Learn 4 Life

All you need to create your own outside broadcast unit and stream video from almost anywhere

I made this presentation for TeachMeet Milton Keynes last night #TMMK but didn’t present as I thought the practitioners who turned up more worthy that evening and time was short.

So many people have asked me how I did the broadcast from the Treehouse last year http://www.l4l.co.uk/?p=690 I thought I’d show what kit was needed and how much it cost.

So download the film, go and buy the kit and write the AUPs and agree the policies with your communities and off you go…

What happens when you give a class of 8 year old children an iPod touch each?

The wonderful thing about my job is that I have a network of people I can visit who are involved with prototyping the use of new technologies in education. My latest outing was to a Junior School with a difference this week.

Peter Barrett, an old colleague of mine, had told me about the seed of this idea some months back. Knowing Peter I guessed it would be quite ambitious. We have worked on a number of innovation projects in the past and he never fails to surprise me…

As well as the school going through a massive rebuilding programme, they have also introduced a set of iPod touches into one year 4 class, for each child, to see what happens.

All the touches are networked through an Apple Airport Extreme and out onto the internet through the school’s connection. It is not every day you see this sort of thing.

So I offered to pop along and make a video of their progress after a couple of weeks. In the first week that the children have had them, they seemed to be quite at home using the applications and devices - but it’s early days…

Here is a brief video record of reflections and practice of that use…

I’d like to thank all the staff, children and parents for help in making this film.

Reflecting on the OpenRSA - modelling the future…

Being drawn in

Joining the RSA as a Fellow has been on the fringes of my attention for some time now. A couple of years ago I was invited to a meeting to tenatively formulate ways forward to do things differently there by Steve Moore. Since that time I have been observing the process of OpenRSA from a distance - infrequently dipping into the emerging activity coming from that direction. So when I saw, what seemed a pivotal workshop, pushed out through Eventbrite on FaceBook (I think…), I decided to turn up and see what had had happened in the intervening time. I’m not a Fellow but I’m interested in becoming one - perhaps - so getting the back story, the current state of affairs and the debate around the concept of OpenRSA was very, very appealing. The fact that I wasn’t a Fellow and could turn up and have the opportunity to engage was a big plus. Certainly the Social Media mechanisms drew me in gradually like a small comet into a parabola of interest around the OpenRSA’s growing gravitational field - so whatever they had done to get my attention had finally worked - I was there and am now blogging about it in depth.

Similar patterns

It is interesting to observe so many similar patterns beginning to emerge in different contexts in various spheres around Social Networking this year. From my focus,  Education, E-Learning and EdTech, there is the growing TeachMeet phenomenon; smaller cadres of smart educators like the teachers at the  EdtechRoundup weekly Flash Meetings on a Sunday night;  larger and more aggregated events like Amplified (facilitated and recognised by NESTA) and, indeed, direct action like the recent writetoreply site rezzed up in a couple of days by people responding to a need within the community to easily feed back and comment on Digital Britain and other forthcoming interim government reports.

All this activity does seem to be pointing the same way like iron filings around invisible social magnetic fields and there are opportunities to effect systemic change from the ground up in a distributed way -  in part. But each group seems to share some of the same frustrations, cul de sacs and challenges that involve such emergent change.

Challenges

How to reach out to wider communities beyond the tech savvy individuals that inhabit these various worlds without alienating and excluding others used to more traditional forms of communication? How to gain the attention of and to co-opt top down initiatives to co-create new ways of working but have those emerging models break through into the mainstream and effect change so that the innovative and creative becomes more the norm? How to wrest power and resources from older centralised systems to empower more localised activity that is sustainable, configurable, extensible and can be given wider scope? All key questions in the overlapping Ven Diagram of groups I inhabit.

Events

I think people do lose sight of the fact that it really is about people - the solutions to smarter ways of connecting together both online and in the physical world - it does start from the local community - where these Social Networking tools do score is that they both help, drive and augment community involvement but initially at the point of need within the physical world to cement and reinforce engagement - use and takeup is most definitely event driven.

Digital Refuseniks

And I don’t have a problem with technological refuseniks - theirs is a healthy skepticism or obliviousness -  force of numbers and direct need will make many migrate over time when models of social use have been scaffolded enough by family and friends and significant opportunities or serendipity act as fortuitous drivers to effect change through face to face traditional meetups or ‘meatspace‘ as a few of my more wired colleages might say…  I do think Open Source software, Open Standards, Data and ubiquity of portable mobile devices may well underpin this.

