One thing about Microsoft impresses me more than any product I've ever seen them ship: their company motto is "Change the world, or go home". I love it because it is instructive, inspirational and visionary. Its a kind of BHAG - big, hairy, audacious goal to "serve as unifying focal point of effort, and act as a clear catalyst". We need these in life because our natural state is inertia which manifests itself resistance to change. I'm pretty resistant to change myself being part technophile and part luddite, but in the case of primary education I'm in favour of a revolution, and you can't do that without change.
Well I've just read the Cambridge Primary Review - Towards a New Primary Curriculum, which was produced to influence the latest government initiative to move the whole topic forward - sadly both fail to be remotely visionary and seem unlikely to inspire any kind of change for good. I even fear that what they propose - encouraging primary school children to access sites like Wikipedia - may backfire on them, much as I admire the sites themselves.
Where's the problem? The content will certainly have been written by well intentioned academics, they will have done formal investigations on the topic, which (at least at the time of writing) I have not, but the phrase "sticking plaster on a gaping wound" springs to mind. They want primary school kids to learn about IT (apparently at the same time as teachers, but we'll skip over that), but miss the point that children don't see IT as a topic in its own right at all - it is a consituent of all they do. Children do not see the magic in computing that I do - they expect it to work, whereas I am constantly amazed that it does.
And that's my fundamental problem with the initiative. It treats IT as a subject that should be part of the curriculum and completely fails to appreciate that it should be part of the education process itself. It is particularly disappointing to see the government's press release quote Stephen Crowne, Chief Executive of Becta, the government agency for technology in learning:
“There is no substitute for good teaching but technology is a vital tool which can develop knowledge and understanding and provide children with real skills for their future education. We want to see all young people leave primary school knowing how to put technology to best use in a way that enhances and advances their learning through secondary education and beyond.”
The irony of it - the government vision for young people to leave school knowing how to put technology to best use when the government itself doesn't know how to do that.
A lack of vision, I'd say.
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Thursday, 5 February 2009
I thought Bill and I might be on the same wavelength, but we're not...
Bill Gates talk at TED as reported by Ethan Zuckerman shows that - apart from Mosquitos - he's interested (like me) in raising the quality of teaching:
"How do you make a teacher great?” We’re all here, Gates tells us, because we had great teachers - including Gates, a legendary college dropout. Gates believes that 20% of American teachers do an excellent job, training the people who will create “the next revolutions”.
"How do you make a teacher great?” We’re all here, Gates tells us, because we had great teachers - including Gates, a legendary college dropout. Gates believes that 20% of American teachers do an excellent job, training the people who will create “the next revolutions”.
The education that the balance of students are getting is weak and getting weaker, he fears. The dropout rate is over 30% in the US, over 50% for minority kids. If you’re a low-income person, you’ve got less than a 25% chance of completing a college degree - you have a better chance of going to jail."
So he's defined the right problem. But oddly, given his background, he doesn't seem to have grasped the opportunities that computing has to offer. To my mind these are self evident. We need an open source, team based, software framework for supporting education delivery. And this can mean teachers don't all need to be superstars for our children to get a dramatically improved level of education.
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Manifesto for an IT-led revolution in primary education
I'm not in the twilight of my life, but it is lunchtime, and time to reflect on what I should do in the free periods I have after break and before home time. In this regard, perhaps, I find I have something in common with Bill Gates ... although without the money. What follows is something of a stream of consciousness, part formed thoughts rather than the definitive polemic, but I wanted to get something "out there" to declare my interest.
Having two members of my family working in primary school education often leads to anecdotes about pupils' behaviour, and - apart from the humour value this often includes - it is often striking how the *same* child can be engaged, eager to contribute and developing skills at one moment, yet distracted, disruptive and achieving nothing positive at another.
As I listed to these stories, the phrase "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man", famously explored/validated in the documentary series 7 up, keeps coming back to me. Surely, I think, to get the best return for the huge public investment we make in education, we would do well to focus more on our children's early years.
Shockingly more than 1.1 million adults in the UK have a reading age of 5 or below. Why care about this? At an economic level (and simplisticly linking poor education with a need for welfare payments) social security payments far exceed the cost of our education system - imagine what life could be like if we could cut the need for social security to the same level as education - with tax for everyone declining. I imagine many more benefits relating to the economic improvement for the better educated beneficiaries, and associated reduction in crime, anti-social behaviour, and healthcare costs.
