Painting the Bigger Picture

A decision this week by one of Scotland’s 32 local authorities to delay the introduction of new national qualifications has re-ignited the debate over the implementation of the revised curriculum guidelines, and raises a number of important issues. With one media commentator referring to the aforementioned council as a ‘flagship authority’ (one wonders in what sense an authority which is, by its own admission, unprepared for changes it has known about for at least two years can be described as a ‘flagship authority’), you have to ask yourself whether those in the mainstream media have really made an effort to understand the extent of the changes, or whether they are happy to perpetuate the simple notion that successful educational outcomes and good exam results are one and the same thing. This kind of conservatism is disappointing, though hardly surprising, but increasing resistance from some within the secondary sector begs the more serious question of whether real change and ‘joined-up learning’ can actually be achieved in our secondary schools within the restricting constraints of timetables which send young people on a daily tour of subject departments.

Big History Naked from bgC3 on Vimeo.

This question was uppermost in my mind again today when a friend on Twitter directed me to the Big History Project, a scheme described as ‘an attempt to understand, in a unified way, the history of Cosmos, Earth, Life and Humanity’, initiated by the Anglo-American historian Dr David Christian and supported by Bill Gates. I suppose it may be asking too much that all our young people leave school with a complete understanding of life and the history of the universe, but wouldn’t it be good if we were able to give them more of the bigger picture than a few random pieces of the jigsaw?

The Connected Educator

One of the basic principles of the Scottish curriculum is the concept of the ‘learner’ at the centre’ or the learner as responsible citizen, reflected in the curriculum outcomes which consist of a series of statements beginning, ‘I can……’  The attraction of this format is that it shifts the emphasis from teaching to learning, and places the responsibility for learning exactly where it should be – with the learner. Supporters of the new curriculum, and I am one, have argued that its values, principles and purposes could apply equally well to teachers as to students, which is one of the central themes of a new book from American educators Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Lani Ritter Hall.

I wonder how much longer it will be necessary to preface any educational discourse with a statement about how dramatically the world has changed since the turn of the century, but in case there is still any doubt, the authors of The Connected Educator - Learning and Leading in a Digital Age, reflecting the words and thoughts of  Sir Ken Robinson, lay it clearly and eloquently on the line:

“Producing a skilled workforce in the past required standardization that was easily replicable across classrooms – a need for predictable curriculum and methods. Drill and practice may have prepared a generation of factory workers, but it will not educate learners for tomorrow’s world of work. Schools have habitually prepared students for life by making them dependent on others to teach them, rather than placing power over learning into the learner’s hands. Classrooms that operate like connected learning communities- where students do meaningful work related to service learning and social justice – prepare students for their futures, not ours.”

At the heart of The Connected Educator is an irresistible argument for a new model of professional development to fit the modern-day classroom, one where educators are learners first and teachers second. Connected learners take responsibility for their own professional development. They figure out what they need to learn and then collaborate with others to construct the knowledge they need. Instead of waiting for professional learning to be organized and delivered to them, connected learners contribute, interact, share ideas, and reflect. The ‘connected learning community’ model advances a three-pronged approach to professional development:

Local community: Purposeful, face-to-face connections among members of a committed group – a professional learning community (PLC).

Global network: Individually chosen, online connections with a diverse collection of people and resources from around the world – a personal learning network (PLN).

Bounded community: A committed, collective, and often global group of individuals who have overlapping interests and recognise a need for connections that go deeper than the professional learning community or the personal learning network can provide – a community of practice or inquiry (CoP).

*The main difference between personal learning networks and personal learning communities is that the work of professional learning communities is designed around the specific, identified needs of the school and its students while personal learning networks are something that educators design for themselves to further their short-term and long-term goals for professional growth and personal learning. While each can benefit from the other, they are distinctly different. Communities of practice, on the other hand, are made up of people with a common interest, who collaborate to learn to do it better. By way of illustration, the authors offer the examples of a group of diet enthusiasts experimenting with eliminating grains from recipes without reducing taste, programmers working on an open-source computer application, nurses seeking to reduce errors in hospitals, or educators working to promote writing across the curriculum.

