If it makes financial sense, it'll be adopted in the business world...which is why more and more employers are mobilising their workforce. Mobile phones, smart phones, PDAs, Blackberrys and other devices are changing the way in which we work, communicate and learn. And businesses everywhere are interested the knock-on effects of a mobilised workforce: more effective working hours and greater team efficiency.
- Blackberry users produce an extra 56 minutes of effective work a day (that's an extra 196 working hours a year) - work teams with mobile communications found themselves to be 29% more effective
So what about use of mobile phones in education? Well, not all educationalists view mobile phones as a great learning opportunity, with mobile phones being lambasted as Offensive Weapons that should be banned from the classroom.
But there are some interesting things happening. In the ALPS project, 900 students in the north of England are using T-Mobile MDA Varios for mobile learning and assessments during work placements. Using T-Mobile’s Web’n’walk service, students can access learning resources from a central virtual learning repository and blog their work experience as part of their assessment. And this project will roll out to 9,000 students in the next three years.
Did you know that when you sit down for more than 20 minutes your blood pools in your behind and feet?
If you get up and move around your blood recirculates, and inside a minute, your brain gets a hit of about 15% more blood. This helps you think.
So to learn better, we should get out of the seat and onto our feet...which is not necessarily good news for e-learning, which often requires physical inactivity in front of a PC.
I haven't seen any e-learning that incorporates physical movement into the learning experience (send me links if you know of anything!), but it's something I'd love to try out...particularly using mobile technologies.
When I was a wee thing, I was lucky enough to have a father who was both a maths teacher and a gadget lover. He liked any new technology, which is why we had a radio/cassette/mini tv player at a time when we couldn't afford a new roof for the house.
It's also how we got a BBC Micro computer when I was just a tot. These were great educational machines, and we spent hours in front of it. I remember learning about grids in a game that we called 'Find the Rhino', which consisted of an 8x8 grid, somewhere in which a rhino was hiding. We all took turns in keying in a co-ordinate, and eventually someone would find the rhino, which would flash up large and green on the 2-colour screen. We LOVED our BBC micro, and used to spend hours coding and debugging games for it.
But all that was just fun...the first learning experience I remember identifying as a formal learning experience was trying out a demo copy of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. The demo only taught one row of the keyboard - asdfghjkl; - but we were hooked. Why did it work so well? It was simple, repetitive and visual. The programme had the feel of an arcade game, so the six of us would sit around and compete at who was fastest and most accurate at typing.
When I went to secondary school I had to take typing classes. How did we learn? On manual typewriters. The teacher had a book from which she'd shout out the letters we were to type. We had a keyboard diagram stuck on the blackboard. Everyone was stuck at the same pace. And it took years for us to learn what we'd learned at home in just hours.
I was frustrated then. I felt slowed down and held up. I wonder how today's students - with access to a huge range of online learning materials - feel? Perhaps like the student who explained that 'Whenever I go into class, I have to power down'.
In this digital age, will home schooling become the choice of education for tech-savvy, informed parents?
I said yesterday in my Liquid e-Learning: Laptops and Mobile Phones as Thinking Prosthetics post that I know how the American college student who carries his laptop around everywhere feels. I sometimes feel like Google is my second brain. I frequently don't make any attempt to memorise facts as I know I can access them when I need them - why waste my brain space?
On a personal level though, Google sometimes scares me. In the olden days (The Dial-up Connection Era) if I needed to know something (like A Good Pancake Recipe or How Do I Clean my Leather Jacket?) I'd ring my mother. And I would always get great advice (it helped that I knew not to ring her for advice on Cheap and Effective Cocktail Recipes or Useful Lies for Uncomfortable Situations).
But along with the great advice I might also have to get other information - my mother's equivalent of Google Ads. So I'd move along from How To Clean my Leather Jacket to hearing about Your Man up the road who had his leather jacket destroyed that time he was hit by lightning, and from there onto Josey Meehan's cows that Got Loose and went running into...you get the picture.
Google ads are elective information - I can choose whether or not to explore them. And more often than not, I don't have time to check them out.
My mother's information always comes with context, and often with years or generations of experience. And when I make the time to connect with this source of information, it really makes me appreciate the fact that information has always been hard won. That it's taken generations to get things right. That things that make a big difference to me could have so easily been lost. Will there be a whole generation growing up now who will not appreciate the effort behind the information? Who won't have time to listen to the context behind the facts?
VideoJug's tagline is 'Life Explained. On Film.' No small claims for this beta website then. But VideoJug do cover some of the basics, even if they don't quite constitute the "definitive online encyclopedia of life".
