As part of a series of posts, we examine the latest research on how young people and the wider population in the UK use the internet, and what it means for Local Authorities, schools and teachers.
29% of people in the UK have never had access before or used the net. A large number of these (17%) are nay-sayers, and never will get access to the net. The age where internet use starts to plummet is currently around 45. The reasons for this seem to be mostly down to lack of knowledge of how to use the internet or a computer. There is also more chance that a non-user thinks of the net as not making life easier, than a user believes (48% v 85%). The reasons people find for not using the net are likely to hit most on being complex, containing too much immoral material and, less so, being frustrating to work with.
Increasingly, though, access to equipment is an issue. Ironically, although costs are coming down but hardware is made more powerful and better designed, cost is seen as an increasing reason NOT to get a computer, although two thirds of internet users would find the notion of not having access a problem for carrying out their lives.
As part of a series of posts, we examine the latest research on how young people and the wider population in the UK use the internet, and what it means for Local Authorities, schools and teachers.
What do young people use the net for?
The main use of the net, by far, is for learning: 57% use the net for homework, saying it provides more information than books. 15% use it for learning that’s not ’school’. Parents viewed the internet as a good research tool, but lamented the loss of ‘real’ research skills and worried that the information was not always appropriate or completely accurate. 40% use it to stay in touch with friends, 9% for entertainment such as YouTube (a low figure given the younger age of the part of the sample of respondents). Parents recognised the benefits of the internet as a communication tool but worried about its effect on interpersonal skills and its unpleasant side effects such as cyber bullying.
Where do people in the UK use the internet?
Most users of the net are using it at home (94%), then at work (34%), another’s house (30%) or at school (16%). Only 12% use public libraries and 9% internet cafés. Most people’s first exposure to the web is at home.
The most common technologies found in the home are: (2007 compared to 2005)
Digital camera (61%, up from 51%)
Digital TV (47%, up from 29%)
Mp3 player (43%, up from 9%)
Games Consoles (43%, n/a)
Satellite TV (41%, down from 42%)
Web cam (26%, up from 18%)
Cable TV (21%, up from 17%)
PDA (10%, up from 6%)
How do people use the net? Most use of media is for getting information. Both users and non-users of the internet read as many books as each other, but users watch less TV (cf. Clay Shirky’s theory on “cognitive surplus”). The result is that users generally get more information in general, and as much as non-users through other sources (and face-to-face [F2F] remains the most important means). Users actually value F2F meeting more than non-users. Indeed, in ‘real world’ users are more likely to be outgoing individuals and part of a social group or club than non-users of the net.
Normally, when trying to find trends of net use, we’ve had to use statistical data and research from the USA, with research programmes such as Pew Internet Foundation providing enviable information and insight into the changing use of the internet in North America.
In the Spring of 2008, several major research pieces were launched. Ofcom’s Social Networking Research helped form part of the information set included in the primary research carried out by Dr Tanya Byron for her Review of the risks faced by children in their use of the net and video games. We’ve also seen the first in-depth summary of access to the internet and its uses across the UK population in the Oxford Internet Institute’s Internet Surveys. Finally, Ofcom’s Media Literacy Audit of the UK, with separate analysis for Scotland, was published at the end of May 2008.
Connected Live’s Research Summary Series
Not everyone in education management will have the time to read the detail of these reports, find the relevant information and make meaning out of it for their own circumstances. This special series of posts, every day in the run up to the new school year, aims to take selected highlights from the reports, and frame them in such a way as meaning can be drawn from them by those managing ICT in Learning and Teaching Scotland and our stakeholders in Local Authorities and other educational institutions.
You can find all the posts under our special series Research category, on the left-hand menu of this blog.
Four months ago I began holding lunchtime sessions based around the world famous TED Talks. These Inspiration Sessions had a simple format with a complex aim: empower anyone in the organisation to change the organisation. Here, I share the format, the resources, the questions and hope that it can be used in your school, your department or your Local Authority, to challenge current ways of thinking and empower everyone to make small, powerful changes.
The sessions themselves lasted no more than 90 minutes: 20 minutes of video, a different one each month, discussion about the clip, how it relates to our work or education in general, and then breaking out into reflection online. The advantage of using the cips as a stimulus is that the age-old reason for not sharing online – “my stuff isn’t good enough” – doesn’t figure here. It’s an opportunity to share something that’s not our own, and opportunity to rethink what we and our colleagues do, pubicly. It also presents a chance to discover a new technology that allows us to share, allowing for a natural extension and progression for the conversation stimulated by the monthly films.
At LTS we found the most popular ways of sharing were delicious social bookmarking, which allows simple things such as the talk itself or literature around the talk to be shared, without the individual feeling that they may contravene our self-publishing guidelines or that they don’t have the skill to write an engaging blog post. By using a Friendfeed room we’ve been able to connect our Research team with others around the organisation over a period of a few months, and an effective information-sharing group has begun to thrive.
Others found that crafting a blog post was the best way forward. Existing high quality examples of LTS blogging were joined by newblogs. Others are taking up much more internal blogging as a way to communicate better across teams.
