For any teacher trying to enable students to take control of their own whilst working within a prescribed curriculum there is a tension between the student led ‘desired’ learning and the ‘required learning. Balancing this tension is delicate, sometimes the difference between a piecemeal nod to learners interests, or a failure to achieve the standards needed.

With pressure from on high, unsurprisingly the required learning often comes first. Many teachers manage to prioritise the curriculum content, whilst allowing time at the end for learners to extend what they have covered in their own directions. There is the tension that starting with letting learners follow their interests may take the learning in different directions, directions that have to be curtailed to leave enough time to get through what needs to be done.

Last year I experimented with running a topic on Ancient Egypt with my class of 8 year olds by allowing them to direct the learning from the start. They engaged with a wide range of questions and inquiries following their own interests, much of which ended up fulfilling what was required by the curriculum, some of which didn’t. When it came towards the end of the time we had I surveyed the learning, and discovered there was a gap that they had not covered from the curriculum looking at the effect of the cyclical flooding of the river Nile on Egyptian society.

I decided to play it straight; I told them there was something they hadn’t done, I told them we had limited time and we must do it, and I told them that because I had given them so much time for their own enquiry the only way to cover it thoroughly was in a very traditional way, a way I confess I described as ‘a bit boring’. What surprised me was that they didn’t find it boring at all. Despite the fact the resources I had were not that exciting, and the lesson was not very interactive they were highly engaged by the topic, asking questions and debating the interpretations with each other with enthusiasm.

I realised that because they had been allowed to engage with the topic at their own level of interest for a significant amount of time they were enthusiastic to see where this ‘required’ learning that had not occurred to them before fitted in. They had made the subject their own, and now were keen to learn anything about it of relevance, even if it had not been a particular interest from the start.

Required curricula may not always be tailored to learner’s interests, but they are usually put together with some logical thought about what is relevant to the subject. Encourage the learners to become truly engaged with the subject and make it their own, and it can lead to an enthusiasm for the required learning. Allowing them to follow the ‘desired’ learning first can in some cases make this happen, and rather than take them away from their interests, the ‘required’ learning can then generate even more interests that hadn’t even occurred to them before…

Photo: (cc) Aaron Rieff-Zall

In his keynote at PELeCON 2012, Alec Couros shared a video of a magical moment of learning. Ending his plea for us to think of learning as something to be openly shared, he showed this touching documentation of a young girl learning to overcome her fear and make her first ski jump.

Alec pulled out the vulnerability of this moment, and how when we are at moments of great learning we are often the most vulnerable; something which can be difficult to share. However, I took something different from it.

As the girl stands at the top of the slope surveying the scene she starts going running through the facts; the rational arguments as to why she should or shouldn’t take on the jump. She weighs up all the factors, tries to frame the situation intellectually in such a way that it doesn’t seem so bad. She asks if it is any steeper than what she is used to, but shows the real answer is of little importance to her as she answers herself before her off camera companion can. The facts don’t matter.

Even though she intellectually convinces herself that it is ‘just a bigger 20′, you can still feel the emotional wall between herself and the jump, none of the rationalising makes that any less, and ultimately it just comes down to pushing herself over, overcoming the fear and reaching a point where her intuition lets her go over the edge.

This struck a chord with me largely because I have spent many years being a very rational decision maker. I have always weighed up all the options, and gone with what seems intellectually the best way to go. However, around this time last year I began to realise this isn’t always the best way. I was sat on a train on my way back from an interview at a primary school. I knew it was time for a change, and although I was waiting to hear I was pretty confident that I had got the job. I also knew that there was a job coming up at Plymouth University, which I had applied for but had no guarantees of getting. With a coincidentally apt Friendly Fires song in my headphones, I tried to decide what to do.

