Stepping out into learning with digital technologies: the London Knowledge Lab
June 2007
Merlin John
“We are looking at what kind of knowledge people need in the 21st century because it sure as hell isn’t what they needed to know in the 19th century - and it’s the 19th century knowledge that we are still teaching in schools.” Director of the London Knowledge Lab, Professor Richard Noss, is clear about what learners don’t need as, with fellow director Professor Alex Poulovassilis, he leads the relatively new, multidisciplinary research unit on its quest for effective 21st century learning with digital technologies.
Created in 2004 with a £6 million science infrastructure grant from the Government, the London Knowledge Lab is a joint creation by two universities: the Institute of Education, renowned for its research into learning and teaching, and Birkbeck College’s leading computer science department. Fifty-strong and based in Bloomsbury, it was opened by the venerated educator Professor Seymour Papert (now sadly in a coma in the US) who welcomed “the return of the K word – knowledge”. “How astonishing! Labs aren't about stuff like knowledge; they produce knowledge but don't study it.”
The aim is to bring computer scientists and social scientists together to share their understanding of how digital technologies are changing people’s lives and learners’ lives in particular, to design and build technologies that are people-centred, and to look at the knowledge and technology required for the future with fresh, critical eyes clear of preconceptions.
Richard Noss’ background is in maths at the Institute, while co-director Alex Poulovassilis, an expert in organising, accessing, integrating and personalising information, heads up the team from Birkbeck. As time goes by it’s clear that the Lab is becoming one team rather than the two constituent parts. The clear focus is on lifelong learners as users of technology rather than technology itself.
While its original research projects were a ‘wedding present’ as it were, inherited from the parent institutions, there are now 35 on the go, with new, original, and multidisciplinary bids a regular feature. There are also nine or ten post-doctorates. “These are very important to us,” says Richard Noss. “One of our objectives is to lower the average age in the building every year.”
Newly funded projects include a hard look at the Second Life phenomenon, ‘Learning from Online Worlds; Teaching in Second Life’ (led by media studies specialist Diane Carr and funded by the Eduserv Foundation), and VeSeL, a hugely ambitious project to enable rural communities in Kenya to use
While projects may be viewed by researchers through their individual subject prisms, Richard Noss emphasises the collaborative nature of the work. “We have just won a funding bid for £1.5m from the EPSRC and the ESRC, administered through the Teaching and Research Programme, to study kids’ evolving mathematical understandings. The MiGen project is a real collaboration between mathematicians like Celia Hoyles and myself, people working in the artificial intelligence field, and people from Birkbeck working on adaptivity and intelligent systems and so on. What we have achieved is bringing in lots of new blood, from different areas of the general field of learning - Diana Laurillard joined us last year and Neil Selwyn arrived from the sociology department in Cardiff. Just in this short conversation we have mentioned sociology, policy and semiotics, so you see we are bringing in lots of interdisciplinarity.
“Our vision is that this is a really complex field. Educational research is complex enough anyway, but educational research with leading-edge technology is seriously difficult. It’s impossible to achieve and impossible to make a difference with unless you take a multidisciplinary approach. And part of the reason for that is that you have to understand the culture which you are trying to change and the people you are trying to change or help to see things differently.”
Learners and teachers are involved from the inception of projects and the web is used to communicate activities and findings.
As you would expect, passion for learning runs deep, along with awareness of the potential for change, not just for the curriculum but for schools themselves. Lab member and media studies expert Professor David Buckingham also directs The Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media. Media observers, he says, are fascinated by the collaborative nature of Web 2.0. “I think the debate is, ‘Are we moving towards a more democratic media?’ And I think that in some ways, yes, that is what’s happening. The opportunities for people to participate are there much more.
“The question is still who is in charge and how does all this work? MySpace is an interesting example. On one level you have a very accessible technology: anyone can use it to make their own web pages and kids are distributing words and music. But it’s owned by Rupert Murdoch and it’s funded by advertising. Are we seeing a democratisation of media or are we seeing different ways of targeting consumers and reaching niche markets? Not that that in itself is necessarily a problem, but a there’s a big debate to be had about how we interpret the politics of all this.”
The gap between children’s experiences in and outside school is something he explores in his new book (contact below). “My argument is, look, you’ve got this big shift happening in kids’ media culture and their experience of media, and most of what happens in
“The other argument that people are making, and it’s the James Gee argument about computer games, is that the kinds of learning going on when kids are playing computer games are infinitely more interesting than the kinds of learning that go on in school. So what is the implication of that? We use more computer games in the classroom? Or we bring these technologies in? And it seems to me that very often there is a fantasy going on there.
“I think we need something much more rigorous. My argument is about why media literacy, or digital media literacy, is what we need more than
This approach helps, he says, with the major questions thrown up by the emergence of collaborative technologies: What is school for? What can learners get in school that is difficult outside?
The independence of the London Knowledge Lab is also a great asset, says David. “We have a very critical take - technology is not about gee-whizzery. This is particularly important because there’s a lot of push from Government on buying and putting technology in schools. A lot of it has not been really thought through, and what we have seen over the years is new initiatives that come along, last a short while, and then we are on to the next one. You only need to go to the BETT technology show year after year to see that happening.
“And there’s also big commercial money behind this - schools are seen as a market. I think the job of education researchers is to look at that critically. What I don’t mean by that is then to say it’s all rubbish. There is a need for some slightly distanced evaluation of what goes on here and what we need technology for. Is it making the difference that is claimed on its behalf, and what do kids need to know about it?”
With experts from such different disciplines, a major challenge has been to get them to understand each other’s language. The analysis of a computer scientist involves a different vocabulary to, say, a semiotician or an expert in cultural studies. “The most important thing we ever did, and we did it on the first day our building opened,” says Richard Noss, “was to buy a coffee machine that cost £2,400. I got into terrible trouble for spending that kind of money but it’s been the single most important thing we ever did. Because that’s where you find people talking about things about which they know relatively little. We are learning and it’s fantastically exciting.”
‘Beyond Technology: Children's Learning in the Age of Digital Culture’, by David Buckingham, is published by Polity
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Merlin John is an editor who created and ran The TES’ Online magazine. He is now freelance and works for publications including The Guardian, and runs his own web service at www.merlinjohnonline.net .