This is one of my favourite TED Talks. It gets to the heart (IMO) of one of the biggest problems (and challenges) we currently face in education.

We know, deep down, that the way to succeed in life is to make mistakes and learn from them. Yet, we continue to facilitate a system that rewards students who never make mistakes, and teaches that those who do are lazy and unintelligent?

Moreover, we try to make students feel as thought they are right, even when we (and they) know they are wrong?

In the short term, this may help to boost a student’s self-esteem. However, in the long term, it teaches them to be afraid of failure; creating a climate of fear.

And fear is the enemy of learning.

Students find themselves paralysed, unable to commit pen to paper, unless they have received their latest hit of positive reinforcement from their teacher.

Instead, we need to create a climate in which students are not afraid of failure.

It’s time we let students err; teaching them to acknowledge their mistakes and learn from them.

It’s time we encouraged them to say: “I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong?”

Unable to attend the event, I recorded a video, presenting the work I have been doing with Google Docs to enhance Assessment for Learning. (Point of note, for someone who suffers from perfectionism, presenting live is so much easier than recording something in advance.)

Slides (Click on the cog for download options)

You can read my M.Ed research here: Does the collaborative functionality of Google Docs allow educators to better put formative assessment at the heart of their students’ learning?

A series of blog posts about my experiences, using Google Docs in the classroom, can be found here:

Part 1: Signing Up
Part 2: Collaboration
Part 3: Assessment
Part 4: What’s Next?

All of my work is published under a creative commons licence. You are free to use and share it, all I ask is that you acknowledge me as the source. Feedback is always welcome.

• Learning needs to be student centred. Education should offer choice and provide opportunity, not limit it.

• Schools need to offer a personalised curriculum. One that is adaptive, malleable… designed by learners themselves.

• There should be parity between subjects. But, should learning be structured in subjects?

• All learning needs to be encouraged – gaming, exploration, trial & error (when did we decide that getting things wrong was no longer part of learning?). Moreover, I’m concerned that the school system appears to be geared up to remove play, creativity and individuality as learners get older.

• Schools should be able to acknowledge and accredit all learning (formal and informal). Badges?

• We need to better prepare young people for the models of learning they will be engaged in after school. This means encouraging learner autonomy as well as co-dependence. The era of ‘sage on the stage’ is dead. It’s time to establish ‘guide on the side’ in all classrooms.

• We need to stop labelling students; and we need to stop allowing them to label themselves. A learners ability is not genetic; it is not pre-determined by us or anyone else.

• Education is not about grades or league tables. They are a meaningless, extrinsic motivator; and are detrimental to fostering effective learning.

• Learning is not linear. Learning is messy!

• School is not a bubble. Boundaries between learners and the real world need to be removed

• As one of the last public spaces, schools need to be an intrinsic part of the community. A “space where communities (children, parents and experts), can learn together”. Inter-age, individualised, co-dependent learning?

• Libraries should be at the heart of schools and their respective communities. Libraries should be like this one. And in the 21st century, they are about much more than books.

• Schools need to recognise that Online is ‘now’ NOT the future. Technology should be seamlessly integrated in to the learning experience. There needs to be overlap between physical and virtual spaces – opening up further opportunities for a personalised curriculum.

• Education needs to be wrestled out of the hands of governments. Communities need to take ownership of learning… freeing education of the fads and whims of politicians. Learning needs to be open/democratised.

• Schools should be charged by their communities to provide education that is relevant and creative.

• In the words of Simon Finch: “Something better change”

This post is my contribution to #500words – Take 2; the latest Purpos/ed campaign, asking the question: What is the purpose of education. Check out purposed.org.uk to see how you can join the debate.

Close your eyes and listen.

Listen to yourself breathe.

—

Do you hear it?

Keep listening. Listen for two whole minutes.

—

What happened?

Your breathing slowed, and so did your heart rate. It returned to normal.

—

The speed at which your heart was beating when you first began to listen was not normal.

You were breathing quicker; your heart was beating faster becuase you have bought into ‘rush culture’.

Deadlines, fast food, email, Google, notifications… all work to put you in a state where you think it’s normal to rush; to expect things to be fast; to be instant. They demand your attention and your energy.

‘Rush culture’ will leave you out of breath. It limits your ability to think, to reflect, to ponder. It raises your expectations falsely, increasing disappointment. It makes you believe that fast is best and instant is even better.

The truth is that ‘rush culture’ is distracting you from the things that matter. And perhaps more pertinently, ‘rush culture’ is bad for your health.

So ask yourself: ‘Why the rush?’

If you leave five minutes early and drive to work a little slower, will it make the journey worse?

If your food takes a few more minutes to arrive at your table, will your meal be any less enjoyable?

If you check your email twice a day instead of every five minutes, will it really make you less effective at your job?

If use a dictionary instead of Google, will the results be any different or less valid?

If you turn off notifications on your phone, will you really miss out on anything important?

