Many years ago now I was fortunate to visit the Alan November conference in Boston and enjoyed a few days with like minded people who thought there was something still not quite right about the education systems on most Western Countries. It may well be that this view is more widely spread but those at the conference were predominantly from the USA, Europe and other western democracies.
The world has changed a lot since that visit but many education systems, certainly in the UK, appear to have gone backwards. A few years ago the UK was regarded as one of the leading countries exploring the potential of technology to transform learning, that is certainly not the view now. Other countries are pushing ahead, exploring new approaches and recognising that young people are in a very different world from the one that saw the introduction of mass education.
In 2007 I spoke to two university professors attending an event in the locality and my first question was whether we were turning out the sort of students that their research programmes required - the immediate answer was 'no'.
In this insightful video Alan revisits his main argument, that we need to radically rethink our approach to education in a technological age. He rightly comments on the fact that training a teacher to use technology is only the tip of the iceberg and that shifting the focus of control in the classroom to become more learner centric is a much greater challenge.
It is certainly true that for some students school is an ideal experience, but for many they do not flourish and develop their potential until they move out into college, university or work. We all know of children in Primary schools that suddenly lose their enthusiasm for learning when they move into the high school. Some schools do make major efforts to create the sort of learning environment in which individuals flourish but I have yet to see very many classrooms, let alone schools, where technology is used to stimulate, engage and aid collaboration and communication. There are bits of these in a lot of schools and usually where specific teachers have a vision for using technology ineffective and engaging ways.The trouble in many such schools is that once a creative and innovative teacher leaves then the innovation they brought in often withers and dies.
Alan might be fighting a cause that can never be won but it is a battle worth fighting.
Alan might be fighting a cause that can never be won but it is a battle worth fighting.
While it has been relatively easy to find schools that have used the odd open source software package such as Open Office or Seashore it has been far more difficult to find a school that has gone much further and are using OSS tools for admin, pupil management and within the curriculum.
The old arguments always seem come up - 'its not industry standard' or 'it may be free but it is costly to support' or 'we have had a look at using open source but staff and parental pressure has made it impossible to change'.
Many of the arguments put forward for adopting OSS solutions are financial ones. The fact that the software is free to use could save a school or college significant sums of money which could be used for other things.
There have also been a number of reports generated by various education organisations and governments seeking to explore the use of Open Source Software for Education. In the UK an organisation called BECTa (British Educational Communication and Technology Agency - now closed down) undertook an in depth research study on the potential use of OSS software. Their report entitled:
'Open source software in schools: A study of the spectrum of use and related ICT infrastructure costs'
set out to explore the cost benefit of using OSS and demonstrated that savings could be made but that there were issues about the lack of curriculum specific software (something that was prevalent at the time in the UK with software to help deliver the National Curriculum). The report indicated that the take up of OSS solutions were affected by the perceptions of staff and that training issues might mean that it would be timely and expensive to move staff from one approach to a more OSS rich set or resources. Administrative staff were reported to be lukewarm about the use of OSS due to its inability to integrate or inter operate with already existing systems.
'Open source software in schools: A study of the spectrum of use and related ICT infrastructure costs'
set out to explore the cost benefit of using OSS and demonstrated that savings could be made but that there were issues about the lack of curriculum specific software (something that was prevalent at the time in the UK with software to help deliver the National Curriculum). The report indicated that the take up of OSS solutions were affected by the perceptions of staff and that training issues might mean that it would be timely and expensive to move staff from one approach to a more OSS rich set or resources. Administrative staff were reported to be lukewarm about the use of OSS due to its inability to integrate or inter operate with already existing systems.
Looking elsewhere in the world a typical example of the type of research is the paper published in International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT), 2013, Vol. 9, Issue 2, pp. 64-84 which was written by researchers in South Africa looking at the potential of OSS in Western Cape Schools. In this report the same issues emerge, integration or compatibility with other systems is seen as a barrier as does training of staff.
In both reports the pre-existing situation had a much greater impact than any the actual quality or effectiveness of OSS solutions. the barriers seem to be more about integrating with existing products or services or the effort needed to re-train or try a different approach.
In my search for a school that has gone further than most with open source software I discovered Albany Senior High School in Auckland, New Zealand and their decision to explore the full potential for OS in schools was driven by an educational vision and not by a financial argument. Albany's WikiEducator pages make interesting reading and they set out five key educational arguments for their approach with Open Source Tools. The page also lists the tools they use, which includes some that have been put together by students for use within the school.
In my search for a school that has gone further than most with open source software I discovered Albany Senior High School in Auckland, New Zealand and their decision to explore the full potential for OS in schools was driven by an educational vision and not by a financial argument. Albany's WikiEducator pages make interesting reading and they set out five key educational arguments for their approach with Open Source Tools. The page also lists the tools they use, which includes some that have been put together by students for use within the school.
