Schools without frontiers

1
Schools without frontiers?

• Keri Facer
• Futurelab
• London
• Feb 6 2007

2
About Futurelab

• Research and Development Lab
• Charity
• Interdisciplinary educators, technical experts,
  researchers, creative experts
• Prototype Development
• Curriculum Development
• Research

3
Overview

• Young peoples use of digital technologies
  outside schools
• Emerging practices and the digital generation
• Educational Case studies
• Future visions 2020 and beyond
• I will not do all the talking

4
Young peoples use of digital technologies
5
Some national numbers .

• 89 of children aged 10-16 have computer at home
• 84 of Year 2 parents report children use
  computer at home
• 90 have games console
• 70 have handheld games machine
• 93 of teenagers have a mobile phone for their
  own use
• (sources Valentine, Marsh Pattie for DFES 2005
  Interactive Education, 2001, Bristol European
  Research Into Consumer Affairs Survey, 2004 LSE,
  Children-Go-Online Futurelab/EA Teaching with
  Games survey)

6
Everyday activities

• Mean time spent using a computer outside school
  5-7 hours a week (1.5 for formal educational
  purposes)
• 75-88 of children use the internet outside
  school
• 84 of children play games at least once a
  fortnight
• 80 use mobile phone every day
• Games
• Writing
• Phoning/ texting / instant messaging
• Finding things out
• Fiddling
• Playing with images / representations
• 14-15 of children have own webpage

7
Digital Differences / Divides

• Socio-economic
• 12 have three or more computers, 16 have no
  computers
• 75 households A/B have internet, 33 D/E
• Parental occupation
• Technical support, supplies, software, upgrades
• Age
• 41 year 11 pupils have own computer in bedroom,
  compared with 31 Year 6
• Educational use increases, games use peaks Year 7
  then goes down
• Gender
• games/ education activities
• Ethnicity limited data

8
Questions

• What levels of access to digital technologies
  (like computers, internet, games
  machines, mobiles) are there among young people
  in your local authority?
• What do young people use them for outside school?
  
• Are there differences in access and use by
  different groups of young people?

9
Emerging Practices and Questions
10
(No Transcript)
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• Machinima 1, 2, 3
• Playing with fonts/images
• bricolage
• Working on what is already there, repurposing,
  mash-ups
• What counts as creativity in these
  environments?

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What counts as knowledge, how do we find it and
share it?

• Social Software / Web 2.0
• Personal as public
• Weblogs http//www.zephoria.org/thoughts
• Collation of blogs http//www.wefeelfine.org/
• Collective knowledge production
• Wikis www.en.wikipedia.org
• New means of finding and sharing knowledge
• Tagging/ folksonomies
• http//del.icio.us
• Audio and visual
• Photos www.flickr.com
• Videos www.youtube.com

13
Where are these boys?
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Multiple spaces

• Immediate
• Virtual
• Networked

15
Personal map and spaces

• Draw a rapid mind map with yourself at the middle
  ( use words or pictures)
• How do you personally use digital technologies?
• What digital/virtual/real spaces are you
  connected with when you use them?
• What sources of information and knowledge are you
  connected with when you use them?
• Where do you use digital technologies?
• Compare your map with others on the table
• what are the differences/similarities?

16
Education for aliens?
17

• For most adults the digital ecology in which we
  now find ourselves grew up around us and we have
  adapted accordingly, some more readily than
  others. Our young were born into it it is their
  natural environment. For them, the high density
  of communication vectors is entirely and
  unequivocally natural, something which they learn
  to adapt to, to use and to exploit, just as we
  learned to adapt to the sparse electronic ecology
  in which we grew up. (Green and Bigum, 1993,
  p135)

18
Generational divides?

• 84 of young people play computer games at least
  once a fortnight
• 72 of teachers never play computer games
• Children entering school this year were born 10
  years after the invention of the web it is old
  technology to them

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digital natives ?

• Twitch Speed vs. Conventional SpeedParallel
  Processing vs. Linear ProcessingRandom Access
  vs. Linear ThinkingGraphics First vs. Text
  FirstConnected vs. Stand-aloneActive vs.
  PassivePlay vs. WorkPayoff vs. PatienceFantasy
  vs. RealityTechnology as Friend vs. Technology
  as Foe
• http//www.games2train.com/site/html/article.html

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New learning communities

• Authentic activities working on something
  meaningful
• Different roles/ different contributions/
  different expertise teachers learners
• Collective experimentation and recording what
  works
• Knowledge building shared activity towards a
  common goal
• Alan puts it on, then Karen messes with it and
  then Alan will mess with it and do a bit more and
  Karen says no do that with it, or we can do
  that with it. Theyre swapping facts. Karen
  knows something that Dad doesnt and Dad knows
  something that Karen doesnt

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New learning relationships

• a lot of it Ive learned as well from Joe, my
  friend. He knows a bit about computers but he
  doesnt know anything about making a webpage. So
  sometimes like if I dont know how to do
  something. I had to phone Joe Oh look, its bla
  bla bla and he tells me, you know. I didnt
  know how to use this when I first had it.but
  when it came to like doing the web page he phones
  me and Ill tell him how to do other things, you
  know, its like a compromise between the both of
  us. We both tell each other how to do things.