This book will challenge many of your assumptions about learning and about classroom practice. It will make many teachers, young and old, feel uncomfortable for a while as they are asked to ‘unlearn’ much of what would have been taken for granted in the pre-internet era. To take just one example, the  following extracts from the text would make an ideal starter for a lively discussion at any staff gathering. Consider especially, each of the statements listed in the second paragraph:

“Connected learning is a process of learning, unlearning, and then relearning as we participate in networks and communities. A fast-changing world creates a need to unlearn tacit knowledge (Brown, 2001). Unlearning is necessary, although it is often difficult and painful because it involves grieving for what we leave behind………….

Yet in most schools, still, the assumptions are that learning is an individual process, that learning has a beginning and an end, that learning happens in schools separately from the rest of life’s activities, and that learning is the result of teaching. Technology is beginning to shift those assumptions and change the way, we, as educators, learn.”

Nussbaum-Beach and Ritter Hall draw on their own extensive experience to provide solid practical advice on how to go about creating that all-important connected learning community. A whole chapter devoted to finding and using the best online tools for the job, invaluable especially for digital ‘newbies’, comes with the caution that what matters above all else is the building of personal relationships, and leads to my favourite line from the book:

“Contrary to what many techno-enthusiasts believe, he who has the most tools does not win.”

Having challenged us to examine our current practice, a key message of The Connected Educator is that educators (the term ‘teacher’ is avoided, something which will challenge many in itself), as well as taking responsibility for their own learning, ought to think of themselves more often and take the time to build their own networks, a task which the authors admit takes ‘time, effort, and perseverance’. Ultimately though, the tone of the book  is overwhelmingly optimistic and, far from being a threat to teachers or another dull ‘handbook’, it is an encyclopedia of useful information, inspirational in its themes, and infinite in its reach:

“As you start to think about change in technology and education, do not change anything about how you teach or lead. Instead, change everything about how you learn. Be selfish for a time, and make everything about you and your learning. By becoming a learner first and educator second, you are serving your students and will be in a better position to model lifelong adaptive learning strategies for your students. You can’t give what you do not own.”

The Power of Practice

It was Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, as far as I can tell, who first came up with the notion of the ’10,000-hour rule’, the one which suggests that success in any sphere of life is almost entirely down to sheer hard work – along, perhaps, with being in the right place at the right time. It’s also an idea which is taken up by Mathew Syad, the three-times Commonwealth table-tennis champion in his best-seller Bounce. I was particularly struck by his debunking of the myth of the ‘child prodigy’ or the ‘born genius’, which I’m sure most of us have bought into at some stage, it being such a compelling idea (the provocative subtitle of the book is ‘The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice).

How often do you hear people say that they were always hopeless at spelling or that they couldn’t do maths, the implication being that these ‘talents’ were something you were either born with or not, and they had just happened to be unlucky? For Syad, the idea that the ability to calculate is predetermined at birth is the ultimate expression of the ‘talent’ theory of expertise – we marvel at the feats of those individuals who are able to multiply long strings of digits in a few seconds, as if they are a freak of nature. Yet, according to Syad, there is no magic and no mystery.

“But now consider how much more difficult it is to keep track of a narrative while reading a book. There are tens of thousands of words in the English language, and they are used in new and unforeseen combinations in every sentence of every page. To understand a new sentence, the reader must not only understand its specific meaning, he must also be able to integrate it with all the sentences previously read. He must, for example, remember previously mentioned objects and people in order to resolve references to pronouns.

This is a memory task of almost unimaginable dimensions. And yet most of us are able to get to the last word of the book – comprising hundreds of pages and tens of thousands of words – without once losing the thread of the narrative. The experience we have clocked up as ‘language-users’ enables us to do this in just the same way that the hours clocked up as ‘numbers-users enables mathematicians to get to the end of a multi-digit multiplication by keeping track of the ‘narrative of the calculation.

The difference between calculators and the rest of us, then, is that calculators have spent lives immersed in the vocabulary of numbers, while the rest of us have wimped out by using electronic calculators.”