I am no expert on educating youngsters, but I do know a thing or two about the computers, and how they can help to "change the way the world works" - a phrase used by Lotus Development marketing both for Lotus 1-2-3 and Lotus Notes, and I do think that software can step up to the challenge. I've come to recognise that it could be a good way to use my upcoming free period to attempt to make this happen.
By no means am I am alone in thinking about this challenge, and I recently came across Education City, which is a good effort, but no matter how good an attempt this is, I see it as a fundamentally flawed approach. It is certainly colourful and designed to appeal to children, addresses SEN (Special Educational Needs) and engages on multiple levels but when I think about what would be a good place to start, a commercial, all-embracing website wouldn't be it. It's too much like trying for a Hail Mary pass, when we should be breaking the challenge down to a set of building blocks.
What we need is a platform through which to deliver a whole variety of content. I imagine such a platform will necessarily adopt a set of operating principles for it to be embraced by the educational fraternity. I haven't put these into a structured order yet - I suspect there is one, but I'm not sure it really matters, since I figure they are all necessary elements.
1) Opensource
An educational framework should be provided by a non-commercial entity. Rather like the BBC has a charter to provide a benchmark reference for media in the UK. Its not the only channel available, and it doesn't provide all of its own programs. It has many issues in how it is run, but I view it as an inspiration for how governments can enhance the lives of their population without behaving like a control mechanism.
2) Aim to be a Framework rather than a solution
Rather like Google Andriod I don't see the right answer as a set of specific content. Content should come from many sources, including both traditional educational content providers as well as new internet initiated content providers. The framework needs to set out how any and all content should support the development of targetted skills, which in turn need to be supported by the framework rather than attempt to dictate what the targets are.
3) Be Social
Bearing in mind our target age group, the opportunity for a teacher to influence development is limited by the amount of attention they can devote to their charges. Therefore the task at hand should be to (yes) support the teacher, but also facilitate the other key contributors - parents and (just as importantly) peer groups. Teachers should not be seen as simply a Project Manager, allocating tasks, providing resources and setting time limits. While some will certainly need and appreciate such a role, others will rebel against it, or potentially rebel against the authority figure a teacher represents until they recognise the value such a role can bring to them.
4) Multi-channelled
We do not all learn in the same way, not do we have the same set of interests, nor do we have the same ability to do things. The same children who achieve nothing in class, often getting disruptive or exhibiting anti-social behaviour, can be experts in a specialism like a computer game or a sporting activity. To me it therefore seems self evident that all curriculum needs to enable multiple alternate paths to be taken through the material to allow the student to achieve similar goals.
5) Declared goals
As far as I can tell there appears to be little consensus on what the purpose of education actually is, and it seems to go back a long way. I cannot subscribe to it simply being to push for ever improving exam results, but success cannot be judged without having a clear target for it. I can find no adequate definition, so I'll set up an Aunt Sally myself:
"The highest achievement of education is to instil self confidence and self targetted aspirations."
This is bordering on the philosophical or even religious, but for education to succeed there needs to be a definition of what success means. My definition avoids both the concept of "education for education's sake" and the concept of education as a means of feeding suitably qualified candidates into the labour force.
If that is the vision, the goals to support it need to be separated from the framework itself, enabling goals to adapt over time to match changes in the environment.
6) Tests
Even if we have abstracted goals from the Framework, in order to assess progress in acquiring key skills there has to be support for measurement points. These measurement points should also be open - changeable over time, not just in how measurements are taken, but what the measurements should be. The challenge with this will be no ability to rely on apples<>apples comparisons over time, but there is evidence to suggest that is a flawed concept anyway.
7) Guardianship
As the goal is to include interaction with other children (and parents) in our learning framework we need to support the teacher in ensuring order. We don't want to discourage disagreements, but we certainly want to discourage abuse and ensure any that occurs is dealt with speedily. Therefore we need to include the ability to prevent user generated content from containing abusive words, but also support flagging of anything which is upsetting or intimidating for resolution by the teacher. There would be then an opportunity to link back to content modules to help the contributor understand the issues caused by their behaviour.
