I don’t do a lot of speaking at conferences but my award winning colleague Derek Robertson persuaded to me to take to the stage at the recent Handheld Learning 2008 conference in London. I decided that rather than talk about mobile ubiquitous learning I would try to say a few words about the thinking that underpins some of the work that we have been involved in over the last 7 or so years at LTS. The plan was to set out two different mindsets (I called them philosophies) and then give some examples of how the mindset we have adopted translates into practice. The movie of my talk is here and slides are here.

I was the last speaker of the morning and decided that the audience had probably had enough of PowerPoint/Keynote for the day and decided to show my first two slides and then busk for the rest of the session by taking questions from the audience. As usual the questions were much better than my answers and I didn’t get the opportunity to describe what our mindset translates into practice.

A key area of controversy was my assertion that ‘the let 1,000 projects flourish (and then die once the funding runs out)’ was not a model of innovation that I subscribe to. I argued that my definition of innovation was routed in the principles of scalability of practice (can it work in other classrooms?) and sustainability over time (does it need unrealistic levels of support, finance, inspirational leadership etc?).

I think I may have upset quite a few people so let me make my position clear. I am not against teachers and others experimenting with new ideas, techniques or technologies. I think teaching should be an action research based profession. What I am against is projects that from the beginning are destined to be successful for a couple of years and then die. I know that they bring benefits to learners and teachers in the short-term and often there are lessons that we can learn for the future. What frustrates me is that such projects lead to disappointment and are far too often driven by an agenda which is about more about making something (product) or someone look good. They tend to give a view of education that suggests cultural change can be ‘delivered’ overnight and they often act as a disincentive to others who might be doing great stuff that doesn’t look quite as interesting on the surface.

Enough of me on my soap box. Let me conclude by refining my argument. Let a thousand projects flourish. But before investing lots of time and money please be mindful of scaling them up and sustaining them over time - be your own judge of this based on experience. Change in education takes time so try to take a longer-term view whilst at the same time taking advantage of opportunities (gift horses) as they present themselves. Often all it takes is someone to tweak the specification, ask a few questions or think about the long term impact on learning and teaching. Most short-term projects can be subverted to longer term ends with just a little bit of creativity

The highlights for me this year included:

• The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Fiona Hislop, responding to questions from the floor of the conference for over 30 minutes. Welcome to living in a democracy and politicians being open to challenge, support and able to hear new ideas that have not been filtered through the civil service or an organisation like LTS. I though she gave a confident and self-assured performance and responded in a very open and supportive way. The video of her keynote is on the SLF2008 website.
• I really enjoyed Charles Leadbetter’s keynote and liked his message that learning is fundamentally about relationships which are strengthened when young people: feel that someone cares for them; they get recognition for who they are and what they have achieved; they get opportunities for meaningful participation; and of course they feel motivated to learn. Charles also reminded us that those most likely to benefit from innovation in education are those least well served by the status quo. Educational reform is at its heart a campaign for social justice.
• TeachMeet08 was wonderful. Over 120 teachers presenting for 2 or 7 minutes on something they have done in a classroom and without promoting products or using powerpoint - it is just so refreshing. I think this SLF fringe event will over time become closer to the core of the festival. This year we had 170 practitioner led seminars. Next year we could add 1,000 mini seminars on the TeachMeet model. This was Ewan McIntosh’s last TeachMeet in the role of facilitator and he got a very warm send off from the assembled masses.
• Ellen Moir from the University of California, Santa Cruz, was inspirational and again gave me hope for the US education system. Another little glimmer of light peeping through the dark curtain of No Child Left Thinking.
• The exhibition of over 250 suppliers of resources, products, services, cpd into education continues to amaze me. The rich diversity of what was on offer from public, private and voluntary organisations is quite stunning. It is good to see the exhibition, which is organised by Emap Education, starting to reflect the breadth and depth of educational resources and placing ICT into a more realistic context as one among many excellent additions to the repoitoire of the teacher.
• Professor Richard Teese gave a very thoughtful and timely keynote on the risks of curriculum reform. One of his key points was the role of universities in maintaining the status quo - through the qualifications system they ’substitute the production of success for the prediction of success’, i.e. they use public examinations for young people to provide access for those who are most likely to succeed anyway, often despite the efforts of the university.
• It was great to see how far we have come with Glow over the last year. There is a real buzz at the event about some of the early classroom practice. We have always said that the success of Glow will be down to how teachers and learners choose to use it. We have provided a more secure and stable national online environment,  some tools and little support but it’s the creativity of those who use it that will in the end prove its worth.
• Finally, it’s the opportunity to network, collaborate and share that is always a crucial aspect of the festival.  We have around 7,000 delegates drawn from all 32 local authorities and I love having the opportunity to meet new people, find out what is happening in the world of learning and of course to bump into my many friends and colleagues from more than two decades in education.