They've produced a jug-full of professionally-produced, high definition video content, covering everything from leisure, beauty, and style right through to health, money, and my favourite - DIY. It's kind-of a youtube for 'How do I do this thing?'
The videos are a mix of informative "How To" and "Ask The Expert" clips that take users through what VideoJug's experts think they need to know, step-by-step. I've been through quite a few of them...from the 'How to Ace a Job Interview' and 'Epilepsy Basics' through to 'How to Get a Last-minute Date for Valentine's Day'. Some of the content is good, informative and simple. It is always basic. Text captions reinforce important points. The experts range from the energised career empowerment lady to the Ross-From-Friends clone who talks about epilepsy. And himself.
But all this content is free (apart from the Google ads sprinkled around the place, of course). And there is user-generated content as well - but VideoJug are quick to say that all UGC is carefully screened and accepted. I didn't manage to find any UGC apart from some obscure DIY practices.
Anyway. VideoJug. Free online video learning on a scale we didn't imagine 5 years ago, with our narrowband restrictions and libraries locked up tight in LMSs...so get in there and have a nosey.
An American college student was asked why he lugs his laptop around everywhere with him in a rucksack, instead of just logging into college PC for a few hours. He answered
"It's part of my brain. Why would I want to leave it behind in a computer lab?"
I understand where this student is coming from. If I have to function without my laptop or mobile phone I don't feel like I'm missing a limb. I feel like I'm missing my second brain.
Check out Donald Philip's article The Knowledge Building Paradigm: A Model of Learning for Net Generation Students. The article is worth a read despite the uncatchy title and the hassle of registration for access. You'll find out more about how technology is not just a desirable addition to the educational experience, but is essential - providing us with thinking prosthetics or mind tools.
The article explores the idea that schools must move from the industrial model of classrooms (which also reflects the traditional broadcast media) to a more interactive, elective model of learning.
Find out how learners are moving from linear to 'hypermedia' learning. How we're moving from 'instruction' to construction and discovery. From just learning material by rote to learning how to discover and filter information. Discover how teachers will have to evolve from being transmitters to facilitators (an analogy that should guide those broadcasters with an educational remit...).
The BBC have launched a new project utilising Microsoft's Photosynth technology. They aim to create 3D representations of some Britain's most interesting buildings by combining hundreds of different photographs. Most of the featured buildings have been filmed for a new BBC series 'How we Built Britain', which explores Britain's past through its buildings.
Microsoft describe the venture as being an 'exciting 'research and development' project', which is an interesting definition of a new nation-wide online project.
I'm interested in this project as it contravenes what I know of several BBC technical guidelines - not least the use of Flickr. And the relative speed at which the BBC has moved to utilise the Photosynth technology is impressive. A sign of things to come?
I've just watched this video from the TED talks (after reading Donald Clark's post). It's Microsoft's Blaise Aguera y Arcas explaining a fantastic new technology - Photosynth, which is described as 'a monumental piece of software capable of assembling static photos into a synergy of zoomable, navigatable spaces'.
Watch it. You must. It's amazing! (and yes it's Microsoft. And Blaise is described as an 'acquisition').
But think about the implications of such an amazing technology...OK...it's so cool that we can create a virtual Notre Dame cathedral just from the knowledge scraped from Flickr photos...but it does make me wonder what sort of creations it might make of me...let's say if someone scraped all known digital photographs of me, taken at every wedding, leaving do, birthday party and reunion from the 21st century, I'd say a fairly interesting but utterly unrepresentative portrait might emerge. I guess buildings don't tend to wobble, no matter how much red wine they contain...
Interesting thing I'd like to see...a photo portrait of a famous dead person, scraped from every public photo ever taken...let's see Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana please.
But all this is 2D and 3D interpretations of our seen world. If we can snap it digitally, it seems we can make it cool, sexy, interesting.
So what happens all our world's invisible stuff? Our emotions? How we think? The ways we learn? How we speak, communicate? Watch the video. You'll get a brief glimpse of Bleak House as a novel laid out in columns of data...we can zoom right into the tiny pixels of the print. It made me think...
What I'd love to see a language montage...a way of identifying words according to how, when and where they're used. A way of charting the emotion, the usage, the power of language. A way of zooming into the 'pixels' of meaning and nuance.
I guess though that a language montage is particular to each person. We don't use the same words or phrases to express the same things.
This links (tenuously I know) into an idea I had about recording a language learner's conversations for a week or month or so, and analysing the results to provide the learner with the language they need and use.