This is an interesting analogy – and I’m still trying to work out whether it stands up entirely – but it fits quite neatly with my own thinking about the importance of narrative AS learning, as well as its importance IN learning ie that all learning takes place through the creation and sharing of narratives or ‘stories’ (of course we are always sympathetic to theories which chime with our own thinking) . It also makes me wonder whether, when we are quick to criticize those who promise young people that they are capable of becoming anything they choose to be,  instead of dismissing the idea out of hand, perhaps we should simply advise them to ‘remember to tell them about the 10,000 hours!’

Harry Potter and the Fan Fiction Factory

Teachers, and perhaps especially teachers of English, understand how difficult it often is to convince young people that writing is a worthwhile activity. This is especially true where there is little incentive beyond ‘this will improve your final grades’ – always the last resort of a desperate teacher – but I wonder whether the opportunities afforded by access to the Web have just introduced a whole new set of  challenges as well as opportunities. Could it be that unless teachers can guarantee a real purpose and audience for those youngsters who are already motivated to write – possibly via wikis and blogs – they will increasingly look elsewhere for more meaningful outlets?

In Convergence Culture – Where Old and New Media Collide, the American author Henry Jenkins considers the shift which new technologies have brought in the way we think of our relationship to media, and how the skills we acquire initially through play may have implications for how we learn, work, participate in the political process and connect with other people around the world. Dismissing talk of a ‘digital revolution’, he prefers instead to think of a ‘digital evolution’ where popular storytelling increasingly takes place across different media platforms (transmedia), in a world where passive consumers have been replaced by active  participants or ‘players’.

In the chapter Why Heather Can Write, Jenkins examines the phenomenon known as ‘fan fiction’, and the ways in which it exemplifies the new media landscape. On fan fiction websites like Fiction Alley for example, the largest of a number of websites dedicated to fans of Harry Potter, young writers come together to write, collaborate and share stories about their favourite characters, and sometimes to invent new characters of their own. New writers are mentored by an army of unpaid volunteers known a ‘beta readers’ – a term derived from the world of technology where ‘beta’ means ‘in development’ – and criticism, while it is always positive and constructive, is also focused and direct, dealing with issues of grammar and style as well as plotlines. The beta readers are also contributing authors and what all the writers have in common is that they are looking to improve their work, not simply to have it praised. On another fan fiction site, FanFiction.Net, beta reader Cat Foxglove describes her strengths as ‘Very picky about grammar and continuity. If tenses constantly change, words are continually misspelled, or the very flow of a story contradicts itself, I have no problem saying so.’ Night Monkey, who describes herself as a college writing major from Pennsylvania has written 23 stories for Batman and Dr Who, and says in her beta profile, ‘I’ll read just about whatever you’d care to give me, but I would prefer humor above all else. I’m also, oddly enough, a fan of horror. If you do fanfiction based off (sic) books, there’s a good chance I’ve read or at least heard of it. I’d be tickled to work with Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or Stephen King fanfiction. I won’t say no to Twilight, but don’t bring me senseless crap.’

This relationship between learner and mentor, based on the trust of peers on what is effectively a shared journey is, by definition, quite different from the formal teacher-pupil relationship found in school and allows the young writers to experiment with their craft within the safe confines of a pre-existing fictional world. For many of the writers who contribute to the fan community, the journey begins by simply reading the efforts of others, before they are comfortable enough to submit their own stories. Once they are committed however, the feedback provides the incentive for them to develop and improve. They quickly come to regard themselves as real ‘authors’.

Critics of fan fiction argue that it is unoriginal and imitative, but as Jenkins points out, this kind of ‘apprenticeship’ model is common in other cultural spheres, and historically young artists learned their craft by initially imitating the great masters, sometimes contributing to their work, before establishing styles, techniques and content of their own. Whether the same conditions for writing can be created within a formal school setting, is a different matter. Again, as Jenkins points out:

“Schools have less flexibility to support writers at very different stages of their development. Even the most progressive schools set limits on what students can write compared to the freedom they enjoy on their own. Certainly, teens may receive harsh critical responses to their more controversial stories when they publish them online, but the teens themselves are deciding what risks they want to take and facing the consequences of those decisions.”

