lab's Joi Ito. In so doing, he described a juncture in educational history where some teachers have transgressed the age old boundaries laid down by traditional, realist educational philosophy.  These visionaries and mavericks have begun to establish new curricula where conversation becomes the conveyance and community becomes the subject as well as the recipient. Such teachers are considered radical, because they fly in the face of what many consider to be tried and tested methods.

One of the most important facets of the new ecology is the act of supporting personalised learning. There is a movement toward teaching and assessment that focuses on the needs of individuals. There is clearly tension between this stance and the constraints imposed upon state funded schools where massified education is conducted through the delivery of homogeneous content, teaching children by age group and standardised testing. Alternatively, personalised learning approaches are generally student centred, and where teachers take a supporting role in the process. Some personal learning approaches also enable learners to determine their own routes through education, and where assessment is process rather than product based. Personalised Learning Environments (or PLEs) are generally, but not exclusively, based upon each student's personal selection of personal devices, web tools and learning communities.

Another important component of the new ecology is the choice of progressive pedagogy. Teachers who elect to facilitate forms of pedagogy that involve learning by making will discover that less content is required, and that learning outcomes are generally much more open and unpredictable than those resulting for more formal, traditional lessons. Students tend to collaborate together more, and conduct more personal research than those who are engaged in traditional forms of education. Learning by inquiry and the solving of problems are major elements of this kind of education, and the learning tends to be deeper and more meaningful than didactic approaches. Students have a purpose for making and as they make, and as Phil Shapiro has pointed out: 'Teachers who incorporate making into their teaching are not at all interested in what their students are not able to do. They focus on what their students are able to do. They look for hidden talents and help uncover those talents.' 

Both of these approaches are heavily dependent on digital media and personal technologies. I intend to write more on the concept of new learning ecologies in future posts.

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                       My top 5 posts of 2014

I started blogging back in 2007 to capture my thoughts and make them more concrete. When I began to share them publicly, I opened up my ideas for others to consider and comment on. I have learnt a lot from doing so, and I encourage all my students to do the same now. It's a case of 'now go and blog about this', to encourage them to reflect on what they have learnt before they articulate it. My own blogging is regular, about 3 times each week, and in the last year I have managed to publish 130 posts.

I'm grateful to all those who read my blog posts during 2014, especially to those who have amplified them through social media platforms such as Twitter and Google+, and for those who have taken the time to comment. Below is a quick analysis of my top five blog posts from 2014, based on the number of views and comments.

No. 5: Vygotsky, Piaget and YouTube                  20 comments, 5586 views
No. 4: Watch and learn                                          00 comments, 5688 views
No. 3: Education, schooling and the digital age    07 comments, 5872 views
No. 2: Flipping the teacher                                    16 comments, 6082 views
No. 1: Learning first, technology second              22 comments, 8602 views

During 2014, my blog attracted almost 1 million views, with a mean average of around 77,000 views each month. If you missed any of the above blog posts, do take a look and feel free to add any comments to the discussion.

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                           Future educators

What will educators do in the future? How will they work with students in the coming years? Will the role of the classroom teacher change? Certainly, people's perceptions of education seem to be changing. Some experts are predicting that the time of the traditional classroom is coming to an end. They suggest that the future of education will see learning located in any place, with technology mediating all forms of communication. Others argue that schools will always be needed, especially to maintain the social context of education. Many are undecided and hope that life will continue much as it has in the past. Change is often unwelcome, and disruption is feared by many teachers.

It is likely that teacher roles will need to change because the context of learning is changing. Exactly what those new roles might be is still unclear. Much change is happening. However, there are elements of education that remain constant. Educators discover time and again that the most powerful kinds of learning occur when students are interested in the subject, and the teacher is passionate about it. Everything else appears to be secondary, whether it is the aims and outcomes, methods of assessment, the resources or even the location of the learning. Whatever the future brings, educators will remain important in the learning process, but their roles may change significantly to accommodate new modes of learning and new educational environments. The graphic on this page is very useful as a depiction of the progression of learning over the last few years, and the implicit technology influences. It shows that the community will have a significant role to play in the future of education, but that relationship will likely change. Your comments on these ideas, as ever, are most welcome.

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                              Joining the dots

What happens when you remove restraints from learning, and allow students to discover for themselves? What happens when students are given problems to solve rather than solutions to apply? What happens when students are given blank canvases, digital cameras, an open space? Often, the result is some form of creativity. Time and again I have heard stories from teachers of extraordinary things students have created because they have been given freedom to do so. Give children a camera, and they will show creativity. They will learn to 'see at a higher level'. Ask them to tell their own stories, and they will use their imagination. Give them the chance, and children will astound you with their inventiveness.