The answer?

No!

In fact, you will find that taking a slower journey to work makes you more mindful of your surroundings. You’ll take pleasure in the journey, enjoying the scenary as you travel.

You will find that saying no to fast food, not only improves your health but you begin to enjoy the wait. As the chef prepares your meal, you will have the time to reflect, or to enjoy the company of the person you are dining with.

You will find that only checking your email twice a day makes you a more productive person. You will be distracted less, allowing you to focus on ‘the work’.

You will find that using a Dictionary instead of Google, replaces the buzz of instantaneous results with a more wholesome pleasure. A pleasure that is punctuated by forgotten experiences, such as the smell and feel of the pages.

You will find that turning off notifications (even turning your phone off altogether) makes you more present; able to enjoy time with a loved one more fully.

The problem?

Instant results, fast food, constant connection, are all very appealing. It’s the appeal that is the problem.

‘Rush culture’ is like a drug, it appeals to your senses, promising the instant hit and the constant buzz. And too many of us, buy into it, without ever considering what it’s doing to our health.

There is so much to be gained from slowing down, from removing pressures and limiting distractions.

So, go back to the start, close your eyes and listen… contemplate, reflect, ask yourself: ‘Why the rush?’

It has been apparent for some time that Kevin and I share a similar set of values with regard to education. Unwilling to be the ‘sage on the stage’, to spoon feed, teach to the test or over plan, we both practice (and advocate) a student-centred approach to learning in our classrooms. Yesterday, on Twitter we found ourselves (not for the first time) sharing our thoughts about what had been happening in our respective classrooms. In that moment we both had the same idea, to compare notes in greater detail. We have decided that the best place to do this would be in a Google+ Hangout. This will allow a few other people to join in with us, and for the conversation to be recorded so that it can be shared more widely afterwards.

Read about Kevin’s experiences, introducing his class to personalised learning, in the following posts:

• Personalising learning
• Leashes not required
• Personalising learning does more than get results

Read about the research I have been doing into independent learning in the following posts:

• What does an independent learner look like?
• What is Independent Learning? <– The comments are definitely worth reading!
• #ukedchat: Session 67 – Thursday 13th October 2011: Can we really help our students to become independent learners or are there too many constraints?
• A short term investigation into the impact of a ‘holistic’ approach to Independent Learning within the AS Media Studies classroom.

If the ideas shared here or in the various posts resonate with you, then please consider tuning in via Google+ on Wednesday at 8pm. The link will be shared publicly on Google+ and via Twitter. We hope that the discussion will be a productive and valuable one.

[Update: Kevin and I were joined by Steve Philp and Spencer Cartwright. Unfortunately, due to some technical issues we were unable to record the Hangout. Nevertheless, we had a thought provoking chat about the approaches that Kevin and I have been employing to facilitate independent learning - culminating in a consideration of the barriers to fostering such approaches more widely.]

Next Thursday, I will be hosting #ukedchat for the third time.

During my previous session, I asked:

“Are schools (as physical spaces) necessary to facilitate learning in the 21st century?”

The resulting discussion was a thoroughly engaging one, which raised more questions than provided answers. It was apparent that most of the educators who got involved, felt that schools as physical spaces still have purpose. However, it was also clear that schools in their current state are not 100% fit for purpose. Be it the learning space itself, the infrastructure or the curriculum, a number of areas for improvement were recognised.

In this next session, I want to pick up where the previous discussion left off and explore what a school should be like in the 21st century. In order to do that, I thought it would be useful to provide a premise:

“Starting with a blank piece of paper: Design the school of your dreams.”

In considering this, I wish for us to focus on the following areas:

Curriculum

What should be learned? How should it be learned? How should learning be structured? Subjects? Skills?

Assessment

Should learning be assessed? If so, how? Is there a place for grades? How can we accredit informal learning? AfL? Badges?

People

Who is to be involved? How will they be involved? Teachers? Students? Parents?

Space

Where will the learning happen? Classrooms? What role for libraries? What about virtual spaces?

Time

How long should the school day be? Should it be the same for everyone? How would lessons/timetable be structured?

Technology

What technologies should be utilised? Wifi? Tablets? BYOD?

—

To provide some further provocation, the following series of videos feature students from the Santa Barbara Middle School interviewing Sir Ken Robinson about his dream school; his answers are, as usual, well considered and challenging:

And so, if that has suitably whetted your appetite, I hope that you will be able to join me on Thursday at 8pm.

[Update: Saturday,  21 April] This was the 94th instalment of #ukedchat. You can read a summary of the discussion here and read/download a PDF archive of all the tweets here.

Alongside Tweetbot, Instapaper, Reeder, Kindle and Notesy which I added almost immediately, I have now added the following apps:

Evernote – I have been using Evernote to manage and organise my M.Ed studies. It is an invaluable tool. I use the desktop app almost every day and have been making regular use of the Android version. On first look, as I have found with other cross platform apps, both the iPhone’s UI and UX are vastly superior. What’s more the quality of the display on the 4S is crystal clear.