Opening up opportunities

In the workshop people mentioned development of strategy and databases- yes - but underlying that, I believe, are those Open Collaborative opportunities - and they have to be exactly that, open, to have greatest effect. No more silos despite whatever economic conditions we find ourselves in at present. In my opinion the reason why Twitter has scored so highly recently is entirely because it drills down to the individual via iPhones et al and skips over institutional ghettos connecting peer to peer - it’s a technology that’s ubiquitous, accessible,  wired into you, highly personalised - highly configurable - highly extensible. For me its power lies in the ability to access communities of interest that I would never had access to before and on a global scale. Want an example? I sat with an academic recently and asked him to give me the most obscure term he could think of in his field. I did a Google search - nothing. I did a Twitter search and pulled up about 10 conversations around the subject; all people he could have the possibility of contacting or researching with further links out to communities from there.

Network weaving

And as someone also pointed out at the RCA Workshop, the ability to be able to weave these different forms of communication to optimise use and provide concrete solutions is probably an emerging profession. There is an opportunity there for the business of making things happen. People who are smart filters, enablers and can offer commutativity of ideas between both the online and physical will be in high demand. How that can be scoped beyond the individual is a challenge but that’s where top down facilitation comes in perhaps. But not everyone will have the grammar and syntax to use adopt and run with these new systems - good! that makes for opportunities for me and others to provide solutions…and to expand our networks and level of expertise and insight.

The RSA Workshop

Well from that long lead in I guess I should blog about my experiences of the day. The workshop was run by David Gauntlett (whose site I have just seen and I’m amazed I have never come across before!) and was excellent. I made a very quick mind map of the points people started to raise during the background that both Lauras (Billings and Bunt)  and Malcolm Forbes gave about the whole process up to that time (If you fancy adding to it or putting me right just mail me and I’ll give you access for collaboration). It’s merely my own personal note taking and reflection on the processes of the day. It doesn’t say how much fun it was though. As a teacher and someone who has spent quite a bit of time teaching early years children this was a lovely exercise in reflective thinking through the modelling of concepts in diverse media. This sort of thing always reminds me of John Davitt’s Learning Event Generator - it’s also an excellent excuse for breaking down barriers to social interaction through play or Serious Games.

As we modelled our ideas we fed back and reflected on and aggregated what we’d done. I will include all five videos of the event with pictures of the constructions below. Because they are all High Definition Vids it might take a few days to upload but you might like to return to get a flavour of the day as I upload them.

All in all I felt it was a very productive afternoon - am I going to become a Fellow?

Well quite possibly - this feels familiar territory to me - far more of a structure that I can work within. If you don’t know the work of the RSA then it may prompt you to investigate further - certainly for me in education - it makes more sense than any of the more traditional organisations I would want to be involved with.

I’ll publish the results of the plenaries as I upload to Vimeo - for the time being there will be placeholders with Flickr pics for each group. If you were there - you might like to click on the pictures which will take you to Flickr where you can annotate parts - or then again you might not…

Group 1’s Models

Plenary / Reflection / Elicitation / Explanation

First of several videos from the Plenary from the RSA Workshop 19th February 2009

Group 2’s Model

Group 3’s Models

Group 4’s Models

Teachers are Heroes just for one day - Open Source Schools @ BETT 2009 - Why you must use Open Source Software

Open Source Schools

Open Source Schools - BETT Seminar January 19th 2009

Every once in a while you see something that makes you think: ‘Yes this really is going to change education in this country’ and it makes you smile inside because you know what is going to happen further down the line and how revolutionary it will be; it will touch the lives of so many people and transform learning - making it more effective, more engaging, more personal and build a sense of community far beyond the initial event itself.

Pivotal Moments

One such moment was on the saturday at BETT 2009, where a small but significant 45 minute presentation by 4 teachers (Miles Berry, Michelle Walters, Jose’ Picardo and Doug Belshaw) on Open Source Schools will, potentially, change the face of how schools use Software in the UK and beyond and its knock on effect for how people do business in the classroom. A big shout out must also go to Josie Fraser who I know was one of the consultants to BECTA on the project which is going from strength to strength.