When I was playing around in Scratch yesterday, I couldn't help but think (again) that it's possible to develop a visual approach to learning a second language. When working on BBC Jam Irish, I developed a visual sentence builder to help a learner build he/she/me/they sentences that involved like/love/hate and an object (pizza/school/hairy caterpillar). Using lego people and objects (what else?) the learner could select any subject, object and emotion and then generate a text and audio sentence.
But this was a Flash-based game with a limited number of objects and possible sentences. What would be really interesting is taking a language and categorising its components much like Scratch has done, so that a learner can snap together blocks of language to create sentences that are visually rendered. If I've created a sentence that says I am riding a bike in the rain, then a visual animation of me, riding a bike in the rain, is played out.
A site called lingualgamers.com briefly touches upon the idea of language learning using blocks in this article, having taken inspiration from MIT's StarLogo TNG - another visual programming application.
I've another, stranger idea for visual language learning that's currently bubbling away in my head...I'll try and get around to it next week.
I've written before about the Blendtec viral videos. These engaging videos encourage viewers to participate and create their own content. I love the way youtube opens up video and text conversations with people across the world. So how can we use this type of model for language learning?
When I'm in my Irish language class, I find that I have no interest in translating set text from a page. But if I'm asked an open-ended question, such as 'what did you do at the weekend', I really try to find the Irish to communicate what I did at the weekend. So this got me thinking about video conversations on youtube.
Taking a very basic idea, I wonder could a series of video clips called 'What did you do at the weekend' be used to open up video conversations in the Irish language. The starter clips could be carefully scripted for comedy and good use of images with audio. The learner could watch it. Then they have to answer with their own clip of what they did at the weekend, using the branding, images or video clips taken from the starter clips...
You could use this idea for specific vocabulary. If I had to teach GCSE students the Irish vocabulary for food and cooking, I think I'd make a series of very short cookery clips called 'What do you eat?'
So in each video, a chef shows the viewer a range of ingredients. Then they show how to very quickly put a dish together. Each clip would last for around the magic 2 minute mark, and would not only show the learner how to make a dish, but would give the language for the food stuffs and the cooking process. At the end of the video, the chef asks the question 'What do you eat?'
The learners are then encouraged to make their own video. So they have to find the ingredients, figure out the language for the process, make the video and post it.
There are endless subjects around which you could open up language-learning conversations...and using comedy, and not moderating the responses are all part of the learning experience.
Hmmmmm. Maybe I should get my camera out this weekend and give it a go. Subject - What do you like to drink in an Irish pub?
I did French for five years at school - from 11-16. And after those five years, I know how to say 'tournez à gauche' (why????) and 'Je voudrais un homme après minuit' thanks to several lunch breaks where my friends and I would sit and translate Abba songs into French.
The rest of the language seems to have disappeared into the murk of my mind. The translation of Abba songs was fun. It stuck in my head longer than the audio cassettes or the text books. We didn't have any computerised language-learning aids in the classroom back then. But my inability to learn French wasn't just down to the way we were taught.
The thing is, I never thought French was the sort of language I should be using. I lived in Northern Ireland. The only school trips I got on were cross-community trips to Denmark, where we learned more Danish in 2 hours than we learned French in five years. I knew that France was a lovely sort of country, but a country that probably wouldn't welcome us troubles-scarred types into its lush countryside, chic cities and warm sunshine.
If anyone had asked me what I thought of the French language, I would have told them that it was glamourous and seductive, a language that was to be used by tall thin ladies with expensive coats and complicated beauty routines. That French was for rich people, lovers and poets. French wasn't really meant to be spoken by spotty Ulster teenagers in a miserable little town choked by security checkpoints and drowned in rain. So I never really believed I could learn it.
Now I'm all grown up things are different. And that's lucky, because I'm heading off to Cuba on April 15. Cubans, apparently, don't speak English. And I don't speak Spanish. So I have 12 days in which I can learn some basic Spanish from my Michel Thomas Speak Spanish in Just 8 Hours CD course. This will be the first time I've ever had to attempt language-learning for real. As in, I'll be going to a country where it won't just turn out easier for us all to speak a bit of English.
Michel Thomas is on my ipod. So far I've learned 'No es possible para me', which is undoubtedly a useful phrase, but I do recognise I would benefit from a wider vocabulary. And the ability to understand what someone is saying to me...
What I'm wondering is whether there will be a difference in me spending five years learning a lovely language that I didn't feel worthy to speak and me spending 12 days cramming essential survival phrases into my head, using whatever online/audio and written resources I can find.
Necessity is the mother of invention they say. So I'm wondering if desperation is the key to language learning? I'll keep you posted...
I blogged earlier in the year about my frustration at the slow take-up of new technology by learning institutions. Another concern I've had is learning institutions taking years to copy an idea like myspace or youtube, only to produce a substandard offering when the original idea is old news.