As I waited for the call from the school I did exactly what the girl in the video does; weighed up the pros and cons of working in a school or a University, taking a risk or going for something more known, moving close to friends or to somewhere where I knew practically no one. When the time came none of that made any difference; I still felt that almost physical edge I had to push myself over and the gut decision I made had nothing to do with the rationalising. I took a jump; it turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made.

In their book ‘New Kinds of Smart‘, Bill Lucas and Guy Claxton argue that one of the key aspects of intelligence is that it can be intuitive. We often depict the rationalising as a hallmark of intelligent people, yet in the real world it has been shown that it doesn’t lead to the right decisions. Psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis has investigated the difference between decisions people make when they are encouraged to deeply consider all factors, and when they are forced to think intuitively. His findings? In the case of complex decisions participants who thought intuitively made the better decisions. This is supported by another study cited by Claxton and Lucas looking at intuitive and reasoned choices made by college students about their studies; those who thought intuitively were happier with their outcomes.

Yet so often in the case of complex decisions we stand on this intuitive edge that must be crossed, and rationalise why we should stay exactly where we are. In ‘Linchpin‘, Seth Godin characterises this feeling of holding back as ‘The Resistance’; a force which comes from the recesses of our brain designed to protect us from physical harm in our days as hunter gatherers. He argues that in modern society this backfires and often paralyses us from making the best decisions by over rationalising and convincing ourselves to be mediocre. Julian Smith characterises it as ‘The Flinch‘; and suggests that this should be overcome by deliberately conditioning oneself to push over that emotional edge every time it is felt, for it is here where the best, life changing decisions lie.

To me that video is so touching because it shows the futility of over rationalising decisions, but despite this the huge emotional strength it takes to ignore the thoughts of ‘The Resistance’, to overcome ‘The Flinch’. It isn’t easy to make a decision that is intuitive, but often this is the most intelligent decision and leads to the most personal learning. I’m not sure how you teach this, I am still learning it myself, but I am convinced there is something in valuing ‘intuitive intelligence’ more highly and encouraging people to put themselves in situations where they feel that ledge and have to jump off it.

As for the actual jump; I’m not sure anyone can do that for you.

References:

Open Scholarship and Connected Learning Alec Couros (@courosa) #pelc12

Girls first ski jump.

Lucas, B. and Claxton, G. (2010) New Kinds of Smart; How the science of learnable intelligence if changing education (Open University Press)

Dijksterhuis, A. (2004) ‘Think Different: The Merits of Unconscious Thought in Preference Development and Decision Making‘, in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 87(5), Nov 2004, 586-598.

Godin, S. (2010) Linchpin; Are you indispensable? How to drive your career and create a remarkable future (Piatkus Books)

Smith, J. (2011) The Flinch (The Domino Project).

Sometimes you find amazing things in school cupboards and also, it seems, in Universities…

Today I was given this bizarre piece of equipment for a Science workshop on forces. There were several treads from shoes, carefully removed with a stanley knife and glued to a piece of board with a string on it. At first I wondered what on earth it was for, then I realised it was designed to investigate how changing shoe treads affects friction. The question is… why not just use real shoes?

I posted the photograph above on Facebook and Twitter asking what it was for, and got a very different set of responses. To my ‘teacher network’ on Twitter the purpose was obvious… but my non teacher friends on Facebook came up with the suggestions of a waffle iron, and a stamp for marking very bad pieces of work… Ok, so this was a bit of a joke, but I couldn’t help thinking about what possible reason one could have for making such a thing. Some kind of over zealous attitude to health & safety prohibiting children from taking their shoes off?

There were a number of different treads, and the only sensible reason I can think of is that it was to provide a totally fair test in terms of the weight of the items and a range of treads which children may not have on the shoes they wear to school. I can’t help thinking that whilst we might have gained scientific accuracy from using these things, we have lost much of the real context and personal investment in the investigation that would be present if children just used the shoes on their feet…

I think the fact that this item has been stripped of it’s context explains the humorous responses of my non-teacher friends. Obviously a balance needs to be struck, but Science isn’t perfect, and it seems to me that trying to make it so at the expense of context and personal engagement in the questions being asks is tipping that balance the wrong way.