I read a wonderful story this morning of a school that created a makerspace in a corridor. A broken computer was placed, in pieces, on a table near to the student lockers. A sign was placed next to it challenging students to put it back together and make it work, and a prize was offered to the successful student. Within a very short time, one of the boys presented the computer, fully operational, to his teachers. He was so thrilled that he had been able to fix it, he almost forgot to claim his prize. Several other students asked if there could be other challenges set, so they could also test their abilities. Some of the girls requested a chance to do the same challenge again, because they wanted to show the boys they were just as capable. There was general excitement in the school, because the students had been offered the chance to show off their skills, and demonstrate their knowledge.

The cartoon at the top of this post says it all. Life is about joining up the dots, connecting things together, making sense of the world. Some environments encourage the transmission and acquisition of knowledge, while others demand that you apply your experience. But there is another level we can all aspire to, where we have freedom to join the dots in any way we wish, ways that are unique to us, in a manner that suits our personal style or personality. To reach that creative level, there needs to be freedom. There might be a challenge of some kind, to demonstrate how well you can do, an opportunity to imagine, to create. The bottom line is that creativity of any kind is best assessed by the individual themselves. If you have painted a picture, or written a song, it will often mean more to you than it will to others. The sense of achievement you can feel once you have created something you can be proud of, is usually reward enough.

So here's hoping that more schools decide to invest in this approach and provide makerspaces for their students, creative opportunities for them to show what they can do, and environments in which they can try out new ideas without risk of penalty.

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       Teaching and learning through dialogue

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post entitled 'Learning as dialogue' which was essentially about how students can learn through conversation and by discussing their ideas with each other. This theme is echoed in my new book Learning with 'e's which was published in January. An extract from the book relates one of my own student experiences:

"The teachers who have inspired me most are those who have been accessible rather than remote, personable instead of stand-offish, and knowledgeable without being arrogant. Most importantly, they conversed with me rather than lectured. One of the lecturers in the first year of my undergraduate degree inspired me to learn more and to push myself to my limits to become more knowledgeable in my subject area.

"Dr Ken Gale did this using nothing more than a whiteboard and pen, along with constant discussion and questioning. Ken has since become one of my valued colleagues. This kind of simple Socratic discourse was deceptively powerful, did wonders for my self esteem and piqued my appetite for more knowledge. There was no need for him to use any other visual aids or learning resources. Ken simply pointed us in the direction of relevant reading, and strategically slipped the names of key theorists into his discussions with us.

"For me this was a skillful, but relaxed and unobtrusive kind of pedagogy, involving every student in the room, debating, deliberating and generally exploring together the nuances and intricacies of our subject. There was no lecturing, and there were no absolutes. Just the inspiration of the discussion and the joy of knowing that you were going to leave the classroom with more questions than when you came in.

"It seems clear to me that to encourage open and frank dialogue in a formal learning environment, the power differential between teacher and student must be removed. When teachers wish to promote democratic learning, students are given license to challenge and encouraged to discuss, debate, argue. Passive consumption of delivered knowledge is then replaced by full engagement with the subject matter through conversation. The conversation around the topic becomes the new curriculum, enabling each student to act as an open minded, independent thinker who can defend his or her position without resorting to dogmatic assertions based on partial understanding or incomplete knowledge.

"The best teachers encourage all students to participate and value all contributions, incorporating as many as possible into an extended conversation around the topic."

Learning with 'e's: Educational Theory and Practice in the Digital Age is published by Crown House Publishing, ISBN 13 978-1845909390

Photo by Steve Wheeler

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                                 Fade away

I firmly believe that if we are to reform education we need the help of technology. Although technology in itself is not enough to solve all of the problems inherent in education, in concert with new pedagogies, visionary educators, and strong leadership, change can, and does happen.

Teachers have always had an interesting association with technology. Often that relationship can be uneasy, as each educator comes to terms with how the new tools that are regularly introduced into classrooms can be used, and what each technology means to their professional practice. Teachers respond in a variety of ways, along a spectrum from gleeful acceptance to fearful rejection. What is important for all those educators who wish to successfully embed any technology into the classroom is that it should be perceived as just another tool. Students aren't likely to be impressed with new technology. They are more interested in whether their teacher is passionate and knowledgeable about their subject. They want to know how their teacher can support them as they learn, and whether their teacher is approachable and cares about their learning.

I wrote a post last year that argued for pedagogy to remain uppermost in our minds. Technology, just like any other set of tools, is there to help us all to do the job better, smarter, more effectively. It will never replace good teachers, but if it can amplify our ideas, strengthen our minds, or extend our abilities, then it is incredibly useful. Just don't ever make it appear to be special - the most effective educational technologies fade into the background as learning, and the student, take centre stage.  

