Things change and, let’s be honest, if we’re in the world of technology, we have to accept that and, I’d suggest welcome it. Why I say this at the start of this post is that, quite clearly, Learning Without Frontiers was not the same as it had been in previous years. For me, as I could only attend the free festival, I missed the inspirational speakers, the challenging speakers, the examples of innovative or disruptive work that we had presented in the main hall of previous LWF events.
I think Pete Yeomans, @ethinking, put it to me, most succinctly by saying there was no ‘heart’ in this year’s event.
The inflatable pods at this year’s event were a nice idea; certainly much better than the metal frame stands so typical of events! I’m not sure they always worked, some speakers were drowned by the noise of passing people, popular speakers found their pods overcrowded and some pods seemed harder to walk around than others.
Clouds and Coding seemed to be quite prevalent in the festival, this year. As also did the BBC micro. I’m not too sure about seeing the old beeb model B once more; it’s nice from a nostalgic point of view but all the ‘retro’ feel to computing has, to my mind, a bit of an unhealthy feel about it. Oh, if you do want to see a working BBC computer you can either go into my attic or visit the National Museum of Computing, www.tnmoc.org
As I say, coding was much in evidence at this years festival, I have nothing against this initiative in education and support it in many ways, but let us not fool ourselves, it is not the answer to the problems of computing/ICT in schools and it is definitely not the answer to our economic problems! At the moment, it is as much hyped as anything else that is ‘new’ in education or technology; I only hope we can get over the hype and the bandwagon and create something with it that is both productive, beneficial and innovative for the education of our pupils.
Good to see Radiowaves having a good presence at the festival, thanks to Catmose College. Some of the pupils from the college were going around snagging visitors for video interviews and then presenting their work to a seminar audience.
I know as teachers, we sometimes have an equivocal view of commercial companies involved in education. Sometimes we feel uncomfortable with salesmen presenting their wares to us and inevitably trying to get us to part with money. There is always an element of commerce at such events and really it is important for schools to engage with companies, possibly more so since the move away from centralised buying of tech toward more independence in purchasing by schools. I do feel, though, that there needs to be a common change in attitude in education and commerce along the lines of making ‘education’ paramount over ‘making a quick sale’. It is only when a school feels a company accepts this and is supportive of education, that a school will feel comfortable in buying from that company.
All this waffle, however, masks what might appear to be the biggest change seen in this year’s LWF event. In his opening speech, Graham Brown-Martin said that he was moving away from the technology and the disruption that had been advocated in previous events. These, he felt, had failed to bring about the transformation we have all been calling for or expecting. In his view, transformation would not come about until there is agreement as to what the transformation would look like.
I was quite stunned when I heard Graham say this. Not stunned because I disagreed with his view, after all it was something I had been saying several years ago, stunned more because I had either not expected Graham to abandon the disruption approach or had thought he already understood the problems of ‘transformation’.
As I say, all of this was a change. Change is good if you feel it is moving forward but perhaps sometimes we do need to take a little look back at where we’ve come from before continuing on our journey forward. Perhaps for me, that sums up this year’s LWF festival, a chance to look back before moving forward next time. I only hope that next year the new owners of LWF, if owners is the right word, can remember to bring back the ‘heart’ of LWF.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Who’s Going to Buy Apple’s New eTextbooks?
• Do Learning Styles Really Exist?
• Mr Gove’s Challenge to Us All
• Grumpy Old Men and Technology
• Microsoft’s Stealthy Strategy for Taking Over Education Technology?

Image via CrunchBase

Okay, so this is just yet another blog post written as a result of Apple’s announcement of their new system for creating and selling eBooks (eTextbooks) into education. What I want to do, however, is take a slightly different look at the announcement; instead of looking at the hardware or software that has been announced, I simply want to ask who is going to buy the ebooks?

It seems to me that there may be an issue which needs to be addressed. In Higher Education, it is common and expected that each student will buy (beg borrow or steal) their own textbooks. That is to say it is seen as the responsibility of the individual student to have their own copy of the textbook.

In mainstream schooling, the situation appears to be different. It is the school, or class teacher, which decides which textbooks are to be used and it is the school which takes on the responsibility of purchasing and supplying the relevant textbooks.

Apple’s new iBooks2 as a system for purchasing and displaying ebooks on the iPad, works well for those student in Higher Education. Does it fit as well with pupils in mainstream education schools?

Or are we seeing yet further evidence of a shift in mainstream education away from centralised institutions toward individualised learning? In which case, does Apple’s initiative merely provide yet further impetus in this direction? Should our mainstream pupils take more responsibility for their learning and should that responsibility stretch down as far as selecting and purchasing their own textbooks?

Related articles

• Apple’s new vision of education (macworld.com)
• High schools weigh in on iPads in the classroom (macworld.com)
• Overhyping Apple’s iBooks Textbooks (kumardeepak.wordpress.com)
• “Reinventing” Textbooks, I don’t think so! (elearningstuff.net)
• 350,000 textbooks downloaded from new iBooks in just three days (geek.com)

Possibly Related Posts:

• Learning Without Frontiers 2012 a quick view
• Do Learning Styles Really Exist?
• Mr Gove’s Challenge to Us All
• Grumpy Old Men and Technology
• Microsoft’s Stealthy Strategy for Taking Over Education Technology?

Something that has long dogged education is the Grumpy Old Man, or Woman. By which, I refer to those teachers who have been in the system for a long time and feel they have ‘seen it all before’ and who generally greet any new idea with a cynical grump and muttering “not that old thing again”.

What has taken me by surprise is that educational technology also now has its grumpy old men! What has made this most evident to me has been all the discussion around the concept of the ‘flipped classroom’. I have been very much taken aback by the negative and sometimes cynical comments that it has attracted from some quarters. These comments have suggested that it’s not really a new idea, that one such organisation or another had already tried it/started it/thought about it some years back, or that it is just a silly name.

Now I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that technology now has its own Grumpy Old Men, after all, we’ve been working with educational technology for over 30 years and there are many, like myself, who have been involved since the very start. What worries me, though, is that the attitude of Grumpy Old Men could well become yet another obstacle to be overcome by younger people trying to promote the use of educational technology. Quite frankly, the promotion of educational technology in schools faces more than enough obstacles already without adding another, particularly one which comes from people you might reasonably expect to be supportive.

Let’s take the ‘flipped classroom’ as an example. Yes, I think most would agree that a better adjective than ‘flipped’ would have been useful but, there you go, it’s what has been chosen so let’s learn to live with it. As to other organisations coming up with it first; no they didn’t. Sure the Open University may have tried something which may look similar but they were not working with school pupils. My point here is; so what if it’s a silly name or it may have been tried before?

I do think that the role of people who have been in the field a long time, should be to support newcomers. I accept that such support could be in a critical way. Just because something may have been tried before, does not mean that it won’t work this time round. After all, technology is changing and developing. Maybe, just maybe, the time and technology is right to give something a fresh look and if new people are prepared to do that, then let’s support them!

My New Year’s resolution would be to be more supportive of new developments and new people in educational technology, not necessarily less critical but supportive. I’d hope others may do the same.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Learning Without Frontiers 2012 a quick view
• Who’s Going to Buy Apple’s New eTextbooks?
• Do Learning Styles Really Exist?
• Mr Gove’s Challenge to Us All
• Microsoft’s Stealthy Strategy for Taking Over Education Technology?