Big thanks to everyone who came to see us at the BETT Show in Olympia this January. 27,000 estimated people visited the show this year to visit the 2000 stands demonstrating their products and services. This was the second year Cleveratom (2006-2011) have been involved at BETT and a great place to celebrate the first birthday of the business.
Great to see our own Hal MacLean published in 21 Century Schools….
Cleveratom (2006-2011) continue to consult in the Building Schools for the Future Programme. Hal travels the length and width of the UK to talk effective learning space design (both virtual and physical).
Here is what Hal had to say in his four page article:
Virtually Building Schools of the Future
Building a new school is a major undertaking. Building a new virtual learning environment is no less demanding and requires a clear understanding of the processes involved. It’s as much about change management as anything else, of course, but without a vision for online learning then it will be more of a struggle to get right.
It’s unlikely that you have missed the initiative completely, but to quote from Becta’s website:
In response to this Cleveratom (2006-2011) were commissioned by the Yorkshire and Humber Grid for Learning Foundation to investigate the approaches schools were taking and the lessons they have learned along the way. The approach we took was to create a series of case studies and video evidence to illustrate the processes that had been started, and published these in a book and DVD called ‘Virtually There: Learning Platforms’. The overwhelming message from the work was that there is little in the way of a co-ordinated approach to this between schools, and vastly different levels of understanding existed about the benefits of using online tools for learning.
That isn’t to say that the schools we visited were doing anything inherently wrong or were confused about what they were doing. The ones we visited have been on the road to implementing their platforms for several years, and are in fact pathfinders in their own right, but for each that we visited there are many that are not even on the journey yet.
To try to set this in context a little we need to go back a few years and examine the major influences in online learning within the UK education system. Two massive and unique examples spring immediately to mind amongst many that have come and gone over time.
In the late 1990’s, the Tesco Schoolnet 2000 project (TSN2K) became the largest online repository of children’s work ever created. By encouraging children to add their work from within supermarkets around the UK as well as from school and home, the collection grew massively in a very short space of time. Amongst other things it demonstrated that people want to share their work and will do so willingly if there is a strong purpose and the right conditions are available. The current information for this project, which is continuing to evolve, can be found at the website: http://www.schoolnetglobal.com/
About the same time as the TSN2K project officially ended, the start of another major piece of research began. The creation of the National College for School Leaders (NCSL) needed to include a ‘virtual’ arm. Leveraging the power of Oracle’s ‘Think.com’ software (another excellent innovation and example of online learning tools vastly ahead of their time), the ‘Talking Heads’ online community was created to help reduce the isolation felt amongst newly appointed school leaders.
The space was a collection of online communities hosting a range of different discussions and projects using vastly superior tools to any online web forum. The overriding impression is that these spaces were light years ahead of anything else in the UK even remotely associated with online learning. The outcomes from the original research are available from NCSL in a publication called ’70,000 heads’.
Since these two landmark projects there has been a massive increase in the proliferation of social software – blogs, wikis, personal spaces and places such as YouTube, Flickr and MySpace where users can generate and share content and comment upon it. Suddenly, sharing thoughts and resources became ‘cool’ and these spaces have become the place to put your thoughts, images, reactions to events, videos and all manner of responses to things happening in your life. The spaces are free from being institutionalised or closed off to all but the select few and their existence in such numbers indicates the levels of demand. There is little doubt that online tools for collaboration and discussion are being embraced all over the world in an anarchic way that is exciting and exhilarating to watch.
If only a learning platform could capture some of that!
Learning is not, and never has been static. We now understand more about learning than we have ever done before and should be moving towards embracing the personal side of learning more and more. However, given the shortlist of software suppliers that schools are being encouraged to select a solution from, learning platforms are already appearing to be suffering from institutionalism. The social software sites fit nicely within the realms of social constructivist learning, and the visible trends in learning only strengthen the need to embrace these spaces in schools. The learning platforms we are seeing being introduced are seeking to control and formalise the spaces they create, many of which are an attempt to replicate the face to face learning but little else.