Yes, it's youtube for teachers. Launched early March 2007, it aims to "provide an online community for sharing instructional videos...to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners. [Teachertube] is a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill."
The site seems to be well-designed, intuitive and simple. Although it's still young and the content I viewed had an American bias, it's well worth checking out and using!
I'm reading Mark Hughes' Buzzmarketing right now. He's the guy who took the number of Half.com users from zero to eight million in just three years, without a huge marketing budget. The secret? Make your company a magnet for media attention and word of mouth, by any means necessary.
I began reading the book out of interest - how do people create massively successful websites? How do producers generate the 'buzz' that gets people talking about their content or product?
Then I started wondering how we can create e-learning with buzz.
Education isn't a field that's expert at marketing. Based on our Industrial model of education, students have to go to school. It's the law. We don't bother 'selling' the idea of school or education to them - we force them to do it. Kids spend an average of 7 hours a day in the classroom, 'learning'.
So what do they talk about in the playground or at home? What's got them buzzing? Strangely enough, it's not the curriculum. It's new music. New games. New technologies. New news. The things they're finding out for themselves in their own time. They're teaching each other how to do stuff. They're trying new things out. They're deciding what's got buzz, and what doesn't.
Ok. So subjects like Irish language or Victorian history just aren't as sexy as Paris Hilton's Jail Saga. But it's not just the content that keeps learning from being as buzzworthy as possible - it's also how it's presented.
In a traditional online learning experience, the learner is asked to log-in. They're either given a linear path to follow through set content, or they can select which modules of content they want to learn. The learning experience can range from the passive consumption of text, graphics, audio and video to truly interactive games that surprise and engage.
At the end, achievement is usually scored, and the learner congratulated. Some websites even personalise a little certificate you can print out and stick up on your fridge.
No-one's buzzing...because not only is there no opportunity to share knowledge or achievement in the ways they share informal knowledge or achievement, the stuff they're studying isn't what they see as relevant to their lives.
We all need to show off a bit. To explore or make things. Try things out and comment. Sure we have learning supported message boards and chatrooms, but I've not seen an e-learning shared space buzz the way youtube does. And we're not giving learners the choice of exploring what they want to learn, when they want to learn it.
So universities are moving into Second Life. Up to 15 UK universities are known to have purchased land there. Why?
There are advantages to studying in a virtual world. For one, interaction in Second Life gets beyond the stale and limited 'communication technologies' of chat rooms, message boards and texts. Which is why Harvard has set up a Second Life courtroom where law students can practice their advocacy skills.
And you get to look how you want - because when you create your Second Life avatar, you can choose your gender, age, race and shape. Handicaps in real life - whether real or imagined - do not show on Second Life. It's your mind that matters.
Physical space doesn't matter - you can visit anywhere anytime. You can build 3-d structures to explore architectural or engineering features. And if you're interested in a niche subject that has limited face-to-face learning opportunities, you can connect online with other learners scattered across the First Life globe.
Lecturers like the fact they can actually 'see' who's involved in the learning, and who's snoozing at the back of the class (although the idea of recreating the not awfully successful lecturing model in Second Life wouldn't be the first learning model I'd choose).
Of course it's not all straightfoward - there are the usual technological constraints at the moment (you'll have get yourself some powerful computer kit and a whole lot of bandwidth).
Under current thinking, it's probable that universities will create their own worlds, where learning can happen under their control (just what are the copyright laws in Second Life?). And I think that this will negate one of the most important aspects of Second Life - sheer scale of people from all across the world sharing one space.
And of course we have to wonder will we end up with a group of Second Lifers whose social skills in the virtual world are impeccable, but who can't remember how to shake someone's hand in real life?
Need to introduce kids to concept of programming? Then check out MIT's Scratch - a free programming tool that doesn't require users to have any knowledge of code.
Instead Scratch uses a simple graphical interface which enables users to create programs by assembling them - much like Lego blocks.
Users can select objects and characters from the scratch menu, or create their own in a paint program or even cut and paste items from the web. Movement is added by snapping "action" blocks into stacks.
Scratch is currently being used by kids to create animated stories, interactive art and video games. You can check out MIT's introduction to Scratch here:
I have to say, Scratch reminds me of Douglas Coupland's novel Microserfs, where the characters are developing OOP! - what appears to be a software version of Lego. Lego is often discussed, and the characters sometimes try to analyse the influence of Lego on their coding skills...
