New Skills for a New Age

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New Skills for a New Age
Margaret MeijersNew Town High SchoolTasmania
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Margaret Meijers

• Teacher at New Town High School, Tasmania
• Government school for boys, 815 students grade
  7 to 10 (12-16yrs)
• Diverse school community wide range of multi
  cultural, indigenous, socio-economic backgrounds,
  academic ability, and physical and intellectual
  disabilities
• Why am I here?
• Recipient of
• Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teacher 2006
• Teaching Australia Best National Achievement by a
  Teacher 2006
• Hardie Fellowship 2007
• Australian Council for Computers in Education
  Educator of the Year 2007 .

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Classes

• New Town High
• Four regular grade 7 8 Computing classes
• Online Computing Extended
• Centre for Extended Learning
• Online Game Programming for gifted middle school
  students

Online Campus (2006) Online Computing 8-10 Online
Games Unit 7-10
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Industrial Revolution

• Late 18th early 19th Centuries
• Steam powered machinery
• Mass production
• New industries developed rapidly

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Profound Social Change

• Driven by technological innovation
• Urbanisation
• Transport changes

• Schools established to instil attitudes of
  discipline, structure, temperance
• Latin, Greek, grammar, theology, and religion
  changed to chemistry, physics, biology

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Memory Lane
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WikiPedia vs Encarta
2006 Pew Internet
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Google
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Search Engines
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Globalisation Employment

• Flat Earth
• China, India joining world economy
• Lower wages, larger skilled workforce
• Much work can be done anywhere
• 3 billion more workers competing for jobs
• By 2010 India will have the highest number of
  English speakers in the world
• Anything that can be done by machines will be

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Globalisation Employment

• Jobs requiring science, engineering, IT growing
  at 5 times rate of other jobs US Bureau Labor
  Statistics
• US, UK, Australia number of graduates declining
• Science and engineering represent 60 of Chinese
  bachelor degrees, but 31 in US
• Top 5 countries in international Maths scores
• Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea China, Japan
  Grade 8, 2003 Trends in International Mathematics
  and Science Study

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Urbanisation

• More people (3.3bn) live in urban areas than not
  (for the first time in history)
• Largest cities in the world will not be Tokyo or
  New York, but places like Lagos and Dakar
• United Nations Data

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Technological Change

• Explosive expansion of speed, power, capabilities
  and connectivity
• Downward pressure on prices
• What will life be like in 30 years?
• What will be left for people to do?

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Knowledge Explosion

• Amount of knowledge in the world is doubling
  every 18 months
• Half of the knowledge I learn today will be
  obsolete in 6 months
• It is no longer possible to do all your lifes
  learning at school
• We all must be lifelong learners

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The Digital World

• The ability to represent so
• many things with 1s and 0s
• has changed the way we work and live our daily
  lives.
• The change has been dramatic
• Some have embraced it, others avoid it

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Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants

• Analogy promotes and reinforces hidden
  inequalities
• Technology is rapidly becoming ubiquitous
• Its no longer about access to technology or
  being born in the right time
• Its about having the cultural capital and
  connections to a digitally enlightened community
• Kids born into socially deprived circumstances
  may have the hardware but not the access to the
  cultural capital

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Digital Revolution

• Profound impact on
• Business Commerce
• Communication
• Travel
• Lifestyle
• Social and family structures
• But the impact on schools so far has only been
  superficial ..

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Still in the Industrial Age
Where we are now

• Factory Model students progress, grouped by
  age, at prescribed times
• Curriculum uniform, prescribed course of study
  for all students
• Teacher directed

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Response to Changed World
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The world has changed. What about Kids?
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Kids want community

• to be always connected
• constant communication
• reflected through internet and mobile devices
  which are key parts of their lives

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Kids want personalisation

• They want..
• to customise control everything
• to be self directed
• to work on their terms, at their times, in their
  place
• Reflected in own media libraries, websites,
  customised devices

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Kids want to express themselves

• to have their ideas heard
• to show who they are and what they value
• to have relationships with people in other
  countries
• Reflected through music, blogging, creating and
  constructing both functional and artistic digital
  objects.
•  

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Worldwide Blog Growth
Source Technorati
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Blog Example
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Collaborative Problem Solving
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Success
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Online Video Growth

• Oct 2005 lt 25 million views per day
• Jan 2006 125 million views per day
• July 2006 700 million views per day

Source ComScore
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Social Networking

• Social Networking Explained

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Geocities 1996 200,000 users
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MySpace Registered Users
July 2007 3.8 million Australian profiles
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2006 Pew Internet
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FaceBook

• Social utility that connects people with friends
  and others who work, study and live around them.
• Started at Harvard Uni in 2004
• Now 42 million users worldwide
• Over half users log in daily
• gt1 billion photos
• Grew 273 in Australia between Apr and Jun 2007
  (Hitwise)

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Learning with Web 2.0

• If you know how to access it, you can find most
  of what you need to know about almost anything
  online.
• There are massive international online learning
  communities
• Technologists have known this for decades, but
  other areas have now caught on.

