It is good to question what we see, as all too often we adhere to the life script that everyone else is happily playing out – for me Eli Pariser’s book The Filter Bubble helped me to once again question what we take as the truth, in his case the internet that is presented to us.

But what if there is a school filter bubble?

I am going to look at this as a parent and as a teacher.

My son is my favourite subject and there isn’t really any known limit to the amount I want to know about his day and what he is up to. He has been in full time school for just over a year and I still would love to follow him around for a day. But the message from school and what we find out as parents is only such a tiny fraction of what is happening at school.

We digest the presented message of school, of our children’s learning and the finer intricacies of what is taking place. The PR machine of school is crafting a message about the business of learning. And what a tough task that is because (a) learning is one of the most complex processes in the universe because of the number of factors that effect it and (b) the message is aimed at a (more than) captive audience – as parents we always want to know more.

It may come across that I am bashing school-home communications a bit – well the key thing for me – being a professional in the education sector – is that I know only a sliver of what is happening in my son’s learning life at school. Really only a fraction, the fraction that is communicated, shared at parents evening or in the odd newsletter or word at the classroom door. I don’t think that is enough.

Why should I just accept the school filter bubble?

How is it possible with all of the technology tools that build knowledge sharing, participation, crowd-sourcing, communities and overcome physical and social barriers to make connections, tools that side-step language and time differences and allow us instantaneous communication – that we still don’t have the true capacity to experience what is happening at school instantly, more easily, more quickly and more intuitively.

Well we should and one day we can make it happen.

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Pic Cost savings in The Netherlands: Now you see it, now you don’t by opensourceway

Welcome to 1JR’s class blog. We are a class of ground breaking inventors, unstoppable creators and powerful thinkers. We learn cooperatively together but most importantly with a shared dream of success and impact. We are shaping the future and grabbing every opportunity life throws our way. Join us as we work hard to reap the rewards…after all, to appreciate the beauty of a snow flake, you’ve got to stand out in the cold.

These 5 and 6 year olds must have a great time!

Class 1JR at Rosendale Primary School

All too often we don’t co-construct our curriculum with the children in our class. What occurs is a complete lack of clarity about where, as a group of learners, we are heading. In fact the direction we are going in is all too often very much laid out for the learner – the route is set by the teacher and the outcomes are already known.

Curriculum planning in this vein doesn’t cater for the tangent or the divergent thinker- well it might entertain it briefly but will eventually settle back on the steady path to where we were always going.

Curricular of this ilk are not setup for serendipity. If I knew exactly the music that was going to be played on the radio all of the time, well in advance and had no control over it, I would miss out on those beautiful moments when you hear a wonderful track that hasn’t been played for ages and there you are in that completely unexpected moment savouring every note.

Much of this is to do with teacher control and the lack of willingness to let go of the reins and venture from the path a little. But it is also to do with a lack of ambition about what we plan, many models of curriculum, as well as units of work, are legacy systems:

A legacy system is an old method, technology, computer system, or application program that continues to be used, typically because it still functions for the users’ needs, even though newer technology or more efficient methods of performing a task are now available.

If the direction of a unit is already laid out, involving the learner in the direction is fruitless, for the learner at least, for no alteration can be made anyway.

In his book How Children Fail, John Holt reflected in 1958:

It has become clear over the year that these children see school almost entirely in terms of the day-to-day and hour-to-hour tasks that we impose on them. This is not at all the way the teacher thinks of it. The conscientious teacher thinks of himself as taking his students (at least part way) on a journey to some glorious destination, well worth the pains of the trip.

He continues to explain that he recognises a disconnect with what we as teachers perceive as a learning journey and how children truly see this. How many schools do you think could still be described in these terms?

At one of our partner schools in South London the pupils of Rosendale Primary School negotiate their learning. They have a clear direction and input into the course that is going to be set – not only that they have the ability to define how they get there. The pupil’s prior knowledge, skills, interests and passions are the starting point for much of the project learning that takes place.

With a vested interest the pupils at Rosendale have a much clearer understanding of the learning as a journey – they know what needs to be done and have made choices that help to define this and make it real and meaningful to them. It is not simply a set of tasks imposed on them by a legacy system.

Most of the time with these more open models we have to set our course into the unknown a little, we have to be willing to take the path less trodden.

When the teachers and Year 3 and 4 pupils of Thorney Close Primary School took on the challenge of running their own TEDx we didn’t know if we would be successful, there were a great deal of unknowns. At one point we didn’t have a venue because Take That were playing at the Stadium of Light!