Here's an excerpt from my new book, Learning with 'e's:

"Teaching has always been a challenging profession, but in a time where technology is proliferating and has penetrated just about every aspect of our lives, teachers now have unprecedented opportunities to reform education and create previously inconceivable possibilities for learners. But they need to get past the idea that technology is special. It is not. Technology, just like any other set of tools, is there to help the user perform. In the case of learning technology, it fulfils the function of supporting learning. As such we should make it mundane. Technology that is transparent is more effective than technology that is so prominent that it demands our attention. Technology that frames learning so we can see ‘through it’ to engage and explore, is more effective than technology that is the centre of attention. Introducing technology into schools is not difficult. Ensuring that it is used appropriately is another matter entirely."

By all means, integrate technology into learning, but do make sure that it's there to support learners, and becomes transparent, so that students can see past it to find their learning.

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                  The music is in the musician

Unless you've been hiding in a cave for the last decade, you'll know that Sir Ken Robinson has a lot to say about education and technology. Any one of the 100 million plus viewers of his various TED talks will tell you that his perspective on schools and learning is decidedly progressive. On the occasion of his keynote speech at the 2015 BETT Show, this was abundantly clear.

Many of those crammed into the BETT main arena to hear the great man speak were willing to endure the crush, and also the discomfort of standing or perching for over an hour as he held forth on learning, creativity, the role of technology, and the future of education. There were several memorable soundbites, and subsequently a small Twitter storm, as his audience attempted to capture and share the one liners. One of his most memorable one liners was about teachers using technology, where he said: 'The music is in the musician, not the instrument.', and he was also caught channeling Marshall McLuhan with his remark that 'we amplify our tools and then our tools amplify us.'

If you can stick around, I would like to spend just a little time deconstructing these sound bites, because I believe they hold a significant message that all teachers should hear. Firstly, the statement that the music is in the musician is profound, because it places all of the emphasis of creativity and all of the responsibility for proper application onto the user. Those who have argued that technology has nuances have a point. The argument is that each technology has affordances - design features that enable the user to perceive their possible applications. However, it is difficult to use this argument to explain the many ways that technology can be used that are not expected by the designers. As Sir Ken reminded us during his BETT keynote, 'people use technology in ways we cannot anticipate.' The design is simply the start of the journey. Thereafter, we can use the tools in any way we see fit.

We need to understand that as we shape our tools, our tools do tend to shape our use of them, but in entering this relationship, we are capable of discovering new and wholly unexpected ways of using them. We discover new tasks and problems that can be undertaken or solved that were previously tedious, mundane or impossible to achieve. This is the beauty of technology. It gives us options. It provides us with alternative approaches and offers us the space to try out new ideas.

When the pianist sits at her instrument, it is used by her to channel her creativity. The music is in her head, and emerges through the dexterity of her hands. The piano becomes an extension of her capabilities, and amplifies her ideas to her audience. Likewise, when the teacher uses his interactive whiteboard, or opens his laptop computer, the prime consideration must be for him to share his knowledge, competence and passion to his students. The key similarity between the musician and the teacher however, is that the musician has her audience, and the teacher has a community of co-learners - all of whom if invited, can join in with the chorus.

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Why technology will never replace teachers

Learning is highly complex. Consequently, any attempts to teach, or to provide formal environments within which learning can occur, yield complex problems. The result is a multitude of contradictory theories and explanations on what learning is, how it happens and what teachers need to do to optimise it. How do you cater for the learning needs of every child in a class of 30? Is that really the only way to teach? What are the best methods for education? Should we push content or allow students to discover for themselves? Is dialogue more important than structure in a classroom? What do students actually learn in a formal context anyway, and how can we know for sure? Learning is very complicated, but it is also a deeply human characteristic. It's probably the most important thing we do throughout our lives, and we do it constantly. Yet it is so difficult to understand and describe. We flounder and stumble as we try to navigate a plethora of educational theories and we become bogged down in prescribed institutional pedagogies, providing no more than glimpses of true education for our students.

One of the most important questions for educators in this century is whether technology can offer a transformational influence for learning. The advent of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), the flipped classroom, games based learning, social media and mobile learning - on the face of it - seems to herald a new dawn for education. But do these methods and technologies actually live up to the promise? Technology is often great fun to use, and opens up new vistas of opportunity for all who use it, but does in actually impact positively on learning?

Schools spend an inordinate amount of their annual budgets on purchasing and maintaining suites of technology, but what are the tangible positive outcomes for students? Writers such as Larry Cuban have been asking these questions for some time, and the chorus has been joined by many other skeptics including Susan Greenfield, Nicholas Carr and Jaron Lanier. The common view from this camp is that computers and other technologies either distract from the real purpose of education, cause undesirable changes to the structure of our brains, or undermine knowledge and learning by trivializing it. Does the spell checker on your word processor act as a convenience, or is it a hindrance to good grammar and writing? The answer will differ depending on your personal view of what learning is. It will also depend on your views on the place of technology in education. For example, is online learning, especially free and open offerings from MOOCs, a threat to contemporary education?

