Last week, I took part in a Think Tank event in the United States examining technology, innovation and education. Participants were drawn from across the world and their expertise was even more diverse in terms of both geography and sector.
It’s a challenge to think about the major points to get across in a short presentation, but I landed on these:
- Across the world there’s a lot of good work being done by learners, teachers, education and political leaders to develop education, technology and innovation
- At the same time there’s much more to be done to develop and spread that practice and we should be in a hurry to move things along
- People not technology will change practice. It’s a risk that technology will only magnify what exists already, good or bad, unless we think carefully and creatively
- The power to change things for the better sits with all stakeholders in the education, and we should all be encouraged to take the steps that we can take for that improvement, not bemoan the difficulties that we think others cause
- And wouldn’t it be good if at least some of the effort that is put into learning at school could be used to make a real difference to each learner’s world
With these thoughts in mind, my presentation turned out as follows:
CAVEAT
While there seems to be a lot of talk about broken education systems, it’s worth remembering the excellent, positive and successful work being done by learners, teachers, school leaders and political leaders in many, often challenging circumstances. At the same time there is much that could be improved – or better still changed.
TECHNOLOGY
Technology seems to be a kind of magnifying glass on learning. Poor teaching can be magnified by technology, and good teaching can be made great. Some of the dullest lessons I’ve witnessed have been using technology, and some of the very best learning opportunities have been too.
So the discussion should be less about what technology we might use to support teaching and learning, and more about but how we use it.
DISCIPLINED INNOVATION
We have all learned, I think, that when someone used to ask “What computer you should I buy?” then the best response, was “what is it you want the computer for?”
Only then can one think of the software and tools that might be appropriate to the task and subsequently to consider what computer might run that software. The answer to the initial question would be different for each use, whether engineering design or writing, simple online communications or online game playing.
Innovation in education should start with the problem we are trying to solve. There are quite a few to choose from, but I’m concerned that in education we too often we treat learners as empty vessels that we seek to fill, we treat teachers as obstacles in the road to a better place and that we waste everyone’s effort by spending time on case studies when we could be doing real things.
So challenges I’d like to address are:
- How can we build greater agency for learners in their own learning?
- How can we build greater agency for teachers in the education innovation and reform?
- How can we encourage learning by doing real things?
INNOVATIVE PROJECTS
I recently read an article about a video producer in England who had completely re-thought his business. He realized that he was learning more by producing his 30minute videos for education than his viewers would ever learn from consuming them. His new business sells software tools to help learners produce videos.
HIGH TECH HIGH, SAN DIEGO
High Tech High offers a good example of the potential benefits moving from consumption to production, and the power of a good question. Larry Rosenstock, High Tech High’s founder and leader set the challenge for High Tech High learners to produce a documentary about a city that is a city today, and was also a city in 1492. The strength of the work is in the question – it provides opportunities to investigate history, geography, economics, politics and to reflect on the power of communications in the way that the video is presented. Parents support “Taco Salad evening” when they bring the food and the short videos are viewed and celebrated by the school community.
[see http://www.hightechhigh.org/ ]
So technology is used for learning, through creation and not so much consumption, except at Taco Salad time.
DANISH SENIOR SECONDARY EDUCATION
Test scores sometimes seem to have a vice like grip on education and stand in the way of innovative ways of learning. Things could be different.
In senior secondary schools in Denmark, in the summer of 2010 learners had access to the Internet during their final high stakes exams. As part of a Ministry of Education pilot project 14 schools examined their pupils in 3 subjects with pupils having Internet access.
This isn’t something that was dropped on the students and teachers suddenly. That access to the Internet during the exams is part of a project that has lasted over around 10 years. That has allowed time to work with teachers, parents and pupils to play their part in development of and support for the initiative.
Just think, what questions would you set in an exam where students have access to the Internet. Yes it’s like open book and then some. For a start, your questions couldn’t sensibly be ones that simply test the power of recall and speed of writing, as too many tests have done in the past. To be of value questions would involve:
- Inquiry
- Discovery
- Validation
- Analysis
- Synthesis
- Construction of cogent and compelling arguments
Technology used in this way might just push us towards the 21st Century skills that, like it or not, people keep talking about.
[see paper written by Futurelab/Gavin Dykes for Cisco Systems: http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/education/DanishNationalAssessmentSystem.pdf ]
ROLE OF COMMUNICATIONS IN LEARNING AND INNOVATION
In his book, “Where good ideas come from: the natural history of innovation” Steve Johnson describes the growing influence of non-market networked ideas, a consequence of people coming together and learning from each other. The process started with cities and urbanization – meaning that you were more likely to find people with new ideas and similar interests in coffee houses and institutions. And through those connections you could develop and form your ideas in to real innovations. Now we have the Internet and the web, and our opportunities for sharing ideas and developing innovation are even greater.
You could take this to reinforce the critical role of technology in communication and therefore something about the contribution it can make to learning. Again this is technology not being used for content and consumption, but for communication and creation. It seems ever clearer that networks and communities of interest and practice have a critical role to play – supported through technology, both for teachers and for learners.
DOING REAL THINGS
It has always struck me that most poorly used resource in schools, colleges and universities is learners. When I say a resource that is used, I don’t mean exploited, but used to develop engagement, used to contribute intelligence, creativity and energy and perhaps too to address some real issues whether local, regional or national.
It’s amazing the difference it makes when effort in learning has some real impact, and I think it’s why, for may learners, their most positive reflection on schools days comes when thinking about an exciting and significant project. When in college I arranged a contract with our Football Association Premier League to develop premierleaguelearning.com to support the education of all the league’s young professional soccer players. We engaged technology students in developing and building the solution with FAPL’s support.
The pride the students had in their excellent creative work, in the development and maintenance of the full e-commerce systems, the recognition of their skills and capabilities and the fun that we had in delivering the contract led to a completely new learning experience, with technology at its core. That and similar experiences in other fields convinced me of the value of doing real things with real impact.
Another current and fine example of learners moving to real action, and learning hugely in the process, is TakingITGlobal’s DeforestAction project. This is an extraordinary undertaking making a positive impact on deforestation at the same time as learning lots. [see http://dfa.tigweb.org/]
CONCLUSION
These projects reflect innovative work where learners act as agents in their learning, teachers effectively act as agents of change, where technology plays a central role in terms of context not content, and in a number of the cases there is real action and there are real results that go hand in hand with learning.
It also makes me wonder whether the old saying “content is king” shouldn’t be changed to “context is king” when it comes to teaching and learning!
Gavin Dykes
April 2011
Trackback URL for this post:
http://www.futurelab.org.uk/trackback/887
