Mind games for christmas

I’m not the greatest fan of black tie dinners but I did have a real hoot at the e-learning awards, where our table (Caspian Learning) won the award for best game/simulation. These guys are smart and really do understand the role of games in learning. This is probably the most exciting field in e-learning at the moment. The software is good, the price finally reasonable and the results outstanding. It led to some interesting chat on the role of games in technology and learning.

New to the game
This Christmas, games’ ads on TV are no longer just gunfests and smackdowns. It’s whole families on sofas playing the Wii, older couples playing Brain Training on the Nintendo DS and everyone exercising on Wii Fit. The industry has finally raised its game to break free of the traditional laddish genres. The new Nintendo DS has two cameras and allows you to create an avatar (of yourself, to insert into its downloadable games). This is personalised learning taken to the max. It’s a whole new ball game and the floodgates are now wide open for fun and games to enter all sorts of new territories.

Game shape the future
Games, it could be argued, are now shaping the future of technology itself. By revolutionising input devices and interfaces, games and gadgets have redefined the user experience. It started with comfortable controllers for consoles, then add-ons like steering wheels, guns and other real-world things you could hold in your hand. Then came gyroscopes and the detection of movement in real time and space with the Wii. Tilt detection in devices like the iPhone/iTouch allow you took at satellite images, tilt the screen and see the landscape tilt into 3D. Guitar Hero and a raft of other applications gave you a near-real experience of playing the guitar or drums. Games input devices became wireless as did the devices. The new Nintendo DSi has the full web page on the top screen and a magnified section on the bottom screen. On graphics, games have led the way, technically and aesthetically, influencing the movies, television and advertising. AI is now largely advanced in the games world. All of this is happening at breakneck speed in a highly competitive market. Where else would young people queue up all night to spend £50 or £300 out of their own pocket on a game or console? How much do you think they spend on traditional learning?

Two can play at that game
A feature of many games is the online dimension, where you can play others, compare scores, download and upload. My two teenage boys are quite comfortable in chatting with guys from the US “Hey dude, what’s it like in England?” using VOIP before proceeding to massacre each other online. Guitar Hero allows four mates to form a band and online gaming involves cohorts of thousands, even millions. World of Warcraft has become a global phenomenon and don’t forget Disney’s Penguin Club and dozens of other successful online gaming environments. Games have come to define web 3.0.

Social gaming
Social networking has also embraced viral casual games. Facebook is fast becoming a games platform, a good example being Caspian’s Christmas Game, where the viral nature of the game and presents sent, has given it real viral qualities. Forget Christmas cards, send someone an online present. Social gaming is getting very BIG, very fast.

Mobile gaming
Games are a vital component in devices such as iPOD touch, where the cleverness of its tilt technology allows new forms of gaming. This has become the way in which the device is marketed. Although mobiles have different operating systems, screen sizes and capabilities, almost all mobiles have Java, which turns them into little computers. Downloaded games is therefore big business. The iPhone and Google’s Android are creating whole new game markets as they’ve encouraged external developers to create content. Mobile games are HUGE.

Mind games
The name of the game should now be mind games, where you play to learn. It’s the antithesis of all that page turning stuff and, as Caspian have shown, be superior in terms of learning outcomes. Many of the basic problems in numeracy and other subjects and skills could be alleviated by the simple introduction of games into learning. The research by Derek Roberson, now peer reviewed and published is very clear – it works. Just sprinkle a little of the magic dust of games into learning and you solve the root cause problem in numeracy – motivation. Games are pushing the boundaries on technology, interfaces, software, leisure, movies and interaction. Education and training is now fair game.

Rapid tools: more bubble machine than bubble

It’s not that the Rapid Tools market is a bubble, it’s a bubble machine, with thousands of little fragile bubbles all floating out and popping within seconds of their creation. Most of these tools and VLEs have the longevity of a fruit fly.

Tools buyers as false starters

I once worked with the CEO of Linguaphone, one of the biggest companies in the languages learning market. They sold CD-ROMS and online stuff to teach you how to learn French, Spanish, Italian, whatever. One day he confessed that that his real market wasn’t language learners at all. Their marketing term for their customers was ‘false starters’, people who wanted to learn a language, buy the product, get started, then crash and fail. He whispered that he had made millions from selling shelfware to people who didn’t learn a damn thing.

Is it the same in the rapid tools industry? Are the buyers, by and large, false starters? Are they being sold the illusion of quick and easy quality content, then get hit with the fact that it’s not so easy? On the whole, I think this is the dynamic in this market. Making these tools has become easy, selling them darn impossible. With sites and blogs galore publishing Top 100 Tools lists, is there any other market where there’s more tools, one for one, than clients? With the price point low and cost of sale high. It’s damn difficult to make money here.