With uncertainty often comes failure and we felt that for real and so did the children, but would they learn from it – absolutely!

Here are some reflections on the process by one of the teachers involved:

I learnt to trust the children and to let them go in the direction they want, trust that they’re going to make the right decisions with a little bit of guidance but not as much structure as we normally would give. So to sit back more and to listen more, and just ask the odd few questions – without waiting for that answer that the teacher wants to hear.

One of my favourite ways to describe this sense of a general direction, unclear and yet thoughtfully open, is the idea of a “fuzzy goal”. Taken from the opening to the wonderful book Gamestorming by Sunni Brown, David Gray and James Macanufo – a fuzzy goal can both describe our philosophical approach to change as well as the direction of a student led unit.

Like Columbus, in order to move toward an uncertain future, you need to set a course. But how do you set a course when the destination is unknown? This is where it becomes necessary to imagine a world; a future world that is diferent from our own. Somehow we need to imagine a world that we can’t really fully conceive yet—a world that we can see only dimly, as if through a fog.

Pic navigation (cc) by marfis75

He referred to the bookshelf look of iBooks and the animated page turn in digital books. Salcito asked why do we need this in the digital form? Why does this analogue construct persist in the digital representation of text?

I have recently enjoyed reading some of the the early Sherlock Holmes stories on my iPad and I like the way I can personalise the look and feel of the text. The page turn animation and control is always quite nice too. But are we just being unnecessarily nostalgic about this and in fact limiting what can be done with text in the digital form by sticking to this traditional notion of the “page”? Are we not being ambitious enough?

I think it was either Anthony Salcito himself or Steve Wheeler on Twitter who referred to it as a behavioural artifact:

Why does page turning exist in digital format? Behavioural artefact? #lwf12

January 26, 2012 3:40 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@timbuckteeth

Steve Wheeler

And thrown into the mix was of course our love of the ‘desktop’ which was shared by Andy Powell.

The discussion about pages in digital text reminded me of the following video of further development of the user interface of the eBook, a prototype from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

Skimming through the pages of a book, a feature that was previously unavailable with e-books, is also possible through 3D rendering of the contents on the pages being flipped. A bookmark function allows users to conveniently go back and forth between pages of interest. In addition, the system has a “multi-touch” function as well as a smart capability of recognising dragging time, finger pressure, and finger gestures.

Professor Howon Lee said,

“I hope that our technology will accelerate the wider use of e-books and contribute to Korea’s endeavours to lead the development of software application technology for mobile devices.”

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But is this simply innovation in the wrong direction? Does it just perpetuate a form factor that limits what can be done on digital devices? Or is the 1000 year old idea of a page going to be with us for another millennium and beyond?

This is the first of 4 posts in which I feature my first 5 recommendations:

Hairy Letters

A great app for early years classes – understanding letter shapes and sounds. Good to see a phonics app using fonts / sounds used in UK.

• Interact with animations and trace the letter shape.
• Play games to reinforce learning and build letters into simple words.
• Letter sounds come to life with animated characters.
• Learn to form each letter shape with your finger.
• Play games to blend letter sounds into first words.

iTunes Link
http://bit.ly/ypbR4M
£1.99

Paint Sparkles

A lovely free paint application that sparkles when you use it. Little sounds play as you paint and when you have finished your line or brush. Each colour is read aloud when you select them from the palette, making this great for EAL pupils.

iTunes Link
http://bit.ly/ypbR4M
FREE

Toca Store

I was shown this at the Taipei European School by Glenn Malcolm – a great little app for developing role play areas in class. I see it being used alongside existing shop and money role play activities – love how it encourages working together.

iTunes Link
http://bit.ly/zx1cIz
£1.49

Skitch

I am a big fan of Skitch for the Mac as a tool for screen grabs etc the iPad app is ace for all of that – but it also links to an Evernote account. Skitch for iPad could potentially be a great interface for younger students using Evernote. (It just needs tagging to be included)

iTunes Link
http://bit.ly/ADqdyl
FREE

The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore

A beautifully executed story that makes you feel you are part of a film, narrative and interactive app all at once.

iTunes Link
http://bit.ly/xNrwG0
£2.99

I hope that you find plenty of inspiration for your own use of the iPad – please make sure you share your ideas and experiences in the comments or you could even add them to the Interesting Ways resource which is now up to 75 iPad ideas, where these apps also appear.

Make sure that you explore nearly 40 other crowdsourced resource like the one above – you can see the full series of resources on the Interesting Ways page

I spent today working with staff at Christ Church Primary School in Brixton, South London – and we were predominantly talking about the use of classroom blogging to support learning.