In just over a week educators and technologists will be descending on Plymouth University to attend the newly rebranded Plymouth e-Learning conference PELeCON. I have taken on the role of managing the social media for the event, and with live streaming and social media discussions we are hoping to spread the conversation and debate well beyond those physically present at the event.

Our attendees will inherently be a connected bunch already, so we wanted to try some different things with the social media at the event. One of the most important parts of the academic side of the conference is the presentation of papers and ensuing peer review and discussion. A robust discussion brings benefits for all; the audience get to air their views and develop their thinking, speakers get their ideas tested and refinements suggested. To aid this process we have timetabled sessions with plenty of time for discussion, and posted all of the abstracts online with a commenting feature on the PELeCON website. This will allow capturing of points of view from the conference, but we are also encouraging those not attending to add their thoughts to get as much feedback as possible.

Back in October conference chair Steve Wheeler wrote of his interest in learning from failure, and this is something we intend to explore at PELeCON 12. Throughout the conference delegates will have the opportunity to enter our confession booth to confess their failures, and reflect on what they learnt from them. The booth will be linked to our YouTube channel, sharing their confessions in audio or full video with the world so that others might learn from them.

Similarly to the abstract comments, we invite people from across the world to confess their failures this April, tweet the link to our @PELeCON twitter account, and we will add them to our Failure Confessionals YouTube playlist. These will then be shared online, but also offline on screens at the event. Failing is one thing, but learning from it is the most important, so get onto YouTube and start sharing your failures and their consequent learning with us. Whether you choose to show your face or not is up to you, cover the camera if you want, the key is getting those failures out into the open so others can learn from them and you can move on.

Twitter backchannels and live streaming are well established elements at many conferences, and we want to push the use of social media beyond observation and discussion ‘behind the scenes’ to make a significant contribution to the offline event. Join us in commenting on abstracts, confessing your failures, and more opportunities to be announced around the event. For more follow @PELeCON on twitter, watch the #pelc12 hashtag, and keep and eye on the PELeCON blog.

Photo: foto_mania on Flickr

This week I presented to some colleagues about a research project I am doing and was pulled up for consistently referring to ‘literature’ as ‘sources’, echoing my undergraduate life as a historian. It got me thinking about how my thinking has been shaped by the different disciplines in which I have been involved in, and having recently had an intense period of learning around photography it made me notice some parallels with this and my work as a musician.

It took a long time for me as a musician and producer to appreciate the impact of a process known as ‘mastering’. I spent many years concentrating on writing good melodies, arranging the progression and development of good tracks, and making each instrument sound as I heard it in my head. I felt like I had gotten pretty good at this, and then I started playing my compositions on the student radio show I used to present. Listening back to the show they sounded weak, amateurish and quiet…

I looked into it, after all I had spent a long time trying to make them sound the best they could, yet they still didn’t stand up to commercially released tracks, and I realised the importance of the process of mastering. Usually when music has been produced and made to sound it’s best by the band and their producer it is passed on to a specialist studio. It is the job of this studio to basically polish the finished recording and make it stand up to other commercial released. Whilst those mixing the record are largely guided by artistic constraints; does it sound how the artist intended, does the chorus have enough impact compare to the verse, the mastering personnel usually come at it from a more technical point of view. They ask whether the bass and the treble are balanced in the same way from track to track on an album, whether there are any tracks that are much louder than others, and whether there are some parts of a song that need to be turned down to level out the overall volume and make it contstant.

The mastering engineers are the ‘finishers’, the people who add that extra polish that turns a recording into a release, a version into a hit. They make sure it sound comparably punchy when played on the radio next to Kanye West’s latest single, even after the huge amount of distortion and processing that happens as part of the radio broadcast process.

