Armando Pisani: the pioneer who holds the key to immediate increases in school attainment?

Want immediate improvements in student attainment in schools, especially in maths? Listen to this guy. He’s a pioneer. Armando Pisani is unique. Why? He is a high school teacher who teaches 14-18 year olds in maths and physics and is unique in that he records all of his lessons on video for later use by students. He is also unique in that his academic background is in data analysis, so he has gathered a great deal of useful data on his work in his school. If his data is correct, and I think it is, he could be the catalyst for a huge increase in productivity in schools across Europe. The following is the result of a structured interview I did with Armando in Trieste.

What are the advantages of recording lessons?

To learn efficiently and deeply, students need to be able to “review, not miss things through inattention, being distracted, illness, student absence, teacher absence or  language difficulties – some students have other languages as their mother tongue”. The lack of “supply teacher availability is also a problem”. Recorded lessons give the students the ability to “catch-up and cover work not covered in a teacher’s absence”.

What data did you gather?

The survey data is outstanding, with evidence on how much was watched, when it is watched, how it is watched and the resulting rise in attainment. Another fascinating side to the data is the acceptance of the method by parents.

First the results...

Black no lectures  Red watched lectures

What percentage of students use recorded lectures?

 Do you think the lectures give you good help and support?

How much time do you spend watching the lectures?

Do you watch lectures in your normal study time or spare time?

Would you recommend the use of lectures to other students and friends?

What device do you use to watch the lectures?

Would you suggest that parents watch the lectures online?

Parents - have you seen the online lectures?

Parents - are you in favour of online lectures?

Parents - do you think online lectures help your child to study?

What are your views on homework?

He is appalled that some teachers and schools consider dropping homework. “Spain’s plans to drop homework nationally is crazy”. The “Italian word for homework is ‘Compiti’ with its root in the idea that you’re closing a gap in your knowledge”. Homework, he thinks, is an essential part of the learning process, the place where one gets reflection, gap-closing, deeper understanding and practice.

Has recording lessons affected student behaviour?

“Students appreciate the effort you make to record your lessons and moderate their behaviour” he claims. “As every teacher knows students get bored and often do ask to go to bathroom. When I’m recording, they never ask to go out of the bathroom.” Other changes in behaviour include, “less disruption, more questions asked by students, staying afterwards to ask questions”. After recording 182 lessons, he “can’t think of one incident where a student disturbed the lesson”. In some cases, “they are keen to know about the content of the next lecture”.

What about parent behaviour?

In Italy there is a strong family tradition and education “must involve family – school is part of that family”. That is reflected in parent involvement in schooling, with four meetings a year, “the first to meet and get to know the teachers and vice-versa, especially in the first year but also to show parents the school’s plans and activities. Subsequent meetings are for progress and to solve problems and misunderstandings”.

More than this Armando sees parents as a key driver in the use of his recorded lessons. Parents “like to see what students do during lessons” and some parents “loved the subjects when they were at school”. “I had assumed parents like it (recorded lessons) less than students but the opposite is true”. He thinks this is because parents they tend to think of it as “learning, students as  a task or work”.

What is the technical set-up?

I have given lectures at the highly innovative International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste (they built the 800 euro hardware) for three years and this is one of the best presentations I’ve seen there. He uses ICTPs EyA system at a total, all-in cost of 800 Euros. “I do this on my own, with no help – it’s easy”. With no more than a 5 minute set-up he can record his lessons, including questions from students, although they are left out of shot for privacy reasons.

Conclusion

Having been involved in technology based learning for 30 years I am not easily impressed but Armando impressed me greatly. First, he is obviously a great teacher but more than this he wants, and this is his great strength, to turn his students into more independent learners. He really does understand the idea that teaching is really about motivating learners and giving them repeated access to good content.

PS
A fuller version of the study is to be found here in the European Journal of Open, Distance and E-learning. Armando is well aware of the limitations of the study in terms of sample size, especially when comparing students who don't use the lectures with those that do. However, he is convinced that the poorer students tend to get more out of his lectures, He is keen to move on to the next stage of his research. It would be great if this were done in the UK.