• Blue 3 Blog | This is yours to present to the worldhttp://bit.ly/yJsIGL - Leeds, UK
• Mrs Elrick’s class blog http://bit.ly/zUf3gt - Taiipei, Taiwan
• Year Two http://bit.ly/zn7IgJ - Toulouse, France
• Mrs Soltau-Heller 2011-2012 http://bit.ly/wVrEi4 - Canada
• Mrs Soltau-Heller’s Class http://bit.ly/zkjS5c - Canada
• PLC Year 2 – PLC Sydney Year 2 Class Blog http://bit.ly/wiqgoD - Sydeny, Australia
• Class 5′s Blog | Come and see what we’ve been up to!http://bit.ly/y95e8r - Hampshire, UK
• 2KM and 2KJ @ Leopold Primary School http://bit.ly/zUtheT - Victoria, Australia
• 2M Gems http://bit.ly/zBXS92 - Queensland, Australia
• Learning Together http://bit.ly/A9rKER - Melbourne, Australia
• Kensington Avenue Primary School http://bit.ly/wgCtq8 - London, UK
• Ferry Lane Year 6 blog http://bit.ly/x6Cvlp - London, UK
• Mrs. Poulin’s Blog – Kindergarten is one of the places I call home.http://bit.ly/ypLy0L - Massachusetts, US
• kinderkids-kindergarten blog | A reflection on our kindergarten classroom. http://bit.ly/Amtssb - US
• Caton Pre-School Playgroup http://bit.ly/yvZy8e - Lancaster, UK
• Creative Blogs | Community http://bit.ly/woIzhm - UK
• Class Blogs – LiveBinder http://bit.ly/y7uigY

Make sure you spend some time exploring the different blogs and look for links to other school blogs they have displayed and I hope you perhaps find a class to link to and share some stories with.

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Please share your class blog in the comments below

Over the last couple of years I have begun to take a deeper interest in the spaces that we call school and those we don’t but which are still considered spaces for learning.

Much of this focus has to do with our ongoing work at NoTosh with architectural firms and in support of schools seeking support and advice in making the most of new and old physical designs.

So I was drawn to this piece about a new school just outside Stockholm – partly due to the blog title – “Learning environments based on learning.” Here is a short extract in which Ante Runnquist explains some of the spaces or learning environments they have designed for the Vittra Telefonplan.

• Campfire situations are characterised by communication flowing from one to many, requiring a space that can accommodate a certain number of people in a group situation, where everybody can focus on the person talking or presenting.
• The watering hole is a place where people come and go, and a learning environment where you can gather in groups of different sizes. A watering hole is a place of exchanging communication, flowing back and forth. The watering hole areas are typically placed where you naturally would go, and where you maybe bump into somebody or something.
• Show-off situations are situations where one person communicates towards the rest of the world, showing what he or she can do or has done, thus requiring a physical space for display and exhibition.
• In the cave, communication flows within oneself, requiring a physical frame that furthers seclusion and contemplation.
• Lastly, the laboratories are places where the students can acquire hands-on experiences, working physically and practically with projects in a societal and experimental context. The laboratories inspire students and teachers alike, enlarging the learning experience and inspiring teachers to use different tactile approaches.

In practical terms the learning that is going to take place dictates what space would be best. And Ante Runnquist, a Vittra researcher and the author of the post, supports what we believe at NoTosh about how the pedagogy surely is the forerunner for any school design.

Even though pedagogy has changed greatly over the last 100 years or so, the physical blueprint for schools, dating back to medieval monasteries remain: it is one based on time-space-topic. Behind this lies a basic assumption that the students need to be regulated , if a school doesn’t verify that the students are in the right place at the right time and doing the right things, they simply wouldn’t do it.

During our trip to Sydney in November of 2011 Ewan and I found an old book of school designs from decades ago and were amazed to see how traditional the furniture was in the diagrams. Despite the interesting spaces being crafted and planned, you could still see the regimented learning that would take place from the rows of desks. Some things never change.

In our experience new school design does not automatically mean a school is thinking about learning in new ways – much of our design thinking work helps school do just that and if we are fortunate this precedes any physical planning. In fact it should inform the design.

It is exciting to see that the plans at Vittra Telefonplan have this as a simliar focus.

First, I think we have to rethink pedagogy: what are the dynamics of an education with focus on on 21st century skills? Second, as a consequence: we need to rethink the learning environment. When we do this, things start to happen.

