Learning
Connectedness changes learning
23/08/17 14:33
The gob-smackingly huge failure of schools that I referred to in my last blog is the failure by the majority of schools and the UK education system as a whole, to recognise that the way young people learn has changed.
The digital revolution has made possible a new and better way of learning, which young people have adopted. That the majority of professional educators apparently cannot see this is a failure of understanding in their core purpose - promoting learning. This is why I used the phrase 'gob-smackingly huge'. It is comparable to doctors not adjusting their practice when the nature of disease became understood, and we discovered about infection and bacteria.
I can only conceive of two reasons for this. The first is that the majority of people in education systems are incompetent, but I know this isn't true. We have a lot of very good teachers who care deeply about how their pupils learn. That they are not seeing this change in learning suggests that something is inhibiting their experimentation with the changes the digital revolution has brought and hence the development of their awareness that there is now a better way to promote pupils' learning. The second possible reason is that those in positions of power in our education systems, particularly school leaders and the politicians and bureaucrats who run our education systems, are not primarily concerned with getting the best learning possible but have other priorities that they focus on instead.
In saying that there is a new and better way of learning I am not saying that all past practice was wrong. Far from it, teaching has developed a very great deal in the last 50 years and there will continue to be a place in teaching for the best current practice. The 'new and better way' arises because a new and very powerful factor has become available - connectedness. Our young people, from a very early age, are now connected, to information, to computer based systems and tools, and to other people. This is a hugely radical development for which there is no precedent. The closest I can come to conceiving of a precedent is to imagine that books, literacy and huge libraries all happened in a matter of two decades but that schools continued to teach orally.
There are a few schools that over the last decade have embraced this developing connectedness and have adjusted pedagogy and teaching to capitalise on it. They have shown the way. There is no shortage of video and articles explaining how these schools generate better learning, but the majority of schools still deny children the opportunity to use their personal devices in school. And they take little notice of how pupils' connectedness can change the learning of the children out of school.
So if the children and their families are now connected, and many teachers are connected themselves and quite capable of bringing connectedness into their professional approach to teaching, what is the inhibitor? It can only be something the other group of people in our education systems are doing, the school leaders, politicians and bureaucrats. And as these people are in general not bad people but people acting in good faith, it can only mean that their main priority is not quality of learning but something else.
I put it to you that politically the prime purpose of education systems is to exercise control over young people. Initially this was about reinforcing the power-base of the organisations that provided education, initially the churches and then the independent schools that arose. They presented themselves as the gatekeepers of knowledge that would enable advancement, for those wanting entrance to positions of power in the state, the military and the church. Then as it became necessary to educate more than just an elite, nation states got involved and set up their own education systems.
The fact that developed-world education systems are about control first and learning a poor second is clearly evident in the way these education systems operate. But it is wilfully obscured by maintaining the myth that learning is the prime aim. This had better be the topic of another blog.
The digital revolution has made possible a new and better way of learning, which young people have adopted. That the majority of professional educators apparently cannot see this is a failure of understanding in their core purpose - promoting learning. This is why I used the phrase 'gob-smackingly huge'. It is comparable to doctors not adjusting their practice when the nature of disease became understood, and we discovered about infection and bacteria.
I can only conceive of two reasons for this. The first is that the majority of people in education systems are incompetent, but I know this isn't true. We have a lot of very good teachers who care deeply about how their pupils learn. That they are not seeing this change in learning suggests that something is inhibiting their experimentation with the changes the digital revolution has brought and hence the development of their awareness that there is now a better way to promote pupils' learning. The second possible reason is that those in positions of power in our education systems, particularly school leaders and the politicians and bureaucrats who run our education systems, are not primarily concerned with getting the best learning possible but have other priorities that they focus on instead.
In saying that there is a new and better way of learning I am not saying that all past practice was wrong. Far from it, teaching has developed a very great deal in the last 50 years and there will continue to be a place in teaching for the best current practice. The 'new and better way' arises because a new and very powerful factor has become available - connectedness. Our young people, from a very early age, are now connected, to information, to computer based systems and tools, and to other people. This is a hugely radical development for which there is no precedent. The closest I can come to conceiving of a precedent is to imagine that books, literacy and huge libraries all happened in a matter of two decades but that schools continued to teach orally.