Word doesn’t make you a novelist

A hammer doesn’t make you a carpenter, Excel doesn’t make you an Accountant, Powerpoint doesn’t make you a good speaker... I could go on, and often do, but you get the point. The question is, does this market, its buyers, and investors, really get this point? What percentage of the overall task becomes more productive with most rapid tools? Less than 5% I’d say. Most of the real effort is in design, graphics etc.

Quantity not quality

Templates for screens and questions are fine, but this leads to the Powerpoint problem. The end result is usually a series of mind dumbing, stab-point, text heavy, clip art rubbish. It traps you into a page-turning, manual on screen model, when many of the learning tasks demand more, much more. Just as the e-learning market was starting to produce a broad canvas from simple through scenario-based up to simulations and games, it plunges itself into a quantity not quality model.

Clip-art clowns

With rapid production, as soon as you need images, the clip-art clowns come out to play. Sure you can clip-art away, and infantilise both content and audience, but don’t pretend this is serious learning. I’ve seen medical e-learning programmes dealing with chronic diseases and terminal illnesses clip art the subject to death (sic). Health and safety, compliance – you name it, someone will clip it, trivialising the subject.

Lord Privy Seal

Or you can Google image search and come up with a series of disjointed photographs. The BBC used to have a Lord Privy Seal rule when teaching people about editing. When mentioning this person, you don’t simply show a picture of a Lord, followed by a picture of a WC then a seal. Image to noun stuff is hopeless. They had a point.

Graphics is a skill and most people don’t have this skill. A few cheap brushes and a paint-set doesn’t make you an artist. It doesn’t even make you a basic and competent graphic artist. So why should a basic authoring tool and a graphics package make you a competent content designer?

How do you monetise Rapid e-learning?

Model 1: Communities ain’t cash

OK, let’s create a community. Fine, if you want some dodgy stats to impress investors, but not if you need to generate income. Communities are largely free, fickle and feral. It’s damn difficult to get them to pay, they’ll jump ship at the drop of an ad and take more than they give. Communities are the domain of not-for-profit ideas, like Wikipedia. Crazy strategy. High risk, low reward.

Model 2: Tools as Trojans

Some use their tools as a Trojan horse, leading to real revenues with real margins. Typically, it will be a door opener, with all the baloney about how you’ll be able to make this stuff yourself with little or no previous experience or skills. Then, when you buy it, realise that’s not on, you come back and get them to do it for you. And by the way we’re a licensed reseller for this, that and the next thing. A ‘going nowhere quickly’ model. Low risk, low reward.

Model 3: Forget tools, go bespoke

Some realise that the best solution is to simply make stuff. Sell on the illusion that’s it’s a quick DIY solution, then do it for them. This is Kineo’s very successful model. They’re a bespoke e-learning company with a stripped down process. They never meant to be bespoke, but that was the only way they could make money. This, in my view, is a reasonably smart model. Low risk, medium reward.

Model 4: Sell out

Tools need a brand along with the money, geographic reach and marketing expertise to market and sell that brand. The only people who think this is easy, or cheap, are technical people, often the brains behind the tool, and people who have never run a business, which is almost everyone in education, training and development.

To cut to the quick, to be successful you need to sell your company to a bigger player and ride on the back of their ‘suite’ of tools approach and their clout on global branding and marketing. This is what happens to good tools. They get bought. Selling out is the way to success, usually to a global software company. This may be the best and only way to making lots of moola. High risk, high reward.

Model 5: Go it alone

Ok, you’ve developed your tool and want to make money but don’t want to do any of the above. You’re a pure tools player. Problem is, no one’s ever heard of you and getting them to listen costs cash. Disastrous model. High risk, certain failure.

Don’t get me wrong, good tools are good things, but how many tools does one need in this market? People have short memories. We had dozens of LMSs and LCMSs and VLEs emerging around 2000 and by 2003/4 the market had consolidated into a few winners Saba, Blackboard etc. This was consolidation by attrition, not acquisition. In my 25 years in this industry, I’ve seen hundreds of tools created with 99% of them ultimately dying a quick, sometimes painful and lingering death.

Moogle takes off!

After their rip-roaring success with Rocket Coursebuilder, the guys from Rocket have launched Rocket Moogle; an open source, VLE, LMS, LCMS, CMS, repository, community building, media sharing, curriculum planning, virtual classroom, talent management, e-portfolio, synchronous and asynchronous, web delivered, portal and search engine. A multilingual, AICC, SCORM compatible, end-to-end, enterprise-wide platform.

It allows you to design, create, author, edit, launch, publish, communicate, collaborate, personalise, reuse, assess, timetable, distribute, track, administrate, survey, index, schedule, manage, ROI, report, certificate, customise, promote and sell; online, offline, distance, adaptive, self-paced, blended, stand-alone, formal and informal learning.

