Laurie O’Donnell

Just back from an event in Glasgow’s Oran Mor organised by Scotland’s Centre for Confidence & Wellbeing. The speaker was Professor Barry Schwartz.

I have tweeted some of his quotes (@laurieod) and this post is my notes of what he said.

The ‘Paradox of Choice’  - too much choice in certain aspects of our lives (commodities/products etc) can make us miserable whilst  not enough choice in other areas (how we treat/are treated by other people) can also make us unhappy.

The official syllogism
More freedom = more well being
More choice means more freedom

• Consumer goods – choice has exploded into more areas of our lives:
• Healthcare – patient autonomy, direct marketing of drugs (prescription) to patients
• Work – anytime, answer an email or take a business call anywhere
• Liberal arts curriculum (HE in US)
• Close relationships
• Identity

But too much choice can lead to paralysis

• What Too much choice does: Satisfaction (not as much bang for the choice buck)
• Regret and anticipated regret (only way to get out is to defer decision)
• Opportunity costs (missed opportunities)

Escalation of expectations

• People do better but feel worse (Gap between expectations and reality)
• Only a marginal increase of happiness post the threshold of subsistence

Disappointment - Self blame

• Who’s fault is it – shift from the world, the product, the corporation to self

Maximising and ’satisficing’

• Best or good enough?
• Maximisers – consider more jobs, want more options , earn more, did better but feel worse …

How can choice be both good and bad?

• No choice life is infinitely bad, some choice makes life better, but increasing choice after a certain point makes people unhappy … relationship is non-monotonic
• No magic amount of choice (contextual/situational/personal/cultural)

The choices worth having

• We can’t do without character and virtue. Better rules or smarter incentives don’t work. Practical wisdom (Aristotle) is the key virtue.
• We are waging a war on wisdom
• Moral skill/moral will – Aristotelian ‘practical wisdom’
• A wise person knows
  • when and how to make the exception to every rule.
  • When and how to improvise - Wisdom is moral jazz
  • To use moral skills in pursuit of right aims.
• A wise person is made not born.
• Importance of context/situation

Rules and the war on moral skill

• Rules and procedures may be dumb but they are convenient for people who want to avoid thinking or taking responsibility for their action.
• Rules protect against disaster but ensure mediocrity.
• Rules are often imposed after people fail to meet an acceptable standard and designed to ensure a minimalist approach to quality, safety etc
• Rules don’t do the job and make it less likely that people use their judgement. (Hence no opportunity for growth/learning) and hence guarantees no growth in wisdom.
• Examples of completely scripted/lock-step curricula, eg no child left behind. Reflecting no confidence in the teacher and an insurance against bad teachers. But guarantees over time more bad teachers by driving out moral judgement.
• Need rules but need to be able to improvise to reflect context/situation/etc

Incentives and the war on moral will

• Financial incentives undermine moral commitment.
• CEO financial  incentives lead to irresponsible behaviours based. Doing the right think cannot based on monetary reward.
• ‘We must ask, not just is it profitable, but is it right’. Obama 18.12.08
• Banking has become demoralised. All self-interest. Losing morale of practitioners.

Remoralising work

• Ethics is taught in practice not in classrooms.
• Encourage both moral skill and moral will.
• Teachers should become moral heros.
• Teachers are always on stage. We are always teaching in everything we do.
• Work as job, career or calling
  • Job – work sucks
  • Career – positive trajectory
  • Calling – happy and work vital to identity
  • People doing exactly the same work have different levels of happiness
  • Happier to have a calling. Job and career look the same - both unhappy

What creating a calling requires?

• A sense of organisational purpose
• A sense of partnership
• A large degree of discretion and autonomy

Never let a crisis go to waste

• Imagining new possibilities. Reintroduce virtue & the importance of practical wisdom.
• Desire to make the world a better place. Has become hard even in the areas of work where this should be easy (health, education etc)
• Telos of education, nursing clear but more often conflicted as a result of losing the original purpose - hospitals become disease control factories rather than places where people become healthy.
• The telos of banking has become to make as much money as possible. Banking has lost it way.

Great stuff, thought provoking, stimulating and inspiring. Worth watching Barry Schwartz’s TED Talk on the Paradox of Choice  or on The Loss of our Wisdom if you want more …

It seems like only yesterday that I blogged about my decison to leave LTS to work for myself. It felt like a big step on the 25th March announcing to the world that I was moving on after 8 years. I really liked being able to blog and tweet my departure (what did we do before web 2.0?) and have been delighted with the number of friends and colleagues who have been in touch to either wish me well or check out my mental health (’leaving a public sector job with a pension during a recession - are you crazy!’)

Still got far too much to do before I leave on 30 June but last week I got a big boost when my colleague Marie Dougan, LTS Glow Programme Director, was appointed as Interim Director of Learning and Technology. Marie will be great in this role and I wish her all the best in taking forward the major work of the directorate I have led: Glow; the LTS Online Service; and our work in new technologies including games based learning.

These are challenging times for schools, local authorities and the public sector economy in general. LTS has made a major contribution to the learning and technology agenda which will be increasingly important to education in the years ahead.  I have been hugely privileged to have the opportunity to lead and manage some of this work over the last 8 years. More than that I have been incredibly lucky to work with some fantastic colleagues who have pushed the boundaries of Scottish education a little bit further forward. Colleagues who have remained positive and optimistic about the future, despite the many challenges, and never lost sight of the importance of making a positive difference to the work of our teachers and to the life chances of Scotland’s young people.

