In June I had the opportunity to attend EduTech 2014 in Brisbane. Billed as the largest Educational Technology conference in Australia and boasting keynote speakers such as Sir ken Robinson and Sugata Mitra this was an opportunity I was looking forward to. Looking back now on the week I can confidently say it lived up to expectation. It presented a vision for a future in which education has a key role to play but a model of education unlike that we are used to.
The common message was that schools need to change, to move towards the development of skills applicable to life long learning in an environment where creative problem solving is valued. Schools will best serve their students by moving away from content delivery and by embracing an understanding of the tools available to the learner in a connected world. The speakers outlined a confluence of factors that make the chalk and talk model of the past obsolete. The rapid expansion of connected technologies, changes to the global career market, population pressures and emerging industries present new challenges and schools will need radical transformation if they are to remain relevant.
Sugata Mitra started the week off and presented well-researched evidence for why the students of the near future will learn in an environment fundamentally different to the schools built to meet the needs of the industrial revolution. He spoke of the lessons learned from his ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiment in which students who were provided with access to the internet were able to meet learning goals considered impossible. This research led to the SOLE (Self Organised Learning Environment) model which is becoming popular across the world and is evolving into ‘The School in the Cloud”.
Listening to Sugata describe his research process was entertaining and compelling. He described setting up an experiment designed to fail in which he provided a group of students who only spoke Tamil access to resources for the study of gene replication. He hoped that as this was a sufficiently complex topic and as the information was provided only in English the students were destined to fail. Disappointingly they did not. At the end of the experiment they were able to describe in their recently developed English how genes replicated. What was perhaps most surprising was that despite this feat of learning they began their response with “We have learned nothing, except . . .’ where the ‘except’ was a beautifully coherent description of gene replication. From his research Sugata concluded that the power of the Internet is the learning it makes possible in an environment of collaboration.
At the heart of this models success is collaboration. The students learned from each other, sharing knowledge, testing ideas, putting together the pieces of knowledge they gained and together drawing conclusions. This aspect of his research throws into question the trend towards 1:1 tech programmes. The forced sharing and collaboration that came from a scarcity of resources needs to be built into systems where each child has their own device.
Sugata also spoke about the role of the right type of feedback and encouragement in this model describing the ‘Role of the Grandmother’. The feedback or encouragement from the non-expert encourages the learner to continue to explore. To facilitate this he has employed a team of ‘grandmothers’ who listen to what the students are doing, provide non-specific positive feedback and thusly encourage the students to continue their exploration. This is so unlike the feedback commonly given to students where they are told whether they are right or wrong.
Lastly he spoke of learning as an edge of chaos phenomenon. Learning is described as what occurs when one is faced with the unknown and needs to move forward. For this chaos to exist though teachers need to give up a degree of control. We may like a completely ordered system where all is predictable; however, if we set up a predictable environment how do we know we have predicted everything. In chaos new outcomes become available, new learning can occur and discovery becomes possible.
His research challenges notions of a need to spoon feed content to students. Learning in a SOLE does not always have to be obvious. The best questions might be ‘I wonder ...’ and the trick is to not have an answer or to pick a topic with no answer. With this in place and with access to the right tools students are able to Self Organise their learning, to collaborate, to evaluate and explore directions not otherwise conceived. The possibility SOLE offers educators is a model for a learning environment where the core skills developed are exactly those students will require in a post industrial revolution age.
Anthony Scalcito – Microsoft - Daily Edventures Blog
Next on the agenda was Anthony Scalcito of Microsoft. He spoke of the need for a Holistic Transformation of Learning. Building on from Sugata’s SOLE model he described how learning has fundamentally changed – ‘your students are learning without you’. In the internet age kids grow up surrounded by learning.
Anthony spoke of the 1:1 movement and how too often educators start with the wrong questions about how to use the device not what we want to achieve for the students. He outlined how his research and experience shows that the best innovations are when the learning environment changes. By putting discussions about dynamic exciting learning on the table and talking about how we set up environments for learning and not focusing on what gets taught or what device it gets taught on is essential.
A key advantage of technology enabled learning according to Anthony is the opportunity to deliver enhanced levels of differentiation. Schools can achieve an A-E grade in the same way for all and at the same pace OR aim for an A grade achieved by all at their pace and in their way. Having spent time recently researching ‘Universal Design for Learning’ this ideas of adapting the learning to the learner, instead of trying to adapt the learner to the learning or allowing some learners to achieve less because the system does not suit them makes sense. Technology allows this shift so all students move on to the next step when they are ready.