When it comes to learning platforms, we all know that a complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine, but this hasn’t stop Rocket from forging ahead with even more functionality. In an innovative approach to personalised learning, Moogle tracks your behaviour online and offline categorising you as Millennial, Generation Y, Generation X, Baby Boomer, a foetus or dead. It then delivers learning targeted at your generational learning style.

Intuitive, easy-use, user-friendly, affordable, scalable (infinitely), secure, fully integrated, just-in-time, feature-rich and ready-to–use. Integrated with web 2.0 tools including Blogger, FaceBook, MySpace, Skype, Messenger, RSS, Second Life, iTunes, Flickr and Twitter.

What’s more, it runs on PCs, Macs, all mobiles, PDAs, Blackberry, PSP, Nintendo DS, Xbox, Playstation 2/3, Wii, iTouch, iPod, e-books, sat nav systems, some digital cameras and pagers.

Already selected by several Global banks to provide compliance training, thereby protecting them from their employees, it also provided their regulators with BOS* reports to prove that every possible effort was made to learn without putting people off selling. *(BOS – Bums On Seats)

Written by a 2-bit company who don’t like competition 1-bit, it’s Rocket science!

All of the Above - how to cheat Multiple Choice questions

Forget objectives, start with questions

I never liked the 'start with the learning objectives' advice on designing content, and preferred to start with writing and polishing these objectives as test items. This seemed that much more real, practical and relevant than forced 'Mager-like' objectives. Get the assessment right and the rest seemed to follow. This, I suspect, is why students much prefer to get past test papers to establish the real contents of a course.

Of course, writing good test items is far more difficult than many imagine, which is why many tests and not really tests of understanding, merely tests of recall. An interesting way of coming at this problem is to do some reverse engineering. Ask how students can cheat their way through a test.

There's the usual crib notes. The best I heard was, remove the lable from a bottle of orange juice, writing the crib notes on the back of the label.paste it back on, then drink orange to reveal the notes. But let's assume that pure cheating is out. What are you left with?

Second-guessing the test designer

Many multiple choice questions are poorly written. What better way to expose these errors than write a crib sheet for learners? So here goes with my 20 ways to cheat Multiple Choice tests:

1.    Skip the hard questions, mark them with a cross, and go back to them. This means you’ll not lose marks for unanswered easy questions.

2.    If in doubt choose ‘C’, poor questions designers do not truly randomise the right options and have a bias towards ‘C’. Next best is ‘B’.

3.    If in doubt choose the ‘longest option’. Question designers often cannot make a right option any shorter, but have complete freedom with wrong options.

4.    Look for similarities in options and eliminate outliers (in bold) e.g. 4p-q, 2p+q, 4p+q, 3p+q.

5.    Now note that there’s only one ‘-‘, which makes 4p+q more likely. Look for these internal patterns.

6.    ‘All of the above’ is likely to be correct. For it to be correct the writer has to design options that were all correct, so, if you can’t spot any wrong answers, or see that two or more are correct, it increases the probability of ‘All of the above’ being correct. Similarly with ‘None of the above’.

7.    Choose a middle order option i.e. out of 100, 150. 200, 250, choose 150 or 200. Designers tend to have a bias, where right answers tend to be lower than the highest and higher than the lowest option.

8.    For questions that demand an ‘except’ or ‘not’, mark each option with a T for true and F for false against each option. And underline the word ‘not’ as it’s sometimes missed.

9.    If there’s a typo or punctuation error, the option is likely to be wrong. Writers tend to proofread correct answers only.

10.  Look for grammatical agreement between the question and its options; ‘An.....’ and words starting with vowels or agreement between subject, object or verb.

11.  Go with your first impression. The more you read, the more you tend to read into the wrong options.

12.  If you’re stuck, go with the ‘Least bad rule’. Eliminate least likely answers first.

13.  Look for clues about answers from other questions. Designers often, unintentionally, put clues, even answers, to questions in other questions.

14.  If you’ve never heard of the answer, it’s likely to be made up and incorrect.

15.  First cover the options and try to answer. Prevents being misled by clever wrong options.

16.  If two options are opposites, one is likely to be correct. Designers first made up option is likely to be the correct option’s opposite.

17.  Favour options with careful qualifiers, such as ‘sometimes, occasionally etc.’ as tested knowledge usually has more finite than absolute qualities.

18.  Conversely, be wary of options with absolute qualifiers, such as ‘always, never etc’. As these are often too definite to be reasonably correct.

19.  Always guess, unless there is a penalty. It’s a 1 in 4 chance, so don’t give it up.

20.  Eliminate obvious answer on 4 options then guess, don’t fail to answer. This reduces the odds from ‘1 in 4’ to ‘1 in 3’. Far better than just guessing or not answering, depending on any penalty scores for wrong answers.