Picture: Detritus of “meaningless language” to describe learning cast aside by students at MLC (Sydney, Australia) by Ewan McIntosh

This post is in part an effort to scrutinise Google’s YouTube for Schools more closely and to maintain and continue the important discussion on school web access, by bringing together some thoughts from around the web.

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Optophobia by Hani Amir
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Many schools will sign up to this flavour of YouTube because it quickly plasters over the crack of an unfiltered open web and means they don’t have to think about that.

An open YouTube allows teachers to use their own professional judgement about the type of content that a class will focus on and the ability to have the discussion about appropriate content, online behaviours and freely use whatever resources are appropriate to that class.

This “new” service, although it may well be more easily digested by school admins, means Google has become a further conduit of knowledge. A version of the web chosen for us – or in fact a team from YouTube Edu. This is literally a Filter Bubble in plain view! Eli Pariser explains in his book and TED Talk that due to an algorithmic filtering of the web we are seeing a version of the internet that is built from our preferences and previous interactions – the one the internet “thinks” you should see.

Schools using this will present a set of educational content on this platform decided by someone else and in my opinion are sidestepping the bigger issues we need to tackle. But this is a flawed model anyway, because at 3.30pm children will have access on the way home to an open web! We are sticking a plaster over the major issue of open content and how we must educate children and trust the professional teaching community on this issue. Summed up well by Liz Christensen a teacher from Nevada in the US who responded:

@tombarrett I think that since I am a professional, I should be treated as such. Let me make the judgements on youtube.

December 23, 2011 5:33 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@grouchyteacher

Liz Christensen

Theo Kuchel, an expert in the use of video in teaching and learning, wrote the first piece I read in response to the YouTube announcement

Teachers should be encouraged to address the issues raised by comments and how related videos algorithms work and evaluate their effectiveness. This is all part of developing digital and media literacies. Offering a solution based on ‘removing’ comments and related videos is pedagogically unsound.

Dan Stucke an Assistant Headteacher from Manchester in the UK reacted to Theo’s post:

I’ve often found it useful as a spontaneous relationship builder too, many times a conversation in class leads to a story from my childhood or similar, and many times Youtube brings some video context to the story.

David Rogers the Curriculum Leader for Geography at Priory School in Portsmouth further underlines the importance of this, video material that doesn’t neatly fall into the “educational” category but requires a context to be built around it to make it meaningful, inspiring and useful at the point of learning. In many case the context is a very personal, subjective thing – if teachers the world over decided only to use media, resources and learning materials labelled “educational” just imagine the opportunities that would have been missed. Eli Pariser explains that:

…the search for perfect relevance and the kind of serendipity that promotes creativity push in opposite directions…By definition ingenuity comes from the juxtaposition of ideas that are far apart…

David goes on to explain:

While I admire Google for trying, the only real people that should be making decisions on what is useful educational content is teachers. Teachers who understand their own educational context, the learning styles of young people and their classroom. I think that it’s the wrong argument to have, but admit that it is a start.

I agree with everything David has said in his post, right up to the last 7 words in the quote above. I can’t bring myself to think that this can be a start – because many schools will see this as the only way, it is not a good starting point for schools because they are, all too easily, sidestepping the broader discussion about filtered and open web access.

I would like to think that using this version of YouTube in schools will make teaching colleagues question why it is in place and broaden their understanding and appreciation for the filters we put in place, but I worry it will simply be swallowed as is. In my opinion Google have given them an easy way out. (In addition both Theo and David ably deal with the roundabout language Google use in their announcement too about the “new” service.) Alastair Creelman from Linnaeus University in Sweden closes his blog postabout it with a telling statement:

…somewhere along the line we still need to discuss issues like attention, distraction, source criticism and information retrieval so that they (stuents) can find the good resources for themselves despite the distractions. We need to be careful of the line between benevolent protection and censorship.

Not enough discussion or debate has taken place, both online and within schools, Ryan Bretag has recognised this too:

And I have to wonder, are these Marlin-like administrators at all concerned about their choice between YouTube, YouTube for Schools, or <gasp> neither? Are they engaging their leadership teams, their faculty, and their students in a broader dialogue about this?

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Back in 2009 Ewan posted findings by research consultant Kim Farris-Berg from a US, South American and Australia study:

In 2007, [filtering] was high school students’ number one obstacle to using technology at their schools (53 percent). For middle school students, two obstacles tied for the greatest barrier (39 percent each): “there are rules against using technology at school” and “teachers limit technology use”. It’s likely that when students face obstacles to using technology at school, they also face obstacles to inquiry-based learning opportunities which can include online research, visualizations, and games.