Above all, the opportunity for a diverse group of colleagues to get together in a ’safe’ environment and self- and peer-assess what we do every day has helped show the way in several of our largest projects, finding room for improvement and gaps where innovation is required in the future. As they say, watch this space…
Here is a six-month outline of the talks we chose to use and some of the activities that we have designed around them. If you have other suggestions, leave them in the comments and they will be added over time. Let us know, too, how you get on should you plan your own Inspiration Sessions.
Creativity in the workplace: do we have any? where is it? what’s lost?
Kids take chances – can we? What are the barriers to taking a chance? Are we prepared to be wrong? What have our biggest ‘wrongs’ been?
We squander tremendous talents; what are the tremendous talents in LTS? how can we stop this happening?
We have no idea what is going to happen in the future; how do we teach kids (and guide their teachers) when we don’t know how?
Hierarchies and their role in decision-making, workflows, coverage, time, attention
University professors: does LTS live in its head? How can we make sure that what we do is more ‘real’? Is the ‘real’ the same in the minds of teachers, learners, Government? What is ‘real’
How do we know that what we are doing is going to be good? Are focus groups, samples etc any good? Is there another way? Another type of person? Role of learners in helping us choose material for the online service.
What’s the role of the niche?
Are we LTS or a group of LTSes? How would this work?
Teaching as mustard – there are only different kinds of mustard. Technology needs the same kind of democratisation.
Month Three:
David Pogue: When it comes to technology, simplicity sells Links from the third session Learning aim: Use internal blogs to talk about how we could simplify things, use external blogs to ask users what they would do. Examine Glow, Curriculum Design and documents (e.g. Building the Curriculum 3). Are we a simple as we can be without being simplistic? What would we change in our approach and systems to guarantee simplicity? How can individuals effect this kind of change?
Month Five: Barry Schwartz: Paradox of Choice Learning aim: how to track so much information, maybe based on this. Compare and contrast with the previous sessions on simplicity and the power of the niche. Where is the balance to be struck between catering for all and doing well for all? What’s the role for involving more ‘users’ of a service, students or parents, in taking on more of the workload?
Month Six:
David Eggers: Homework drop-in centres
An example of civic innovation in practice. What role is there for organisations to kick-start this kind of initiative, extend the potential of learning beyond school?
When it comes to technology simplicity sells. That’s the title of David Pogue’s TED Talk which provides the basis of discussion at the third Inspiration Session for Learning and Teaching Scotland employees. But this time, with Scotland’s teachers on holiday and clearly with nothing else better to do, we’re inviting you along.
With apologies for the late invitation, if you fancy a trip to Glasgow or live nearby, you are welcome to join members of the Glow, online services and technology teams, as well as Development Officers and Knowledge Management colleagues from across the organisation:
Monday, July 28th, 11.45-14.00
Classroom of the Future at Learning and Teaching Scotland, Glasgow
Optima building, 58 Robertson Street
Meet at 11.45am in the 9th floor reception, session from midday until around 2pm.
If you wish to attend, please leave a comment here or email me.
This session will feature a team viewing of the, ahem, sideways look of
technology and what ’simplicity’ actually means. We’ll then have a
fairly loose discussion around how LTS could do its job better by
finding its simplicity bone. Your input here would be most valuable. I
do hope you can come along. If you want to see what we’ve done so far in our inspiration sessions, please flick over to Connected Live.
For the past three months I’ve been hosting these Inspiration Sessions, providing regular “thinking pitstops” for nearly half the staff in this time, getting to grips with what new technologies’ potential might be for their own projects and mining the staff at all levels, from administrator to Director, for their creative ideas. Several new blogs and web services have been launched with the growing confidence of staff, and internally we’re beginning to see much better sharing of information using the likes of social bookmarking on del.icio.us, an internal wiki and weblogs.
Here is a list of links to concerts in the Fringe featuring solo guitar, guitar duo, guitar in mixed ensemble & guitar/vocals. These links will take you to their entries in the fringe programme – giving details of dates, times, prices. Many of these artists have their own websites where you can hear samples of their playing.
Many of these gigs take place at The Acoustic Music Centre – follow the link to view their complete programme.
Andy McKee & Don Ross (two virtuosi of acoustic guitar – normally original material)
How good is your ear for accents? How different do you think one word could sound in a variety of accents? A new interactive site entitled Sound Comparisons by Edinburgh University in conjunction with the Arts & Humanities Research Council allows you to hear the same word uttered in dozens of accents. I tried out the word “brother” and was amazed at the differences.
I’d say it’s impossible to cultivate a musical ear without being sensitive to the subtle changes in pitch and timbre which distinguish accents. Perhaps that’s why so many impressionists are musical.
Some of the pages are slow to load and using Firefox over Internet Explorer is recommended – but not as highly as downloading the entire site – which I’ve just done.
It’s not really news, I know, but it’s always good to see reaffirmation of the benefits of exercise on learning and the brain – like this article in the Independent. One aspect I hadn’t seen articulated quite so directly concerns the role exercise plays in reducing aggression. Perhaps that explains why, almost without exception, martial artists seem to be amongst the least aggressive people around. Much of the article concerns the work of Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, John Ratey, author of a book entitled Spark and a related blog.