Anthony shared some tools Microsoft is developing to enable this enhanced learning environment.
· ‘Office Mix’ is a set of tools for creating online courses from the familiarity of the Office Suite of applications. Easy to use and to create content
· Oslo. Bringing content to you in a manageable form with tools for collaboration.
From his classroom experience he shared the story of an innovative use for Skype. Mystery Skype is a game played between schools on a global level where classrooms connect with each other and through a Question and Answer process try to guess where the other school is located. The students seemed very engaged with the process and learned a good deal about cultures as a result.
He spoke of the ‘New Pedagogies for Deep Learning Project’ as a potential source of ideas. This project is definitely worth further exploration.
Lastly he spoke of the need to move beyond Data to Actionable Information. For schools the amount of data we have access to is ever increasing. Anthony made the point that we now need to be able to act on that data in meaningful ways and that for this to happen it needs to presented in ways that are meaningful to the end user. When we move to Actionable Information about our students we are able to better plan for and meet their needs.
Student Voices – Brett Moller (Moderator) Faith Ty & Leio McLaren (Students)
This session was handed over to the students. First up Faith described how she had used Garage Band on her iPad to produce a piece of music selected for the Tripple J Radio programme ‘Uneathed’. In front of a large audience of educators this young lady re-produced her track demonstrating her knowledge of music, her talent for composition and the potential of mobile devices. Her award-winning track recorded under her stage name 'Cypher' is worth listening to and clearly shows what our students are capable of when provided with the right tools and teachers who let them explore.
Listen to Liar by Cypher
Next up was Leio who passionately spoke of the importance of all students learning to code. His story was one that would challenge many educators as his knowledge of coding and ability to learn it went well beyond that of the typical teacher. Leio learned in many respects in spite of the education system but he was lucky enough to have teachers who understood enough of what he was doing to not put barriers in his way. Leio has gone on to produce App’s that have been featured on Apples iTunes store and are already making him money. He is the founder of AppAppAway and is suitably proud of his achievements. He has moved beyond just making and selling simple Apps to developing his own App Development Agency.
Digital Literacy – Jenny Luca - http://jennyluca.wikispaces.com/EduTECH+2014
Jenny Luca spoke about the skills students require as they navigate an online world beginning with three key areas – connect, collaborate and curate. Her presentation was fast paced and covered concepts from the Australian Curriculum to tools that enable learning. Fortunately her slides are available online via the link above and worth a visit. In particular her slides ‘Future Work Skills’, ‘Ten Skills for the Future Workforce’ and ‘Digitally Resilient’ deserve a second look. The concept of being digitally resilient is particularly relevant to teachers as we explore and sometimes test new technologies. Digital Resilience will allow the teacher to push past the roadblocks and problems encountered and persist with the implementation of a new idea. In Jenny’s slideshows you will find numerous ideas including tools for the digital classroom, simple timesavers and a well-researched approach to privacy. I would recommend anyone with an interest in online privacy and youth online read Deborah Boyd’s book ‘It’s complicated’ that describes how young people really are using the internet and social media and in doing so dispels many of the myths and fears around the topic.
Panel Discussion
A panel discussion of ‘Future possibilities of the cloud for school’ presented some of the opportunities of cloud based computing and indicated some of the pitfalls that may be encountered along the way. Clearly this is the way computing is moving but while the panel covered the topic well, the panellists failed to go beyond the fundamentals. It was a fair introduction for those beginning to explore Cloud computing but not much for those already living there.
Judy O’Connel introduced the topic of Web 3.0 and described some of the potential of innovations in this area. Judy has shared her slideshow online and for those wanting to better understand the impact the World Wide Web has had over its 25 year history or to see how it may evolve over the coming years this link is worth exploring. http://www.slideshare.net/heyjudeonline/preparing-for-the-impact-of-web-30
Sir Ken Robinson
Sir Ken Robinson was undoubtedly a highlight of the two days. His mix of informative presentation and humour makes for a polished and convincing presentation. He spoke of the need for an ongoing transformation of Education with a focus on creativity. He summarised much of his writing to date and subtly mentioned his books on the subjects of Education and Creativity. In other talks, including his well watched TED Talks he has described the importance of creativity for schools and the sad reality that schools often stand in the way of this process.
An interesting experiment he shared is based on student responses when asked to complete a drawing. Each group is provided with a piece of paper on which a triangle has been drawn. One groups is told they will be given points for correct answers the other is not. The first group mostly produced predictable drawings of a house with a triangular roof; the second group produced a great variety of creative drawing using more colours and a mix of themes. The results can bee seen below.