Days of Lockdown are ending

For me the days of locked-in licenced computing and the lack of access to pupils to good professional quality software at home are a big issue. So this launch is timely - if you are mulling over the lack of funds in your budget for the year you must see this presentation - it will save you thousands of pounds and enable you to have a way of ensuring pupils can work from home to school and back again fluently with the software and kit without worrying over legal and compatability issues. This will save you money and raise the game in terms of home/ school learning.

Fiming and Mashing the presentations

I couldn’t attend because I was presenting about Second Life (with a live link to Tailand) elsewhere at BETT but Hannah Wise from the BBC kindly agreed to film the session and what a good job of camerawork she did! I’m glad we managed to capture it on video because I think the event needed documenting and the basic concepts spreading as far and wide as possible using that medium.

I’m passionate about the use of video in education to effect change - for me it is the underlying ethos behind this site. See something good, film it or record it to audio and then disseminate it to make things happen. So I Mashed the video with the presentations to create the results below. They will all be available on the Open Source Schools site, please go there for lots more resources as well and please download them and use them in CPD for consciousness raising locally. They are all free to distribute under a CC Education Commons licence. In this time of Credit Crunch and shrinking school budgets Open Source Software will be invaluable but more than that it will underpin and build your learning communities and that is what it’s all about surely? Show this to your head, head of department, LA advisor, parents, local firms, anyone who can make a difference in your local community.

Teachers are Heroes

The teachers in this film are special; early adopters who have given over hours of their time to show their vison for the future - people like this are my heroes - they make the difference and not for just one day but one day, one moment can change things, they have my immense respect. They are passionately engaged with their subject and, most of all, their pupils; they change people’s lives by their devotion and commitment to education. What they do needs to be documented and shared.

Open Source is about People and how they connect

Open Source is not about the software, it is about the people, the inherent freedoms of choice we make in our world and the lives of the young people with whom we engage and isn’t that one of the most wonderful things to pass on to another generation? Making these videos has been a labour of love I hope you find them of use and spread the word far and wide. But enough of this sentimental guff - down to practicalities; watch the videos below, download, show and share them with everyone you know.

The Presentations

Miles Berry, Michelle Walters, Jose’ Picardo and Doug Belshaw - Whole Presentation

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Miles Berry’s Introduction (only) to Open Source

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Michelle Walters explains what Open Office is and how to use it

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Doug Belshaw talks about his use of Netbooks and Linux in the classroom

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Jose’ Picardo talks about how to install and use Audacity the free Open Souce audio recorder

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Miles Berry talking about Moodle

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Michelle Walters on how to get started with Open Source Software

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Miles Berry talks about the Open Source Schools website

Click To Play

NB: For those of you with a technical bent the links to an iPhone, WMV, OGG Vorbis and loads of other versions of these videos are available at the blip.tv site : http://learn4life.blip.tv/. Just have a look at the controls for embedding in the show player.

Outside the Wire - What lies ahead - Possible solutions and pointers? Making the map…

Image attribution to Bill Gracey on Flickr under this CC Licence

‘The revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new tools, it happens when society adopts new behaviours‘ Clay Shirkey

That pithy sentence uttered in the new UsNow film couldn’t be more true, especially in the world of innovation in education that this blog constantly addresses.

So far this year I have been pulling focus on informal learning outside the wire of traditional institutions - in 2009 I am going to be more concerned with looking at the research and opinion that surrounds this arena and focus on highlighting and amplifying ideas and practice from individuals that might contribute to change in those places of learning and show concrete examples of how that practice demonstrates workable innovation - I’ll be searching out, interviewing and pushing practitioners, policy makers and others to reflect on how they think change can be brought about and banging on about 21st century learning, identity, curricula and literacy.

I’m not a researcher and I’m not an academic but I do have a passion for digital media and a drive to show others’ innovative practice going on now in schools, colleges and HE institutions. I think the change is happening too fast for academia and part of what this site is about is documenting and mapping those pivotal changes as they evolve through the eyes of those individuals who have the vision to innovate.

I’ve been interviewing people for over five years now and I am beginning to sense a wider change starting to happen so I’ll be out and about interviewing people on video about how innovation, informal learning and bottom up practice might change education in the UK and how it could do that in practical and scalable ways.

I’m not really interested in formalising this activity but more about disseminating how such behaviours might effect change in some small way or get people to consider doing things differently over time in both strategic and localised contexts within their own communities.

I’ll also be challenging policy makers to enter the debate and show some interest other than just through traditional media, soundbites or third party buffers - that certainly will be a challenge.

It should be a busy year.