Keri’s post about the QCA review of the GCSE ICT and the consultation is timely. I have just returned from my usual study visit to Stanford University and Keri’s post resonated with my experiences and raises a number of questions about GCSE ICT and the learning experiences of our children and young people.

As Professor Mike Sharples of the LSRI, Nottingham University so clearly demonstrated in his BETT presentation this year:

http://flux.futurelab.org.uk/2008/01/10/disruptive-mobile-learning/

• How do we connect formal and informal learning?
• How do we connect learning inside the classroom and learning outside?
• How do we connect learning about the world and learning in the world?

To Mike’s challenging questions I would add one more:

• How do we connect learning Online with learning off line?

Digital Media Academy

Stanford University in Palo Alto has a long and distinguished reputation for producing next generation digital pioneers.

Silicon Valley is peppered with start-ups and successful off shoots from the world-class teaching and research facilities of this Californian University.

The Alumni roll call includes the founders of Firefox, Netflicks, Hotmail, Cisco, Sun, Google, You tube, e-bay and of course good old Hewlett and Packard who’s Garage/Workshop is now preserved as a historic monument to digital pioneering. There are many others whose names are not as well known but who have created successful and innovative companies spawned in the classrooms, laboratories and dormitories of the Stanford campus.

This summer saw another successful Digital Media Academy cohort of children and teens attracted to Stanford for programmes of study which varied from “Advanced 3D Visual effects and compositing with Maya and adobe after effects” to “Online game design with flash and action script”, and ” Video game creation, robotics and programming”.

All of the programmes offered Stanford University Continuing Studies Credits as well as Maya, Adobe and Apple certification.

One of the students at this year’s academy was 14yr old Kieran Barrett from Greater Manchester, a pupil at Urmston Grammar School, a specialist science and technology college in Trafford.

“The Digital Media Academy provided Kieran with a real opportunity to stretch his capability in his use of digital technologies and meet some other teens with similar aspirations in a world class learning environment” said Mum ‘Rene Barrett.

“Although Kieran attends a specialist technology school the level of this programme is beyond anything the school can offer in either technology or tuition”

Kieran has always been highly motivated in his use of technology and is an accomplished on-line gamer and social networker and his recent experiences on his x box live have provided him with some additional global co-constructors, team mates and friends to add to his existing network as he has progressed through the familiar communities of habbo hotel, runescape and world of warcraft.

“ I have learned how to design and build online games using flash and action script and created characters as well,” said Kieran.

He acknowledged it had been hard work but very worthwhile…”I have learned a lot from the other participants as well as the tutor” he added “ and we are going to keep in touch and meet up… virtually of course”

“I want to build my career in digital technologies and I would like to continue my studies in this area. but first I need to focus on my GCSEs”

21st Century Learning

Sadly Kieran’s experience at Stanford will not count towards his GCSE in ICT and perhaps our education system is missing a trick here?

Indeed the grades Kieran achieved in his last school report for ICT were average and in no way reflect his capabilities in the use of new digital technologies where he is working in a in a constructive and collaborative way with young people from around the globe.

His experience resonates strongly with one of Charlie Leadbeater’s recent suggestions in 21 ideas for 21st Century Learning.

Charlie pleads for a reform of teaching so we can teach and learn “with and from” rather “to and for” and Kieran would be a terrific example of this principle.

Surely there must be a reliable and valid way of using non-school based accredited learning in a form of credit accumulation and transfer similar to that used by the National Open College Network?

The QCA would be well advised to follow some of the principles and practices developed by Futurelab in the Learner Voice work and listen to the digital pioneers who are finding GCSE ICT restricting and dull?

Perhaps some of our Universities and Colleges could offer the same sort of provision in the long summer vacations when all that expertise and equipment could be utilised more effectively such as Nottingham University LSRI summer school.

Perhaps our assessment system should accommodate real learning, which takes place outside school and has real currency and value in the 21st century?

A further article on the Stanford Online High School will be posted on Flux soon.

SIGGRAPH 2008 played host to many new technologies, techniques and developing interaction methods ranging from the potentially powerful to the really silly.

Primarily dedicated to computer graphics and animation (Jim Blinn made an appearance - if you’re a fan you would have been in good company here) it also provides plenty of interesting new and emerging technologies that you can play with and explore.