There are a few schools that over the last decade have embraced this developing connectedness and have adjusted pedagogy and teaching to capitalise on it. They have shown the way. There is no shortage of video and articles explaining how these schools generate better learning, but the majority of schools still deny children the opportunity to use their personal devices in school. And they take little notice of how pupils' connectedness can change the learning of the children out of school.
So if the children and their families are now connected, and many teachers are connected themselves and quite capable of bringing connectedness into their professional approach to teaching, what is the inhibitor? It can only be something the other group of people in our education systems are doing, the school leaders, politicians and bureaucrats. And as these people are in general not bad people but people acting in good faith, it can only mean that their main priority is not quality of learning but something else.
I put it to you that politically the prime purpose of education systems is to exercise control over young people. Initially this was about reinforcing the power-base of the organisations that provided education, initially the churches and then the independent schools that arose. They presented themselves as the gatekeepers of knowledge that would enable advancement, for those wanting entrance to positions of power in the state, the military and the church. Then as it became necessary to educate more than just an elite, nation states got involved and set up their own education systems.
The fact that developed-world education systems are about control first and learning a poor second is clearly evident in the way these education systems operate. But it is wilfully obscured by maintaining the myth that learning is the prime aim. This had better be the topic of another blog.
35 years pushing uphill
21/08/17 10:44
I've spent over 35 years endeavouring to help schools and governments capitalise on the opportunities technology and the digital environment bring to learning. And it is time to reflect on why all the effort myself and others have exerted over this time seems to have had remarkably little effect on the majority of schools. My guess is that only around 10% of schools in the UK have properly normalised the use of the digital environment and digital tools. Though most primary schools are making a reasonable amount of use of technology few are properly linking with the digital environment of the families of pupils. We still regularly get stories of secondary schools banning pupils from using their own mobile devices in school. The students move from an always-on digitally supported life outside school to what is effectively a digital desert in school, only permitted to use the connectedness of the digital environment and the tools it makes available when teachers think it is a good idea.
I have huge praise for all in education who are trying to make their practice reflect the world we now live in. I hope I have done my bit to support them. But the fact that a few schools have shown the way to create an education fit for the connected world we live in but the majority seemingly completely ignore this is frustrating. And it makes me wonder why.
The conclusion I am coming to is that the majority of teachers, school principals and politicians involved with education are just not seeing the change that is happening. Marshall McLuhan prophetically stated that "The medium is the message". Big changes come upon the world not because of what technological innovations can do, but because of how these innovations change the world. Radio and the telephone broke down the isolation of communities and countries and created one world. Cars impacted not because they provided faster transport but because they changed cityscapes and commuting and shopping distances. The digital environment, combined with access to smartphones for all, is changing what we are as people and how social communities operate.
The majority of the schools in the UK, and in many other developed nations, have not realised this. They are reacting to some of the impacts this is having, usually from a fear-based approach rather than an opportunity-based approach. But failing to recognise that the culture into which children have been born, for the last 20 years, is a connected culture quite different to the societal culture that existed before personal mobile phones. Children who had the benefits of SMS messaging throughout their teenage years are now in their 30s and having children. All the children now in school were born into a world connected by the internet.
As Douglas Adams said, anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things. All young people consider being connected at all times is a natural part of the way the world works. The majority of schools don't.
That schools and politicians are failing to recognise this major societal change is a gob-smackingly huge failure. Of which I will blog more soon.
I have huge praise for all in education who are trying to make their practice reflect the world we now live in. I hope I have done my bit to support them. But the fact that a few schools have shown the way to create an education fit for the connected world we live in but the majority seemingly completely ignore this is frustrating. And it makes me wonder why.
The conclusion I am coming to is that the majority of teachers, school principals and politicians involved with education are just not seeing the change that is happening. Marshall McLuhan prophetically stated that "The medium is the message". Big changes come upon the world not because of what technological innovations can do, but because of how these innovations change the world. Radio and the telephone broke down the isolation of communities and countries and created one world. Cars impacted not because they provided faster transport but because they changed cityscapes and commuting and shopping distances. The digital environment, combined with access to smartphones for all, is changing what we are as people and how social communities operate.
The majority of the schools in the UK, and in many other developed nations, have not realised this. They are reacting to some of the impacts this is having, usually from a fear-based approach rather than an opportunity-based approach. But failing to recognise that the culture into which children have been born, for the last 20 years, is a connected culture quite different to the societal culture that existed before personal mobile phones. Children who had the benefits of SMS messaging throughout their teenage years are now in their 30s and having children. All the children now in school were born into a world connected by the internet.
