Connected Blog

A child starts planning the storyboard, while another begins cutting some archived film. Two other classmates seek out some images on the net. Each student in this group, like all those students who attend Islay High School, are using their own Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC), which they bring to and from school to provide a continuous portable base for their work.

But this is not just a story about cool gadgetry – this is a school which has changed itself entirely in the past five years.

I was taking in all of this on Friday, the same day the school won Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Ambition Awards at the Scottish Education Awards. I was joined by John Johnston, primary school teacher and blogger from Glasgow’s Sandaig Primary School, whose account shows how visits like these can lead to new practices in schools many miles away. Krysia and Doug Semple also joined us along with John’s Head Teacher; blog posts to follow, I hope…

But what grabbed us all was the scope of change. First, everyone in the school community (that’s students, teachers and parents, too) is part of a grand peer-assessment ring, with the UMPC acting as a show-and-tell hub for the work and discussions that took place at school that day. Using OneNote, students can capture text notes, audio and video from their classes, with teachers as accomplices in the recording of their explanations and discussions. All too often, the thought of having a teacher recorded on the fly by a student would have the teacher confiscating the device doing the recording. Here, it is celebrated, with OneNote allocating each segmentof audio to each relevant paragraph.

Students can be heard sharing secret numerical codes – their machine’s unique IP Address – so that such documents can be shared and edited collaboratively in real time. This is how students brainstormed and created storyboards collaboratively, keeping all their progress for future analysis in their review of their work thus far.

Andy Wallis, the English teacher running this excited film-making adventure, brings the class to a brief pause, to encourage them to video their own discussions for the next few minutes. It’s a real eye-opener for those who have been hogging discussions, providing a spotlight moment for those who’ve been a little quieter until now. As they say, the camera doesn’t lie. Another piece of evidence for for the formative assessment pile.

It’s not just pedagogy that has changed to make learning work here; the timetable has seen the beginnings of change. Wednesday and Friday afternoons are curious times for the uninitiated: students who, when I was at school, even had separate social areas are now collaborating on projects. It’s not uncommon to have a 14 year old S3 student working alongside a 17 or 18 year old sixth former who’s seeking to work through a brand new subject area. Here, the class you are in is decided by your level of attainment, not your age. Twice a week these afternoons offer an opportunity to expand horizons through extended project work.

As John says, it’s the overriding desire to learn which can be felt from every member of the school community that is quite overpowering – you wonder why you’ve not felt it in every school you’ve ever visited. It’s the responsibility that has been transferred to students – when they misuse their UMPCs they are subject to the ‘normal’ rules of engagement you’d find in any school. The technology has changed all the things it should do, and left some elements of school life, rightly, untouched.

This is a school where the introduction of a new piece of technology has helped introduce changes across the rest of the system. Or where the system’s changes led to the necessary introduction of the technology. You see, that’s the other thing. When change is so integrated into everyday life, it’s hard to remember what happened first.

See the rest of the photos from this trip on Flickr.

Update: Doug “DigitalMaverick” Semple has just added his extensive thoughts, too.

A newly discovered blog from West Lothian led me to a newly discovered project written by the brother of an old(ish) aquaintance, and whose company is also doing some interesting work for Channel 4. If this is a sign of things to come, then we’re certainly advising the right thing on the C4 Education Board.

We Tell Stories is Six Stories based on Six Classics (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) told in Six Different Ways through the net and written by Six Different Authors (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), by the brothers Hon’s company Six To Start. It’s a dream for any English language and literature teacher, with one new story every week for the next six weeks.

The first week has a Google Earth-fresh lit mash-up from top Scot author Charles Cumming. The 21 Steps is based on Buchan’s The 39 Steps and takes the reader on an intriguing mystery through the streets of London and up on the plane to Edinburgh. It’s all a bit too close to home, but wonderfully done. There’s a phone clue in one chapter which I’ve just called, but gutted that the solution to the clues lies in St Pancras Station – where I’ve just dashed from this evening on my way home. Had I been playing instead of working today I’d have been unable to unlock a seventh secret story. I just wonder if the Alice character is inspired by one inspiring gamer I work with occasionally.

Almost as intriguing as the story itself is the backstory to how these six (or seven multimedia Web 2.0-ey ARG-type games have been created, and the challenges both authors and coders came up against. It would make a superb literature project for the 21st Century student seeking out a dissertation subject:

Adrian Hon, chief creative of the online games company Six to Start,
says:

“Authors don’t need to be great artists or programmers right now.
They ‘just’ need to write. To make anything more advanced than a normal
story, though, you need more skills.”