Beyond the computer animation festival where you can discover the finer details of animating pretty much anything, the multi-sensory, the emotional and the would-be-human side of technology were at the fore front this year. ‘Evolve’ was the conference theme, and it is evolving towards more and deeper engagement with technology than ever before.  Here is a summary of some of my highlights:

Robots

From copycat robotic arms to a wide range of live robots, there were various degrees of interaction, agency and robot-wit around the exhibition halls.

Firstly there was Quismo, one of SIGGRAPH’s featured hosts. A cute and friendly robot greeting visitors daily that uses an endearing child’s voice and effective humour to gloss over the limitations of artificially intelligent conversation. A great example of AI used well with a wide-range of contextual emotions expressed via its voice and range of motions and animated features.

There was also the toy-like, touch-responsive robot from NEC which can learn movements and commands based on touching spots on the robots body then twisting its head. It’s simple and playful to programme making it easy for children to command.

Then MIT’s rather sci-fi looking MDS (mobile, dextrous, social) robot currently provides limited interaction but has lots of potential for education, health and home environments as it aims to develop into a human ‘partner’.  Combining a highly mobile robot with more human-centred interaction, the robot keenly observes and learns from your movements, face and expressions, voice, words and gestures - in time it will become more intelligent and interactive both with humans and with other robots. Its advances include greater intelligence, manoeuvrability and dexterity, smaller size and weight, plus facial responsiveness and expression, and more natural gestures. The hope is that by designing in more human aspects to robots that this will eventually make it easier for us to accept and make use of them in our lives.

Haptic and tangible interfaces

Beyond robots, visitors were engaged in many other ways. Haptic developments (interfacing with users via touch) had a dedicated area which is where the virtual cockroaches made an appearance. Wearing a long wrist-covering glove, you can place your hand on a table-set LCD screen with virtual cockroaches and ants on it. They crawl towards and then ON TO YOUR HAND (yep, I’m bug-phobic, this was a big deal). Withdrawing your hand in horror doesn’t save you though as they are now ‘in’ the glove and you can feel them running up and down your arm (courtesy of tiny brushes being controlled inside the glove). Only a sharp shake the way you would fling off an actual cockroach will remove them, at which point they ‘fall’ back on to the screen and scamper off. It’s definitely creepy.

More practical uses of haptics were also on show with touch sensitive control devices using pens, gripping devices, joysticks, and gloves to provide the input/output to the user. Some haptic interfaces were still in search of useful applications, some were used for manipulating modelling software and of course medical simulation applications too.

Haptic and tangible interfaces were primarily still in the research lab and not really near to market yet. Tangible workbenches with moveable objects used to move things on a screen were plentiful. Sometimes the objects themselves contained projections of fun animations that reacted to their grouping with other objects. Mostly though the kit is still cumbersome and in prototype form.

The technology still needs to catch up to fulfil its potential and become more readily available and less cumbersome. It will eventually afford untrained users to be able to pick up and use more realistic representations of what they are interacting with and provide neat simulation and training opportunities that clearly have great potential for learners.

The future of art

Futurelab’s Newtoon project was one of four talks given in a session on the Future of Art. Newtoon provides the ability for kids to create their own mobile-phone games intended to stimulate conversations around physics. Alongside this project were also amazing developments in ceramics and fashion. Did you know you can squirt ceramics through a 3D printer then fire it, creating the most complex and intricate ceramics ever known? This is perhaps the most exciting innovation in this field in 1,000 years

There are also technological advances in fashion that result in exciting kinetic dresses.  Using electronic circuits printed on fabric (watch out for short-circuits, they’ll leave you with a slight burn and singed clothing) they power kinetic fabric that is soft and pliable but has a movement memory triggered by an electric current. The result: dresses that have revealing flaps and dynamic hem lines adding a beautiful new dimension to clothing.

These advances could have big implications for how traditional arts like ceramics are eventually taught in school.