Sceptics & social media: 5 stages of grief

I’ve long been an observer of the way newspaper, radio and TV journalists have dealt with social media. Many simply snipe away. We’ve heard the weary tones of TV pundits who have been forced by their Producers to refer to their web page or Twitter accounts at the end of the programme. Others can’t wait to find a story that confirms their deep prejudice against any form of mass communication that doesn’t involve them. This week, the press have discovered the word ‘troll’ and there’s no end of attacks on Twitter from people who probably had to look up the word on Wikipedia.

TV, radio and newspapers have been full of this over reaction this week. To take just one example, the normally rational Simon Jenkins, in the Guardian, describes Twitter as “a harmless pastime for show-offs and voyeurs…the crack cocaine for the commentariat”. NO matter that journalists regularly use Twitter to get more reach for their work. No matter that many Guardian columnists now read like second rate bloggers. No matter that the newspaper industry is only just recovering from phone hacking practices that make the occasional troll seem like a choir boy. Journalists are keen to punish trolls but less keen to punish their own.

What is missing here is good ‘journalism’. Few discuss the detail around the protections that existing laws provide, whether it be harassment, confidentiality or libel. Few actually know anything about the procedures which Twitter and Facebook have in place to deal with extreme transgressions. Few bother to even find out.

Five stages of grief

It struck me that there’s some merit in applying Kubler-Ross’s ‘five stages of grief’ to their behaviour in facing up to the realities of contemporary mass communication and journalism.

Denial: Work of the devil. I’ll have nothing to do with it. Most journalists completely ignored the presence of social media, even when millions were using it and it was feeding images and reports into mainstream media.

Anger: Snipe and sneer whenever it’s mentioned. Suddenly, they were no longer silent but openly resentful and hostile on TV, radio and in print, with the usual ill-informed remarks about media they had never used and barely understood.

Depression: Why don’t they want me any more? Panic then sets in as they realise that newspaper circulation is heading towards disaster. They are in danger of missing out on a means of communication they need to both ‘pull from’ and ‘push to’, as a valuable source for stories but also dissemination of their work.

Bargaining: Maybe I’ll give it a try…  Then it literally clicks. This stuff is here to stay. They take a couple of baby steps and find out that it’s easy to use but do so irregularly and clumsily, with more than a tinge of residual scepticism.

Acceptance: Know how many ‘followers’ I have? Suddenly, they realise it enhances their reach, reputation and personal brand, and jump gleefully on to the bandwagon. Then you can’t stop them.

Flip media

But something else has happened, a sixth phase, which I’d call the ‘flip’. This is when traditional media relies so much on social media as a source – Tweets, Youtube, mobile cameras etc .that it resorts to simply telling people what they already know.

I liken this to two tectonic plates colliding. As the new online media plate crashes into the old offline media plate, the old plate starts to be pushed down and as it is submerged, it sends out lots of tremors, earthquakes, even volcanic explosions. Arguments erupt, as the old world tries to deal with the new reality. Calls are made for more censorship, arrests, jail sentences – even torture (Manning) prosecution and persecution (Assange). It’s the wretched acts of a defeated army in retreat.

Conclusion

There is something inevitable about all this. Technology is always ahead of the sociology. What matters is that the early adopters and people with some foresight ignore the naysayers and get on with their blogging, contributions to Wikipedia, YouTube uploads, Facebook posting, Tweets, whatever, and ignore the sceptics.

Wikipedia Zero – mobile as lifeline to learning

It jars when I hear people say online learning isn’t used. Don’t you use Google, Wikipedia and lots of other online services to learn? I know you do, because the stats are overwhelming. In fact billions use online learning, daily.

Increasingly, this is done through mobiles. Compare the 6 billion mobile subscriptions in the world to the 600 million broadband connections. We’re close to seeing mobile as the most ubiquitous piece of personal technology ever, and it’s the developing world that’s experiencing the fastest growth. Check out this table which shows the countries with the highest mobile access to Wikipedia.

Nevertheless, in the developing world, where mobiles have become massive, internet connectivity is scarce and expensive, tariffs remain a problem. Here the mobile is often the only means of accessing the internet. A mobile is a godsend to someone who is poor, often their only link to erratic employment opportunities, services and money management. Yet access to learning is hampered by cost. Call and data time is precious and used carefully and sparingly.