None of the above

This crib sheet can be used by question designers to improve their tests. Good students put themselves in the shoes of the test designer to improve their chance, so the more you know about their techniques, the better designer you’ll be.

I still see binary option questions with ‘Try again’ logic, grammatical disagreement and stupid options. Some time back in this blog, after they refused to respond when I emailed the mistakes through, I had a go at BBC Bitesize’s science tests, as they were riddled with these errors. 140 comments later, it still pops up on the home page when you go to BBC Bitesize through Google.

Writing good multiple choice questions is not easy. What’s easy is simply extracting all the nouns, objects and quantities, then testing for recall. The trick is to push beyond this to test understanding. It’s not the ‘what’ but the ‘why’ that often matters but remains untested.

Why questions matter

Professor Dylan Wiliam, Deputy Director of the Institute of Education, Professor of Educational Assessment gave a brilliant ALT talk (Seb Schmoller put me on to this) on what calls ‘hinge questions’, questions that literally diagnose poor understanding. He explains how one can use these questions as powerful verbal test items in a classroom, where it is difficult to diagnose 30 kids quickly. This is a technique every teacher should learn.

The ball sitting on a table is not moving. It’s not moving because:

A. No forces are pushing or pulling on the ball.

B. Gravity is pulling down, but the table is in the way.

C. The table pushes up with the same force that gravity pulls down.

D. Gravity is holding it on to the table.

E. There’s a force inside the ball keeping it from rolling off the table.

This question not only catches common misconceptions, it diagnoses between those who have understood the ‘physics’. C is correct.

What can we do to preserve the ozone layer?

A. Reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air

B. Reduce the greenhouse effect

C. Stop cutting down the rainforest

D. Properly dispose of air conditioners and fridges

Looks like the designer ran out of options and put the last item in to make up the numbers, but it’s actually the right answer. Interestingly, this was one of dozens of mistakes in BBC Bitesize,

Which of the following is NOT an effect of burning fossil fuels?

A. global warning

B. ozone depletion

C. acid rain

D. smog

E. fog (right according to BBC)

Ozone depletion is also correct as the result of CFCs which are completely artificial (they did not exist in nature prior to synthesis by humans). They were used in air conditioning/cooling units, as aerosol spray propellants prior to the 1980s, and in the cleaning processes of delicate electronic equipment. They are not the result of burning fossil fuels.

Wiliam’s point about the imortance of classroom questioning, is that; 

“The variability at teacher level is about four times the variability at school level. If you get one of the best teachers, you will learn in six months what an average teacher will take a year to teach you. If you get one of the worst teachers, that same learning will take you two years. There’s a four-fold difference in the speed of learning created by the most and the least effective teachers. And it’s not class size, it’s not between class grouping, it’s not within class grouping – it’s the quality of the teacher.”

This led him to determine what separates good from bad teachers.

“And actually, new teachers are actually pretty bad. You don’t really learn to teach at all well until you’re six or seven years into the profession. And some recent data from Australia shows that the amount of value added by teachers actually carries on increasing for about twenty years.”

And here’s a brilliant paragraph.

“The key concept here—the big trap—is that teachers do not create learning. That’s true teachers do not create learning, and yet most teachers behave as if they do. Learners create learning. Teachers create the conditions under which learning can take place. Our schools don’t function like that, which is why somebody once joked that schools are places where kids go to watch teachers work.”

The solution, given the fact that reducing clss sizes is incredibly expensive, is to use diagnistic 'hinge' questions. This accelerates the teacher's knowledge of the state of learning of the learners and accelerates the learning.

Dylan William also co-authored, with professor Paul Blackgave, the brilliant Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment, another ‘should be compulsory’ text for educators. This makes the obvious point that far too much teaching is simply 'chalk and talk'. If you don't believe this walk into any school and you'll see it in practice. It's a manifesto for more formative assessment.

Why questions matter

What matters? All of the above and more. Questions really do matter in learning. 

Questions and curiosity

First, they stimulate curiosity. Almost all of my learning as an adult has this dynamic. Something intigues me and I follow it up as I'm curious to find the answer. This is the great joy of having the internet as a resource. It has made this type of inquiry and research possible.

Questions and diagnosis

Good qestions diagnose your strengths and weaknesses. You don't know what you don't know and questions uncover the often uncomfortable truth that you know less than you thought you know.

Questions and improvement

Questions and searching for answers are fundamental to the process of learning. Roger Schank has been using this apporach in all sorts of contexts, and this truly structured Socratic approach, works well when used by a skilled practitioner. 

Questions and motivation

To create the conditions for learning, as opposed to just delivering content, questions are the true stimulus. 

Yet, despite these advantages, few have the real skills to either construct or deliver formative or summative feedback at the level necessary for true learning. It's a real skill.