Slow art

People often think high-tech = high speed. Well not at this year’s conference. There was a whole area dedicated to ‘slow art’ - and it really doesn’t get much slower than live snail mail.  Real snails were equipped with mini circuits and antennae glued to their shells. If the snails roamed close enough to the transmitters, emails generated at the snail mail workstation were serendipitously picked up and then sent on their way. I sent a few, they haven’t arrived yet, it might take a while…

The Dreaming Pillow was just gorgeous. A large fabric pillow with seamlessly interactive visuals, like something straight out of a Harry Potter movie. Run your fingers down the pillow and watch the blue ink spill over where your fingers had been. Push your hand into the pillow and see shadows of invisible people’s fingers pushing back up through the fabric. Amazing.

The Oasis ‘interactive aquatic light table‘ was the most tactile interface there. You could dig through the black sand with your fingers to reveal the LCD screen underneath and watch virtual life grow before your eyes. The power of touch must have been the draw for the sizeable crowd of people surrounding the table (the life forms weren’t that amazing in monochrome) who were intently pushing sand around.

Augmented reality didn’t make much headway at the show this year. What was there was still pretty limited in what it can achieve. ‘Dart the dog’ was yet another example of the incremental advances in the level of interactivity available to enhance it. Here you could move simple shapes and use key strokes to entice a virtual dog to feed and play ball but still nothing really to get excited about.

Brilliantly though, the old-fashioned cardboard 3D glasses featured at quite a few stands. Their simple ability to enhance screen displays can still pull off a surprisingly immersive and engaging experience.The best-in-show use of these was the immersive, large-format 3D ant colony which allows you to explore inside along with giant ants (actually normal size I guess if you are the size of an ant). Using a Wii remote control and some low-cost kit you get to actually experience how ants live. Could be a winner in a biology class.

Technology innovation is slow, tactile, immersive and emotional

There was of course a load more I could ramble on about, but that’s a flavour of what was on show. There is still a drive towards moving technology innovation away from the screen-mouse-keyboard paradigm and towards tools that enable us to experience the virtual more directly, intuitively and more collectively. SIGGRAPH encouraged visitors to engage with the virtual much more fully and immersively. Added to this there was a sense that slowing it all down and combining it with nature can provide a much-needed opportunity for deeper, more meaningful and even emotional engagement with technology.

The GCSE gives out important messages about both what ICTs ‘are’ and about the role they might play in all areas of life – from personal and working lives, to leisure, culture and consumption. As such, it’s really important that as many people as possible have commented on the plans.

The QCA is currently consulting on a set of draft criteria at http://www.qca.org.uk/qca_18259.aspx. It would make sense for anyone interested in ICT and education to ensure that they’ve looked at and fed back on these.

Long term futures work is not about predicting the future, but systematically investigating a range of futures so that short term actions are more informed about possible, probable and (through discussion) preferable futures. This systematic investigation is about understanding current and historic data, looking at trends and considering how those trends may develop. The forecaster Paul Saffo says that it is not predictions, but about mapping the ‘cones of uncertainty‘. As Saffo explains, uncertainty is cone-shaped because as you project further into the future there are more surprises. The longer the term the more uncertain or the less specific you can be.

Take your own work. You can be pretty accurate in statement one of what you will be doing in the next 10 seconds; statement two of what you will be doing in 10 minutes might have a little more uncertainty - the phone might ring, your coffee cup needs refilling or you’re back on facebook again. (Was your statement one right by the way?) 10 days time - your diary may suggest something but you can be less confident that it is 100% accurate, and the further you go, the more uncertainty there is. 10 weeks, 10 months, 10 years, the range of possible futures on the extremes of the cone become further from one another.

But BSF is about building the appropriate spaces for learning for the potentially the next 50 years. The level of investment in such infrastructure will surely not be around at this level again before that - so how can we ensure that the decisions being taken now will be relevant to the range of possible functions, learners and aims that the institutions may need to be cater for?

The answer, of course, is that we can’t. We can’t be certain that today’s decision is appropriate for tomorrow’s needs - there are too many factors that influence education: it’s expected role in society; numbers of pupils; types of learners; the aims of education; sorts of resources etc etc. But what we can do, is ensure that the decisions we make are as informed as possible. That we’ve investigated as wide a range of possible futures as possible to ensure that, not only are we prepared for a whole range of possibilities, but that we are actively working towards the preferable future that we want.