My thinking in this area is incomplete. However, I view it as a long term vision - an audacious goal if you will - and not something I feel can be progressed with a magic wand. I expect to return to this topic frequently, updating my thinking in each of the pillars identified above as time hopefully brings clarity and time permits.
Having two members of my family working in primary school education often leads to anecdotes about pupils' behaviour, and - apart from the humour value this often includes - it is often striking how the *same* child can be engaged, eager to contribute and developing skills at one moment, yet distracted, disruptive and achieving nothing positive at another.
As I listed to these stories, the phrase "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man", famously explored/validated in the documentary series 7 up, keeps coming back to me. Surely, I think, to get the best return for the huge public investment we make in education, we would do well to focus more on our children's early years.
Shockingly more than 1.1 million adults in the UK have a reading age of 5 or below. Why care about this? At an economic level (and simplisticly linking poor education with a need for welfare payments) social security payments far exceed the cost of our education system - imagine what life could be like if we could cut the need for social security to the same level as education - with tax for everyone declining. I imagine many more benefits relating to the economic improvement for the better educated beneficiaries, and associated reduction in crime, anti-social behaviour, and healthcare costs.
I am no expert on educating youngsters, but I do know a thing or two about the computers, and how they can help to "change the way the world works" - a phrase used by Lotus Development marketing both for Lotus 1-2-3 and Lotus Notes, and I do think that software can step up to the challenge. I've come to recognise that it could be a good way to use my upcoming free period to attempt to make this happen.
By no means am I am alone in thinking about this challenge, and I recently came across Education City, which is a good effort, but no matter how good an attempt this is, I see it as a fundamentally flawed approach. It is certainly colourful and designed to appeal to children, addresses SEN (Special Educational Needs) and engages on multiple levels but when I think about what would be a good place to start, a commercial, all-embracing website wouldn't be it. It's too much like trying for a Hail Mary pass, when we should be breaking the challenge down to a set of building blocks.
What we need is a platform through which to deliver a whole variety of content. I imagine such a platform will necessarily adopt a set of operating principles for it to be embraced by the educational fraternity. I haven't put these into a structured order yet - I suspect there is one, but I'm not sure it really matters, since I figure they are all necessary elements.
1) Opensource
An educational framework should be provided by a non-commercial entity. Rather like the BBC has a charter to provide a benchmark reference for media in the UK. Its not the only channel available, and it doesn't provide all of its own programs. It has many issues in how it is run, but I view it as an inspiration for how governments can enhance the lives of their population without behaving like a control mechanism.
2) Aim to be a Framework rather than a solution
Rather like Google Andriod I don't see the right answer as a set of specific content. Content should come from many sources, including both traditional educational content providers as well as new internet initiated content providers. The framework needs to set out how any and all content should support the development of targetted skills, which in turn need to be supported by the framework rather than attempt to dictate what the targets are.
3) Be Social
Bearing in mind our target age group, the opportunity for a teacher to influence development is limited by the amount of attention they can devote to their charges. Therefore the task at hand should be to (yes) support the teacher, but also facilitate the other key contributors - parents and (just as importantly) peer groups. Teachers should not be seen as simply a Project Manager, allocating tasks, providing resources and setting time limits. While some will certainly need and appreciate such a role, others will rebel against it, or potentially rebel against the authority figure a teacher represents until they recognise the value such a role can bring to them.
4) Multi-channelled
We do not all learn in the same way, not do we have the same set of interests, nor do we have the same ability to do things. The same children who achieve nothing in class, often getting disruptive or exhibiting anti-social behaviour, can be experts in a specialism like a computer game or a sporting activity. To me it therefore seems self evident that all curriculum needs to enable multiple alternate paths to be taken through the material to allow the student to achieve similar goals.
5) Declared goals
As far as I can tell there appears to be little consensus on what the purpose of education actually is, and it seems to go back a long way. I cannot subscribe to it simply being to push for ever improving exam results, but success cannot be judged without having a clear target for it. I can find no adequate definition, so I'll set up an Aunt Sally myself:
"The highest achievement of education is to instil self confidence and self targetted aspirations."