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Online University Courses
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Cat 16

• I can have a conversation with a person with a
  PhD in whatever I want. 
• If you try and do that in real life they dont
  take a 16 year old girl seriously, but when its
  just text based or voice based they dont really
  care how old you are, what you look like, what
  colour your skin is. 
• Its just about you, your ideas and how you can
  get them across to them in a way they can discuss
  with you.

I discuss philosophy on a regular basis, whereas
at school weve just started meeting once a month
to have philosophical conversations for half an
hour. I need more mental stimulation than that
really.
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Baby Boomer or Gamer?
gt35
lt35

• Which character do you more readily recognise?

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Baby Boomer or Gamer?
Over 35s have not grown up with games Early
games were trivial and boring Early gamers were
nerdy isolates

• 1988 Nintendo
• Entertainment System

Game Revolution was born!
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Video Games

• Casual Games - Solitaire, Pong, Tetris, Pacman

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Serious Games

• Take up to 100 hours or more
• Are immersive virtual worlds
• Require collaboration with others
• Involve developing values, insights, and new
  knowledge
• Have an external environment involving
  communities of practice, buying and selling of
  game items, blogs, and developer communities
• Have become complex learning systems
• Are hard fun

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Game Culture
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How Parents see Games

• Messages Evil, violent, destroy your mind
• Constant fighting to get kids to stop playing
  games and do homework, go outside and play, get
  exercise.
• Demands for money to buy more games, better
  computers etc.

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Will Rot Your Mind.
Television
Games

• In condemning games, are we any different from
  our parents generation?
• As many hours are spent playing games as the
  previous generation spent watching TV, but
  different things are being learned.
• Gamers are learning how to manipulate electronic
  information.

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Put yourself in the shoes of a teenager
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Why Play Games?

• You are the centre of all attention you are a
  hero
• You have total control unlike TV which is
  passive
• You are always right
• You are expert and really good at what you do
  others see this
• You can die and not get hurt

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Why Play Games?

• The gameworld is simple and logical (unlike the
  real world)
• Relationships are structured and predictable
• Trial and error is always a good plan
• You are always competing, striving to get better
• Young people rule

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Why Play Games?

• There is a global community that transcends age,
  race and culture
• It is escapist when you dont like reality you
  have a game world.

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Parents yell at kids to get off computers,
without understanding that their kid could be
managing a 200 person online guild.
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James

• 19 yrs old
• Avid gamer
• Highly successful student
• WoW Guild Master (200 members)

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Real Time Strategy

• Its all about the strategy and doing things at
  crucial times
• It teaches you how to think about 5-10 things at
  once and manage all those things at once. 

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1st Person Shooters

• You are very reliant on your team and the way
  you are able to execute the tactics that youve
  planned down to the very precise moments
• Split second thinking, planning on the run,
  trying to get 5 people working as one unit
  instead of 5 individuals are all vital.
• Helps you to identify and concentrate on the
  important things.

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Role playing games

• Teach you about persistence if you have a go
  and set yourself to it, and use the social
  aspects such as helping out people so they help
  you out, then you can get there. 
• This is beneficial to real world success.

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Benefits of Games

• Each genre of game helps in different areas
  this is far more beneficial in real life than
  watching TV or reading in my opinion. 
• Reading teaches you lots of information but it
  doesnt really help the way you actually think in
  a real world situation.  
• I read, all my friends who play games read, but
  if you ask any of them, theyd say the thing that
  helps you to learn to think is playing computer
  games. 

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Serious Games
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Learning Systems

• Games are complex and effective learning systems
• People
• pay money
• to put in long hours
• to learn something really difficult
• The business world has recognised this and
  leverages this learning

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Beth Israel Hospital

• Surgeons train on video games before operating.
• Surgeons who played 3 or more hours of games per
  week made 37 fewer mistakes and operated faster.
  