Zero tariffs

An idea that has been around for some time is now getting real traction – zero tariffs for education on mobiles. Simple, but it opens up knowledge and educational opportunities to billions who do not have easy access to books, libraries, schools and learning. As Eric Schmitd says in his new book The Digital Age (a largely tedious tomb) in the developing world the mobile phone is often the only “lifeline to learning”. I first heard of the Zero tariff some years ago in relation to Dr Maths, in South Africa. Started in 2007, it grew rapidly, and unexpectedly to thousands of users.  Maths tutoring is delivered, largely through MXit. Tutors, from anywhere in the world, help students with questions and homework. It uses text messaging. Interestingly, when they faced the problem of scalability (tutors are the scarce resource) they upgraded the architecture so that content could be created to produce ‘bots’ or automated replies, reducing the load on live tutors. Geoff Stead also points out that it has happened even in the developed world, with free SMS messages for TextForBaby in the US, a mother and child healthcare service. 

Wikipedia Zero

But the big news is Wikipedia Zero, now available to an astonishing 470 million subscribers in Africa, India, Eastern Europe and the Far East. Of the 25 countries that have the highest rate of mobile traffic on Wikipedia, the top eight are in Africa and an astonishing 22 are in the developing world. Wikipedia Zero is also now available in India to 60 million subscribers (through Aircel). Note that in India, mobile penetration in India is over 70 % at 867 million subscribers, compared to only 77 million people with access to the internet (Comscore, June 2013). This move is born of necessity as the context has turned the developed world’s model on its head. Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and many other countries are on board.

Local languages

An interesting side effect is the stimulation of language versions of Wikipedia. To be really useful Wikipedia must be translated into local languages. This statistic says it all;  Hindi Wikipedia, has 22.1 % of page views globally from mobile, compared to 17.3% for ALL other languages. Wikipedia Zero, I suspect, will accelerate translation into many other languages.

Win-win

Even on a purely commercial basis, I see this as a win-win situation; learners getting free services and telcos increased reputation, reach and market edge. Like Google and Facebook, learners get a valuable service for free, the companies increase their brand capital and deliver adjunct services.

Conclusion

Wikipedia came out of the blue to become a consistent top ten website, showing that there is a massive thirst for online knowledge. What was even more astonishing was that it was crowdsourced, for free. No one saw that coming. Now we have the opportunity to extend free production to free distribution on powerful, portable and personal devices that have become ubiquitous in the developing world. If that doesn’t make your heart leap with hope and optimism, what will.

Good, bad and ugly: 7 critics of social media

I’m of an age (56) where lots of my contemporaries show contempt towards social media. It’s rarely a reasoned argument, simply a sneer accompanied by a ‘I’m too good for that sort of thing’ attitude. Euan Semple made the valid point on Facebook that “Not being attracted to the social web is OK but adopting a sneering tone when you tell me that, frankly, isn’t.” and that it’s not easy dealing with the criticism as the debate as it’s very difficult arguing the case for something your opponent has never used or has no real knowledge of.

1. Know nothing critics

Unfortunately, the most common are those who simply scoff and start with something like “Why would I want to know that someone is having a cup of tea…” Barely a week goes by without me experiencing this type of criticism. They haven’t used social media but assume they’re experts on the subject, pull the ‘ugly’ face and sneer as the rest of us. It’s a sort of superior attitude usually accompanied by simplistic, ill-informed views of how social media is actually created and used. All of those Wikipedia articles you’ve used, they were crowdsourced. Ever watched a YouTube video, someone made that and uploaded it.

2. Know a little critics

A little learning is a dangerous thing and some use one aspect of, say facebook, but have no idea that the tool also includes messaging, apps and other functionality. It’s like someone who thinks a car is only useful for social visits to friends and relatives. NO - you can also use a car to get to work, do work, engage in poltics, visit interesting places, go on holiday and so on. Social media for many people, replaces email, voice calls and txting and the sheer range of social media options means that it has many different functions.

3. Lurkers

First, it’s OK to lurk. Some of you reading this sentence will be lurkers, indeed the evidence suggests that in many social media, and media sharing services with a social dimension, the great majority of users are lurkers, who rarely if ever post or comment. What is odd is when the lurkers turn into critics. They take out a lot, but only give back criticism, sharing is a mystery to them.