This is bordering on the philosophical or even religious, but for education to succeed there needs to be a definition of what success means. My definition avoids both the concept of "education for education's sake" and the concept of education as a means of feeding suitably qualified candidates into the labour force.
If that is the vision, the goals to support it need to be separated from the framework itself, enabling goals to adapt over time to match changes in the environment.
6) Tests
Even if we have abstracted goals from the Framework, in order to assess progress in acquiring key skills there has to be support for measurement points. These measurement points should also be open - changeable over time, not just in how measurements are taken, but what the measurements should be. The challenge with this will be no ability to rely on apples<>apples comparisons over time, but there is evidence to suggest that is a flawed concept anyway.
7) Guardianship
As the goal is to include interaction with other children (and parents) in our learning framework we need to support the teacher in ensuring order. We don't want to discourage disagreements, but we certainly want to discourage abuse and ensure any that occurs is dealt with speedily. Therefore we need to include the ability to prevent user generated content from containing abusive words, but also support flagging of anything which is upsetting or intimidating for resolution by the teacher. There would be then an opportunity to link back to content modules to help the contributor understand the issues caused by their behaviour.
My thinking in this area is incomplete. However, I view it as a long term vision - an audacious goal if you will - and not something I feel can be progressed with a magic wand. I expect to return to this topic frequently, updating my thinking in each of the pillars identified above as time hopefully brings clarity and time permits.
Monday, 16 June 2008
Anatomy of a modern day happening
On the 11th May 2008 the team I support, Reading FC, got relegated from the English Premier League. You had to be there (in body or in spirit) to realise what a great day that was. We won the game 4 goals to nil, but it could easily have been more. We played fantastic football, as indeed we had for many games during the season - certainly not all of them, but it did include our first victory against the mighty Liverpool in all our 136 year history.
So, whilst many clubs would have been sad and depressed at the prospect of relegation we were rather looking forward to another season where we stood a chance - actually quite a good chance - that we'd win a good share of games. And then reality started to dawn, what if we lost our best players; more importantly what if we lost our manager, Steve Coppell. At the time of writing only Hereford United, Accrington Stanley and Leyton Orient can boast longer serving English Managers and relegation is often a time to go.
Fear set in. As soon as we thought about it we sent a letter of support into the club asking for him to stay. Emotion was running high - if we felt this way, maybe others felt this way also? The easiest way to find out these days is to check the fan forums on the internet. For Reading FC this means the HobNob Anyone? (HNA) website. [Fabulous name for the site, kudos to whomever named it. ] And sure enough, there was active discussion on there from likeminded supporters. What transpired next seems (to me) a beacon of light for humanity in what often seems a murky world.
The relevant thread began with a post (by "Royal Yank") called FAO Sir Steve (later abbreviated to SSC, as in Sir Steve Coppell - not knighted in reality, but in our minds he should be, and the Man Ure fans always refer to their manager as SAF) the same day as the game - 11th May at 19:48: "Isn't it sad all this talk of "thanks for the memories", and who will be the "new manager"? - well my message to you SSC is quite simple: Please stay." In the same thread, at 10:19 the following day "Geekins" the first mention is made of the concept of community action: "I think we should get a load of us down to the training ground so he knows how much we want him here and a boost for the players as well."
By 16:42 "The 17 bus" created a thread on HNA called Coppell's Parking Space with a photo of the lamppost with the first sign.
At 16:56 "Geekins" urged on community action: "Let's get a massive bunch of us up there! I'm coming too!" At 17:16 "Stranded" showed how media savvy the world is becoming "If people really want to do this then it needs to get as much press as possible, so tomorrow at the earliest and contact the EP, Sky Sports News etc.....and get as many people to show up as you can to make it..." and at 17:21 "Row Z" made the leap from the HNA forum activity to the Facebook community: "Can we agree a time please? A Facebook Event will be set up for this as well."
