Getting by..
October 23rd, 2008 § 1 Comment
Thanks to a tip off from Paul Miller (on the Xiphos blog) I came across the latest missive from Michael Wesch, he of YouTube fame(!), on the Brittanica blog. Titled ‘A Vision of Students Today (& What Teachers Must Do)‘ there is alot I agree with and support but there was a particular section that really struck a chord with me.
“..a long list of other activities students have learned that they can “get by” without doing. Studying, taking notes, reading the textbook, and coming to class topped the list. It wasn’t the list that impressed me. It was the unquestioned assumption that “getting by” is the name of the game.”
My time in education from about the age of 15 til I left university at 22 was pretty much all about ‘getting by’. I soon discovered what was the bare minimum I needed to do to get along (and it was pretty minimal it has to be said!) and devoted the majority of my time to my social life – looking back, particularly at uni, most of the real lessons I learned were more of a personal nature (and often alcohol related!) than academic. This was before iPods, wifi – or even much internet connectivity at all. Finding ways to ignore lecturers even if you do turn up to class has never had much to do with technology – I often used an early morning Archaeology lecture to catch up on my Zzz’s!
The thing is even back then I was pretty passionate about learning and was always seeking new information out, reading and visiting libraries – I just found the traditional lecture format pretty uninspiring. Like the teachers referred to in the article I love learning but for the most part had little time for school. These days my life is all about learning – my job is focused on it but beyond that there is so much information just a few key strokes away that I find every mild moment of curiosity leads me down a path of new discoveries – yet I am still not comfortable in any kind of traditional teaching scenario (as I proved to myself in a recent 2 day course that I found frustrating beyond words despite a genuine interest in the topic).
In the 12 years since I graduated the world has moved on in leaps and bounds and like Wesch says “there is literally something in the air, and it is nothing less than the digital artifacts of over one billion people and computers networked together collectively producing over 2,000 gigabytes of new information per second.” Trying to act like this hasn’t happened simply isn’t going to succeed – but then neither is the idea that technology alone is the answer.
I firmly believe the role of the (good) teacher is still vital but that if school is going to be the place that inspires learning things need to change – and its for more clever folks than me to decide how but it seem important that this is addressed now rather than later.
Learning 2.0 at the Techcrunch 50 and DEMO
September 11th, 2008 § 7 Comments
If you are anything like me and have a feed reader filled to bursting point with all sorts of blogs that cover the web/start-up scene then you couldn’t miss this weeks blanket coverage of DEMO and Techcrunch50 (although we all know the big event this week was the ALT Conference in Leeds right?). Now putting aside the various spats between Techcrunch and Demo what I’d like to focus on is the fact that around 100 start-ups essentially ‘launched’ over the last few days and as far as I can tell (and maybe I missed some – that would make me happier) only Grockit was focused on learning and a number of the other offerings were vacuous at best. As far as Yammer winning at Techcrunch50 – why? Its a Twitter clone right? A pretty nice one but as far as I can tell apart from giving it an ‘enterprise’ focus its essentially a straight rip-off?
I’ve mentioned Grockit before and I’m really pleased for them – they were one of the runners-up and to my eyes had one of the most innovative ideas with a real understanding of the market they are aiming at (and maybe because that audience exists beyond the Valley it confused the judges?). Anyway I love the idea – combining gaming and peer-to-peer learning is an increasingly popular strategy in education and building a start-up around that and focusing in on test prep seems ideal (that US test regiment seems like a really nice fit for this sort of thing – we lack anything similar here in the UK at the moment to really tie into as far as formal education is concerned).
Maybe we need to start our own Learning 2.0 event for start-ups with an interest in education and learning – something where the phrase ‘enterprise’ is banned and gossip sites are refused entry!
Oh and as I mentioned ALT earlier – congratulations to Josie Fraser for her Learning Technologist of the Year Award – well deserved as far as I can see..
The education 2.0 debate hits Techcrunch!
August 21st, 2008 § 1 Comment
..well Techcrunch UK – but still its nice to see education get some coverage outside of the usual suspects.
The article kicked off an interesting debate in the comments which I contributed a couple of small points to and enjoyed reading the many intelligent comments (while people were not always agreeing it all remained very civil).
Many issues I have come across before were raised; the power of the BBC and Channel 4 in the education space (BBC Jam was mentioned a number of times), the reluctance of budget holders in schools to take a risk on something new and innovative and the already existing cadre of education software providers who have been around for years and who are (often but not always) able to trade on a reputation rather than innovation.
As far as I can see none of this is going to change any time soon. Personally I think the BBC and Channel 4 do valuable work and as long as its within their remits to provide educational materials then I believe that there is no problem with that – as long as they are producing quality content and tools its good for education in the UK. The software companies spent alot of time and money getting where they are and aren’t going to just step aside to make room for a bunch of start ups and the schools worries about sustainability are real.