Hamish Chalmers is Deputy Principal at Albany Senior High School now responsible for the continued development of their OSS approach building on work done by a former colleague who has now moved on to another post. The fact that the use of OSS continues at Albany pays tribute to the fact that its use has now become embedded in the school and unlike many projects I have witnessed elsewhere disappears when the person who began it is no longer around.
Hamish kindly agreed to speak to me via Skype about their approach and some of the issues that have encountered along their developmental journey with OSS.
In the UK we have spent a lot of money over the years creating a high speed infrastructure for schools. Many schools have fast internet connections but I wonder just how many of them are working to establish what might be called an infrastructure for learning. What does this mean?....
There are probably many different models for communicating and collaborating with learners as well as a wide range of services that
can be used to support the learning process.
The VLE or Learning Platform is one such infrastructure built as they are from a number of different tools but if they are only used for providing another means of delivering work then I am pretty sure they will not be as effective as one might think.
There are other infrastructure models or additional tools than could be brought into the VLE to expand the options for engaging young people particularly where young people have access to a mobile device.
An example would be Calibre - an ebook management system which has its own server so you could use it to distribute coursework books (text books) in a completely new way. On mobile devices this works great with the Stanza e-book reader and is simple to set up.
There are also tools such as Jisko which is a private microblogging system similar to Twitter but which provides a means of using such tools in a controlled and safe way (internet safety is a high profile issue in the UK). Add to this the potential of mobile phones used as response devices using tools such as GiEFal which is a little away from an out of the box product but demonstrates a direction of travel for the use of mobile tools for learning.
We have a long way to go with really making effective use of ICT in learning and we need to move away from what devices we use or what bandwidth we have onto what learning infrastructures we need to create to make best use of them.
This said the critical thing with all of these infrastructures is that they need good and imaginative educators to make them really work. Setting the challenges for harnessing such opportunities for learning is the real challenge but at least these and other tools allows educators to explore ideas and perhaps transform the learning experience.
Is a device like an IPod Touch sufficient
as a 'use anytime' device?
Having worked with schools, learners and teachers for a number of years I am increasingly convinced that a single technology device is just not enough! Various surveys have been done about the use of technology by learners at home and at school as well as attitudes towards technology across the age range.
Some of the more recent research makes interesting reading such as the recent 2009 e-Maturity Study produced by some of the leading researchers in the UK.
What the research like this does not do is to study the actual use of technology by young people and teachers and what the minimum technology they would need to meet their immediate needs. Having observed a large number of lessons where ICT is used it is clear that many do not require the power provided in the majority of the hardware devices that are actually used. Teachers may use their devices to create materials for classroom use but during lessons the technology is mainly used for presentation purposes. Pupils use of technology varies depending on what they are doing but again in the majority of cases the devices are not used for creating content.
It may be that we are all waiting for the right technology to come along e.g suitable sized keyboard, long battery life (longer than a school day) high quality screen etc etc but in fact maybe all you need to be able to do is take notes, perhaps snap a picture and access information. The more heavy weight uses such as creating presentations, editing movies or creating publications need more processing power.
My contention is that we need a ' use anytime' device that is used mainly for the less sophisticated but important tasks such as the researching, note taking and watching with additional resources available 'when needed' to do the more demanding tasks.
There is much discussion about Transforming Education but what does this mean and how can you transform something that in many countries is driven by achieving specific outcomes. We all know that we need our schools to deliver citizens ready for work in the 21st Century but what does that actually mean when the measures we have for success are largely the ones that we have used for hundreds of years.
If you spend any time trying to find a definition of 'Transformation' as it applies to education then you won't find anything definitive. there are lots of people and organisations that state they are engaged in transformational change but very little to describe what that fundamentally means. Let us look at what we know:
- Young people now engage in a wide range of activities some of which were not available only a few years ago. Much of this activity is connected with communication, either through their mobile phone or via the various communities they join online.
- There are some young people who have no interest in technology and although most will have a mobile phone they may well not take part in any online collaboration.
- The curriculum in many schools remains as it was ten or more years ago. In the UK we are exploring new structures for learning through such things as diplomas which will require collaboration between institutions but the bulk of the curriculum is still focused on traditional models
- Quite a lot of the technology kids will use outside school will not be allowed in many schools
- Kids like to collaborate and be creative.
- Technology will continue to develop and will do so based on what the market requires - much of the market are young people
The outcome of the above is that we are creating two worlds; one which is the formal world of school and the other is the personal space surrounding the learner. Of course there is already overlap between these two but the impact of technology is pushing the world of the personal
space further away from the formal world of school.
In my view transformation, in part, must be greater inclusion of the informal personal space within the formal education space. How you do that and to what extent is the real challenge.
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