We do know that technology will never replace teachers. Teachers perform roles that even the most powerful computers could never replicate. If you think that this is a bold statement, consider this: Computer can only ever follow rules. Humans can break rules consciously, and learn from the consequences. Consciousness, intuition, belief, creativity and emotional engagement are all peculiarly human traits, and none of them are rule bound. Even if you could program a computer to break rules and mimic (or model) these traits, it would still be following rules and would not be able to deviate from them. When children act unexpectedly, or demand support that requires intuition, only a human teacher who knows that child can support them effectively. Compared to the incredible complexity of the human brain, the computer is quite a simple tool. We are only just beginning to understand some aspects of the human brain, whereas computers are fully understandable, because they have been designed by human ingenuity.

Learning is indeed a very complex process, and it continues, increasing in its complexity, throughout our lives. There is no single perfect explanation about how or why we learn, and there is no single technology that supports all types of learning. One thing is clear however. To support learning of any kind, personal choice of method, tools and context are vital. Without this, we will continue down the blind alleyway of partial education, missing many opportunities along the way.

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Two innovations that have changed learning forever

Earlier today in an interview for Sponge UK, I was asked the question: During your career in educational technology, what single innovation do you consider the most important? On the face of it, this could be quite a difficult question to answer, simply because I have been involved in the study of educational technology since 1976, almost 40 years. As you would expect, during that time I have seen many innovations and rapid changes.

The extent of change that has occurred in this period has been quite astounding. I witnessed the development of video cassette tapes, CD-ROMs, personal computers in the 70s and 80s but this was just the start. In the 90s we saw the rapid emergence of the Internet and video conferencing, followed closely by the introduction of mobile phones and the rise of the Social Web. Social networks, blogging, podcasting, the growth of online repositories such as Wikipedia and YouTube, and the rapid convergence of older technologies all began to shape and reshape the educational technology landscape and brought us to where we are right now. Interactive technology, touch surfaces and networked resources are now taken for granted in the classroom, in the home, on the move.

To answer the interview question, I decided I had to cheat. I said that there are in fact two innovations that I believe have made the most impact on learning - social media and mobile phones. The powerful combination or convergence of these two technologies has given learners everywhere a capability to discover, create, repurpose, share and amplify content. These two technologies, once combined, have opened up endless global networks of like-minded professionals, communities of practice and connections to virtually limitless resources. The opportunities learners now enjoy are unprecedented. No previous generation has had access to as much knowledge as we have today. No previous generation of learners has been able to create and disseminate so much of their own content. And no previous generation of learners has been able to connect into the global community as quickly and easily as this present one. Another interview I gave for a French TV company is embedded below, where I elaborate on this idea, and also several other perspectives such as the future of learning, open education and new technologies.

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               Making the future of education

Many would agree that a lot needs to be done to bring education up to date. The methods we use to try to align school and university teaching with the demands of contemporary society will shape the extent to which we succeed. Some advocate the flipped learning approach and to a certain extent, the transfer of content delivery from the classroom to the home (or elsewhere) makes a lot of sense. Time in the classroom with the experts should be used for assimilation of that content, and the critical thinking and application of it, which is a great deal more difficult. A lot of institutions are adopting versions of this method, and are employing technology, particularly video and online content to achieve it.

But this is just the start, and more can be done to ensure that the present day education system adequately prepares young people to take up their roles in a rapidly changing world. One of the most significant movements in recent years, and one that I believe will have a profound impact on current educational provision, is the makerspace. Alternatively referred to as hackerspaces or hacklabs, makerspaces are based on the principles of peer learning and knowledge sharing. You have probably noticed at this point just how similar this approach to learning is to work based learning practices. People teach each other by passing on their knowledge, and learn within their community of practice, focusing on their specialisms.

In makerspaces, people come together to fix things, modify existing materials and design structures, and generally explore alternatives as they learn together. They are zones of self directed learning where there are few limits to the imagination. There is usually a lot of experimentation, exploration and prototyping and testing of new ideas. This can be a very powerful means of learning not only about the things you are fixing or modding, but also about the processes that underline them such as risk taking, discovery and problem solving. A specific theory of learning, Seymour Papert's constuctionist learning theory, could be applied to explain this. Papert suggests that when we involve ourselves in making things, we become a part of that process, by constructing mental models to represent it. Furthermore, the power of sharing what one has made with an audience reinforces the achievement and motivates learners to achieve even more.

It's not that difficult to see how this approach might be used in schools to promote better learning, and encourage students to engage more.  Makerspace learning can enable students to acquire and practice skills they will later need in the world of work. Some thinking has already gone into the pedagogy of makerspaces, and later posts on this blog will attempt to describe how these can be established in schools and universities. In the meantime, if you wish to explore this idea further, check out 7 things you should know about Makerspaces by Educause.

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