4. Hypocrites

Let me give you an example.  Pew surveyed 2,462 middle and high school teachers and found that , when it comes to Wikipedia; 1) Teachers recommend that students do not use it, warning them that its accuracy can’t be trusted, but 2)  Teachers overwhelmingly use it themselves for research and preparation. In fact, they use it “at much higher rates than U.S. adult internet users as a whole (87% vs. 53%), Pew also found that Wikipedia reliance “does not vary across teachers of different subjects, grade levels, or community types,” and only varies ever so slightly by age, with 90% of the youngest teachers using it versus 85% of those 55 and older. This is ugly. http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Teachers-and-technology.aspx

5. Know but don’t engage

Some don’t do social media because they simply don’t want to or don’t have the time. That’s fine. This is good. These critics I like. It’s OK not to engage in social media in the same way that it’s OK not to engage in lots of social events, go to the cinema, theatre, football, cricket or music festivals. It’s not for everyone. These people don’t moan and whinge about social media, it’s just not part of their lives. In fact I rather resent the social media Taliban, who insist on everyone being online and everyone needing to be highly ‘social’.

6. Privacy (weak)

Some don’t like to put their neck out and have their lives out there for others to see. This is good, as long as it doesn’t tip over into criticising others for being more social, taking risks and enjoying the range of social, professional and interesting interactions that social media brings. I’ll come to a theory on this later.

7. Privacy (strong)

A stronger argument is the species of critic who values their privacy and has suspicions about government, big business and other shady institutions knowing what they’re up to. I respect this position and think that for some, it is a valid argument. Julian Assange, for example, never uses Facebook for that reason. Given recent revelations, the US government is clearly not to be trusted on the matter. However, I think it’s exaggerated. What exactly in your life do you think they can use against you?

Characteristics of critics

Here’s an observation, not based on any research that I know of, merely a hypothesis. I have noticed two specific characteristic that distinguishes enthusiastic users of social media, from sceptics and critics; 1) personality type and 2) risk taking.

1) Introversion and extroversion. On the whole, the people I know who are extroverts are enthusiastic users of social media, introverts tend to be non-participants or critics (3 good, 2 bad, 2 ugly). This is not a criticism, merely an observation, and it perhaps reflects a general attitude towards networking and social activity by extroverts and introverts both online and offline. This is reflected in my full acceptance of non-participants and the privacy stance (weak and strong). The downside of extrovert dominance is the tendency for people to present their ideal lives online. There’s a lot of showboating that masquerades as sharing.

2) Risk taking. For me, this is a more interesting issue, as I suspect that much of the criticism of social media comes from an intrinsic fear of taking risks that expresses itself as derision. Nervousness often expresses itself as scepticism and scorn. On the whole, the risk takers I know, in business and life, tend to be users of social media, or at least willing to give it a try. Good risk takers are also able to distinguish between good and bad risks, that’s why I respect those who are wary on the grounds of privacy.

Social media Taliban

After all I’ve said above it may surprise you that I don’t follow the groupthink view that we should strive to get everyone online. I’m a libertarian at heart, and for me going online and using social media is a matter of choice. I have little time for spending huge sums of money on this form of mock inclusion. Make it cheap and compelling and they will come. I can remember when print and TV journalists constantly sneered at social media and the web, now they all have their blogs and Twitter accounts. The numbers speak for themselves.

Neither am I a social constructivist and therefore keen on those who see all learning as social and ‘connectivism’ as a valid ‘theory’ of learning. I spend relatively little time, for example, in MOOCs on forums, and don’t much like the diffuse chat that passes for learning or training sessions where round tables construct flipchart pages blue-tacked to the walls. On the other hand I see social media as an invaluable part of my life and learning.

Conclusion

Having used social media since its inception and blogged, facebooked and tweeted for many years, I’ve come across a large number of critics. I respect those who simply opt out as well as those who don’t participate on grounds of privacy (weak and strong). That’s three of my categories. On the other hand, I resent those who simply sneer and/or don’t have any real knowledge of these media in terms of their functionality, actual use and potential. I’m also impatient with the hypocrisy behind lurkers who sneer, and duplicitous hypocrites who condemn but use it at the same time. Stay clear or share, don’t just take or sneer.

Cambodia: what do you do when all teachers are killed?

