|
|
Digital Dialogues
Fostering Collaboration and Conversation in Education
24-25 March 2004, The Showroom and Workstation, Sheffield
Overview by Ben Williamson, Learning Researcher, Futurelab |
The role of new technology in supporting communication and collaboration in young people's learning processes has been gaining momentum in recent years. Futurelab's Digital Dialogues conference sought to explore the stimuli behind these new approaches, and provided a forum for a range of projects that demonstrate the practical implementation of collaboration models in both formal and informal contexts.
After an opening presentation from Futurelab's Annika Small, which set an agenda for the conference based on collaboration between professional disciplines as well as between learners, Tom Bentley, Director of DEMOS, called for a refashioning of the current UK learning system. Learning, he stated, is accomplished primarily through a variety of institutions and activities that to date are not joined up. New technology taken alone only bathes us in data, not necessarily in knowledge. A learning system based on inter-dependence and networks, which would allow people to connect with others, could draw together the disparate range of resources offered by institutions of learning along with families and communities, as well as by other informal centres.
Kathy Sykes of the University of Bristol also emphasised the importance of bringing together schools, communities, families and informal learning centres for science learning. Drawing on a variety of projects intended to widen access and participation in learning activities outside of school, Sykes argued that school children are motivated to learn and debate science when hot contemporary topics, such as GM food, are involved. Sykes also highlighted the need for creativity in science, something rarely acknowledged by pupils in schools, and that scientists working in collaboration rather than alone accomplish the most scientific breakthroughs.
Despite the number of interesting initiatives designed to support teaching and learning, Kevin Carey of humanITy maintained that most e-learning resources are little more than "digital, didactic tedium" that children find condescending and patronising. Carey suggested that the current national emphasis on basic skills is not enough in a society where computers and machinery can often accomplish basic tasks.
"In the information age," he said, "the only game in town is creating information." Less gifted children in UK education, therefore, are penalised by a system which does not accept imitation or collaboration as valid, despite their need to practise and support each other to become active producers working in a culture of mutuality and trust. In developing ICT for learning, Carey concluded, the aim should be to facilitate, not to frustrate, communication.
Claire O'Malley and Steve Benford of the Mixed Reality Lab at Nottingham University followed this by describing three projects using new technology to move the experience of learning away from the desktop PC - and even outdoors. All three projects are based on the principle that digital devices are usually designed for use by individuals, and not for group work. KidStory facilitates collaborative storytelling using pressure pads embedded in a carpet and a touchscreen; SHAPE (Situating Hybrid Assemblies in Public Environments) is a treasure hunt-style challenge designed for use at Nottingham Castle as an interactive guide to the history of the site; and Uncle Roy All Around You uses handheld computers in an outdoors public game exploring questions of trust, communication and collaboration between strangers, provoking players to reflect on and reconsider all that they usually take for granted in the public, outdoors arena.
In keeping with the conference agenda, Neil Mercer from the Open University and Jay Lemke from the University of Michigan utilised video-conferencing facilities to conduct an international conversation on the contextual basis of dialogue. They suggested that effective dialogue occurs when participants build on the cultural assumptions and the collective knowledge that they share, and that new technologies are widening the repertoire of dialogues it is possible to have. Dialogue mediated by new forms of communications technology is being altered to constitute norms and values appropriate to each new communicative channel. Multimedia technology, for example, now permits the augmentation of textual communication with images, symbols and sound clips.
Pierre Dillenbourg of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne provided the event's final keynote presentation, describing the persistent disconnect between face-to-face conversation and computer-mediated communication (CMC), and suggesting that assumptions made about rich media being better than other media are wrong. For Dillenbourg, when participants in dialogue are not co-located, they lose 'peripheral awareness' of others, which is damaging for team work since most effective communication is augmented by spatial relations and by gesture. E-mail, he argued, never transmits complete messages until interpretation has occurred upon reception, and this can sometimes alter the perceived content of the message.
He then outlined a number of CMC technologies that are seeking to make interaction through computers substantive again, suggesting that some of these allow participants in dialogue to become 'co-present' despite their geographic spread. CMC also provides an extension of memory by logging and recording participants' contributions, and it also allows participants to engage simultaneously in several conversations at once - something that it is rarely possible to manage in face-to-face dialogue.
Interspersed between the keynote presentations, a number of case study sessions illustrated practical implementations of technology-supported dialogue in a range of diverse projects.
Jim Turner of ICDC described work on the multiplayer computer game Astroversity, designed explicitly to support team work and collaboration. Keith Johnson from Luckwell Primary school, Nathan Hughes of I am the Mighty Jungulator and Teresa Dillon from Futurelab outlined their work with primary school children on a multimedia advent calendar that used Virtual Puppeteers and Jungulator software to create 3D virtual performances and soundtracks. Teenage students from the Glasgow based Space Unlimited project attended the conference with Michelle Selinger (Cisco) and Heather Sim (Scottish Enterprise), to discuss what students want from e-learning resources.
Later on, the Global Nomads Group's David Macquart demonstrated a video-conferencing project that has allowed youths from disparate cultures (including Baghdad and New York) to join in dialogue with each other despite their geographic and cultural disconnect. Viki Bennett (Bristol LEA) described a pre-school project bringing nursery schools into partnership with cultural centres and artists as a way to stimulate children's imaginative play, and to provide impetus for a more child-centred approach to learning. Rounding off Day 1, Jo Morrison of Futurelab, Richard Hull from HP Labs and Marc Jacobs from the BBC Natural History Unit described the Savannah project, which uses hand-held computers to give children access to a virtual version of the African plains from a playing field space.
On Day 2, Leon Cych and Derek Smith of King's Cross Education Action Zone described a recent production of Carmen performed across six schools simultaneously using video-conferencing and laser broadband. Rachel Willis from Explore at-Bristol described the recent Hypertag project, which has put interactive guides in the hands of visitors to augment the experience of being in the museum. And Jo Reid from HP Labs outlined a design approach with users that incorporated designing with models and other physical objects during the prototyping process.
The morning of Day 2 was dedicated to an ideas workshop event. All delegates joined small groups to work together on generating ideas for potential new learning resources, and produced posters and storyboards to illustrate them. The session was intended to promote the benefits of dialogue between educators, designers, policymakers and researchers in experimental cross-sector approaches to designing new learning technology. The brief encouraged participants to consider tools for foreign languages learning, a game for maths to be played outdoors, or resources to support PE outside school.
At the end of the session, all groups displayed their posters and storyboards for other groups to visit. The ideas ranged from 'intelligent playground apparatus', to multiplayer adventure games, to wearable technologies, and software to support storytelling in teams. Many of the ideas produced in just two hours were exciting, novel, and fresh, and highlighted the benefits of approaching design for learning in multi-disciplinary teams.
An audience debate chaired by Microsoft's Chris Yapp at the end of the conference again highlighted the absolute centrality of such dialogue between the educational, technology and creative professions if digital resources are going to succeed in the 21st century education system. This does not mean designing tools necessarily to support the existing curriculum, but designing for the needs of current and future learners that exist outside it.
Some of this can be accomplished, as the conference began to demonstrate, by including learners in the design of learning technology; some can be accomplished by inter-disciplinary work; some can be managed by providing access to learning outside of the school gates. The question remains, however, that if such approaches have the potential to refashion the current education system, then what might be the future role of the teaching profession? It is this question that the next Futurelab conference aims to address.
|
|