And at 17:45 "Reading Fan Man" reported a Facebook group had been set up called Save Steve Coppell and "Alex Everson" posted a discussion topic asking for ideas : "What ideas do people have to raise awareness for the need for Steve Coppell to stay at Reading? Some ideas which have been mooted so far have included turning up at his parking spot, calling media to it, petitions. Anything has to be good, so any ideas need to be carried out ASAP!" and by 20:06 Alex repeated "AbovetheI"'s killer idea (posted on HNA at 19:02) "Let's all take 1 piece of a4, write whatever on it and stick it to that lamp post [by Steve Coppell's parking space] Keep it simple, each with our name and own little message of support. How does that sound? " At 17:50 "Row Z" told the HNA crowd about the event held at 7pm on 13th May - and the rest will live on in Royals history for many years to come. See if you can spot me in the clip :)
[Interesting side note on Facebook timestamps - it seems Discussion Board postings are always at PST, whereas the Wall and Events seem to be local time stamps]
And so it came to pass that Steve decided to stay, and those of us who took part are grateful to those who stimulated it all to happen - my emotions summed up by "2 world wars, 1 world cup" who wrote the following post:
"This is to say an official thank you and well done to the several hundred people here, who, at the drop of a hat went out in force to support and welcome Coppell to stay. Well done 17 bus et al for the idea, and everyone else who took part and represented people like me who were at work and/or didn't even know about it. Clearly had a lot to do with Coppell's decision. You may not realise it now, but this one act of sheer passionate support may well have changed the direction of RFC forever. After being so vocal about our horrendous home support, which I still maintain shows we do not belong anywhere near the Premiership, you guys have put back a lot of my faith in Reading fans and I'm delighted the flame of Elm Park's spirit lives. After such a showing I'm beginning to think we certainly do deserve to fight for the Prem. My respect and my thanks to real Reading fans everywhere. Once again proud to be a Reading lad. READING TILL I DIE."
And in the true tradition of the modern age, the commemorative T-Shirt.
So, whilst many clubs would have been sad and depressed at the prospect of relegation we were rather looking forward to another season where we stood a chance - actually quite a good chance - that we'd win a good share of games. And then reality started to dawn, what if we lost our best players; more importantly what if we lost our manager, Steve Coppell. At the time of writing only Hereford United, Accrington Stanley and Leyton Orient can boast longer serving English Managers and relegation is often a time to go.
Fear set in. As soon as we thought about it we sent a letter of support into the club asking for him to stay. Emotion was running high - if we felt this way, maybe others felt this way also? The easiest way to find out these days is to check the fan forums on the internet. For Reading FC this means the HobNob Anyone? (HNA) website. [Fabulous name for the site, kudos to whomever named it. ] And sure enough, there was active discussion on there from likeminded supporters. What transpired next seems (to me) a beacon of light for humanity in what often seems a murky world.
The relevant thread began with a post (by "Royal Yank") called FAO Sir Steve (later abbreviated to SSC, as in Sir Steve Coppell - not knighted in reality, but in our minds he should be, and the Man Ure fans always refer to their manager as SAF) the same day as the game - 11th May at 19:48: "Isn't it sad all this talk of "thanks for the memories", and who will be the "new manager"? - well my message to you SSC is quite simple: Please stay." In the same thread, at 10:19 the following day "Geekins" the first mention is made of the concept of community action: "I think we should get a load of us down to the training ground so he knows how much we want him here and a boost for the players as well."
By 16:42 "The 17 bus" created a thread on HNA called Coppell's Parking Space with a photo of the lamppost with the first sign.