Teachers annihilated

Cambodia all but wiped out its teachers in the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge genocide. In a curious twist of fate, many of the senior cadres and architects of the revolution had been teachers and many of prisons were former schools, including the notorious S21 in Phnom Phen. Think of it –being a teacher would most likely get you killed. Think of the problems they’ve faced after this holocaust; no schools, no books, no professional teachers, no cultural capital around teaching and a generation of people left illiterate. The numbers are shocking. Soviet sources state that 90% of all teachers were killed by the Khmer Rouge. Only 50 of the 725 university instructors, 207 of the 2,300 secondary school teachers, and 2,717 of the 21,311 primary school teachers survived

The Khmer Rouge took away the very things the people held dear; family, religion and work. Children were separated from parents, husbands from wives. Intellectuals, teachers, monks and eventually even city dwellers were seen as the enemy. It was ‘dialectics’ picked up by intellectuals who had studied Marxism in France, taken to surreal extremes. 

This is very recent history (1975-79) and it’s never far from the surface when you’re in Cambodia. My tuk-tuk driver’s head hung low when he told me that both his older brother and father had been killed at that time. It was the saddest and most poignant moment of my whole trip. This is still a country of graves and landmines, and seeing people daily with missing limbs is a blunt reminder. Landmines are an evil and make no mistake, if you sell them, you should hang your head in shame, as you’re part of that evil.

I’ve reported from schools in Africa, China and the Middle East and always try to get a feel for education on the ground when I travel but this was different. We’re talking ‘Year ZERO’ here. Let me tell you one anecdote. A teacher I met in Cambodia told me of a parent who didn’t want to send her daughter to school “as they’ll all (teachers) be killed some time”. However, this is rare. Cambodia and Cambodian parents are now almost obsessive about education, partly because they’ve been through so much.

Meet Sue

I met Sue in Siem Reap market where she was buying a few dozen pirated DVDs. In her seventies, she’s worked in rural Cambodia for the last three years. This polite woman from the Isle of Wight came here on holiday and decided to devote the rest of her life to teaching the rural poor. As she said, “When I’m gone, I just want to make sure I’ve left a legacy that works”. After losing her money on an ill-fated attempt to buy land for a school, she persevered and the local MP has given her some land. The main problem here is that it is difficult for foreigners to buy land (understandable for other reasons) and the difficulty in erecting permanent school buildings (NGOs often have to build collapsible structures). She’s here for good and clearly loves the children, people and Cambodia. “I’ve learnt a lot about life since I’ve been here” she said, a lovely role reversed line from a dedicated teacher.

Sue’s scalable technology

Sue has a computer and dongle which she uses for email and to keep in touch back home but when it comes to technology in her school, she was smart. The reason she was buying so many bootleg DVDs was that she wanted to expand her children’s knowledge of English. English is the aspirational language here, as it is everywhere else I travel. She’s also careful to teach them Khmer, as they need to read and write in their own language to progress at school. So she gives them a treat every Saturday, which is ‘movie night’. She has a TV but is after a projector, as she wants to show movies to 100 people at a time. Her rationale is that this is scalable solution taps into their natural motivation to learn English, but expands their knowledge, cultural and linguistic, in all sorts of ways. Instinctively practical, she knows that the choke point is the limited sockets and electricity. This is smart thinking.

Another issue is cultural context. Although these are western movies, she had lots of David Attenborough and National geographic stuff! She explained that displays of affection, even kissing on screen, can be seen as shameful, so she carefully views and selects the programmes she shows.

All in all, she was building a sustainable, scalable solution by fitting the technology to her scant resources with a fair amount of cultural sensitivity. This is exactly what I presented at Online Africa, and why I’m so critical of many of Sugata Mitra and Negroponte’s ‘parachute projects’. Innovation should not trump sustainability. Innovation is only innovation when it’s sustainable.

Monk and me teaching

While poking around in a Buddhist monastery, I had a second illuminating experience. No, not religious enlightenment. I came across a monk, who was teaching English. His kids were not monks but local children, many who had been sent here by their parents. He invited me into the classroom, which had no walls, a dirt floor and I did a little teaching. The roof was less than 6’ and I’m 6’4” which led to some hilarity, as I had to cock my head to one side. They were a lovely and lively bunch, keen to chat and ask questions. They continued talking to me after the class, keen to extract as much ‘English’ practice as they could. The sad thing was the awful national textbook they were using, written, it seems, with the intent to prevent you learning English, an awful, grammar-laden affair full of sentences, no real English speaker would ever utter. It made me aware of the fact that some schools may be doing little to actually teach English, just going through the motions.