 

Email makes road sign

Another brilliant example of blur between the real and unreal. When the Welsh transport department emailed this text for translation, what they actually put on the sign was:

"I am not in at the moment. Send any work to be translated."

Sex in Second Life ruining marriages

I love this tale of the blurring of the real and unreal

Sexual couplings in Second Life are fraying real  marriages

William Saletan gives us this example from Slate. Counselors are "seeing a growing number of marriages dissolve over virtual infidelity." One wife says her husband's avatar's marriage to another woman's avatar is cheating; he says he isn't. 

His arguments: 1) It's just a game. 2) He has never met the woman behind the other avatar and doesn't plan to meet her. 3) His participation in Second Life is no different from his real wife watching TV. 

Her arguments: 1) The virtual marriage includes a joint mortgage, dogs, and spending hours together. 2) The husband and the other woman spend real money on each other's avatars. 3) The other woman says, "There's a huge trust between us. We'll tell each other everything." 4) The husband met his real wife online in the first place. 5) His virtual avatar is all about lingerie, nude dancers, and redheads, which is fake wife is but his real wife isn't. 6) He's spending all day in Second Life and ignoring his real wife. Wife's summary: "When it's from six in the morning until two in the morning, that's not a hobby, that's your life." 

Human Nature's view: Leave him. 

Best 'Rapid' software ever!

Best ‘Rapid’ software ever?

Forget ‘Rapid’, this hell-for-leather software must be the quickest and easiest course builder on the market. ‘Rocket Coursebuilder’ promises you full courses on any subject in minutes, yes minutes, with unlimited licences, all for $9.99.

The tool has six software modules, which you can mix and match to create your own courses (classroom and/or e-learning), without any prior knowledge or training. The truly amazing feature is that you need no subject matter experts or expertise, the software does it all. Blend the following components in any order on any subject and, hey presto, you’ll have a corporate classroom training course quicker than Jesus turned water into wine. 

 ‘C’reator

First a quick dose of alliteration. ‘C’ word creator puts the ‘C’ into courseware. The creator selects from a considerable database of ‘c’ words including;  creativity, challenge, commitment, communication, compassion, cooperation, collaboration, curation, connections, culture, conflict, clarity, concise, context, competence, change, chemistry, contribute, critique, compelling, coordination, consultation, community etc. It takes five of these, randomly, and inserts the phrase, ‘The 5 ‘Cs of..............’ In fact, pick any letter, apart from those pesky ones at the end of the alphabet, and’C’reator will define your course structure in seconds.

Shape Sharpener

First step is to choose from the menu of a ‘square, triangle or circle’. Then choose the number of segments and shove in words (preferably starting with the same letter). For hierarchies, it recommends triangles with the important thing at the top and the rubbish category at the bottom. Something like Maslow’s hierarchy of the bleeding obvious is used as an exemplary model. Or there’s the interlocking circle of arrows, always good for the continuous process, because not many people realise that things in life go on and on and on and on and on. The square with four quadrants is also available, as we all know that anything in the world of knowledge and skills can be split into four things with two axes.

Quotator

Zipping up a good quote or two, culled from the quotes database, gives an atmosphere of intellectual seriousness or credibility, especially if it’s by Aristotle, Samuel Johnson or Einstein. Einstein quotes are great, as he never actually said any of them but they have gravitas. For every one of these you’ll need a lighter touch, something by Groucho Marx always goes down well. It needn’t be relevant, just amusing. If you’re talking about the future of anything, there’s quotes from the likes of the IBMs CEO Watson who thought there’d only be the need for five computers in the world (this is a sure-fire winner, as no one is likely to have heard it before). He didn't actually say it - but nobody knows or cares.

Cartoons Cart

You can pull in a cartoon from the Cartoon Cart in seconds. Just type in the level of your audience and subject, and a Dilbert or Doonesbury cartoon, that need only be distantly related to the topic, will pop up. This lightens things up. Everyone loves a cartoon but Peanuts may is deemed too lightweight for all but Leadership courses. Mad, The Far Side and The Simpsons are reserved for techies.

Breakout Builder

To give the illusion of collaboration and, let’s face it, this gets the students do all the work, an online breakout planner is included. Simply pop in a nice open question(s), and this software will split trainees into groups, allow them to vote on a chair online, provide a discussion forum, then the voted chair reports back online (no writing it all on flipcharts and pinning them around the walls with bluetack ruining the walls). Virtual mints and sweets also appear on the centre of the screen. The software then promises to email the results to all participants (one particularly realistic feature is that it doesn’t actually send them anything at all).

Assessinator

The final module deals with assessment and provides multiple choice questions that can be peppered throughout the course (formative assessment) or at the end (summative assessment). It generates multiple choice questions by pulling out stuff from the web, creating questions such as ‘Rank these in order of importance’ or ‘Which of the following is relevant to...’ Even better is the options creator which automatically generates four options; one completely stupid, a couple of likely suspects and the right answer.