"When I was young, if I built a house out of Lego, the house had to be all in one color. I used to play Lego with Ian Ball who lived up the street, back in Bellingham. He used to make his house out of whatever color brick he happened to grab. Can you imagine the sort of code someone like that would write?"
So the BBC have decided to suspend their educational Jam service.
I'd like to blog about why I think Jam failed. Why I felt it was flawed from the start. On how the BBC could done things differently. But then I read the BBC press releases on the Jam suspension, and I thought what difference will my comments make?
Liz Cleaver, controller of learning and interactive has said that BBC Jam is "a highly distinctive service which absolutely represents the direction in which I believe formal learning from the BBC should be travelling".
Perhaps Jam really is the direction in which the BBC will take formal learning. But is that the direction that the general public want 'learning' to go in?
Are the BBC going to take this 'suspension' as a chance to sit back and look at what they delivered to the public, at the public's expense. To see what went wrong, not just with the content, but the internal processes, the technologies used, the management approach, the content production methods? To see what users really feel, and more importantly, to find out what the non-users think? I'm not convinced.
BBC Jam represents £150 million pounds worth of 'free learning'. That's about the same amount the government invested in another disastrous 'formal learning' experiment - UKEU.
And Jam's £150 million pounds worth of 'free learning' is being taken from the British public as of March 20. If BBC Jam had worked, if the content was good enough, if people really used and loved the service, would there not be protests? If it really is the 'highly distinctive service' that provides creative, innovative and imaginative learning content to pupils of all ages, where's the outcry?
Maybe the BBC should stop talking about Jam, and start listening.
So the BBC has struck a partnership deal with IBM to create web 3.0 technology.
Now we all know that web 2.0 is getting a bit overused...I mean, the term's been around since 2004, and even your granny's web 2.0 these days.
But I'm more than a little uncomfortable with the idea that Ashley Highfield of the BBC is going to 'create' web 3.0 for us.
Web 2.0 was allegedly born in the aftermath of the 'dot com bubble'. That happened in the Autumn of 2001. So three years later we finally got a term for what had been evolving online.
And what had evolved online? A user-centred, application rich web experience. Websites that were filled with user content. Websites that facilitated communication and the sharing of ideas and content. Websites that were driven by people's need to learn and share knowledge.
The BBC has struggled with the idea of web 2.0. Their website is still heavily mired in the mud of its web 1.0 genesis. Much of their content reminds me of the type of thing telly and radio people who've done a Dreamweaver course and attended a few conferences think is good. It's still based on the viewer staring at a screen that will educate, entertain and inform.
So the idea of the BBC 'creating' web 3.0 for us, the users, is novel. So what are we getting for web 3.0. A video search system for CBeebies and CBBC programmes. Last time I looked, the under-5 market was not the influential technology shaper of the online world.
And while I agree that harnessing video search technology could be a make or break strategy for the BBC, it's probably not what your average web user thinks of as the next 'must-have' technology. I mean, not too many of us have got an archive of 1.4 million hours of video and audio to digitise and sort. Most of us could, with a little bit of effort, view and organise our multimedia in a week or so. Of course it would be nice if a machine would come along and do that for us, but it's not my next big Must Have technology.
So. The BBC is delivering us web 3.0, even as they struggle to adjust to web 2.0. Which, if I remember rightly, we delivered to them. Read more at the guardian.
I just got an email from the Eduserv Foundation about their third annual symposium “Virtual worlds, real learning”. This event takes place 10 May at the Congress Centre in London.
The Eduserve Foundation aim to look past the hype surrounding virtual worlds such as Second Life and evaluate whether they offer real opportunities for learners at UK educational institutions.
The 'real' venue is booked out, but all the presentations will be streamed live into Second Life and on the Web. Check out the content in Second Life here:
- The Virtual Congress Centre on Eduserv Island. - The auditorium on Cybrary City. - The outdoor teaching space on NMC's Teaching 2 Island.
I'm not sure about how we can use Virtual Worlds for Real Learning. I think we often struggle hard enough to impart Real Learning in our Real World...what makes it easier to teach virtually?
However, I do think Virtual Worlds offer interesting ways to teach language. But more on that next week. My Second Life tan needs topping up.
Well, I passed. And I found the test a lot easier than the lessons. Why? Because my examiner wasn't instructing me. He was letting me drive. So instead of making a mistake but then being distracted by my instructor pointing out my mistake, I concentrated on driving.
I hadn't managed to do a reverse around the corner under instruction. But I managed it twice in the test. I didn't do it perfectly...but I know that if I was out on the road and had to do that manoevre, I could.
But I will admit I'm highly nervous of going onto the road alone for the first time. Because although I know how to do things like check the oil and brake fluid levels in my instructor's car, I actually don't know how to put petrol in my own car.