Then a shock. In a room next to the open classroom was a row of computer screens all still wrapped in the plastic they had arrived in, covered in dust. They had never been used as they lacked sockets and electricity. Once again, my point about sustainability was confirmed.

They had been kindly donated but no one had really thought about the support resources and how they would be used. Interestingly, as I was doing my bit in the classroom, one kid’s mobile went off. Like kids everywhere, they love their mobiles. Everywhere I went, cheap mobiles were being used to text, make calls and listen to music.

Informal learning

In practice, most people learn their language skills in work. This is important. Time and time again I met young people who had really learnt English on the job. Necessity is the mother of language learning. Even very young kids were picking up languages through selling. This tiny 5 year-old could count to twenty in three languages and challenged me to a game of tic-tac - for money! She wasn’t in school but she was as smart as a squirrel.

In my hotel, this young girl, a waitress, was allowed to use the computers when she had finished her work and no guests were around. She was doing lots of useful things. I watched her use Google earth to view Angkor Wat, Facebook and message away. She was constantly reading, writing and picking up IT skills useful for her future work prospects. E-learning, in Khmer, to learn English and other practical, vocational skills, would be a godsend.

Schooling not enough

In speaking to young Cambodians, it became clear that some learnt a little English in schools, but not much. There are real problems with the quality of teaching, materials and lack of teachers. Teacher attendance in state schools was also appalling in some areas. Sue had been to schools where the kids were there and were getting on with learning but the teacher hadn’t bothered to turn up! To be fair the salaries are between $20-50 a month. Many teachers have themselves, failed to finish their secondary education, teacher training is poor and some need to work to supplement their salary.

English is their passport to further education, work and prosperity. Tourism is growing at an astonishing 25% a year, and I can see why. Angkor Wat is a dream cultural destination but the country still has that laid back feel, with good food, cheap accommodation and charming people. What these people need is some formal learning, in basic English, then support in a vocational context. An interesting addendum was Sue’s comment that she was looking for a good local person who could also teach Chinese, as this was the big growth area in visitor numbers.

Conclusion

So what did I learn from this? First, Cambodia has much to teach us, as the madness of killing teachers has not gone from our modern world. I had to cancel a trip to central Nigeria twice this year because of the threat from Boko Haram (translation: Western Education is bad) and in some areas of the Islamic world, education is war, with teachers and even pupils being targeted by religious zealots.

Second, Cambodia certainly needs more good teachers and schools but it has recognised that vocational training needs to be its main focus. Sure it has Universities, all private, with fees at $360 for the first year and $400 thereafter but they’re all in the cities, so travel and accommodation expenses are a problem. The quality is low and there’s the usual aloofness and lack of alignment and relevance. But the main focus is, rightly, on the idea that people need to 'learn to earn'.

Third, what I witnessed was ‘schooling for the sake of schooling’. The English textbook was ridiculous, teaching hampered by a lack of training, irrelevant tests and so people were in classrooms going through the motions. What these countries really need is not more ‘schooling’ but better ‘teaching and learning’. They need curriculum reform, teacher training and a reboot of the system. I saw lots of great work done by volunteers like Sue but the sheer scale of the problem, means that a radical shift is required. The good news is that young Cambodians are getting on and doing it for themselves. This is a young and vibrant population in a country of micro-businesses. The problem seems to be the age-old politicians, corruption and their lack of vision.

MOOCSs: 20 ways to monetise

MOOCs aren’t all about money but when it comes to their future, money does matter. Calls for the monetisation of MOOCs are reasonable, although a little at odds with the failure in the past to look for the monetisation of Higher Education as a whole. In many ways MOOCs are a response to the ever-rising costs of higher education that has led to record levels of student debt and the worry that defaults may be on the horizon.

No one should deliver a MOOC without considering income but pure ‘monetisation’ is the wrong term, as a MOOC is an activity that needs to be seen in terms of both costs and income over time. So I’ll come at this as if it was both an income and cost issue, namely its impact on your profit & loss account. Note also that an institution could position its financial goal as an investment, aim for break-even or go for profit. Monetisation is ot just about profits.

1. Investment

A MOOC can be seen as a strategic investment by an institution and be paid for straight from its existing budget. The rationale for this can be a number of things that we’ll come to in terms of reducing costs and other revenue streams. For the moment, one could simply fund such an initiative from your teaching, technology or marketing budget. There is also an argument for funding it as research. Interestingly, some institutions clearly see themselves as leading the charge and developing MOOC software for use by others.