The challenge for start-ups is, I think and its only my own vaguely thought out opinion, to find a niche in the increasingly important ‘informal’ learning space. More and more activity takes place outside of the classroom these days and its here – away from the direct restrictions of the national curriculum, Ofsted, SATs scandals etc – that there is room to do something new and interesting.
Its also woth remembering that in many ways its not the students or the schools you are targetting but the parents and guardians so maybe there is an adjustment that needs to be made there.
I firmly believe there is room in this space for a number of start-ups to come through – people like School of Everything, Teachstreet, Grockit and GlobalScholar are all showing that oportunities exist out there but in many ways this is a more challenging area than normal consumer driven social media – the stakes are higher and so are the standards required.
Beanbag for Bristol..
June 23rd, 2008 § 2 Comments
A spate of almost aimless Googling and browsing yesterday (it started with a purpose but sometimes I just get swept away with the journey and forget about the destination!) brought me eventually to a new education based, web 2.0ish, start-up based in Bristol – Beanbag Learning. Now this alone was enough to pique my curiousity but the discovery that one of the guys (Jon Ellis) running things is a fellow Monks Park escapee focussed my attention (for the record Monks Park holds a special place in my heart – as well as me, my brother, mum, two aunts, two uncles and four cousins all attended the school and my grandfather even worked there for a while!).
The site aims to match parents up with qualified tutors for their children – in many ways it would be easy to compare it with School of Everything but I think it has much more of a focus on enhancing compulsory education rather than giving a shop window to more adult and community learning opportunities which seems to be the goal of School of Everything (it has to be said I think SoE is flippin’ brilliant and just the kind of start-up I approve of so any comparisons should be seen as a compliment!).
The site was built by Jiva Technology and seems to be built on Ruby on Rails – just like my favourite service Twitter – though it has to be said Twitter isn’t exactly the most stable of services so maybe thats an issue with using this technology? Anyway it certainly gives it a big tick in the web 2.0 box! As does using Getsatisfaction for customer feedback and helpdesk. This is a great idea – Getsatisfaction is a wonderful service that helps build a community around an application and offers a much more user friendly resource than small companies could manage on their own.
Beanbag also has elements of social networking about it – actually a bit more than I think is useful. The ability to recommend people is a real benefit – but I can’t see why adding friends is appropriate here? Just seems to be a feature for the sake of it. The use of profiles is obviously appropriate for tutors but maybe there should be more (mandatory) information relevant to a parent deciding if they are an appropriate tutor – as I’m neither a parent nor a teacher I’m not sure what this would be but I’m sure in these days of (over) protective parents the more info the better?
I’m also not quite sure if the site is supposed to be live really – there is a pretty obvious issue with a link on the homepage (Looking for help?) which I’m sure should go to some kind of form to create a Want Ad but instead goes to a list of current Want Ads. Also the current profiles and members seem to be mainly people involved in the company and the ‘tour’ is still coming soon so perhaps I’m a bit early to the party!
The search and browse of tutors works well though perhaps an additional filter by level (GCSE, A, BTEC) might be helpful? However I find the Learning Resources section a bit muddled – its hard to see how its sorted even after a subject filter is applied – of course that might just be me! Also the handful of videos on the site at the moment (produced by the Jiva team I guess?) are great but maybe a bit too slick! I wonder if something a bit more DIY in nature would encourage people to add their own video/audio resources in the future. The videos are hosted on Blip.tv which is another big win for me as I have long admired them ahead of the other providers in the online video arena – however I would guess that most videos would still be hosted on YouTube (or slides on Slideshare or Authorstream) so the ability to embed stuff in from other sites might be cool (it might also already be available and I just missed it)
All in all I think it has the makings of a really useful service and its current focus on Bristol seems sensible. I mean with the education system in the city in such a shambles despite a high percentage of people working in education (almost 9% of the working population of the city in 2001) there must be a market for this kind of offering – and Bristol is hardly alone in the UK as far as struggling with education. Any given week there is a story in the media about the failure of schools and the Governments latest plan to save things. While there are other web services doing this kind of thing already – a quick look around shows that most of them are quite old fashioned (in web terms) and Beanbag seems to be the main one learning lessons from the social web and implementing them in this environment.
It has to be said though it does have a pretty small Google footprint at the moment. I would have expected to see more blogging about it, maybe some action on Twitter, contributions to other blogs and networks but there isn’t really anything I could find beyond the Jiva blog. There is a big community of edubloggers out there and it seems that tapping into this community could only be good news?
So all in all I’d declare beanbag learning ship shape and Bristol fashion and wish them luck!