It would be great to hear about your highlights from the festival and anything we should be doing to make it even better. Comment is free!

Tomorrow afternoon, in the LTS Glasgow office, I am going to be saying a few words at a presentation for Ewan McIntosh. [Ooops - just checked my diary and it has been postponed.]  Ewan recently left LTS to take up a very exciting post with Channel 4 4ip as Digital Commissioner for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Over the last couple of years Ewan worked as one of LTS’ national advisers with a remit to explore new technologies for learning. The extent of this work has been incredibly well documented through Ewan’s edu.blog.com. Ewan’s blog reflects the energy, enthusiasm and passion that he brings to everything he does. Before taking up the post of national adviser Ewan was seconded from East Lothian Council to work initially on the development of our award winning  Modern Foreign Language Environment (proof of concept project for Glow) and then on the development of educational blogs. My first contact with Ewan was more than 5 years ago when he applied for a John Dickie Award grant to explore blogs in education. It won’t surprise you that his application was successful.

What makes Ewan and his edu.blogcom so interesting is not just his prolific output - it is often hard to believe the scope and scale of what he is able to do, write and sustain on a daily basis. Nor is it the remarkable global network that he is able to maintain with consumate ease. What makes Ewan’s blog such a great success, to my mind at least, is the fact that he is a fantastic communicator.

His move from LTS is education’s loss and the media’s gain. His ability to take complex ideas around social media and translate them into meaningful contexts will stand him in good stead for another successful career. I extend LTS’ thanks to Ewan for his hard work and commitment over the last 4 years and wish him all the best for the future in the sure knowledge that our paths will continue to cross.

PS Ewan will be in action again on Wednesday night in the SECC as the facilitator of TeachMeet2008 at The Scottish Learning Festival.

My LTS colleague and friend Derek Robertson (see Man From Uncle picture above) is once again in the news.  This article in The Sunday Herald is another example of how Derek’s work has moved on the discourse around computer games in the classroom from ‘how much damage they do’ to ‘which ones can we can explore to improve pupil motivation and enhance learning’.

Read more about Derek’s work in his Hotmilkydrink and Consolarium blogs or if you are in Glasgow later in the week hear him speak at The Scottish Learning Festival.

The Irish Government’s Department of Education and Science recently published two reports the first ‘ICT in Schools’ is a very thorough description and evaluation from the schools inspectorate.  The second ‘Investing Effectively’ is the report from the ministerial strategy group which suggests that Ireland’s 7 priorities for  investment 2008-13 should be:
1. Continuing professional development
2. Software and digital content for learning and teaching
3. ICT equipment – additional and replacement
4. Schools broadband and services
5. Technical support and maintenance
6. Implementation structures and supports
7. Innovative practice and research

We met with senior staff from the Government’s ICT Strategy Unit, Schools Inspectorate and National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE) and took the opportunity to share ideas and challenges. There was much interest in what we are doing with Glow.

MIT used to have a presence in Dublin and we visited their former home at The Digital Hub for an extended conversation with two members of the Ministerial Strategy Group, Michael Hallissy (Director of The Digital Hub Development Agency) and Dr Conor Galvin of the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at UCD.

Ireland has a thriving business cluster around ‘e-learning’ and we spent a morning with Brendan O’Sulivan CEO of Third Force and his senior staff. This company has developed from start-up to having a $40m turnover in 5 years with over 2,000 online courses and a growing capacity in assessment. I really don’t like the term ‘e-learning’ but was intrigued by the business model and how the company is responding to and seeking to develop the market in online professional/skills development. Lots to learn here for the world of education and the future development of Glow.

Anyway enough travelling for a few weeks. Next week it’s The Scottish Learning Festival and the world comes to Glasgow.

We came across the updated Framework for 21st Century Learning when we were in the US.  Nine of States have live projects exploring the model and there seems to be a growing movement of educationalists, politicians and employers happy to sign-up to what amounts to a radical departure from normal practice in US schools.

The mission statement (see below) makes for interesting reading. Need to explore it much further to see how it compares with the rationale for Curriculum for Excellence. One thing for sure is that even in the US there is a recognition that a curriculum designed for an industrial age falls short of what our young people will need to thrive in the 21st Century.

MISSION STATEMENT
Serve as a catalyst to position 21st century skills at the center of US K-12 education by building collaborative partnerships among education, business, community and government leaders

TWENTY FIRST CENTURY CHILDREN
Every child in America needs 21st century knowledge and skills to succeed as effective citizens, workers and leaders in the 21st century.

There is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces.

To successfully face rigorous higher education coursework, career challenges and a globally competitive workforce, U.S. schools must align classroom environments with real world environments by infusing 21st century skills.