2. Not-for-profits

Not-for-profits have been very active in this area. As a Trustee of a major education charity, I have supported a very large charity investment in a single MOOC in the UK. Well known charities in the US have also been very active. Mitra’s million pound TED prize is going towards a MOOC of sorts (school in the cloud) and the WISE $500,00 prize is another possible sources.

3. Government

In many countries this is the primary course of funding and we have already seen government funding go into Futurelearn, via the Open University, in the UK, albeit in a rather opaque fashion. Tapping into government funds to increase access, I’d suggest is a good model for killing two birds with one financial stone, rather than woolly ‘access offices’.

4. Private equity

They have been active in the US, most notably with Udacity and Coursera, but also in other initiatives. These investors take calculates risks and this is one way for the system to hedge its risk.

5. Private donations

Institutions often tap into alumni for donations that go into expensive, and sometimes ill-advised, capital projects, usually buildings named after the donor. An alternative is emerging, where donors contribute towards courses. This is a fine idea, especially if the donor is an interested party, with some background and credibility in the subject.

6. Sponsorship

Google, AT&T and others have been active in sponsoring MOOCs that seem relevant to their mission. There is every reason to see this as a substantial and useful source of revenue. It is common the arts and arts education, so I see no reason as to why it should not be used in education.

7. Students pay

Udemy use this model and with reasonably low costs that attract students who see value for relatively little money. Freemium models may move towards fees for popular and sought after courses or a more n-depth learning experience after a taster.

8. Certification

This is top of the list, as a portion of MOOCers will want certification and be prepared to pay for it, at various levels. Given the large numbers of potential participants, even at a relatively modest price point, this could be lucrative. Remember that, once the fixed, up-front costs have been paid, the on-going cost-per-student are small. Coursera’s Signature Track fees are $30-100.

9. Proctored assessment

Many MOOCs offer online and offline assessment, on a shared revenue basis, with the likes of ProctorU and Pearson VUE. This is an additional high-value proposition that can attract prices greater than that of volume certification.

10. Books/materials

Some MOOCs have already linked the course to compulsory or optional course materials such as existing textbooks but there’s also potential sales from specialised course materials, such as software and equipment.

11. Summer schools

Universities have pitifully low occupancy rates, one reason for their high costs, so offering ‘summer schools’ or other ‘holiday period’ ;earning experiences could be one way to generate income, especially from the intellectually curious, who are less interested in certification. The Open University, in the UK, has been doing this for decades.

12. Recruitment

Recruitment referral (with student’s permission) is an existing revenue stream, especially in IT and other technical MOOCs, where high-end, practical skills are sought from a Global pool. The referral comes, of course with the employers knowledge of what the MOOC delivers and demands of its students.

13. Advertising

Any online delivery that attracts large numbers of eyeballs, can generate advertising revenue. In this case the advertisers know exactly what sort of audience they’re attracting, and as MOOCs develop, this data will become invaluable. It’s not just the number of participants, now in their millions, but the intense amount of times and time they spend on the course.

14. Future indigenous student income

MOOCs aimed at high-school students will increase your chances of getting those students into your institution or at least getting the best of those students.

15. Future overseas students income

Overseas income is a £5 billion industry in theUk and could rise to £16.9 bllion by2025. These have become an essential source of income for many institutions but as countries, especially in India, China and the Far East. develop their own, large, world-class institutions, and visa restrictions bite, revenues may fall. MOOCs have remarkably diverse audiences, with students often coming from every corner of the globe. This must be a way of attracting more students to study and pay fees at your institution.

16. Parents of future students

These are the people who pay top dollar for education and often play a pivotal role in what institutions their children apply to. MOOCs targeted at this audience make perfect sense. It gives the parent a feel for the institution and even the academic(s) teaching there. These are the ‘influencers’ that marketeers love to target.

17. Future alumni contributions

MOOCs are already being targeted at alumni, as in many countries, especially the UK, the vast majority of alumni remain an untapped source of income. This is a way of staying in touch and marketing to alumni in a way that is relevant to both parties, intellectually and not just financial begging.

18. Brand capital

A University sees its staff come and go, its students come and go, its research owned and delivered by publishers and others. The core ‘value’ is in the brand, that’s what endures and has to be built, enhanced and protected. MOOCs undoubtedly enhance brands as they are a form of massive, indirect, online advertising.