 

If we compare that with the information from the 2010 Speak Up campaign in the US it is sobering to realise that students frustrations with filtering in schools not only remain the top problem in their mind but also that it is growing even more acute. As Audrey Watters points out:

When a similar survey was undertaken five years ago, students’ number one complaint was the speed of Internet access at school. Now, they point instead to school filters and firewalls. 71% of high school students and 62% of middle school students say that the most important thing their school could do to make it easier for them to use technology would be to allow them greater access to the websites they need.

An increase from 53 percent to 71 percent of frustrated high schools students does not indicate we are making progress with open access in schools. We certainly don’t seem to be listening to the students themselves.

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I wanted to hear from teachers on this subject as although the posts above prove a useful starting point there simply is not enough debate about the open web and open access to resources like YouTube. There were some really interesting replies on Twitter that back up many of the points made above, so I thought I would share a selection of them below:

@tombarrett open sensible access. Safest swimmers are those that can swim. Safest road users those who have passed. Safest Internet users..

December 23, 2011 8:26 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@1jh1

john

@tombarrett some of our schools (over 80 I worked with in school district) never had YouTube blocked! Should be acknowledged.

December 23, 2011 8:36 pm via ついっぷる Pro for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@heyjudeonline

Judy O’Connell

@tombarrett We’re more adult based but our Institute has open FB, YouTube & Vimeo. It’s all about rights & responsibilities.

December 23, 2011 7:31 pm via TwitterrificReplyRetweetFavorite

@gsyoung

Geoff Young

@tombarrett asked many schools this year “why is YouTube blocked?” And got the same answer “because we always have”

December 23, 2011 7:12 pm via Twitter for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@PPotter

Pete Potter

@tombarrett We don’t use the LEA servers as they block sites such as youtube. The ethos of the school is of education rather than prevention

December 23, 2011 6:56 pm via Twitter for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@andyhudson77

Andy Hudson

@tombarrett We’d have YouTube open to students in school during the day were it not for the bandwidth issues that arise each time we do so

December 23, 2011 6:53 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@digitalmaverick

Digital Maverick

@tombarrett yes, our school does. We teach the kids discernment and how to check for approp content. Better that way than banning!

December 23, 2011 6:48 pm via RockMeltReplyRetweetFavorite

@krivett1

Kimberley Rivett

@tombarrett The “story” is simple: we teach digital citizenship. And we rely on student responsibility as well.

December 23, 2011 6:08 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@surreallyno

Cristina Milos

@tombarrett we don’t block YouTube. No story. We just don’t.

December 23, 2011 6:21 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@Dowbiggin

Diane Main

@tombarrett Work at a K12 school in Norway, we have 100% open Internet, incl FB, Youtube etc. Zombies roaming the hallways, of course.

December 23, 2011 6:06 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@bjornhg

Bjørn Helge Græsli

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What encourages me most about the tweets I have shared above is the number of schools and teachers working with open access to the web in their schools. Primary, secondary and higher ed institutes just getting on with things, helping their students tread thoughtfully and carefully through their experiences online.

What is missing though is the fanfare and celebration of what these schools, teachers, parents and pupils have accomplished together – we conveniently do not hear enough of their stories, we don’t share enough of their expertise. I hope that can change.

The teachers at these schools are doing their job and it is an opporunity we should all have.

I was writing about this topic 2 years ago and much like the statistics above, sadly not much has changed:

At the end of school children will go home and use the website, open to the inappropriate content we block in school. Not only is YouTube exempt from my teaching, I am exempt from helping children better understand, process and find value amidst a mass of video content. I am exempt from demonstrating and educating the children in my class to appreciate the power of such an information source. Apparently that is a good thing.

In my opinion it comes down to some hard decisions. The longer, more protracted path of educating young primary school children in dealing with open content on the web (including YouTube) is too hard a path for some to consider. The easy route is to block it. 

Or in fact use an impoverished, diluted version.

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The ICT Curriculum is set to change in England and I just hope that we don’t lose sight of the role a more open approach to web access can have on learning in our schools. After all the students are telling us straight:

We are taught how to save documents and search for simple information, but we are on the internet at home and do most of our homework on the computer so we know how to do that. So IT lessons are kind of boring and we all really want to say to the teachers that we already know what we’re being taught. I wish we could learn how to do graphics, how to make a game or how to use Facebook safely – then we’d feel like we were actually learning something useful. I want to be a dancer or an actress when I’m older, so I’d like to learn how to look up videos to help me with my acting.

Ellie Magee, 12, Rivington and Blackrod high school, Bolton, Lancashire