Learning to drive was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. It was a strange mix of manual, cognitive and confidence skills. But I've passed my test. As my mother said, now it's time to learn to drive :)
I've been taking a bit of time out to get my place in Belfast redecorated and as near to finished as I'll be able to do, so I've not been focusing on my e-learning work. But I have been thinking about some discussions I've read on the left-brain, right-brain theory. It started with Donald Clarke's reaction to Clive Shepherd's Neuromyths post.
I only know the basics of how the brain works, although I've bought some books and bookmarked some sites so I can read up on the subject when my DIY torture is over. My interest in how the brain learns isn't just academic or professional. In my early 20s I acquired a brain injury. The first thing I was told about my brain injury is that brain damage is permanent. That what has been destroyed will never come back. That I might be able to 'compensate' for my losses, but I would never get anything 'back'.
This is a frightening situation to be in when you can't remember your second name, what you did five minutes previously, or how to finish the sentence you have started. When you don't know how to tie your shoelaces, how to make a cup of tea or even feed yourself. I didn't know the names of objects like a cooker, fridge or chair. At 23 I was bedbound, feeling like a toddler with a whole world of learning in front of me. Except my brain wasn't the information-hungry tabula rasa of a child. It was full of holes. Damaged.
Recovery has taken years. And in the event I feel I have learned a lot about how I learn, how I retain information and how you it's possible not just to 'compensate' for brain damage, but how you can overcome it.
One of the things i feel very strongly is that my brain has two very different basic modes, which may be labelled as 'left' and 'right', but would probably be more usefully described for me as 'verbal' and 'non-verbal'.
After my brain injury I had difficulty in perceiving depth. I would walk into a shop or down a street, and if I was unfamiliar with the space, I could not see any depth - it was as if a poster was in front of my nose, and I could not tell what was 2D or 3D. Every step felt like a step into an abyss. I overcame this simply by forcing myself to enter spaces and making my brain work. A lot of early recovery felt like this. Brute force. Making my brain work but not understanding how it was working.
Prior to the injury I was a very good portrait artist. Afterwards my depth-perception problem meant I could copy from a 2-D picture, but really struggled with drawing from life. After several frustrating years of trying to recapture my drawing skills, I found a book called 'Drawing on the Right-Hand side of the Brain'.
This book is full of the cheap pop-psychology of left-hand, right-hand brain...but the book works. It will teach you how to switch your brain into the non-verbal mode that best helps you draw. It taught me how to switch consciously into the mode best suited for the activity I was doing. It also taught me how to draw again, a skill I thought I'd lost forever.
Learning to drive was one of the last big achievements I've made since my illness. I've posted earlier about how I found this a difficult process, as it felt to me like a 'right' brain activity - non-verbal, but I felt my brain to be in constant conflict as I was being taught how to drive verbally. Since getting my licence my driving has improved leaps and bounds, because when I'm in the car, my learning is not interrupted by having to talk or listen. I simply drive and absorb what I'm doing without words. This mode is non-verbal or 'right-brain'.
The brain is an incredibly complex organ - we can't pretend to understand much more than the basics. And as humans, we like simplifications. What could be nicer than pretending that this mysterious mass of nerves and neurons can be divided into two parts and easily understood? After all, don't we have men and women, darkness and light, rain and sun?
Left-brain, right-brain isn't correct. The advances in neurology we're currently seeing will of course reveal to us a much more complex picture - after all, it wasn't so long ago that we were taught that we only use 10% of our brains.
But for me, I found that the simplification of left-brain, right-brain helped me recover from my brain injury. It has helped me immeasurably since. Of course it doesn't help any learner to apply a strict theory to how they should learn - an intuitive approach is best.
I'm reading How the Brain Learns by David Sousa. It's an introduction to what parts of the brain are used for what function, and is written specifically for teachers and trainers.
At the moment I'm particularly interested in language learning. According to David, a newborn baby's brain is not a blank slate. Certain areas are specialised for specific stimuli, including spoken language.
And apparently the window for acquiring spoken language opens soon after birth (although I suspect it happens even earlier - in the womb). The ability to acquire spoken language tapers off around the ages of 10-12 years. Beyond that age, learning any language becomes more difficult.
In the UK, educators tend to provide language learning only at the age where the ability to learn is decreasing.
In the Republic of Ireland, Irish-language learning is provided from the first years of school, and has been since the earliest years of the Republic's inception. Yet the Irish language has been in steady decline.
So not only must we introduce language learning early so we can take advantage of the developing brain, we really need to analyse what kind of language learning works.