Most authors aren’t also computer
programmers, and most programmers aren’t novelists. As Hon says:

“Web
people come up with cool ideas, such as telling stories by web 2.0
series, wikis or e-mails. Twitter, but it fails because they can’t
write a good story for it.”

This needn’t be an insuperable hurdle. We
may see a new partnership added to the traditional artist-and-writer
combination for illustrated books, or musician-and-writer team for
songs. Writers could work with programmers in this new form of
storytelling.

It also kind of puts claims that Amazon’s Kindle is the innovation in e-books into stark contrast with where the real innovations can take place.

So what are these innovations? Well, the Hons see them falling into only six categories, around which one could start design one’s own interactive literature. To see how this works in the context of the first story, you can read the process involved on the creator’s own blog or get into even greater depth in the Gamasutra interview. Better still, see what others make of it from the project’s airing at BarCamp Brighton (presentation below). One of my first ever non-edublog pals Rachel covers it all beautifully.

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Thanks, Adam, for the initial tip-off and, yes, it’s something we could, in theory, adapt for Modern Languages. Watch this space. In the meantime, I think there are numerous possibilities for the Frenchies and Germanists amongst us to exploit the playing/experiencing of the adaptations of  the 1001 Nights, Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytales (I know he was a Dane, but his work and 1001 Nights formed the basis of my Honours degree dissertation into the Fairytale Since the Time Of Perrault), and Zola’s Thérèse Raquin .

The most exciting development in 21st Century Literacy this year? Probably.

Update: If you’re a teacher short of time and want to try preparing something around this, Rachel and others have worked it out and provided some spoilers. Don’t read, these, of course if you just want to experience the story.

Jim in The Highlands was quick to note Channel 4’s move from £6m per year on educational television programming to a large part of £6m per year on online educational programming. Is educational TV dead on C4? Not quite, but it’s certainly undergone some serious surgery to make it recognisable to a 2008 teen. Channel 4 is certainly living up to its mantra: Do it first. Make trouble. Inspire change. And I’m glad to have been part of it.

Yes, it’s a bold experiment, but no, it’s not to ‘cash in’ on anything. It’s just using the web because that’s what teens and tweens use most, and using the web that they use (adults tend to call it Web 2.0, for them it’s just the web). As Channel 4 remains one of the few television channels in the UK to engage the tricky 14-19 age group (the only one?) this is just one more set of innovations in 25 years of innovation.

I was lucky enough earlier this year to have been appointed member of the fivesome that make up the Education Advisory Board of Channel 4 Television, and I’m very grateful to Learning and Teaching Scotland for supporting my time. I don’t know how much we’ve helped shape the online programming other than saying ‘yes’ a lot, ‘no’ a few times and reassuring Matt Locke, Alice Taylor and Janey Walker that what they are doing is spot on. As Janey put it:

“In all conscience, Channel 4 could not continue to spend £6m on programming that is not engaging people.”

Socially networked, playful, participative content is the only way we can create successful media to engage, motivate and inspire young people “on the box”. The box these days is more likely to be a Nintendo DS screen or PC.

Matt and Alice, the commissioners, are both avid gamers, keen on everything from the world of alternate reality games to playing Zelda on the Nintendo DS. Working through some ideas with them on the Board has been a pleasure, and expanding on some of the ways we can engage young people on this ’slate’ of programming as been incredibly challenging.

Jemima Kiss at the Guardian has the full write-up from the launch of the slate this week, and Kevin Anderson has speed-typed some good Matt Lockisms, but the thrust of development has been along these lines, which might also be interesting to consider for our classrooms and schools:

• The new ‘programming’ online is playful. That doesn’t mean that it’s trivial, but rather it’s about getting young people to participate in the project, create the programme/site/knowledge/learning together. Teens will be encouraged to do this not on some mothership Channel 4 site, but rather on their own Bebos, blogs and Photobucket sites.
• It has a strong social element, so that teens are constantly part of a feedback loop on what it’s like to grow up in 21st Century Britain.
• It’s about ‘playful exploration’. “The BBC tells you what you need to know. Channel 4 helps you ask the right questions.”

I know that Matt and Alice have had to do a heck of a lot of work to convince production companies to change the way they pitch, propose and structure these much more playful, explorative, social ‘programmes’, where the TV programme might come as the end result of a year’s online learning.