The Beyond Current Horizons programme is attempting to look at these long term possible, probable and preferable futures. The BCH blog is the scrapbook of developments that may be useful to provide insight into some things that may challenge the way in which we currently think about education (in terms of its aims, processes etc). Towards the end of March 2008 there will be a large collection of data and analysis, tools, and future scenarios that will also be of use in helping to inform more immediate decisions and strategies.

Long term futures work is about making visible some of the possible futures, detailing the cones of uncertainty, so that from longer term visioning and systematic thinking, we can develop richer and more informed nearer term visions, near term strategies and more appropriate immediate actions. By telling stories of our preferable futures, we can begin to ensure that our immediate actions go to creating and shaping the future that we want. To become involved in BCH please contact me or sign up to the blog and newsletter - all involvement is welcome. After all, the more informed our thinking can be, the better our use of the incredible resources of BSF.

How can young people lead, inspire, or have a positive impact on design?
Can ethics and social responsibility inform this design?

In a series of fast-paced, short presentations (ten presentations of 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each) a wide range of designers came together to offer their response to these questions.

All the presentations were inspiring and thought-provoking, and it was particularly interesting to see the different perspectives of product designers, graphic designers, web designers and artistic designers. Clara Lemon and I gave our view of design as a process, and one that must involve learners if it is to be socially responsible, drawing on the recently published Designing Technologies for Social Responsibility handbook [pdf] and Fountaineers.

We heard from designers concerned with environmental and social sustainability, with Claire Selman, young designer of the year, creating wallets made from discarded plastic bags manufactured in the Gambia, and Kate Rudman presenting environmentally sustainable printing processes.

Artists Conway and Young made us think about the power of art and design to give people a voice, picking out the following ways in which design can be considered a socially responsible activity, including:
• Connect people
• Engage people
• Make things more accessible
• Create a base for dialogue
• Allow you to communicate directly
• Give people an outlet

Knowle West Media Centre showcased the involvement of young people in graphic design, creating the ‘What Have They Done Now?’ campaign to highlight their positive activities to counter popular perceptions of young people as trouble-makers.

So – how would you respond to these questions?

How can young people lead, inspire, or have a positive impact on design?
Can ethics and social responsibility inform this design?

* Thanks to the Social Design Site for this quote.

This article first appeared in Beyond Current Horizons Blog on 15 July 2008

When looking at the future it’s easy to forget that we aren’t the first people to live in the present. What’s happening to us now is naturally much more real than what happened before we existed, or what has yet to exist, and it’s only human to privilege it without realising. But it’s essential to try and avoid this way of thinking if we want to avoid going over ground that’s already been well-trodden.

The March issue of the British Journal of Educational Technology highlighted this. In an introduction from Nick Rushby and Jan Seabrook, the authors suggest that most current efforts to support learning with technology don’t tend to show any awareness of previous efforts: in their words, “It is almost as if our field started in the late 1990s, and that nothing of importance happened before that time. Yet, the two decades from 1980–1999 encompass a great deal of UK research and development in the use of technology in education and training”. The penalty of working in this state of ignorance, of course, is that progress comes hard and energy is wasted.

So what can combat this lack of awareness? One initiative that has the potential to provide researchers into learning technologies with the kind of perspective Rushby and Seabrook are looking for is the fledgling National Archive of Educational Computing, a collection of memories, documents, artefacts and software herded together by Richard Millwood of Core UK and previously Ultralab. Launched at the Institute of Education last week (read Merlin John’s report of the event), NAEC aims to document the history of learning technologies and the experiences of those who built and used them. It’s a huge and much-needed undertaking, and if you can contribute a story or support the project in any other way you’d be doing a valuable service.

The BCH project is looking at the futures that lie ahead for education and technology, not the past, so NAEC might not seem like the most obvious topic for us to look at. But the archive offers us the promise of perspective and context, the chance to step back from what seems like a constant rush of technological excitement and learn from what’s happened already. An example: the recent reorganisation of government departments that gave birth to the DCSF, DIUS and BERR might prompt us to consider whether educational technology is something that stimulates industry and is an economic asset to the UK, or whether its economic value is more indirect, through its equipping learners with modern technological skills (or indeed, whether there is more to education than just supporting the economic health of the country). This is a current debate. But it takes access to the experience of people like Mike Aston for us to know that the Department for Trade and Industry and the Department for Education and Science were struggling to control this new approach to learning back in the late 1970s. Or that calls for “systems thinking” or “algorithmic thinking” have been made for nearly forty years. When a debate seems less novel it’s easier to assess its impact or importance than when caught up in the urgency of the present-day.