David points out that the genetic impulse to learn language is so strong that children found in feral environments often make up their own language. Children's brains are wired for learning quickly and effectively. As teachers and educators, we need to learn how to best deliver the information they need, when they're most receptive.
So Chris Keates, general secretary of teaching union NASUWT wants mobile phones banned from school premises because they're being used as 'offensive weapons'.
Now I understand that mobile phones can be used by students in the classroom for all the wrong reasons - for student and teacher bullying, for covert recordings of teacher performance (which can subsequently be shared on sites like bebo or youtube), for distraction, for cheating, or just for entertaining students bored out of their skulls.
And I do understand that today's hugely pressured teachers can do without the potential for harrassment, ridicule or attack that mobile phones can present. But to classify mobiles as 'offensive weapons' that should be banned from the classroom is just plain wrong.
When I was at school, pupils used pen and paper or chalk and a blackboard to effectively humiliate, bully or ridicule both staff and pupils. Nobody suggested banning these 'offensive weapons'.
Instead of demonising the mobile technologies that are changing the way today's pupils interact with the world they will have to work in, we should be exploring how mobile phones offer teachers and educationalists a fantastic way to connect with pupils. To deliver, create and receive content. To engage and challenge pupils.
Mobile phones are not potential weapons of mass destruction. Used wisely and used creatively, they are potential tools of mass education.
I've been thinking about how an immersive 3D environment could help language learning. I've worked on a project where we created an entire house and garden as an environment for learning Irish. The learner could click and explore all the objects in the house, and clicking certain objects opened up language learning games or activities.
This worked well for the average learner - they could see an object, click to hear how to pronounce the name of the object, and also see a text label.
But we decided what went in the house, what was placed where, what the learner had to learn.
What I'd love to experiment with is a 3D environment that has nothing in it. Just a big white space that the learner enters with an avatar.
The idea is that as the learner learns words, the objects appear in the 3D world. So if they learn the colours of the rainbow, a rainbow appears in the empty space. If they learn the words for sky and grass and trees, these appear. As the learner progresses in the language, the world fills out. The learner makes the world. If they discover how to say 'I have a blue dog and five friendly sisters' then a blue dog and five friendly sisters appear in the world.
And learners could connect with each other via text chat or audio...populating their world with real conversations.
But learning a language isn't just about learning a word and ticking a box. It's also about retention...so in this 3D world, objects could begin to fade if the learner doesn't use the vocabulary...every time they log in they could be presented with a list of endangered objects that they must 'save'.
Right. Who's got a few million in development funding for me?
I just came across this well-received post and presentation by Leisa Reichelt, who is a User Experience Consultant (someone who creates customer experiences that are both pleasurable and effective).
She's an advocate of a non-linear, user-centred approach to design and build of anything from a retail space or a phone call, to a website.
She's posted a presentation which explains the pros of the washing machine approach (an iterative design process) versus the cons of a traditional 'waterfall' approach (used often in advertising, broadcasting, and much corporate e-learning solutions) where the design and build cycle follow a strict and linear process of
SCOPE DESIGN BUILD TEST
Although I'm not convinced by the washing machine metaphor*, the presentation is worth a watch for an compare/contrast between the two design styles.
*in my experience, you open a washing machine, put stuff in, click on and leave it until it's finished...not much scope for opening it halfway and adding another pair of jeans or switching cycles...
In 2003 I read this BBC article on teaching children to write using computers, rather than pencils and paper. I haven't heard much about the practice since, but following a conversation with my mother (an ex-primary school teacher) on how myself and my brothers and sisters learned to read and write, I became interested in it again.
In Norway, 18 schools decided to teach children how to write just by using PCs. So instead of spending hours and hours being taught how to draw the 26 letters of the alphabet using one hand, the children are taught how to type using all ten fingers. This makes the act of writing a lot easier for children.
Arne Trageton, the associate professor in education at Stord/Haugesund College says he is not opposed to handwriting. But points out that in the 'real' world, hardly anyone writes by hand anymore. Yet in our schools small children are forced to handwrite at a time when it is a challenge to their developing motorskills.
Traditional hand-writing skills are taught in the Norwegian schools - but they are introduced at the age of 8, when the children pick the skill up much more quickly.
The director of the school district, Vidar Aarhus, describes the practice as 'learning by playing' and believes that the children become better writers because they avoid 'technical difficulties' of mastering the physical act of writing.
Handwriting still matters in today's school system. Despite the fact that most pupils will graduate into a world where the occasional scribbled post-it note is likely to be the most they will have to hand-write, they must take exams by hand. Research has shown that pupils with faster handwriting get better exam results. The researchers who discovered this have recommended that we teach handwriting throughout school. Why? Why not teach children the keyboard skills they're going to need - the skills that will give them an advantage in the 'real' world? And why not let them take exams by PC?