Even smarter than all of these six modules is the ‘Happy Sheet Generator’, which tracks the trainees’ mood by getting them to choose from rows of emoticons. These results are then translated into a full report with bar chart graphs, statistics and business impact scores, all of which can be handed over to the CEO - under the heading data analytics.

Did McCain have better learning policies?

Interesting postscript to US election. Turns out McCain had more progressive educational ideas in technology than Obama.

McCain was far more radical and progressive in e-learning. He supported expanding virtual learning by reforming the "Enhancing Education Through Technology Program," with an initial $500 million in current federal funds to build new virtual schools and support the development of online course offerings for students. He said he would allocate $250 million to support states that commit to expanding online education opportunities and proposes offering $250 million to help students pay for online tutors or enrol in virtual schools. On top of this low-income students would be eligible to receive up to $4,000 to enrol in an online course, SAT/ACT prep course, credit recovery or tutoring services offered by a virtual provider. Obama has no policies in this area.

Both voted for and support Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB), with some adjustments, no difference there. Both want to fund more teacher training, get better qualified people teaching and increase more accountability into teaching, no difference there. 

The real difference comes in Obama’s Early childhood education: where he wants to invest $10 billion a year to increase the number of children eligible for Early Head Start, increase access to preschool, and provide affordable and quality child care. He also proposes to increase the child and dependent care tax credit.  It may also surprise some that Obama is a keen supporter for Charter schools that receive funding from sources other than the state and get autonomy in return (same as our Foundation Schools), doubling the funding. This is part of his policy to increase choice for parents on what schools they can send their children to.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Obama fan, but on education his policies seem predictable and a bit limp. For someone who won the election on the back of the smart use of technology he’s really missed a trick here in education and training.

Obama: e-President

Orchestrated not organised

Both candidates used the web for their political campaign but it was Obama who won hands down. This is because he did more than use it, he understood it. Obama did not attempt to simply use it as a censored broadcast channel, he saw that it control was NOT what it was about. He also understood the importance of e-invites and the viral spread of active agents. Online activity now leads to proportional offline campaign effort. This was truly a bottom-up, networking, viral campaign, superbly orchestrated (not organised).

TV is still a major force with hundreds of millions spent by both candidates on advertising (much more by Obama due to his successful fund raising. But print has been left behind. Newspaper circulation is down and they're a poor third in a race for an ever younger audience. Obama understands the changing demographics - younger and more diverse. 

YouTube
YouTube has been a significant media player in this election. 7/16 presidential candidates announced that they were running on YouTube. Old videos of Obama, Biden, Palin and McCain have been unearthed and published. Pro-candidate videos such as Obama Girl got over 10 million hits and the War veteran pro McCain video even more. Then there's spoofs; the Tina Fey SNL appearances and the fake Canadian radio interview with Palin. My favourite is McCain singing 'Bomb Bomb Iran' to a Beach Boys tune. 

To those who complain that some videos have been edited to show their bad side, a good example was the Obama video showing him making a statement about his faith. In fact it was taken out of context and the fuller video was posted, rising above the first in the ratings. What many don't realise is that YouTube works on a flagging system and if viewers flag something, it is taken down. The bottom line is that almost every serious election will have to manage their YouTube and online strategy. This is a good thing as so many more voices have been heard and the candidates have no where to hide. In the end the Obama videos topped 9,000 with 5,000 for McCain.

Facebook

With 2.5 million friends compared to McCain's 624,000, Obama is the clear winner.

MySpace is ObamaSpace

Obama hammered McCain on friends with 860,000 to McCain's 217,000. Only 100 or so comments for McCain but thousands for Obama. Interestingly, McCain's is much more broadcast, whereas Obama's is a call for action and involvement.

Texting

Telephone numbers were collected at rallies and key tests sent to encourage activism and voting. This is being used to get young, especially black, voters, out to vote. A Princeton study showed that this was much cheaper.per vote, than leaflets. Both used texting but Obama started collecting numbers much earlier and in a more sophisticated manner.

iPHONE

There was even an iPHONE app for contacting people and getting them to contact and ancourage others to get involved and vote!

Twitter topped by Obama

Both candidates had Twitter sites, but the Obama one was taken seriously. McCain's was an afterthought with Obama posts running at three times those of McCain, which stopped suddenly on October 24th. Around 100, 000 were following Obama's Twitter and about 5,000 for McCain. And remember that his democratic nomination was announced on Twitter BEFORE he announced it in person.

Games

There are even reports of in-game advertising.

mybarackobama.com

But it has been the Obama web campaign that has changed US elections forever. Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, helped build the site. It has been groundbreaking. It was here that 280,000 people registered accounts and went on to form 6,500 volunteer groups organising 13,000 offline events. It also became a source of policy ideas, with over 15,000 submitted. 