As Douglas Adams said, anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things. All young people consider being connected at all times is a natural part of the way the world works. The majority of schools don't.
That schools and politicians are failing to recognise this major societal change is a gob-smackingly huge failure. Of which I will blog more soon.
Making Learning Addictive
11/03/17 17:21
We are increasingly addicted to our computers and phones. This is not an accident. The companies devising those online offerings that grab and hold our attention know precisely what they are doing. It was at a conference back in about 2008 that I first heard people talking about this, so the understanding of how to get people addicted to your website isn’t new. This was all brought back to my attention this week by New Scientist who reviewed a book by Adam Alter “Why we can’t stop checking, scrolling, clicking and watching”.
While we may decry the amount of time young people (and many older) spend glued to their phones, the article did make the point that we can also use technology to motivate good behaviours. In fact it doesn’t need tech at all, though tech can be very powerful in multiplying the impact of what you do to addict people to good behaviours.
What has made me put words into a blog is that the techniques being used to addict us to online systems are identical to the approaches being used by the schools that have gained the Naace Third Millennium Learning Award, which are a good sample of digitally-evolved schools. They have shown us in their videos what they do to increase engagement in learning by their pupils. These schools are essentially addicting young people to learning. I cannot see this as anything other than a good thing to do. The choice of where these young people will direct their attention to fulfil this addiction is entirely theirs. Their teachers and parents will suggest and guide so that they hopefully direct their learning attention to good things, and most young people want to learn the positive things life offers. Addiction to learning is in a completely different category to addiction to things that bring harm or merely absorb time.
Having pupils in your school addicted to learning also creates major spin-off benefits for the school staff and even the school budget. Pupils excited about learning, with an appetite for learning, who practise learning and reinforce the learning of others is what we all want. Teaching becomes a joy, achievement rockets and everyone in the school has the satisfaction of knowing their pupils are well equipped for the learning challenges they will continually face beyond school.
So what are these techniques to addict people. They are things that stimulate our brains to release dopamine, giving intense feelings of pleasure and making us want more. They are:
- Feedback
- Goals, which should be just beyond reach.
- Progress, through a sense of incremental mastery.
- Escalation, via progressively more difficult tasks.
- Cliffhangers, to produce tension that demands resolution.
- Strong social connections.
Anyone familiar with computer games knows how they use these techniques. But you will surely recognise that social networks are also using them to grab our attention.
These are also the defining characteristics of schools that are providing an education that surpasses good traditional learning:
1) Really good feedback, from the teacher, from lots of audiences through in-school celebration of work and collaborative activities, through parental and family engagement, and through involvement of the community.
2) Aspirational targets agreed by pupils, made possible because the schools have installed a growth mindset and made failure the first step to success.
3) A very strong focus on progress, which makes it easier to set agreed aspirational targets as all pupils can see clearly their progress, even if it is from a low base. Mastery is celebrated and rewarded through peer tutoring and many pupils taking leadership roles in the school (one third of the pupils have leadership roles in one school we have looked at).
4) Escalation of the difficulty of the challenges teachers set pupils as soon as they successfully master the original challenge. With ‘stretch and challenge’ resources available for pupils to independently move themselves on to.
5) Cliffhangers introduced by teachers in numerous ways such as timed tasks, deadlines to present work to other pupils, collaborative activities in which pupils challenge each other, performances, competitions and real-life tasks where pupils interact with others outside the school.
6) Strong social connections weaving their way through all of the above, through class discussions, collaboration, peer tutoring, class experts, pupil leaders, numerous audiences in-school and online, and high visibility of pupils’ output to others as a normal part of the work they do in school.
All this is of course possible without use of technology, but immensely more powerful when the school makes the online systems available to underpin all these. Visibility of work, audiences, collaboration and feedback, clarity of progress, availability of escalating challenges, and setting of high expectations can all be immeasurably stronger with effective use of technology. Not to mention the tools and resources for the work challenges that technology brings.
It is time that more schools realised that it is not enough to bemoan that children are becoming addicted to their phones. It is time to make what happens in school and in classes more addictive than the pleasures they get through their phones. And to use the fact that children have smartphones to complement, reinforce and make more addictive what happens in class, making children desire to continue feeding this learning addiction out of class.