But back to Writing without Pencils. I really like the idea that children can spend time becoming creators at an early age, rather than consumers. And instead of making small children sweat over recreating a legible 'q', you can free them to explore creating words and sentences, to expressing themselves.
Has anyone experienced this method of teaching a child to write?
I've been crawling through different language-learning websites on the Internet. It was a pretty samey experience...I'd click on a link that promises to teach me a language online, get delivered to a site that would let me download a few pdfs, half-hearted podcasts, but really just wanted me to buy their book (first authored in the 80s, but Newly Updated!) with accompanying audio CD-ROM. If I was really lucky, I'd get a website offering me the chance to purchase an interactive language learning programme...which would be posted to me on CD-ROM.
The global market for language-learning products and services is estimated to be in excess of $100 billion. So with web 2.0 in overdrive all around, I was beginning to wonder just what's the story with language learning?
But then I found Ken Carroll's ChinesePod. Sigh :)
Don't get me wrong, this educational offering isn't perfect, but they're head and shoulders against the other language-learning sites I've been on.
ChinesePod starts by offering a free podcast every day. And thanks to their buy-in to the Creative Commons licence, you can download the podcast, cut it up, play with it, share it, and even republish it (apparently a French guy has been going through some podcasts replacing the English instructions with French). As long as you credit ChinesePod, they're happy for you to play with their content. A very good start.
But ChinesePod isn't just podcasts. It's split into three environments: 'explore', 'study' and 'connect'. In explore you can check out over 500 lessons at 6 different levels. Topics include 'I've lost my keys' and 'closing a meeting'. You can assess your level of learning with a free listening test, or you can arrange to speak with a real live teacher who will perform a needs analysis. You can pick and choose your own lessons, add them to a calendar and get them delivered by rss to your PC.
When you're ready to study, you can print transcripts or view them on your mp3 player. And online you can get consolidation with interactive lessons and games.
The connect section makes use of social networking principles to provide learners with a well-designed space in which they can ask and answer questions and connect with other learners with the same interests or in the same geographical location.
So what's the revenue model? There are no ads. So once you've exhausted the free content, or when you fancy a bit more, you can subscribe. $9 a month gets you access to PDF transcripts and other bits and bobs. $30 gets you an additional range of guides, exercises, games and tests. And if you fancy the human touch and you've cash to burn, for $200 you can get a needs analysis, a personalised study plan and someone to practise with for 10 minutes every single day of the week.
So it's all good, right? Well I think it's mostly good, if not fantastic. But I've not explored ChinesePod in depth. I have no interest in learning Chinese, but I will be checking out Spanish Sense, Ken Carroll's new baby.
So without having tried hard to learn I'm not the right person to make an informed critique...but I will admit that I have shades of doubt over the instructional design of the content. This is not to say that the ChinesePod team aren't paying their fullest attention to this matter. I think there's room for improvement in how the learning is presented and structured. But ChinesePod seem keen to explore and improve not just the web 2.0 technologies that drive this site but also their learning content.
As a language-learning model, ChinesePod is so different to the rest, I'm delighted and amazed they've got so much right in such a short space of time...just six months after setting up they had 20,000 people subscribing to their free podcasts...and 3,000 people had subscribed to receive a fuller service. But a year ago, interest in ChinesePod exploded...and they had notched up more than 10,000,000 lesson downloads.
ChinesePod and Spanish Sense now have a mobile site which enables language-learning on the go. Oh for the new iPhone...
If it makes financial sense, it'll be adopted in the business world...which is why more and more employers are mobilising their workforce. Mobile phones, smart phones, PDAs, Blackberrys and other devices are changing the way in which we work, communicate and learn. And businesses everywhere are interested the knock-on effects of a mobilised workforce: more effective working hours and greater team efficiency.
- Blackberry users produce an extra 56 minutes of effective work a day (that's an extra 196 working hours a year) - work teams with mobile communications found themselves to be 29% more effective
So what about use of mobile phones in education? Well, not all educationalists view mobile phones as a great learning opportunity, with mobile phones being lambasted as Offensive Weapons that should be banned from the classroom.
But there are some interesting things happening. In the ALPS project, 900 students in the north of England are using T-Mobile MDA Varios for mobile learning and assessments during work placements. Using T-Mobile’s Web’n’walk service, students can access learning resources from a central virtual learning repository and blog their work experience as part of their assessment. And this project will roll out to 9,000 students in the next three years.