Armed with this knowledge, it might be tempting for teachers either to write off fan fiction entirely as inferior or worthless (despite its massive popularity), or to wholeheartedly encourage their students to get involved and even to join them in the endeavour, but the growth in such online communities raises a number of questions for teachers and schools.  Could it be that part of the attraction of fan fiction writing and its devotees is that they are outwith the formal structures of the education system? Should teachers simply accept that there are some elements of a young person’s literary (and literacy) development which should be left alone, and, whether or not teachers embrace the new orthodoxy which determines that we are all learning together, will there always be a gap between formal and informal learning? I’d be interested to hear your views.

The Millionth Monkey’s Movie

It was once said that a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters for a million years would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare, but what if you gave them a movie camera? How many times have you seen a film and said, “I could do better than that”? Well here’s your chance to put your money where your mouth is and see how many people want to watch your movie!

Filmmakers (D-Media) and Film Fans (Close-Up Film) have come together to challenge our perceptions of how great movie ideas are born, and are using social media to ‘crowd-source’ the next big cinema hit. Launched on 6th December, the project will run over three months, with entrants first building up support for their movie concept. Open to amateur and professional filmmakers alike, voting begins on 1^st February 2012 and thereafter no new projects can be submitted to the site. Voters can vote for as many of the pitches as they like, but only once for each idea. The leader board will show the top ten projects each week.

How does it work?

1. Start with an idea, a character, a place, a plot, a sketch.
2. Post it on the website.
3. Tell your Facebook friends, Tweet family, and anyone else you can reach, to see if they are intrigued enough to come and have a look.
4. Get them involved, sharing ideas, passing comments, or just having a look.
5. Add to, alter and develop your movie pitch and see how many people you can persuade to want to see it on the big screen.

The more interest you attract, the higher you move up the leader board. Ultimately, the concept with the most fans wins.

Cost of entry is just £30. For this, you will have your own page on the Millionth Monkey’s Movie website, your work showcased to over 100,000 people, online resources,  access to film industry professionals and, of course, the chance of having your film made and seen.

The Winner will pick up two thirds of the net money received from the entry fees for the competition and the  support of D-Media in having the film produced, starting with a tour of the facilities at Pinewood Studios. Gina Fegan (The Tournament, Devil’s Playground) will also be appointed executive producer of the film to support the project.

The team behind the Millionth Monkey concept

The Runner-Up will win a tour of Pinewood Studios, including an industry lunch, and one day with D-Media and Close-Up to develop a realistic outline of how to take the project further.

The Weekly Winner, will be profiled on the weekly leader board and will win two cinema tickets.
To find out more and enter the competition, visit: www.millionthmonkeysmovie.com

 

Substance Matters Too

Following my blogpost yesterday on the impact of Howard Gardner‘s Theory of Multiple Intelligences on those of us who were teaching in the 1980s, it was quickly pointed out to me that I had wrongly attributed the concept of ‘preferred learning styles’ to the man himself, a schoolboy error if ever there was one. In fact, on re-checking my sources, it seems that Gardner was keen to distance himself from the idea. On pages 83-84 of the paperback edition of Intelligence Reframed he clearly states, under the heading ‘Myths and Realities about Multiple Intelligences’:

“Myth 3. An intelligence is the same as a learning style.”

Bizarrely (in my view), in the course of the next few lines of commentary, he goes on to offer the following observations:

“In my view, the relation between my concept of intelligence and the various conceptions of style needs to be worked out empirically, on a style-by-style basis……….

Perhaps the decision about how to use one’s favored intelligences reflects one’s preferred style. Thus, for example , introverted people would be more likely to write poetry or do crossword puzzles, whereas extroverted ones would be drawn to public speaking, debating, or television shows.”

So, if you are still with me, the argument seems to run along the following lines: There is more than one kind of intelligence. Intelligence is not fixed. We do not all have the same kind of minds. We all have preferred ways of learning (which should not be called ‘preferred learning styles’). Therefore, schools (and by definition, teachers) should take account of these differences when planning curricula.