Instacast – Like Tweetbot, this is an app I have wanted to use for some time. It has been well reviewed, with the consensus being that there is no better app for the job. As an avid listener to podcasts, I am very pleased with my experience so far. What this app offers over the built in music app is the ability to stream shows, download on the fly and access show notes within the app itself. This makes for a far richer listening experience.

Agenda – The built in iPhone calendar has a very poor UI. Agenda, is clean and minimal, utilising sound principals of typographic design.

Pop – I’m a huge believer in ubiquitous capture and even with Notesy installed, sometimes all you need is a piece of paper. That is exactly what Pop offers: a piece of paper on to which you can write stuff down and return to later. The only other options are: select, select all, copy all and paste. This adds what I would call ‘useful friction’ in that when I decide to act on the information I have captured in Pop I will have to make an effort to move each piece around. This means I will be forced to decide if what I noted down is really valuable or not.

Taking photographs with a mobile phone is an activity I have never really been interested in. I think this is due to the poor quality of cameras I have encountered in previous phones. With the iPhone 4S’ 8MP camera, I am planning to take this as an opportunity to capture images on a more regular basis. I looked to my PLN on Twitter to help me get started and they didn’t disappoint. I chose to begin with the following two apps:

Camera+ – I decided to get this app as it offered some interesting improvements on the built in camera app: Improved zoom capabilities and a stabiliser (perfect for a novice photographer)

Snapseed – Nearly everyone who replied to my initial tweet recommended this app, and I have already had loads of fun playing with it. It offers a wide range of features, from basic editing features such as cropping and rotating to more stylistic effects such as manipulating depth of field.

In terms of arraigning the apps, my choices are based on frequency and tactility. Apps towards the bottom of the home screen are the ones that I use most often. As such I want them positioned where I can access them quickly when holding the phone in one hand. Beyond that the apps are loosely grouped: Photography, Sound & Video, Reading, Notes/Writing, Interruptions.

TweetBot - This was the first app I downloaded and installed. Partly because Twitter is number one reason I use a smartphone but mainly due to the fact that I have been coveting this app since it was first released. As an Android user, I have had to read/listen to others talk about how good it is, while being stuck with only mediocre choices. And, my first impression is a significantly positive one. Both the UI and UX are superb. The only feature it lacks is ‘keyword block’ which I enjoy with Hibari on Mac.

Instapaper - This is another favourite, regularly used app that has been poorly served on Android. Marco has done a wonderful job with version 4.1.1; the attention to detail is meticulous. I can already tell that I will be opting to catch up with my unread items on my iPhone rather than on my MacBook Air.

Reeder - I have been using the Mac-based equivalent since I bought my MacBook Air last year. The iOS version does not disappoint, attractive UI and friction free UX.

Kindle - Most of the time I read on a Kindle Keyboard but I tend to use my phone when I am travelling to and from work. The iOS app is identical to the Android version and was a natural choice for inclusion at this early stage.

Notesy - This was the most difficult choice. I considered Byword, Writing Kit and Plain Text before deciding to try Notesy. Plain Text does not include Markdown support, making it easy to remove that from the selection process. Writing Kit was a little too feature rich and I was concerned that it would not fit into the minimal mindset that I have with regard to text editors. Based on some thorough reading and a helpful chart, I settled on Notesy due to the fact that I could customise the UI more than in Byword.

I’ll follow this up as I continue to add apps and use the phone.

This process has, and continues to be motivated by two values:

First, it is important to own as much of your own data as possible. Too many of us invest time in various apps, networks and other online tools, without considering whether or not we will be able to get that data out, should we decide to stop using them.

Second, it is important to give mindful consideration to the information that you publish online, as this is how many people will form their opinion of you. For all intents and purposes, your digital self is like a brand. It needs to be cultivated and cared for. It is therefore, my intention to ensure that brand ‘James Michie’ is well cultivated.

It was with these principals in mind that I decided to move my ‘other’ blog ‘Et cetera’ from Posterous and integrate it with my main blog.

Twitter’s recent acquisition of Posterous, provided the final push I needed to make this move… one that I had considered doing last year. Do I think that Twitter is going to shut down Posterous? I am not sure but the signs are not great. Recent trends on the web would also suggest that either the service will fall into neglect or eventually close.

In making the move, I decided that it was also an opportunity to do some cleaning up. Before importing the blog, I removed any content which I felt did not fit in effectively with my main blog; this included the remnants of a failed #365 project and a few other posts.

If you were a subscribed to Et cetera, then please consider subscribing to this blog either by RSS or Email.

Owning your data and caring for your digital self is very important. Putting in, what I believe to be a reasonable amount of effort, has allowed me to take (greater) ownership of my data, and to better establish the version of my digital self that I wish for people to engage with. I encourage you to do the same.