Surely, if there’s one thing we have learned from TSN2K, Talking Heads and the range of different social spaces being used across the world it’s that having the tools available to enable the user to appropriate the space, and having the flexibility to be creative, is essential. Simply recreating spaces in an all encompassing piece of software will not necessarily encourage the users to contribute. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the learning platform will be engaging and vibrant, but absolutely certain that it will need a lot of managing, updating and financing year on year.
If possible, schools need to harness the power of the spaces that children are already using and appropriating for themselves. Whilst it is unrealistic to expect learning activities to be created online in YouTube, the technology to embed the YouTube clip in another web site already exists. Equally, aggregating text from other websites and keeping track of useful resources are also already possible using tools like RSS and Furl. Making use of existing technologies like this would enable a pretty vibrant learning environment to be created at minimum cost.
A side effect could be a stronger sense of purpose for the spaces that children are already very familiar with and schools could then be much more creative with the online learning activities since almost all of the sites quoted make use of the exciting ‘Web 2.0’ technologies already. Not many suppliers are able to say that their platforms are already able to do the same.
The main criticism of this thinking revolves around one of two themes. Either there is no suitable way to protect identities and ensure safety, or that with such tools being used there is no way to adequately assess work and keep track of the assessments made. What this appears to come down to is the belief that everything needs to be in one place in order to keep track. It’s a very old-fashioned ‘teacher-centric’ and isn’t a very imaginative argument when the same technologies for pulling together all of the children’s pieces of work could be used to pull together the assessments as well. What is required then is a standards based tool to collect together the information that is held in different places around the web. This is a very different beast to any of the learning platforms being touted as having ‘passed muster’. It requires a little imagination to see it, but essentially a combination of a cleverly crafted online environments set up on a server which the school controls (or the local authority if you wish to go along that road) could pull together all of the different pieces from the mass of user based participatory or socially driven sites on the internet. Each child or learner could choose the exact software platform to suit their preferred learning style. It could be that one person uses ‘Wordpress’ and another ‘Drupal’, whilst yet others will use ‘MySpace’ or ‘Blogger’. It simply wouldn’t matter as the important parts can be collected together using the power of RSS feeds.
Podcasting could be included in an instant both for teachers delivering particular aspects of a lesson or for children offering a viva on their work. Peer review would become a normal activity. Group collaboration could exist with dynamic and exciting creative projects making use of innovative spaces. Users could select the place they wish to work, and all that would be needed is a simple feed back to the central server where it gets collected together.
An added bonus would be that the data storage for things like video files is handled by the service provider and not taking up valuable space on a school server or in local authority data centre. It will all be stored on a plethora of different servers, all of which probably provide far superior back up routines to many school-based networks. There is a huge potentially saving at school level to be had.
Another thorny issue would also be solved. When a child moves from school to school there is no need to repackage their work and send it on, they simply re-point the feeds at the new school. File compatibility issues would be a thing of the past. In fact, since the work could be created online using things like Google Spreadsheets and documents as well as directly typing into web pages, much of the common software used in schools and costing thousands of pounds would also not be needed.
We haven’t even begun to discuss why mobile phones no longer need to be banned, and how schools can start to leverage the incredibly sophisticated technologies they offer, or why they will be the new ‘laptop’ computer of the very near future. Keep an eye on the horizon as there are untold possibilities and endless opportunities to support, extend, engage facilitate and enthuse your learners. We only have to lift our heads above the digital parapet and take a good long look.
Hal can be reached by phone on 0845 868 9020
Hal has a lot of work to do this weekend! The pack of finalists has just arrived for all those entered in an award for great learning space design in primary schools. Hal, Director of Learning at Cleveratom (2006-2011) is a judge.
Good luck Hal!
First things first…. The Department for Education and Skills have made it clear that every child in the UK must have access to a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) by the close of 2008.
With 24,000 schools in England and Wales (and one more brand new school opening every 4 days(ish))….this is a big challenge…….but as Professor Stephen Heppell says …. “It is a nice one”…..
What is a VLE? Why have one? How does it work? What does it cost? What are the alternatives? What is the impact on time and workload? How does it enhance or improve learning delivery? What do we have to do to make it work? What does it do? Why does it do it? How does it fit with curriculum delivery? Is it curriculum delivery? …. the questions go on, and on and on….