The things the indies have come with are great, and I’m so happy we can all start playing/viewing/talking about them:

Gaming projects include City of Vice by Littleloud, which invites
the user to solve historical crimes from Georgian London, and Six to
Start’s project The Ministry, which explores privacy and identity
online.

Phantasmagoria by EC1 encourages web users to explore
their identity by tying together profiles across different social
networking sites. An online project by Maverick Television will
encourage teenagers to use web-based tools that can help them to set up
online businesses.

The broadcaster says it wants to encourage a
more collaborative, supportive environment for young entrepreneurs,
moving away from the cliched and aggressive view of business seen on
programmes such as Dragon’s Den.

One thing is sure: the audience isn’t on the television. So maybe it’s not that “high risk” a strategy after all…

Cross-posted at edu.blogs.com

A friend referred me to a very interesting site for guitar enthusiasts the other day called Chord Book It has many features, the most immediately useful of which for pupils is an online tuner.The beauty of this is that you can click R (for repeat) for each string and hear the note for as long as you need. In addition to standard tuning, it also features 7 altered tunings and the option to create your own by altering the virtual pegs. At any point, you can click strum to hear how your creation will sound.

Other features include chords, scales and some backing tracks for jamming. These features are very well laid out and intuitive to use so I won’t go on at length. Let me just recommend exploring the inversions feature on the chord page and point out that the virtual guitar neck can be reoriented for left-hand players.

From the home page, you can access some video lessons. While I would never discourage anyone from enjoying these, I feel that they (and I am referring to the the genre and not these specifically these lessons) have their limits. While affording a source of ideas and inspiration they are necessarily about someone else playing and not you. This type of situation has been summed up by a mind greater than mine:

“Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand.” – Chinese proverb, sometimes attributed to Confucius around 450 BC.

Passing the towering bookshelves at home it often strikes me that there is more reading matter there than I have hours left on Earth. The sands of time continue to flow while I visit websites and blogs. Why then do I compromise further by dallying with websites boasting massive archives? To paraphrase the ego-centric shampoo ad – because it’s worth it.

Such a site is Edge whose stated aim is to ask leading thinkers the big questions. Some of these annual questions end up as the titles of books edited, like the website, by John Brockman Titles include: What We Believe But Cannot Prove? What Is Your Dangerous Idea? & What Are You Optimistic About? The towering shelves at home boast a couple of these and I can thoroughly recommend them. The essays are all very short, punchy and thought-provoking.

Of those remaining solely in electronic form, one which intrigued me was 2001’s What Questions Have Disapered? Some hark back to the ancients, wondering why relevant, modern versions of unsolved queries fail to grab our attention. Others cite issues which history has negated. I was struck by two particularly prescient examples which mirror debates currently taking place in the educational blogoshpere:

Stephen M Kosslyn on How do people differ in how they think and learn?

Raphael Kasper on What Does All The Information Mean?

Another dimension to this Edge is The Third Culture whose name, rather than implying a secret society, hints at a desire to heal the split between Science and Art described by C. P. Snow in his 1959 Rede Lecture. The cast list is a who’s who of names associated with science’s reaching out to a wider public. There is even an online version of Brockman’s book The Third Culture.

If you haven’t already come across the three books mentioned above, you can get a flavour of them by accessing the archive which goes back to 1997.

CBS last night kicked off their CSI:NY crime show (on Channel 5 in the UK) in Second Life. Second Lifers can solve the cliffhanger to the television series that would otherwise not be played out until a show in February. By throwing players online the mystery can be resolved – by them – far quicker.

This is what Henry Jenkins calls a “transmedia” experience, and judging by the number of people who were in-world at the CSI:NY location this morning/last night it’s a huge success. You start off with the television series on the box, and then you can view video clues using the new in-world video viewer, see blog entries, do virtual lab experiments and talk with others trying to get to the bottom of the murder. You might even work out who dunnit.

It’s a bit of an ARG, really, playing out on television, in Second Life and through blogs, videos and podcasts. If only there were mobile text messages being sent when you got stuck – that’s what always happens in the TV show, isn’t it? In a rather spooky yet compelling way, this is also why you’re in Second Life in the first place: on the trail of a stalker cum murderer who trailed his victim into Second Life to kill her. First life, Second Life… all this transmedia stuff is getting a bit heavy.

Just take a look at the trailer for the show and jump into an amazing NYC set and fascinating interactive plot line. If you want to find out more behind this then Henry Jenkins’ interview with the CSI:NY Second Life creator is brilliant.

(Cross-posted at edu.blogs.com)