Now copy these notes in whichever style you prefer

On a more practical note, Gardner expands on the ways in which students with different strengths may be engaged with and helped to understand a topic, by offering seven ‘entry points’ to learning which he equates roughly with specific intelligences:

1. Narrational – The narrational entry point addresses students who enjoy learning about topics through stories.

2. Quantitative/Numerical – The quantitative entry point speaks to students who are intrigued by numbers and the patterns they make, the various operations that can be performed, and insights into size, ratio and change.

3. Logical – The logical entry point galvanises the human capacity to think deductively.

4. Foundational/Existential – This entry point appeals to students who are attracted to fundamental kinds of questions. Nearly all children raise such questions, usually through myths or art; the more philosophically oriented pose issues and argue about them verbally.

5. Aesthetic – Some people are inspired by works of art or by materials arranged in ways that feature balance, harmony, and composition.

6. Hands On – Many people, particularly children, most easily approach a topic through an activity in which they become fully engaged – where they can build something, manipulate materials, or carry out experiments.

7. Social – Many people learn more effectively in a group setting, where they can assume different roles, observe others’ perspectives, interact regularly, and complement one another.

I think this is a very useful checklist to keep in mind when preparing a topic or a series of lessons. Going back to look at what Gardner has to say about learning is extremely powerful – even if a little confusing at times – but on one thing critics, academics and practitioners all seem to agree. From the moment Howard Gardner began to question our assumptions about intelligence, the days of the  ’preferred teaching style’ of chalk and talk were numbered. It was no longer good enough for teachers to talk at children and assume that if they were smart enough they would get it.

Style Matters

The topic has been around for the best part of thirty years now but the controversy surrounding it has been enjoying something of a renaissance in recent weeks thanks to the social networking sites Twitter and YouTube. I’m talking of course about the concept of ‘learning styles’ and the flurry of excited posts on Twitter celebrating the research of Professor Daniel T Willingham of the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia which – he claims -demonstrates that ‘learning styles don’t exist’. Quite why there should be such enthusiasm for his ‘findings’ is worthy of consideration in itself, but if you haven’t yet seen or heard it you may wish to listen first of all to Professor Willingham in his own words:

Learning Styles Dont Exist

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I’ve written before on the blog about my admiration for the work of Harvard professor Howard Gardner and his Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which transformed thinking about learning and teaching in the 1980s. Gardner’s notion – arrived at largely through his work with brain-damaged adults – that there are different ways of learning and that we all have preferred learning styles, led us to question traditional notions of intelligence or ‘IQ’ which until then were based largely on an academic model of learning through reading, and depending wholly on the teacher/expert for the transfer of knowledge:

“The daily opportunity to work with brain-damaged adults and with children impressed me with one brute fact of human nature: people have a wide range of capacities. A person’s strength in one area of performance simply does not predict any comparable strengths in other areas……..

We are not all the same; we do not all have the same kinds of minds (that is, we are not all distinct points on a single bell curve); and education works most effectively if these differences are taken into account rather than denied or ignored.”

Howard Gardner, Intelligence Reframed – Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century

Over time, Gardner’s views were often misinterpreted or distorted, with some schools and teachers in extreme cases going so far as to label children as one kind of learner or another, reinforcing the concept of ‘fixed’ intelligence which the theory of MI had done so much to rebut, but for many of us it marked the recognition at last that significant numbers of young people in the system were being failed because they didn’ t fit the narrow definition of intelligence which had hitherto prevailed. Suddenly, it was not acceptable to focus only on a small section of the population, with talk about those who were ‘willing to learn’ as opposed to those who weren’t, those who were ‘bright’ and those who would never ‘get it’.  The common practice of ‘streaming’ in secondary schools (grouping pupils according to IQ scores into the same group for all subjects) was largely abandoned. Learning and teaching became a whole lot more challenging and  a whole lot more rewarding at the same time.