Up until now what has largely been missing was clear help in answering the questions and finding ways to make sense of the mass of information available from creators of commercial products, government agencies, ICT professionals and plenty of others. We have never been short of information, but we have never really started to filter it too much either.
The thing is…..general research currently establishes that decision makers need to talk, schools need a lot of guidance on what a VLE actually is and above all, VLE implementations need to be carefully thought out and involve the young people that use the system in the research, design and implementation process.
The underlying message which has been repeated time and time again with VLEs is that one size does not fit all -each school will need to evaluate what they actually want from a virtual learning environment. Every school is different and therefore implementing a practical, flexible and expandable system which allows growth (both push and catch up) with the school.
Our part in this project started in February 2007 with Sue Pickering from YHGfL commissioning Cleveratom (2006-2011) to work with the YHGfL. Cleveratom (2006-2011) brought in the research skills of Kris Popat of Kris Popat Projects who is based in the YHGfL region and was able to carry out the initial research phase of the project. Kris visited the seven schools selected across the Yorkshire and Humber region that have already implemented a VLE to document the learning journeys and learn from those schools the challenges they faced and the lessons learned. Kris fed back to YHGfL and Cleveratom (2006-2011).
Hal MacLean and myself from Cleveratom (2006-2011) then visited the same seven schools researched by Kris to capture on film the key messages and voices of the staff involved. We then turned those messages into a DVD. I sat in a very dark room for a month making the ten DVD films while Hal worked on the sound. Once the text from the research was completed by Kris, Alex then spent time working on developing the online space and book design while Hal constructed the DVD from the video files.
Now we’re with Professor Stephen Heppell in Castleford at a conference attended by 200 school heads and key decision makers from across the region exploring VLEs for the first time. A further 2000 schools across the Yorkshire and Humber region will be sent a copy of the DVD and book. A virtual online community will soon be launched to encourage everyone involved to come together online and discuss what they need to do in order to establish their own learning platform. We are photographing the event and running a podcast stand where delegates can record their thoughts and questions to be presented as short videos in the online space.
Cleveratom (2006-2011)’s core team experience of virtual learning environments, social software and how to get the most from working online over the past ten years have really helped us when working together with the YHGfL. I think it is important reviewing exactly where schools are now, and interesting for us we’re working with schools one to one directly to provide and support evaluations, vision sharing and innovation in learning through technology consultancy. This VLE work has helped us to increase our knowledge and experience in this field.
YHGfL’s ‘Virtually There : Learning Platforms’ project has been an enjoyable experience for all involved. Sue Pickering has been an excellent project partner to work with, the entire YHGfL team have made an excellent team effort in delivering a very well attended and thought out event.
See the pictures Hal took from the event.
Read what Hal MacLean had to say about the event.
Watch a clip of Stephen Heppell as ketnote (Mobile Phone Camera): Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadI’ve been up to my neck and beyond working alongside Hal on the Yorkshire and Humber Grid for Learning project.
We’ve been working in the Yorkshire and Humber region filming school leaders and their staff talking about the impact of Virtual Learning Environments on school life… We’ve been working with seven schools. Kris Popat (a former colleague from Ultralab (1990-2006)) has been conducting the research report for the project, which will be turned into a booklet… Alex (from our team) is currently looking into the design, Hal is building the DVD structure.
The films I’m currently editing will be distributed by DVD to a further 2500ish schools across the region to help schools understand what VLE’s are, and what schools are doing with them…
Every school in this country is required to have a VLE installed by the end of 2008….we’ve found some great uses, experiments and even failed implementation attempts which should help other schools get on the right track from the start of thier own research, investigation and implementation for their VLE….
The final DVD will be launched by Professor Stephen Heppell in May.
Back to the edit….
Alex and myself spent Monday at the Global Leadership & Governance of ICT standards for learning, education & training conference in London. We were invited along to demonstrate to the 200 delegates from around the world the potential of podcasting as a elearning tool by capturing thoughts and ideas about the future of learning online as podcasts.
Cleveratom (2006-2011) were invited to the event due to our knowledge and experience in the field of internet broadcasting, collaboration and dissemination.