Interesting new development from Google. Thanks to @jonesieboy for tweeting  about Google Wave

Interesting research commissioned by C4 on how the 12-24s use technology.

Top-line stats are:

• They personally own 8 devices (including MP3 player, PC, TV, DVD player, mobile phone, stereo, games console, and digital camera)
• They frequently conduct over 5 activities whilst watching TV
• 25% of them agree that “I’d rather stay at home than go on a holiday with no internet or phone access”
• A quarter of young people interviewed text or IM (instant message) friends they are physically with at the time
• They have on average 123 friends on their social network spaces
• And the first thing the majority of them do when they get home is turn on their PC

As the father of a 12 and 16 year old I am not at all surprised. My girls have lots of gadgets (no wonder the UK’s electricity needs continue to grow at 4% a year when I see how many chargers we have around the house); they have lots of spare capacity when watching TV (usually because most [not all] of what they watch isn’t very challenging - try doing 5 things while watching ‘The Wire’ and keep up with the dialogue!); in our family it’s a 50% vote for no holiday without mobile comms; I get calls on the house phone from a daughter who is upstairs phoning me on her mobile :); they are connected in a way that is really stunning and; our wireless network is on from before school in the morning until last thing at night.

The survey suggests two questions for me - ones that I think I know the answer to. Firstly, how does the experience of our young people compare with their counterparts across the world? Secondly, how does their school experience compare with their out of school use of technology?

More good news for Glow While I was in Barcelona I was delighted to hear that Falkirk Council has signed the Glow Customer Agreement (effectively the licence to make Glow available to teachers, pupils and parents in the local authority area).

That takes us to 31/32 of the Scottish local authorities. My understanding is that Fife Council is in the process of signing the Customer Agreement and this will be a significant milestone for Glow as we complete the full set of local authorities.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill we are approaching the end of the beginning for Glow. To my mind it really starts to get exciting now as we explore the benefits of having a truly national system.

The IMS Global Learning Consortium press release with all of the winners from the 2009 Learning Impact Summit has now been published. Looking down the list I think our competition was from only 5 continents rather than 6 as previously claimed.

LTS press release with comment from Cabinet Secretary Fiona Hyslop.

Glow has picked up another prestigious award.

This time taking the top award at the IMS Global Learning Impact Summit in Barcelona. Great news for the Scottish Government, LTS and RM. Brilliant to get international recognition for the ambition, complexity and scale that characterises Glow.

PS Should also have given due credit to all the teachers, local authority officers, librarians, technicians and others who have worked hard to make Glow the success it is today.

Well done to Patricia Kemp and the website team at LTS. Another first for Learning and Teaching Scotland  as we launch a unique resource on Apple’s iTunesU to support the professional development of teachers and other practitioners across Scotland and beyond. LTS is the first schools oriented organisation in Europe to make some of its digital content available in this way as we follow in the footsteps of HE institutions such as the Open University and Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
The LTS press release makes the claim that:

‘Anytime anywhere, teachers can access a free online repository of rich digital content using Apple’s iTunesU technology. Teachers can watch a wide range of videos including case studies showing classroom practice, presentations from leading international education thinkers and video learning materials. This initiative, the first of its kind in Europe for the school and early years sector, puts the power of technology into the hands of practitioners allowing the free dissemination of resources, knowledge and learning. LTS, in partnership with HMIE and the Scottish Government’s ‘Determined to Succeed’ programme, hope that this new resource will engage with all education professionals in the field and will support the next generation of teachers as they implement Curriculum for Excellence.’

This opportunity follows on from a visit to Apple’s HQ in Cupertino California last autumn that I had with my colleague Andy Pendry, Glow Technology Adviser. We were impressed by the way that Apple’s iTunes infrastructure was already being used across the world to support education. At the same time senior education staff at Apple were impressed with the approach we have taken in Scotland to support professional learning and development. Hence the invitation to make the LTS Online Service  the first ‘K-12′ site in Europe for iTunes and our willingness to take up the opportunity to present some wonderful content to a global audience.

On Monday and Tuesday of next week I will be speaking with colleagues from the Glow contractor, RM, at the IMS Global Learning Impact 2009 event in Barcelona.

Glow has been short-listed for the Global Learning Impact Award for 2009. Based on the scale and ambition of Glow I think that it will give the other projects a good challenge. Win or lose it is a good news story for Scotland and for the Scottish Government that Glow is being considered for an international award.

Let’s hope that later in the week I am blogging about winning. If not then I at least I will be able to console myself  by what I hope will be an interesting event in a wonderful city.

Global Learning Impact Award 2009
From the IMS website:

Purpose:
The Learning Impact program is facilitated by the IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS) for the purpose of recognizing outstanding applications of technology that address the most significant challenges facing the global education and training industries.

Thesis:
Improving the quality of and access to education is the global challenge that underpins all other global challenges. Harnessing the potential power of new technologies that can enhance the reach and effectiveness of education is a compelling priority for society. The IMS Global Learning Consortium is a unique collaboration of corporations, educational institutions, and government organizations that can play a significant role in recognizing advances in technology that address key educational challenges worldwide.

Had a lovely morning at Perth High School launching The Winning Game within Glow.

The main force behind bringing the game to Scotland is Winning Scotland Foundation. The Winning Game is based on The Winning Theory of Yehuda Shinar and has been developed by Dundee based games company TPLD.

I think it is going to be a big success in Scottish schools. It also provides an even more compelling case for every learner and teacher in Scotland to join the learning community that is Glow.