• Now warm up with games such as Super Monkey Ball,
  Star Wars Revenge Racer and Silent Scope.

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Multi Casualty Incident Response

• Trains fire fighters in their duties and
  priorities
• Range of scenarios
• Records actions
• and responses

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Monkey Wrench Conspiracy

• The Monkey Wrench Conspiracy "mod" puts you in
  the role of an intergalactic secret agent
  dispatched to deep space to rescue the Copernicus
  station from alien hijackers.
• It is a complete tutorial for a complex technical
  product, designed to teach industrial engineers
  how to use new 3-D design software.

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Inider

• A 4-CD game created by PricewaterhouseCoopers to
  teach its 24-year-old-average-aged auditors to
  understand derivatives on corporate balance
  sheets.
• Set in the future, players join the finance team
  of intergalactic mining company Gyronortex, where
  they are required to master the basics of
  hedging, swaps and options.

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Straight Shooter!

• A first person shooter game created for Bankers
  Trust Company in which marketers hunt for clients
  in cities, airports and hotels around the world.
• Clients can only be acquired when the player has
  demonstrated he or she understands the business
  policies in question.

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Infinitearms

• Team participants are stranded on a remote
  island, with little chance of immediate rescue,
  and a variety of problems and mysteries to solve.
  
• By progressing through challenging team problems,
  groups of individuals find themselves
  communicating, collaborating and embracing the
  behaviour of highly effective teams.

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Americas Army

• Tactical multiplayer, first person shooter
• Free financed by US tax department
• Global public relations initiative to help with
  recruitment
• Sub genres
• Advergame
• Serious Game
• Militainment

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Kuma War Game

• Video footage from Iraq, Afghanistan and Liberia
• Game missions based on US perspective

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Racing Academy

• advanced physics simulation engine
• familiarity with engineering concepts, through
  racing and engineering realistic virtual models
  of cars
• facilities allow teams and communities to
  collaborate and compete on the web

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WFP Foodforce

• Published by the United Nations World Food
  Programme (WFP) in 2005.
• Players take on missions to distribute food in a
  famine affected country and to help it to recover
  and become self-sufficient again.
• At the same time they learn about hunger in the
  real world and the WFP's work to prevent it.

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And in Schools?

• We like to think weve changed, but.
• Teacher still clinging on trying to being the
  expert (kids largely ignore this)
• Social networks, communications blocked
• The filtering in China is less restrictive than
  many US public schools (Wes Fryer)
• Children largely sit in classrooms and move by
  age factory stylein boxes and groups
• Inflexible times and hours

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US School Districts in 2007

• 84 have rules against online chatting in school
• 81 have rules against instant messaging in
  school
• 62 prohibit blogging, participating in online
  discussion boards
• 60 prohibit email
• 52 prohibit social networking sites

http//www.nsba.org/site/docs/41400/41340.pdf
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Alarmingly Similar!
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We look to the past, not the future

• Needs for learning have changed but we resolutely
  hang on to the past
• Who is driving and leading the digital world?
• Many kids are doing more learning outside of
  school than inside school
• Schools are stuck in the industrial age

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What is Important in a Changed World?

• Learning how to learn

with passion curiosity!

• Innovation Creativity

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What is Important in a Changed World?

• Communication skills
• Team work and collaboration

Yet in many schools we are actively blocking
technologies that encourage and support this.
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I pledge that the work I have submitted is all my
own. Nobody has helped me with it and I have not
offered help to anyone else.
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What is Important in a Changed World?

• Critical thinking problem solving
• Technological Literacy

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Can you control technology or does technology
control you?
Technological Literacy
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Programming/Control Needs

• TV, DVD, HD Recorder, washing machine, mobile
  phone, mp3 player, car stereo, navigation system,
  microwave oven, bread maker, washing machine
• Security system, air conditioner, heating, phone
  system, answering machines
• Home PC, home networks, antivirus, spam, spyware
• PC Applications MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel,
• Internet WWW webpages, email, online safety
  and security

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Roomba
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Reading and Writing Needs

• By the time they are 21, the average student will
  have spent
• 10,000 hours on video games
• 200,000 emails
• 20,000 hours on TV
• 10,000 hours on mobile phones
• Less than 5000 hours reading books
• (Andrew Bonamici, 2005)