At 16:56 "Geekins" urged on community action: "Let's get a massive bunch of us up there! I'm coming too!" At 17:16 "Stranded" showed how media savvy the world is becoming "If people really want to do this then it needs to get as much press as possible, so tomorrow at the earliest and contact the EP, Sky Sports News etc.....and get as many people to show up as you can to make it..." and at 17:21 "Row Z" made the leap from the HNA forum activity to the Facebook community: "Can we agree a time please? A Facebook Event will be set up for this as well."And at 17:45 "Reading Fan Man" reported a Facebook group had been set up called Save Steve Coppell and "Alex Everson" posted a discussion topic asking for ideas : "What ideas do people have to raise awareness for the need for Steve Coppell to stay at Reading? Some ideas which have been mooted so far have included turning up at his parking spot, calling media to it, petitions. Anything has to be good, so any ideas need to be carried out ASAP!" and by 20:06 Alex repeated "AbovetheI"'s killer idea (posted on HNA at 19:02) "Let's all take 1 piece of a4, write whatever on it and stick it to that lamp post [by Steve Coppell's parking space] Keep it simple, each with our name and own little message of support. How does that sound? " At 17:50 "Row Z" told the HNA crowd about the event held at 7pm on 13th May - and the rest will live on in Royals history for many years to come. See if you can spot me in the clip :)
[Interesting side note on Facebook timestamps - it seems Discussion Board postings are always at PST, whereas the Wall and Events seem to be local time stamps]
And so it came to pass that Steve decided to stay, and those of us who took part are grateful to those who stimulated it all to happen - my emotions summed up by "2 world wars, 1 world cup" who wrote the following post:
"This is to say an official thank you and well done to the several hundred people here, who, at the drop of a hat went out in force to support and welcome Coppell to stay. Well done 17 bus et al for the idea, and everyone else who took part and represented people like me who were at work and/or didn't even know about it. Clearly had a lot to do with Coppell's decision. You may not realise it now, but this one act of sheer passionate support may well have changed the direction of RFC forever. After being so vocal about our horrendous home support, which I still maintain shows we do not belong anywhere near the Premiership, you guys have put back a lot of my faith in Reading fans and I'm delighted the flame of Elm Park's spirit lives. After such a showing I'm beginning to think we certainly do deserve to fight for the Prem. My respect and my thanks to real Reading fans everywhere. Once again proud to be a Reading lad. READING TILL I DIE."
And in the true tradition of the modern age, the commemorative T-Shirt.
Sunday, 18 May 2008
UK Biobank - not in our best interest?
The UK Biobank invites people of a certain age (that's me) to become part of a study that would monitor health (or lack of it) over time. Participants donate blood samples for DNA analysis that would allow researchers to determine over time causes of disease and, I'm sure, many other options for improving well being.
I love the idea that each human being has an obligation to contribute in some way to the good of humanity as a whole, so this appears at first sight to be right up my street. However, the bit where I have an issue is the paragraph in the information leaflet which says: "In signing the consent form, participants transfer all property and intellectual property rights in their samples and data to UK Biobank."
I wondered, if I ever withdrew from the study (as the leaflet informs me I could do) what would happen to my intellectual property. So I sent them an email to ask them, and a short while later their "Head of Communications" wrote back to me [although oddly the email was signed by the "UK Biobank Principal Investigator"] In his reply he told me that:
I love the idea that each human being has an obligation to contribute in some way to the good of humanity as a whole, so this appears at first sight to be right up my street. However, the bit where I have an issue is the paragraph in the information leaflet which says: "In signing the consent form, participants transfer all property and intellectual property rights in their samples and data to UK Biobank."
I wondered, if I ever withdrew from the study (as the leaflet informs me I could do) what would happen to my intellectual property. So I sent them an email to ask them, and a short while later their "Head of Communications" wrote back to me [although oddly the email was signed by the "UK Biobank Principal Investigator"] In his reply he told me that:
"In signing the consent form we ask participants to transfer all property and intellectual property rights to any developments that emanate from research carried out using their samples and data collected by UK Biobank. Though UK Biobank owns those samples and data, it does not own your blood, urine or information about you (so you could sign up to other projects doing similar research if you wanted to). If you withdrew from the study at the level of ‘no further use’ then UK Biobank would destroy your samples and remove your data from the study. However, it would not be possible to destroy any research (and therefore the findings emanating from such research) that has already taken place. There would be no rights to ‘revert to you’ because you would cease to be a part of the project and therefore your samples and data would no longer be used."
Now if the Biobank require me to sign over the IP rights in my DNA to them, surely I cannot sign the same rights over to someone else? Wouldn't it be better to ask me to grant them worldwide royalty free rights to use the IP in my DNA? I did ask, but apparently not.
The information leaflet was also unclear as to whether the research being undertaken was actually truely for research purposes, or in fact a commercial venture. The answer on that one was:
"It is not possible to prohibit the use of samples and data for research that might involve commercial gain. This is for a number of reasons, not least of which is the complex interaction between the academic, charity and commercial research organisations that makes it hard to prise apart the commercial and non-commercial aspects of any research project. It is also the case that commercial expertise and money is required to develop new treatments, which we hope UK Biobank will help to generate."
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