There’s a “but”, of course. The archive itself could benefit from a similar sense of perspective: at the moment, it seems to be working under the assumption that all learning technology comes in the form of disks and tapes and printed documents (listings and manuals and worksheets). But the technologies being pressed into service to support learning won’t allow themselves to be so neatly archived. How do you store the internet, or distributed programmes, or documents that change every few minutes, or activities that exist half in this world and half in another? The archive needs to be more future-focussed, if it isn’t going to end up in a museum itself. No doubt it will be, once it’s up and running.

But even if it confines itself to the last forty years of work, its presence will still help to remind us to guard against being seduced by narrow-minded presentism. And that is already a pretty useful contribution to any exploration of the future.

Paul Murphy is the minister in charge of Wales. His additional ministerial position in charge of digital inclusion is to be found as part of the Ministry of Justice.

What responsibilities will this new minister have? Mr Murphy will be responsible for “data security” and “information assurance.” The key government goal for digital inclusion is to give everyone in the UK access to the internet. Will that be Murphy’s only role? Or will he have some part to play in the upcoming ID cards scheme? Why marry data assurance and devolution WITH digital inclusion?

Answers on an e-postcard….

There was also a strong dose of marketing and business speak, though this probably shouldn’t be seen as surprising given that videogames are a major corporate phenomenon produced and sold in a multibillion-dollar international industry. And this is my point: if we are truly serious about “serious games” then we have to be very serious indeed about the role of this industry in debates about our health, lifestyles, social policies and education. Opening the conference, Prof Richard Bartle claimed that “the army plays games, and not for fun reasons.” Quite. So if games are to be played in schools, what might be the reasons?

Lord David Puttnam (chairman of Futurelab amongst other things) provided the main keynote. Suggesting that videogames seem to many children to be “an antidote to school,” he argued that public policymakers and the games industry need to be involved in a dialogue with educators. Whereas, according to Lord Puttnam, many children experience school as a process of “being done to,” their experience of playing games is one of participation and taking part. The games industry might therefore bring to the current educational debate its expertise in making content accessible and lively while motivating players to continue to overcome complex and difficult challenges. Through playing games, he claimed, players may be able to develop a more subjective view of events and issues, to develop their personal understandings and empathy as well as to experience alternative worlds or versions of the real world that would otherwise be unavailable to them.

Lord Puttnam’s particular interest is in how climate change can be tackled, and he sees games as having a role here. How might serious games illustrate and allow players to explore the effects of climate change? One response was provided by Gobion Rowlands of Red Redemption, who make “socially conscious games,” in the shape of the free game “Climate Challenge” (winner of the 2008 European Green IT award). The game allows players to control the future of the planet by taking on the role of EU president for a year, and it uses accurate data provided by the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC). With over 2million users to date, this is an example of a serious game that remains enterianing. In Rowlands’ words, “fun does not have to be vacuous.”

Dan Hon of Six to Start also demonstrated some non-vacuous fun in his work on the “We Tell Stories” initiative for Penguin books. We Tell Stories presents 6 pieces of short fiction by 6 established authors, but presents them in a variety of ways only made possible by the web. Toby Litt’s “Slice,” for example, is mediated through blog posts on Twitter, while Charles Cummings’s “21 Steps” is told using Google Maps. By developing “social tools to tell stories,” Hon said, the website provides a “fiction experience that isn’t just words.” Although We Tell Stories was not designed specifically for schools, Hon reported a great deal of positive feedback from teachers using the site in classroom activities, adding, “we make entertainment that just happens to be educational.” Both Rowlands and Hon argued that they have no desire to intervene in formal education, but they do want to get involved in it, to contribute to the debate. They represent, perhaps, serious gaming that also happens to be socially responsible and cognizant of a much wider range in the games environment than others might imagine. Neither We Tell Stories nor Climate Challenge are anything like the popular perception of games as fighting, crime and vice simulators. (Which really are “serious” games.)