Learning how to get started at mastering my own music was sone of the biggest steps I took to making it stand up to the work of others, to getting the artistic ideas I produced even be judged on a level playing field as far as most of my friends were concerned. Whilst no one comments on or ‘hears’ the mastering, everyone ‘perceives’ it.

Having just started learning to take photographs I have realised there is a similar process. You can come up with a great idea, shoot it, and share it with people showing great appreciation. However, once you start getting involved in actually developing that photograph, in adjusting the fine balance of parameters in the RAW file, that is often where you make the difference between a ‘snap’ and a ‘photograph’. Take the example below, I am no expert but by tweaking the settings one can change the overall feel of a photo hugely.

Before:

 

After:

 

Click on the images, look at them closer. As I say, I am no expert, but it’s about that final detail

How you finish is often as important as how you start. There is a phrase in the music industry ‘you can’t polish a turd’, but often learning that fine detail of how to polish can make all the difference between an enthusiastic amateur and someone making waves with what they do. I can’t claim to be the latter in either music of photography, but I’m striving to make the most of each stage of the process, and to communicate the importance of the final polish.

Images: (cc) Oliver Quinlan

When you get a new gadget what do you do? A phone, a camera, a games console, the first instinct is to play, to explore without focus, to ‘loose some time’ with it.

It’s never a case of ‘loosing time’, the time you spend playing around with something new and experimenting shapes the way you use once you settle into the day to day. Think about that smart phone, or camera, or piece of software, how many of the workflows you follow when using it were shaped in that initial period of ‘playing’? I’d be willing to bet most of them were.

Playing with something is an investment of time, we do so readily when we have the artificial place marker of buying a new gadget to excuse the ‘indulgent’ use of time, but how often do we do so with existing practices and workflows? I was talking to a student recently looking to push their writing to the next level, and I suggested radically altering their planning processes to something more visual and more flexible. Initially they kicked back against this, feeling it wouldn’t work for them, but I’m not sure you can know until you have played with it a bit. I used to hate the idea of ‘brainstorming’, ‘mindmapping’ and other ways of visually representing thoughts, but when my usual methods failed me I played with alternatives. A colleague told me the other day the students talk about me in terms of post-its and brainstorms, the playing turned out to be an investment in methods that have worked.

It’s easy to see play as frivolous, as one of the pleasures of childhood cut off to us later in life. In reality I think it is an investment, time spent to explore and develop ways of doing things that later become standard practice. If your standard practice isn’t cutting it, why not invest some time in exploring alternatives. Don’t wait for a new gadget to play with new ways of working. Even if they don’t feel right on the face of it, having a play can sometimes result in things which change your game.

More on play:

Moyles, J. (1989) Just Playing?: Role and Status of Play in Early Childhood Education. Open University Press.

Image: (cc) Stéfan

A must watch for the weekend; Doug Belshaw’s recent presentation at TEDxWarwick on Digital Literacies. Doug’s work has always fascinated me, not only for the content but because of his knack for using structures and models to explain complex concepts in easily digestible ways. The medium in which he presents ideas is almost as interesting as the message itself.

One such model struck me from this talk, presented as a way of thinking about the acquisition of digital literacies but I think very applicable to learning in an even wider sense. In the days of dial up internet (for those without clear memories of this) images took some time to load, giving rise to a noticeable difference in how they were encoded as they downloaded.

Some images were encoded sequentially, and thus downloaded bit by bit, taking some time before the whole picture could be seen as elements were slowly revealed. As Doug describes, although every chunk you see is in full quality, the overall experience can be ‘really frustrating’.

The alternative was to encode the images progressively so that you start of with a whole image, albeit blurry, which becomes ‘progressively richer in detail’ as the rest of the information downloads. The entire picture is visible from the start, it just takes some time to come into sharp focus.