This skills set includes:

• Information and communication skills (information and media literacy skills; communication skills)
• Thinking and problem-solving (critical thinking and systems thinking; problem identification, formulation and solution; creativity and intellectual curiosity)
• Interpersonal and self-direction skills (interpersonal and collaborative skills; self-direction; accountability and adaptability; social responsibility)
• Global awareness
• Financial, economic and business literacy, and developing entrepreneurial skills to enhance workplace productivity and career options
• Civic literacy

This project has been managed within LTS by Fiona Andrew and is a great example of successful partnership working, both internally and externally.

This is one of our best rich media CPD resources and supports the highly successful national ”Employer Engagement” training programme which LTS has also managed on behalf of DtS.

If you have a few minutes I would recommend spending some time watching some of the video footage as it is truly inspirational.

One of the objectives of the visit was to build on our existing relationship with The George Lucas Educational Foundation, and find out more about their flagship publication Edutopia. We had the opportunity to spent some time with Milton Chen, Executive Director and Steve Arnold, Vice Chair/CFO.  We were also able to brief GLEF staff on LTS, Curriculum for Excellence and Glow and get some insights into the latest educational developments in the US.

I picked this text up from the Edutopia website and really like it:

‘Kids today. No previous generation has experienced anything like the current pace of transformational societal change. Yet, in light of extraordinary advancements in how we interact with each other and the world, our system of education has been frustratingly slow to adapt.

The George Lucas Educational Foundation was created to address this issue. Our vision is of a new world of learning. A place where kids and parents, teachers and administrators, policy makers and the people they serve, all are empowered to change education for the better. A place where schools have access to the same invaluable technology as businesses and universities — where innovation is the rule, not the exception. A place where children become lifelong learners and develop the technical, cultural, and interpersonal skills to succeed in the twenty-first century. A place of inspiration, aspiration, and an urgent belief that improving education improves the world we live in.

We call this place Edutopia. And we provide not just the vision for this new world of learning but also the leading-edge interactive tools and resources to help make it a reality.‘

This is a vision of the educational future that I am happy to be associated with. Does that make me an edutopian?

One of the many highlights of our visit to the US was the opportunity to spend some time with Gary Plano Superintendent of Mercer Island School District and elected School Board member Lisa Strauch Eggers.

Mercer Island sits in the middle of Lake Washington - a 6 square mile suburban community 10 minutes drive from downtown Seattle. According to Gary, Mercer Island is the home of ‘the most expensive dirt in Washington State’. It would therefore not surprise you to find that  in terms of attainment it is the top performing school district in the State. However, what might surprise you about MISD is that rather than being complacent and playing safe it has embraced radical change as the only way to stay at the top.

MISD is in the process of creating a shared vision for 2020 that it hopes will lead to the successful preparation of all students for the cognitive, global and digital world. The current form of words for a ‘possible new mission statement’ is:
‘Mercer Island School District, in partnership with the community, commits to creating a personalised learning environment with a flexible, dynamic curriculum that inspires students to achieve ambitious, individual academic and personal development goals in order to prepare them to thrive and lead in the new, highly interconnected cognitive, global and digital world.’

This is really great to see in a country where the high stakes testing and accountability agenda embedded in the  No Child Left Behind Act has had a narrowing effect on the curriculum and acts as a disincentive to teacher creativity and professionalism.

The only other place have seen this approach in the US was in a couple of private schools I visited last year.  It would seem that those who come to school already with the greatest advantage get the opportunity to have the best preparation for life in the 21st Century. While those who arrive at school already disadvantaged get an education that was barely adequate for the last 30 years of the 20th Century. The No Child Left Behind Act does not apply to the private sector in the US (just like the National Curriculum is not compulsory for independent schools in England). This means that MISD will have to introduce a 21st Century curriculum and continue to do well in the traditional attainment tests. I think this is perfectly possible. To my mind the converse cannot be true, i.e. to have a curriculum that is driven by the need to pass tests whilst at the same time to preparing our young people  life, work and citizenship in the 21st Century.

Our itinerary took us to New York, San Francisco and Seattle for:
•    Extended briefings and discussions with some of the major US IT corporations: CISCO, Apple, Google and Microsoft
•    Shorter meetings with HP, Oracle Foundation and IEARN USA
•    A visit to Mercer Island School District
•    A series of meetings with the George Lucas Educational Foundation (including a visit to Skywalker Ranch)

We also managed to have spend an evening at a High School football match and catch a little bit of the tennis at Flushing Meadow between flights.

So a really busy time but a fantastic opportunity to escape from the day job to reflect on how we are doing and spend some time thinking about what we need to do to secure the future of Scottish education.

Over the next few days I want to capture some of my initial thoughts about the visit through a short series of posts.