This shouldn’t be hard given that schools have trained adults on site and the face-to-face social environment in which teachers can build addiction to learning, as well as what comes to children through their screens - provided of course that the school has not banned the pupils from bringing their mobile devices into school. The school’s online presence, together with real humans for several hours a day, can be much compelling than a cleverly designed algorithm.
It is the incredible impact on learning that children' smartphones can have that is driving myself and Mal Lee to investigate this - details on the Digital Evolution of Schooling site.
While we may decry the amount of time young people (and many older) spend glued to their phones, the article did make the point that we can also use technology to motivate good behaviours. In fact it doesn’t need tech at all, though tech can be very powerful in multiplying the impact of what you do to addict people to good behaviours.
What has made me put words into a blog is that the techniques being used to addict us to online systems are identical to the approaches being used by the schools that have gained the Naace Third Millennium Learning Award, which are a good sample of digitally-evolved schools. They have shown us in their videos what they do to increase engagement in learning by their pupils. These schools are essentially addicting young people to learning. I cannot see this as anything other than a good thing to do. The choice of where these young people will direct their attention to fulfil this addiction is entirely theirs. Their teachers and parents will suggest and guide so that they hopefully direct their learning attention to good things, and most young people want to learn the positive things life offers. Addiction to learning is in a completely different category to addiction to things that bring harm or merely absorb time.
Having pupils in your school addicted to learning also creates major spin-off benefits for the school staff and even the school budget. Pupils excited about learning, with an appetite for learning, who practise learning and reinforce the learning of others is what we all want. Teaching becomes a joy, achievement rockets and everyone in the school has the satisfaction of knowing their pupils are well equipped for the learning challenges they will continually face beyond school.
So what are these techniques to addict people. They are things that stimulate our brains to release dopamine, giving intense feelings of pleasure and making us want more. They are:
- Feedback
- Goals, which should be just beyond reach.
- Progress, through a sense of incremental mastery.
- Escalation, via progressively more difficult tasks.
- Cliffhangers, to produce tension that demands resolution.
- Strong social connections.
Anyone familiar with computer games knows how they use these techniques. But you will surely recognise that social networks are also using them to grab our attention.
These are also the defining characteristics of schools that are providing an education that surpasses good traditional learning:
1) Really good feedback, from the teacher, from lots of audiences through in-school celebration of work and collaborative activities, through parental and family engagement, and through involvement of the community.
2) Aspirational targets agreed by pupils, made possible because the schools have installed a growth mindset and made failure the first step to success.
3) A very strong focus on progress, which makes it easier to set agreed aspirational targets as all pupils can see clearly their progress, even if it is from a low base. Mastery is celebrated and rewarded through peer tutoring and many pupils taking leadership roles in the school (one third of the pupils have leadership roles in one school we have looked at).
4) Escalation of the difficulty of the challenges teachers set pupils as soon as they successfully master the original challenge. With ‘stretch and challenge’ resources available for pupils to independently move themselves on to.
5) Cliffhangers introduced by teachers in numerous ways such as timed tasks, deadlines to present work to other pupils, collaborative activities in which pupils challenge each other, performances, competitions and real-life tasks where pupils interact with others outside the school.
6) Strong social connections weaving their way through all of the above, through class discussions, collaboration, peer tutoring, class experts, pupil leaders, numerous audiences in-school and online, and high visibility of pupils’ output to others as a normal part of the work they do in school.
All this is of course possible without use of technology, but immensely more powerful when the school makes the online systems available to underpin all these. Visibility of work, audiences, collaboration and feedback, clarity of progress, availability of escalating challenges, and setting of high expectations can all be immeasurably stronger with effective use of technology. Not to mention the tools and resources for the work challenges that technology brings.
It is time that more schools realised that it is not enough to bemoan that children are becoming addicted to their phones. It is time to make what happens in school and in classes more addictive than the pleasures they get through their phones. And to use the fact that children have smartphones to complement, reinforce and make more addictive what happens in class, making children desire to continue feeding this learning addiction out of class.
This shouldn’t be hard given that schools have trained adults on site and the face-to-face social environment in which teachers can build addiction to learning, as well as what comes to children through their screens - provided of course that the school has not banned the pupils from bringing their mobile devices into school. The school’s online presence, together with real humans for several hours a day, can be much compelling than a cleverly designed algorithm.
It is the incredible impact on learning that children' smartphones can have that is driving myself and Mal Lee to investigate this - details on the Digital Evolution of Schooling site.