I believe that Willingham falls into the same trap as those who took the theory of MI too literally and who wrongly came to the conclusion that the way forward was to identify a young person’s preferred learning style and cater for that exclusively from then on in, when in fact what Gardner had been advocating was that teachers use a wide range of methods and approaches for all students.

It’s well worth listening again to Howard Gardner himself in this 1997 interview on the importance of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences and its significance in the context of education:

Howard Gardner of The Multiple Intelligence Theory

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For more on this topic see Ian Gilbert’s excellent post over at Independent Thinking.

Next time: ‘Entry points’ for understanding and why they matter.

Top 100 Learning Tools in 2011

It’s just about that time of the year when people start compiling their list of favourites from the year gone by , whether it be music tracks or films or books or anything else. So I thought I’d get in early, not with a list of my own, but with this terrific list of top learning tools compiled by Jane Hart of C4LPT which I found via Twitter. What I particularly like about it is the simple formatting and the fact that it includes quite a number of tools which have been around for so long we have stopped thinking of them in that way. Have fun counting how many of them you use already and making a note of the ones you will be desperate to try out.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2011

View more presentations from Jane Hart

Welcome to Planet Alice

Fans of the digital novel Inanimate Alice – and the number is growing rapidly – will be interested to hear of some new developments and more resources for teachers. The series was given a boost this week with the publication, in conjunction with new global education partners Promethean, of the third edition of Alice’s School Report which features a ringing endorsement from no less a figure than filmmaker, media expert and educational authority Lord David Puttnam:

“Here is a terrific reading-from-the-screen experience that talks the language of digitally literate educators. Kids will read this when they won’t read from books. It’s vivid moving imagery embracing some of the techniques used in both film and video-games. It’s authentic rich-media, yet it is a high-quality text that teachers can rely on. Surprisingly intimate, the feeling for the characters forms in your head, just like reading a book, surely more so for those whose prefer engagement with “born digital” material. Kids will love reading with Alice.”  David Puttnam

Read the full School Report here.

One welcome change to the new-look IA website is the addition of a Starter Activities Booklet on Episode 1 for teachers who are new to the story, while a host of extra materials can be found on the Promethean Planet website. No need to have or use a whiteboard to access the materials, simply open a free account and go to the User Group to find out how other teachers and kids have been engaging with Alice and taking her on their own adventures. If you are a teacher discovering Inanimate Alice for the first time, I suggest you watch and listen to the introduction from teacher-librarian and media specialist Laura Fleming, and if you are  introducing young people to Inanimate Alice for the first time, this film trailer is perfect for setting the scene. Perhaps after reading the series you could challenge them to make their own version. Find out how to make a film trailer here.

Inanimate Alice – Everloop Trailer

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Learning to be Independent

“It’s ridiculous to think that kids can be trusted to learn things on their own.” Teacher, anon.

A couple of months ago I wrote about a primary school in Scotland which had embarked on some very interesting ‘joined-up’ learning, and I have often written or spoken about the challenges which secondary schools face when attempting to do the same thing. By definition, when your starting point is a structure which is built around a number of subject departments, when time is allocated to those subjects on the basis of their perceived importance in the hierarchy, and where young people move around from one to the next in the course of the school day, it is always going to be difficult to provide experiences which add up to a coherent whole. Add to that the enormous pressure to produce better and better exam results at the exit point, and the opportunities for real student choice, self-directed learning and learning based on outcomes rather than inputs are going to be restricted, to put it mildly. So is it possible for every secondary school to accommodate the needs of every young person? Can they support and challenge the more creative, the non-conformists, the independent thinkers? And is it reasonable to expect them to deliver learning which is relevant, joined up and personal in every case? Do we need to think about alternative school models, or should we begin by looking at the possibility of creating ‘ a school within a school’ as they have done in this bold experiment at Monument  Mountain Regional High School in Berkshire County, Massachusetts? Incidentally, if you listen carefully you will realise that the quote at the top of the blogpost is taken from near the beginning of the video.

My thanks, as so often, to Kenny Pieper for bringing the film to my attention. If you haven’t found Kenny’s blog yet, you’re in for a treat.

The Independent Project

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