How often do we as educators end up replicating that ‘frustrating’ sequential approach to learning, insisting that each element must be mastered before moving on to the next, holding the bigger picture in our heads as teachers but keeping the learners from seeing it themselves for fear their vision might be blurry?

The big picture is important, it’s what gives you context and goals, what gives you intrinsic motivation when the learning isn’t fun but frustrating hard work. Without it learners have no choice but to depend on someone else spoon feeding. With it there is a chance for them to navigate… dealing with the blurriness is all part of the process.

Watch the rest of Doug’s fascinating talk here, and anyone with more than a passing interest in Digital Literacies should read Doug’s thesis here.

Main Image: (cc) Oliver Quinlan

Illustrative images: Doug Belshaw on Slideshare

What’s in a subject? Much of the general content in the English Primary Curriculum is fairly straightforward to categorise, but when concentrating on content I wonder if we are missing out the most important aspects of our subjects.

Recently we have been designing our new Digital Literacy specialist pathway for trainee primary teachers. This began with Steve Wheeler, Peter Yeomans and myself sitting down and brainstorming what we thought it was important to cover in such a course. In the resulting ideas there were three strong themes and I found it fascinating to look at where these came from, for these themes in many ways reflected the thinking styles of the three people involved. Steve is a psychologist, and was pushing for the inclusion of theories and how they map to behaviour. I, a historian was exploring the narrative and development of digital cultures and Pete, with an engineering background, keen to impose a structure onto the course.

With many people in primary education (myself included) spending much time talking about cross curricular learning and skills based teaching, it is easy to characterise traditional disciplines as bodies of knowledge. However, to do so does them a disservice; disciplines are not just repositories for content to be memorised, they are ways of thinking in themselves.

I wonder how much credence we give to this as generalist teachers in primary schools. In a session the other day I was discussing a cross curricular plan with a student who suggested that making a working model of a volcano could be a cross curricular link to design technology. I agreed with her, but then we were both challenged by another student who asserted quite rightly that whilst that might involve ‘making’, the discipline of design involves exploring the solution to a specific problem for a target audience.

How often as generalist teachers do we forget this? I know I have been guilty of shoehorning in some content as part of a ‘cross curricular’ topic. I’m not sure that is always a problem, but I do think it is important to recognise subjects as disciplines and not just silos of content. At primary level it is very easy to do this, to dismiss the idea of a discipline as something that comes later, but I am not sure that it does. The discipline is fundamental to the subject, and in my mind what should be retained even when the content is spread across the curriculum.

Image: (cc) mic wernej

On a recent trip to Florence I took 27 photos I felt were worth publishing. The friends I was with were very complimentary about my skills as a photographer, yet these 27 pictures had been filtered out from over 600 I took…

I rebuffed the compliments, thinking someone who is good at photography couldn’t produce 573 rubbish pictures. I just shared the photos I felt had come out well, as I felt this was a serendipitous event worth celebrating. I think the taking of each photograph probably was, but what got me thinking was perhaps much of the skill of creativity actually lies in the process of selection, of filtering down the mass of output into what appears to be a polished end product.

Such an approach would mirror what I found working in music. As someone who wasn’t classically trained, I always felt I just bumbled along coming up with lots of ‘stuff’, and then filtering it down into what was actually good. However, my experience with musicians from a more traditional background suggests that many of them do the same; always playing, producing masses of mediocre content, but filtering it down to the few killer ideas.

Sometimes it is hard to start with creativity; you inevitably produce a lot of dross that doesn’t measure up to what inspired you to begin. However, I wonder if to a certain extent what makes those seen to have ‘talent’ stand out is not just their skills at production, but their skills at filtering.

Increasingly my approach to creativity follows this; produce as much as possible, then get filtering. Try not to worry about the quality too much when creating, experiment as much as possible and then ruthlessly reduce it down to the best examples. In my experience creating anything good often requires creating a lot of rubbish; it’s the filtering that’s important.

Photo: (cc) Steven Depolo