Something to shout about!
September 2008
Kim Thomas
At the beginning of this year, Futurelab put out a call for submissions based on informal learning to its Ideas Incubator. More than 100 ideas were submitted, but one of the three that particularly caught the eye of staff was ShoutBox, a proposal submitted by Richard Wilson and Tom Dowding, who last year founded the mobile games company Mobile Pie.
The idea behind ShoutBox is that it enables children to use the cameras on their mobile phones to record examples of their activities outside school and share them with friends and teachers on a site such as Bebo or MySpace. Richard explains the thinking: "What kids are used to nowadays is mobile phones and social networking, so we came up with a way of combining new platforms that would let kids capture examples of themselves doing informal learning outside the classroom – perhaps playing sport on Saturdays, or doing an out-of-school job – and creating a framework that would allow them to add it to their social networking site."
Having done that, says Richard, the students can let their friends who are already using the site view the videos or photographs and give feedback. "It uses the environments that kids are familiar with and happy using," he says. "Having a record of their achievement outside the classroom will help them gain confidence."
Mobile Pie's proposal had an immediate appeal, says Leila Walker, a senior researcher at Futurelab: "It was a very simple idea, and it's using very simple technology to capture digital stories that tell the lives of young people – the parts of their lives that they're not used to sharing."
Futurelab drew up a prototype of the application and tried it out in workshops with a group of six 14-16 year-old students from three different schools. Two teachers sat in on the workshops. Students were given a video camera and asked to record a video of an out-of-school activity, edit the footage, add descriptive tags and upload it to the Shineweek website where the other group members could see it.
The students filmed themselves carrying out a range of activities, such as attending drama classes, solving Rubik's cube and playing the guitar. They enjoyed the exercise immensely, says Leila, but initially found it difficult to articulate what they thought they gained from their out-of-school activities: "They’d never had that sort of question posed before. There are so many positive outcomes that kids get from their experiences out of school but nobody does anything to build on it."
Given prompts – such as whether doing a sporting activity helped developed skills of teamwork or leadership, for example – the students were able to come up with several benefits. It became clear, says Leila, that teachers knew little of what students did outside school, because the students assumed that their activities weren't of interest to anyone else: "The two teachers were genuinely taken aback by how their students did not feel that what they did out of school was of the same value as what they did within." One of the teachers involved in the project said it made her see the students differently: "She saw them in a much more positive light, as nicer, more rounded human beings. Hopefully it gave the teachers ideas of what they could do in their own classroom to make it a better experience for their kids."
These workshops have enabled Futurelab to create frameworks that will help students tag their video footage with the particular skills they are learning. But Leila is clear that while ShoutBox, if it is developed, can support formal learning, it shouldn't be imposed on students by schools: "It should be a bespoke tool where they can tag and categorise as they wish and share that information with who they wish."
Richard and Tom first came into contact with Futurelab when they were students at Bristol University, studying computer science. In their third year they had to create a computer game as part of a group, and they partnered with Futurelab to develop an educational game – a take on Super Monkey Ball, designed to teach students about the different properties of materials.
Richard says: "It was a great experience for us, as it let us see how these sorts of projects were approached outside of academia, with a strong emphasis on collaboration and sharing ideas. For myself and Tom it was also good as it obviously introduced us to Futurelab, who came to mind when we set up our own company as an organisation we really wanted to work with. Our plan was always to do something around games, but working with Futurelab helped us realise that a lot of those skills could be applied towards e-learning as well."
When they set up Mobile Pie, Richard and Tom identified a niche in the mobile games market, and their company now develops applications both for individual clients and for the consumer market.
Many mobile applications make limited use of the rich functionality now available on mobile phones, says Richard, such as GPS, web connectivity and in-built cameras. Mobile Pie is keen to change this and has developed some very different applications. One, a game called Snap Happy, won the Media Innovation Awards Trophy in 2008, and was bought by the US company Hands-On Mobile. Snap Happy requires users to take pictures of particular colours in their immediate physical environment to help an alien called Flasher, whose home planet has had its colours removed by a tyrant called EvilBot.
But Richard also believes the e-learning market has huge potential: "Everyone has a mobile phone in their pocket. When you're wandering around a museum, for example, you can find out further information from your phone." For one client, Interactive Places, Mobile Pie has developed virtual tours on PDAs for visitor sites such as Chedworth Roman Villa. The GPS system triggers the content the visitor will see and hear on the PDA at a particular time.
Despite being a very young company, Mobile Pie has already won several awards, and its future looks promising. Richard is excited about the possibilities: "The mobile is so much more than just a phone nowadays. It has advantages over a desktop computer: it's always with you, it's a personal device, it's got all your contacts on it, it's got a microphone, and a lot of them have location, videos and cameras. It's a great target to develop for."