Educsite

An interesting talk on the impact of schools on children, worth watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded

If you surf the internet regularly you'll have noticed the number of extremely creative sites and entries that people create. The internet is a medium that allows people (ordinary) to express themselves in ways that were previously confined to those in the limelight, those who had already proven themselves as artists, film makers etc. But now anyone can shine. Does the internet excacerbate this creativity? or has it always been there? Here's a good example of this creativity: WW1 as a bar fight

I've just attended the ASCILITE conference in Auckland. It was excellent with some very interesting papers. James Clay gave an excellent keynote where he talked about the power of mobile devices for learning.

I've recently been writing an article looking at the educational differences between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. As such I was compelled to read 'Born Digital' by Palfrey and Gasser (2008). Although not rigorously empirical (but clearly founded on lots of information and personal research) in nature the book is thoroughly interesting, partly because of the way it weaves in numerous narratives and anecdotal accounts of events and different people (e.g. Shaun Fanning of Napster fame, Mark Zucckerberg of Facebook fame and many others) who made it big due to simple but timely ideas. The book also discusses a number of current issues with the digital revolution and is organised into chapters as such: Identities, Dossiers, Privacy, Safety, Creators, Pirates, Quality, Overload, Aggressors, Innovators, Learners, Activists. It is well worth a read.

I'm particularly pleased to see the debate that's currently being had about what schools of the future will look like entitled 'Schools 2.0'. The whole debate is now reflected in a website http://school20.ning.com/ which has its own wiki http://school20.wikispaces.com/ stating as it's header:

There is a growing desire to rethink education and learning, and the phrase "School 2.0" is being used to think about what schools will look like in the future. There seem to be three factors driving this discussion:

1. 
   New collaborative computer technologies, in particular the read/write web, distance learning programs, free and open source software, and videoconferencing.
   
2. The move from an industrial to information economy, and a change in skills that are valuable to employers.
   
3. A culture that is rapidly becoming more transparent and collaborative because of the new technologies, allowing a more open discussion about many aspects of our society, including (and especially) education. Please join our discussion.

I'm extremely interested in the idea being propogated that schools should be moving with the times and be brought into the 21st Century but alas they seem to be entrenched in 19th Century practises. There's also and interesting article dating back to 2006 in Time magazine http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1568480-1,00.html

I recently dicovered a few tech developments that look interesting thanks to a few people who pointed them out to me.
Firstly, this one was pointed out by Trond Nilsen and looks to be very promising. It's the Wolfram-Alpha project (http://www.wolframalpha.com) that is an application that tries to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone and it appears to have made a good start with its current application. This is the sort of innovative development that may be important in out knowledge society.
Second, is the 'Sixth Sense' pointed out to me by Professor Therese Laferriere which is basically a prototype of wearable computer that through the use of an outward pointing camera allows the computer to identify and give information on images that it receives. In addition, it also allows you to have an interface with the computer anywhere through a small projector that projects say the image of a keyboard onto your hand. Thus, you can interact with the keyboard and the computer because of the feedback from the camera. I think we may well all be wearing one in 10years! Again innovative and responsive to the need for knowledge. Check it out at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html
Finally, found some great talks and an interesting society TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). Every year the society conference brings together the most facinating thinkers and doers to give short talks on their pet topic. It's very exclusive but means most talks are cutting edge and intereesting. Their website is a collection of such talks - very much worth taking a look if you have 20 mins spare http://www.ted.com/

Computer games are indisputably motivational by nature, however, they haven't truly infiltrated education to any extent. Although games are unlikely to be seen as the be all and end all of education in the near future I do see some very important applications for computer games within education that could be developed right now. Firstly, there are many off the shelf games that can be used as catalysts for social debate and social impact, which is always a difficult aspect of education to approach in schools and at home (e.g. use of 'Spore' to stimulate discussion about belief systems etc see http://www.gamesforchange.org/main/newentry/learning_from_spore1/) . Games for change(http://www.gamesforchange.org/) is an excellent organisation set up for this purpose if you wish to delve further.

Another important use for games may well be the expansion of our cognitive capacity through mind games. Recent research indicates that with training we can increase our working memory capacity which in turn can increase our fluid intelligence (the part of our IQ that is responsible for problem solving etc). The type of training used for this is fairly repetitive and boring and requires mental work, however by incorporating such training into computer games for kids then IQs and Working Memory can be expanded to cope with more traditional school work and may even be useful for helping diaffected kids. Thanks to Derek Wenmoth's blog (http://blog.core-ed.net/derek/) I recently read the 2020 Forecast (http://www.futureofed.org/) which talks about increasing ones self through such brain training and gives some excellent links to other articles etc.

Design-Based Research Collective. (2003). Design-based research: An emerging paradigm for educational inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5-8.

An excellent paper describing 'Design Based Research Methods' which is an approach to studying learning intervention that takes a holistic view of learning, thus taking the context and the learning intervention (program) into account. The paper describes 5 central characteristics of 'Design Based Research Methods':

1. The aim of the research must be to design/construct an effective learning environment as well as to develop a theory of learning.
2. The research should happen through a design/ redesign cycle.
3. The research should lead to useful theories about the implication of the work.
4. The research must be relevant to authentic settings and give information about success, failure and any more subtle interactions that enhance or flaw the design.
5. The development of the research accounts need to use methods that allow documentation that connect how it is done to the practicality of doing it.

Major problems for research in Education are the fact that we often lack either informative theories that relate them to actual practice or that the research itself is not scientific/empirical or fundamentally flawed. The Design Based Research Approach attempts to deal with these problems and attempts to move education forward by documenting effective innovative techniques and why they work.

I've just read an excellent paper by Kurt Squire . He is arguing for the educational power of video games by suggesting that they can be leveraged to design desirable educational experiences where "participants learn through the grammar of doing and being" (Squire, 2006, p19). He does however contend that there is a lot of research that still needs to be done before we can confidently inject serious time and money into them and be able to persuade traditionalists such as schooling institutions to convert. I particularly like the way he describes the way that people learn within games as "through a grammar of doing and being." In my opinion this is a step in the right direction for education because we must get our learners to 'do and be' within the realms of education far more than is current. We would still be able to present material in the more traditional manner and get learners to work through educational material such as practicing long division etc, even within computer games - but it is much more difficult to give learners the authentic experiences they need for meaningful, transferable learning to occur. However, to my mind some of the most important research is still to be done (as alluded to by Squire). For example how are the experiences within the simulated environment perceived by learners and how does this affect learning? What factors mediate this experience? Etc, etc....

Squire, K. (2006). From content to context: Videogames as designed experience. Educational Researcher, 35 (8), 19-29.

I am currently thinking about Virtual worlds and their utility for education and writing a book chapter on this subject that is specifically related to Science Education. Public education is coming to crisis point due to the changing attitudes of learners and the changing nature of our techno driven world. Our learning environments lack flexibility and are very slow to change due to them being government driven. Lets hope that VWs and other innovative ways of learning start to permeate the system soon - but how to kick start this process is an issue. We are currently locked in by too much commercialisation of products leading to a lack of educational content, but until we get traction in the education arena that's unlikely to change. A dilemma!

I've recently arrived in Montreal where I will be spending a years sabbatical at McGill University. I hope to analyse data and write. This should include regular entries into my blog (all going well). I'm starting to settle in although I haven't yet got used to the cold - it's -12 today and there is 10 inches of snow on the ground!

I've created this blog to blog about education from my point of view. It's also a way for me to externalise my thoughts about education outside of my formal University setting.