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TextHELP Read and Write
Text-to-Speech Phonetic Spell Checker NEW
Screenshot Reader NEW Study Skills Toolbar
NEW Summarise Tool Word Prediction Speaking
Dictionary Word Wizard Homophone Support Web
Highlighting One-click Scanning Speech Maker
Daisy Reader Fact Finder Fact Folder Fact
Mapper Speech Input (XP 2000 only) PDFaloud
Pronunciation Tutor Calculators User Definable
Toolbar
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Talking Books

• Wide range of titles
• Anytime, anywhere listening

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Programming/Control Needs
IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR ALL OF US TO LEARN TO
CONTROL TECHNOLOGY

• TV, DVD, HD Recorder, washing machine, mobile
  phone, mp3 player, car stereo, navigation system,
  microwave oven, bread maker, washing machine
• Security system, air conditioner, heating, phone
  system, answering machines
• Home PC, home networks, antivirus, spam, spyware
• PC Applications MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel,
• Internet WWW webpages, email, online safety
  and security

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New Demands New Tools

• Video games teach all these skills.
• You ( kids) need to know the difference between
  good and bad games and how to leverage the good
  ones for learning, entertainment or relaxation.

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NEW TOOLS FOR A NEW AGE
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One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Program

• Goal to provide opportunities to explore,
  experiment and express themselves
• Aimed at 2 billion children in developing world
• Designed for learning learning
• For children to control the machine, not the
  machine to control the child
• Mass production beginning this month
• Imagine the impact of 2 billion connected kids
  with a hunger for learning!

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Scratch

• Interactive stories, animations, games, music and
  art
• control technology
• design, create share

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PicoCrickets

• Tiny computer that makes things spin, light up
  and play music
• Lights, motors, sensors
• Program them to react, interact and communicate
• Designed for making artistic creations

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Chester
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• Modern package, continually being upgraded
• Drag and drop interface built in C like
  programming language
• Suited to high school and capable primary
  students

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Childrens Comments
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Squeak E-toys

• Media authoring tool
• Share and create with others
• Explore new realms of computing and media
  development
• Environment to explore Maths Science
• Create simulations and models to test theories
• The idea is not to teach children specific
  mathematics or science but how to think like a
  mathematician or scientist.

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Seymour Papert
http//www.squeakland.org
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Scratch, PicoCrickets, Game Maker, Squeak
support.

• thinking creatively
• communicating clearly
• analyzing systematically
• using and controlling technologies fluently
• collaborating effectively
• designing iteratively
• learning continuously

More ideas at http//www.mindtools.tased.edu.au
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MODEL FOR 21ST CENTURY LEARNING
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Pedagogy Out
Heutagogy In
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Heutagogy In!

• Self-determined learning
• Appropriate in 21st century
• Focus on the development of individualised,
  independent learning
• Using multimedia, virtual learning environments,
  online assessment and social software.

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Tom Friedman
TO LEARN HOW TO LEARN YOU HAVE TO ENJOY LEARNING!

• Take courses offered by your favourite teachers,
  no matter what the subject
• I dont remember what they taught me, but I
  remember being excited about learning it.
• It is not the facts they imparted, but the
  excitement about learning they inspired.
• Tom Friedman The World is Flat p303

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Fundamentals

• Students should be active participants in their
  own learning
• Learning how to learn, unrestricted by time,
  place, age
• To be creative with the skills they possess
• Flexible and adaptable in familiar and novel
  situations
• Work independently and with others
• Working with and controlling technology to
  achieve their goals

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Model for 21st Century Learning

• Jay Lemke (University of Michigan)
• 3 relatively independent, but loosely integrated
  components
• Individual workstations
• Multimedia (audio and video)
• Access to global information resources
• Access to intelligent learning assistants (human
  and machine)
• Networks and communication groups for interaction
  and collaboration (both stable and ad hoc)

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Model for 21st Century Learning

• Learning centres
• face-to-face individual and group interaction
  with peers, older and younger students, and
  specialist teachers and counsellors
• where skills can be learned through use of
  specialized materials and equipment
• Visits, and placements in real-world settings
• to observe and participate in economic,
  technical, artistic and recreational activities
  with adults

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Knowsley District UK

• closing all of its eleven existing secondary
  schools by 2009
• will reopen as seven state-of-the-art,
  round-the-clock, learning centres
• no formal classes, no timetables
• They will be given their days assignments in
  groups of 120 in the morning before dispersing to
  internet cafe-style zones in the learning centres
  to carry them out.

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New Schools for a New Age?
New Skills for a New Age

• Margaret Meijers
• http//www.mindtools.tased.edu.au