Online money

Obama had 3 million donors who gave $6 milion, with the founder of Fcaebook chipping in. Compare that with $84 million for McCain. Then there's the 370,000 donations, all under $25. Other personal sites raised $1.5 million. Obama's web fund raising has been a first, and massively successful. I wonder if the first US president would have got there without the web?

On policy Obama has proposed the idea of a National CTO to orchestrate the Government's approach to technology and supports network neutrality (good man). 

In any case, I suspect that most people around the world will wake up tomorrow feeling a lot more hopeful after an Obama victory, some may even have a lump in their throat and a tear in their eye. GO OBAMA!

Conferences – jumped up classrooms?

Conferences are mirror images of the classroom. By and large people turn up to be spoon-fed by sages on the stage talking at them, with the occasional opportunity to ask questions. It has one, and only one, advantage over the classroom - scale.

It’s a lazy approach to learning made even more inefficient by the fact that even learning professionals often fail to take notes. This makes it a forgetting experience. The best one can hope for, as a speaker, is to affect some emotional or attitudinal shift. And when people get back to the ranch they rarely write up their findings and distribute them across the organisation. If one were to truly apply a ROI justification for conference attendance, few would be able to look you in the eye.

10 suggestions

So here are 10 off-the-cuff suggestions for sticking some rhubarb up the backsides of these events:

1.       Stop handing out those black, canvas bags that just get dumped – save embarrassment and the planet2.       No name badges – encourages more random networking
3.       Get all speakers to introduce themselves and their talk to all (one minute each) as the very first event
4.       Cut the crap catering – be imaginative with the food
5.       Limit number of PPT slides – maximum of seven, ten at tops
6.       Cut the corporate crud –don’t tell us about how wonderful your organisation is
7.       Smack down sessions between opposing views – more contention
8.       Force audience participation with debate and discussion (not break-out groups)
9.       Tear up the happy sheets – disturb and disrupt people, make them reflective, even angry, not happy
10.   Two feet rule – if you don’t like it leave – this should be encouraged – keep doors open

Handheld chutzpah

I listed these on the train coming back from chairing the Virtual Worlds session at Handheld Learning in London recently, organised by my old mate Graham Brown Martin, as it was refreshing to be at a conference with a difference. Graham has worked in the music industry and brought some of his chutzpah to bear on the event (unlike the exponents of Edupunk who seem to think that slapping a punk track beneath some images makes them interesting).

Of course he had complaints from the old guard who like their traditional fare. Sure you had to write your own name badge and it was a little anarchic at times, and there were a touch too many people living on fat grants on projects that were clearly going nowhere, but that was the whole point. I loved the coloured, Glastonbury wristbands for entry, the bowls of bangers and mash (none of those crap triangular sandwiches and breaded things) and the speakers. Graham is well connected and he had some impressive sponsorship and speakers.

Revolt is in the air

I’ve blogged on the SXSW conference where the audience revolted by taking off articles of clothing every time a ‘social media’ was mentioned. The audience were so incensed at the boredom of Mark Gutenberg’s interview (he of Facebook – and the most boring billionaire on the planet) that they simply grabbed the microphones and started shooting questions themselves.

Time for some fizz

You need only see the audiences mid-afternoon, struggling to stay awake, to realise that something is amiss. There are some great conference organisers out there, specifically Donald Taylor (Learning Technologies) and Rebecca Stromeyer (Online Educa). The problem they have is the same problem that the learning community has, the conservative expectations of their customers. I’m not suggesting that we swing wildly into wholly, participant-driven events, unconferences, where the whole event takes shape as it progresses. They’re rather good actually, but the UK is far too socially reserved for such events to work. What I’d like to see is some added fizz.

Do bullies have low self-esteem or a surplus of esteem & narcissism? Why I changed my mind

It's always satisfying to read something that makes you turn one of your views on its head. A good example is the Scientific American article 'Violent Pride' (2008), where the traditional attitude towards bullies and violent young men was truly trounced. My memories of school are not good. Two tough, often violent, Scottish, secondary schools where few went on to Higher Education. As a bookish sort of kid, my day started with anxiety, and was puntuated by breaks and lunchtime, which I dreaded, when predators would be on the prowl. I'd like to say that the classrooms were safe refuges but back then there were a couple of teachers with leather straps, who literally broke the blood vessels in my wrist with the 'tawse', a thick, two-tongued leather strap. The first time this happpened was when I was 5 minutes late for school - the bus was late, not my fault - didn't matter. A straight six. I'm still burning with the injustice of that incident. In any case, I had many years of witnessing the problem I'm about to describe.