It’s not as odd as it sounds, but innovations in spaghetti sauce (and Pepsi, and mustard) might hold clues as to how Glow, the Curriculum for Excellence and other ‘national’ initiatives can prove successful on the most niche of local levels.
At Learning and Teaching Scotland I’ve been leading some monthly Inspiration Sessions, today being the second one. Last month’s debates were based on Sir Ken Robinson’s Do Schools Kill Creativity?, and from it came some key points for development in the way staff might approach certain challenges. More on those later, I hope, but for the first session we kept the results on our staff forum to see what would happen. 10 times the number of views than normal is what happened; people have seen where they can move things forward for themselves. You can see some of the links we discussed on delicious.
This month, I was curious to see how the niche would be catered for in Glow and the Curriculum for Excellence, especially having recently presented a fair bit on how the social web has capitalised on small passionate communities. The basis was Gladwell’s talk on how marketers in the past forty years have discovered the niche’s power, in much the same way as Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail describes. As some of my colleagues noted, most of the ‘big deals’ in Scottish education these past few years have been “national initiatives” or “national programmes”, leaving LTS and Local Authority staff to impress the importance of local contexts and connections. It’s what Gladwell calls the “platonic dish” approach to policy: this is the right way to do it, there is no other, versus a more user-centred approach, where we empower the user to do what they want, versus an “ask the user what they want” approach, with the complication that the user doesn’t always know what they want. Gladwell puts all these three arguments forward and leaves you buzzing, recognising elements of each in every project you’ve ever done, and not entirely sure where you want to go next.
It was with this meeting of minds that we had a good hour of debate, and a set of tangible actions for our teams to undertake, to help make a dent in the concept of encouraging and celebrating small, passionate groups of participation on Glow, exhibiting, if you like, what the Curriculum is all about. Some of the interesting points to come out:
Making the many ways ‘into’ Glow explicit: with a mentor, through an online module, with a product guide, going to an event, keeping an eye on the Glow blog watch…
Making variety more visible: showcasing interesting groups or practice. There are some technical questions about how we do this, as it’s hard to see “into” a group created at a local level, harder still to promote it to a national.
Reinforcing the messages about localising practice through Area Advisers’ work, and with HMIe finding local good practice and innovation, reporting on it during their work.
Every single launch event should have a “this is what Glow can do in this context”. There might even be some double-branding to drive the point home.
We’re going to start infiltration of each other’s meetings far more often, using Glow groups of other parts of our organisation to ‘listen in’ on discussions and spot opportunities for collaboration. This will be further aided if anyone can put a date into the whole-staff diary without having to go through a colleague first.
The calendar is useful as it currently stands on our intranet homepage, but we also need a YouTube-esque Today, Tomorrow, This Month, This Year, to alert us in good time to events happening in the near future. We will also work on an option to have it to text message via Twitter, simply by splicing in a feed from our intranet events.
Finally, recording of presentations, while happening far more often than ever before, needs to be done as standard, with sharing on Slideshare of visuals. They might not be of use to more than a score or two of people, but the cost is almost non-existent and potential impact huge.
There are some further ideas for developing these in the delicious links I’ve been pulling together on the theme of niches. But the parting shot was an interesting take on what might be called LTS’s Extra Special Range (extending the food and supermarket metaphors to breaking point here!). We all tend to work for our customers – as Don Ledingham has put it before, his customers could be students, parents, teachers, lots of different groups depending on the product or outcome and scenario. One of our colleagues, with experience in the retail sector, talked about the customer’s customer, the theory that we are producing things not for the person who is buying the shopping but for the person for whom the good or service is intended. It raises interesting ideas again on the kind of metrics we used to guage success in Glow or of the new Curriculum. It will almost certainly not be on hits, and may not even be on ‘active users’, whatever they might look like.
However, the big question should be: “What has the impact been on a student’s education?” There are new metrics, involving our development officers, Local Authority QIOs, teachers, parents and students even evaluating the impact of the various programmes, pedagogies and tehcniques that have been employed. How, though, can that be filtered through in a meaningful way, so that those charged with trying to make things better still can do so with reliable evidence? Ideas on the virtual postcard? (or just use the comments below).
Blog feed
29% of people in the UK have never had access before or used the net. A large number of these (17%) are nay-sayers, and never will get access to the net. The age where internet use starts to plummet is currently around 45. The reasons for this seem to be mostly down to lack of knowledge of how to use the internet or a computer. There is also more chance that a non-user thinks of the net as not making life easier, than a user believes (48% v 85%). The reasons people find for not using the net are likely to hit most on being complex, containing too much immoral material and, less so, being frustrating to work with.
What do young people use the net for?
Normally, when trying to find trends of net use, we’ve had to use statistical data and research from the USA, with research programmes such as 
Here is a list of links to concerts in the 
It’s not as odd as it sounds, but innovations in spaghetti sauce (and Pepsi, and mustard) might hold clues as to how Glow, the Curriculum for Excellence and other ‘national’ initiatives can prove successful on the most niche of local levels.