Other sessions during the day illustrated how the serious games field has grown to accommodate all sorts of styles and forms of what can only loosely be called “playing.” Kevin Corti of Pixelearning put serious games alongside a raft of social networking services and suggested gaming is only one aspect of many young people’s electronic experience. He argued that it is users and not companies who will demonstrate the potential of these technologies and media. This would suggest, maybe, that companies willing to invest in serious gaming should be working alongside users (children, teachers) to develop products, rather than following the standard production process of developing products and thens elling them to schools. And finally, Paul Miller demonstrated the School of Everything, a simple social website that allows users to advertise their expertise in anything they feel qualified to teach and others then to sign up to courses. Classes available online range from knitting to crime scene investigation. It is difficult to see the School of Everything as a serious game at all–yet it assumes that people are best motivated to learn when they are making up their own minds, when they are making decisions, and which they continue to want to learn when it gets tough. This is much like the kind of thinking that gamers say makes them want to carry on playing games–”I’m interested in this, it gets harder, I get better at it.” “Could you have a School of Everything,” Miller asked, “within an institution such as a school?” Could you ask children “what do you want to teach today?”

The Serious Games field is divided between organisations seeking to develop social tools which expand on the notion of what playing games is all about, and the potential business opportunities which might be made available for the games industry in the educational environment. This means that the future of the debate in this area will need to address questions about the role of corporations, the role of small and self-avowedly “responsible” organisations, and the role of politics in educational change. “Corporate” is almost a pejorative term in educational debates (so is “policy”); yet educational change may not come about without the financial interest of the private sector. Lord Puttnam suggested that public-private partnership might be the only business model. For the serious games subsector of the games indsutry, that means working alongside the multinationals and policymakers at the same time. That’s what makes “The Education Game” the most serious of all. Let’s hope it’s the taking part and not the winning that really matters.

What’s Next-21 Ideas for 21st Century Learning…Charles Leadbeater

It was an ominous start for Innovation and 21st Century learning when the Guardian Newsroom offices on Farringdon St, the venue for the launch of the Innovation Unit publication by Charlie Leadbeater, remained chained and even the Director of Chariots of Fire, David Puttnam, was unable to gain entry!

However the chains and padlocks of the door and about 150 minds were soon opened and liberated by the stimulating and inspirational ideas of Charlie Leadbeater, the brains, some would say, behind the personalisation agenda.

Commissioned by the Innovation Unit , www.innovation-unit.co.uk ,Charlie has visited a wide range of schools in the country to try and identify 21 ideas and some joined up dots to inform policy and build upon innovative practice.

He argues powerfully that the current approach to educational reform is running out of steam. Improvements in results have reached a plateau. Education inequality remains stubbornly high.

What’s Next? Makes 21 recommendations to create an approach centred on learning “with and from” children rather than “to and for”. This would mean a radical reappraisal of some of the current relationships within and beyond schools. Charlie’s vision of relationships for learning embraces the family, workplace and community as well as the school as centres of learning.

In chapter 2 he introduces a new word to the education policy discussion “Pragmatopians”. A unique combination of vision and building on what we have learned already.

He argues for a series of changes which include the break up of monolithic mass secondary schools, a national peer learner programme, akin to the The Experts Patients Programme in NHS. He also suggests that families who show early signs of risk of drop out from education should be allocated multi-agency support workers., and he strongly feels the standard school day should be killed off rather than be left to wither on the vine as learners decide when and where to learn facilitated by new and emerging technologies.

His views were welcomed by Lord Andrew Adonis who reminded the audience that many of Charlie’s ideas were reminiscent of his time in school and we should recognise and build on what works and the government always attempts to resolve these issues by replacing the “or” with “and” and this was the most important lesson he had learned from Tony Blair!

Val Hannon from the Innovation unit was anxious to point out that the purpose of this work was to stimulate ideas and a conversation at a critical moment of, and opportunity for, school transformation.

This publication, and the conversations it should stimulate, will be of enormous benefit for those embarking on their BSF journey (or indeed those already on it!) and will make a major contribution the NCSL BSF Leadership programmes which are preparing schools and local authorities to make the most of BSF.

The morning began with some locked doors and ended with 150 opened minds!

Bob Harrison