Low self-esteem theory

The traditional view in schools and social work, is that problematic, and often violent bullies, suffer from low self esteem.  When Roy Bauermeister looked for research to support this view, he found zilch. Not content with this, he went on to complete a thorough set of research projects to see if his hypothesis, that they have an overabundance of esteem, even narcissism, was true.

Bullies have high self-esteem

What he found was shocking. Far from having LOW self-esteem, they were egoistical with grandiose views of themselves. Their inflated sense of self-importance meant that, when threatened, or perceived to have been threatened, they turned to violence. Their research were confirmed when they extended their studies to prisoners, where murderers and violent offenders, on the whole had high scores on self-esteem studies. Alcohol often acted as a trigger as it boosted their esteem. In a series of clever trials he showed that threatened egoists and narcissists were the norm in bullying and violent behaviour, not threatened low self-esteem.

Tough on outside, weak inside?

But couldn't it be that their low self-esteem is just hidden, deep inside? This was the vorthodox view, on the back of the feudian paradigm, where unconscious drives lurked benetha every act. The research here was also clear. Those who have studied violence, from playground bullies to gang culture, have found no evidence of hidden low self-esteem. "In contrast to a fairly common assumption among psychologists and psychiatrists, we have found no indicators that the aggressive bullies are anxious and insecure under a tough surface".

Dangerous consequences

Two thirds of teachers have experienced bullying, one in four pupils and similar numbers in the workplace. The danger that lurks in many schools and institutions is that staff are encouraged to boost already bloated egos in the mistaken belief that they have low self-esteem. This is to inflate already overblown egos to become larger and more dangerous. Praise, in other words, needs to be tied to actual behaviour and performance, not dispensed freely. Could it be that our schools have become more dangerous because the bullies have been inadvertently molly-coddled?

Computer games - astounding improvements in numeracy

Here's to you Mr Robertson

Brain Training did more for e-learning than any government campaign or product. It took e-learning mainstream.

The wonderful Derek Robertson has been using this sort of stuff in schools for ages but we now have an excellent piece of research from Learning and Teaching Scotland.

Trial:

• 600 pupils from 32 schools
  
• 20 minutes at start of class for nine weeks
  
• control group did normal class stuff
  
• pupils tested at start and end of study

Brain Training group:

• 50% better test scores than control!
  
• 13.5 minutes to do test, control 18.5 minutes
  
• more improvement in less able kids
  
• no difference between boys and girls
  
• reduced absences
  
• reduced lateness
  

These results are outstanding. If replicable, they have huge implications in terms of a potential solution for our low numeracy standards.

While Derek is wrong in claiming that this is the, 'first independent, academic evidence that this type of computer game could improve attainment when used in an educational context', it's a damn fine piece of work.

Get these things into primary schools now! Better still, simply encourage parents to buy them for their kids. Perhaps we can see the politicians and educational establishment stop whinging about poor numeracy and doing something simple to solve the problem.

Edupunk - more ponytails than punk

It has its own Wikipedia page, and bloggers have been punking it up, but as a movement it’s more ‘dippy-hippy’ than’ punk’.

Armchair anarchists

I’m all for punking up conference presentations and learning experiences. But when grey-haired teachers take on these terms, they’d better look at themselves first. This so-called punky attitude is coming from well paid teachers and academics, in the comfortable context of largely tired old institutions. If they want to peddle punk then do what punks did – free themselves from the cosiness of the establishment. Why don’t they do this? Because they ARE the establishment. Stephen Downes offers up Alice Cooper’s School’s Out as the Edupunk anthem. OK, then get out of school. Armchair anarchists are ten-a-penny, and when they get on a bit, tend to mistake punk for ponytails. Worst example: Johnny Rotten doing Butter ads on TV. What a rotter!

Use, don’t abuse, technology

It’s merely a bit of a rant by old teachers who are fed up with the job or having to use Blackboard, and want a little bit of excitement in their lives.  In other words, it’s all about teachers, not learners. If they were really interested in punking up education and training, they’d use, not abuse, technology. The punkier side of learning is all YouTube, Facebook, games, gadgets and fringe technology. To drag learning back into the classroom with anti-technology rhetoric is simply a backward step. School ain’t punk. Staffrooms ain’t punk. Teaching ain’t punk. Teachers ain’t punk.

Dancing dads

As my two fourteen year old keep reminding me – there’s nothing sadder than 40 and 50 year old teachers high-fiving the kids. Let’s leave it to the young turks who are already punking it up, independently of the dancing dads. The Edupunk video typical. After a confusing montage, to the Ian Brown’s superb Keep What Ya Got, Martin Weller of the OU narrates, perhaps the most boring video I’ve ever seen. Martin wants to ‘turn us all into Broadcasters’ – then trots out a series of obvious and ordinary  ideas, such as using YouTube videos, chat, podcasts and so on. This is more Edujunk than Edupunk.

I’m now off to work up my next big idea – education with a groove – Edufunk.