22
New learning relationships

• If the teacher doesnt have too many limitations,
  you know, say for example you wanted to insert a
  clipart from a different file and the teacher
  originally knew, you know, this is the way you
  should do it, and then you said No I know
  another way to do it to get better images and
  stuff. Then a good teacher like Miss Andrews
  would let you do this. Okay And then she would
  take on your information that you inputted into
  the lesson. She learns from you and you learn
  from her. So its like a two-way system. Its not
  like some teachers who, you know, pound it into
  you, try to just get information into you, they
  dont get anything back, thats a bad teaching
  manner. I dont like that type of teaching at all
  when the teacher just gives you information and
  says write it down bla bla bla. This is it.
  Revise from it. Thats not good teaching at all.
  But when they just give you information and
  thats it, they dont answer questions, they
  dont let you involve yourself in the lesson,
  thats not a good type of teaching, thats really
  bad teaching.

23
Questions

• Is there a generational divide between adults and
  children in terms of using digital technologies ?
  
• What are adults good at and what are children
  good at today (not just in terms of using
  technology) ?
• How might we design schools to foster exchanges
  of skills and knowledge between children and
  teachers?

24
Case studies
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Education for the information age

• Generic Workers These human terminals can, of
  course, be replaced by machines, or by any other
  body around the city, the country or the world,
  depending on business decisions. While they are
  collectively indispensable to the production
  process, they are individually expendable
  (Castells, 1997340)
• Self-generative workers able constantly to
  redefine the necessary skills for a given task,
  and to access the sources for learning these
  skills. (Castells, 1996)

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• New Spaces
• Savannah
• http//www.futurelab.org.uk/showcase/savannah/inde
  x.htm
• Mudlarking
• http//www.futurelab.org.uk/showcase/mudlarking/in
  dex.htm
• Create A Scape
• http//www.futurelab.org.uk/showcase/create_a_scap
  e/index.htm
• Games, collaboration
• Racing Academy
• http//www.futurelab.org.uk/showcase/racing_academ
  y/index.htm
• Space Mission
• http//www.futurelab.org.uk/showcase/space_mission
  /index.htm

Learning Communities Notschool, UK Unlimited,
NZ Bishops Park, UK Enquiring Minds,
UK Fountaineers http//www.futurelab.org.uk/showc
ase/fountaineers/index.htm
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Future Visions 2020 and beyond
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• 19th Century
• Electric light, phonographs, wireless cinema,
  early globalisation, mass production

Invented playgrounds and new school spaces,
universal primary education, widening access to
higher education and laws banning child labour
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by 2020 ?

• Intelligent and responsive public and private
  spaces in which we live unconsciously with
  invisible personalised technologies embedded in
  our everyday attire,
• enabling us to access free personal memory banks
  which have recorded our entire life and
  interactions
• and which allow us to run NASA quality
  simulations on personal and mobile devices which
  generate immersive collaborative environments
• We might live forever

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• Collaborative and immersive spaces

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What If

• Learning institutions were designed for
  flexibility, and to cope with future social and
  educational change ?
• Learning settings were designed to foster
  creativity and collaboration amongst learners ?
• Learning settings were designed to encourage
  interactions between different age groups ?
• Learning settings were designed to meet the
  preferences of individual learners over how,
  where, when and in what ways they learn ?

32

• Personalised Pods
• http//www.futurelab.org.uk/research/opening_educa
  tion/learning_spaces_01.htm

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• Zoned workflow spaces
• http//www.futurelab.org.uk/research/opening_educa
  tion/learning_spaces_01.htm

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Over to you.

• What if things could be very very different? What
  would we want them to be?
• Imagine a day in the life of a learner in 2020
  (ignore all practical constraints, imagine what
  you would want it to be)- what happens?
• What do we have now that can make this possible ?
• What do we need to invent, change or enable to
  bridge the gap?

35
Bioscience developments design for change.

• What does education look like if we can all live
  forever by 2020 ?
• What does education look like if it is possible
  to take drugs to enhance mental processing powers
  by 2010 ?
• What does education look like if neuroscience
  offers radically new insights into learning that
  challenge everything we have understood until
  now?
• What does education look like if there is bird
  flu

36
Thank you
www.futurelab.org.uk/research Ben Williamson,
Dan Sutch, Sarah Godfrey, Tash Lee, Lyndsay
Grant, Mary Ulicsak, Richard Sandford, Jessica
Pykett, Tim Rudd, John Morgan