19. Reduced capital costs

Universities have now realised, despite all the warnings, that they have been spending far too much money on bricks and not clicks. The race is not now who has the biggest campus packed with the most buildings but the online war for students. To continue with endless capital projects at the expense of MOOCs, and other online initiatives, is simply to load up on-going maintenance and real-estate costs. Just think what one could do if tere were a moratorium on building in Higher Education.

20. Reduced faculty costs

Many faculty don’t like teaching seems – OK I’ve said it – but it’s true. Many yearn for a reduction or freedom from teaching. MOOCs are one way to lessen the load on faculty.  Take some high-volume, undergraduate courses and put them online (or partly online).

Conclusion

I’m pretty sure I’ve missed a few other potential income streams and welcome additional suggestions. I’m also sure there are arguments to be made on costs and income around lower drop-out rates for students that prepare by doing a MOOC. There may even be a way of using ‘access’ funds. Whatever the future for MOOCs, it strikes me that money is not a big problem. The cost-per-student metric shows that MOOCs deliver volume therefore lower costs. This is the scaling up that technology inevitably brings leading to lower delivery costs. It has happened in almost every other area of human endeavour and its about time it happened in education..

African MOOCs: unlocking a billion more brains

“Nothing has more potential to lift more people out of poverty — by providing them an affordable education to get a job or improve in the job they have. Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world’s biggest problems.”

Thomas Friedman NY Times

On this view MOOCs are a godsend for Africa. Free, they have the potential to reach vast audiences who stand no chance of getting anywhere near higher education as we know it in the developed world. On the other hand, as the Namibian President wisely said at E-learning Africa this month, let’s not make the mistake of following an overly academic approach at the expense of Africa’s vocational needs, what he called the 'spectacle of hallucination'. African MOOCs will have to be more relevant to Africa’s vocational needs, such as agriculture, healthcare and entrepreneurship. A third view, is that Africa needs to produce as well as consume MOOCs. Absolutely. 

The bottom line is that the simple idea of making and making use of relevant courses, made free (or cheap) and accessible to millions of young Africans, is as good an example as any of Africa leapfrogging a Western Higher Education system that has proved slow, cumbersome and far too expensive. The last thing Africa needs are $20-$40,000 per year undergraduate courses.

Africamooc

‘Africamooc’ is alive and kicking, aggregating and hosting MOOCs. Jens Schneider, a wonderfully enthusiastic Namibian says, “If your course is free, we host for free”. This is a useful service as Jens understands the real needs and contexts in which MOOCs could be used in Africa. Aggregation and reuse is a start, a good start.

Entrepreneurship MOOCs

An example of a relevant vocational MOOC is Jim Vetter’s LIFE, a not-for-profit funded MOOC for entrepreneurs from all over the world, with many in Africa. He uses a MOOC to develop small businesses, especially tech businesses. Lessons learnt? Use a pedagogy for a range of literacies, make it multilingual and make content available on  a range of devices. He also uses learners to help develop content, as they know a lot about troubleshooting in their own, local environments. Stories are important, as are JOLTs (just in time learning tools). What was needed were practical, skills around start-up costs, fixed costs, variable costs, profit & loss, cash flow and so on. For this he uses free, open source spread-sheets with P &Ls etc. He delivers in English and Spanish, and soon in French and Arabic. This is important as 202 countries have logged in so far and it is widely used throughout Africa. I also likes his free ‘facilitator guide’ downloadable from the site.

Tanzanian IT MOOCs

Even more relevant to African needs is the World Bank funded Coursera initiative to provide market-relevant IT skills in Tanzania, where jobs are going unfilled due to lack of relevant IT skills. Tanzania’s problem is not unusual in Africa where talented students go abroad to study, leaving the country bereft of high-end skills. They hope to match IT MOOCs to local employment needs by involving stakeholders such as local IT lecturers, businesses and entrepreneurs. This is promising as it pays attention to local culture and context.

African perspective on MOOCs

What’s now needed are a few home grown MOOCs from African institutions. They need not be universities. Gertjan van Stam has spent a long time in deep, rural Africa, in Zimbabwe and Zambia, and has some revealing insights into MOOCs in Africa. The African perspective on MOOCs, he feels, should be different. Take the rural or traditional African perspective on the subject and you see things through different eyes. 71% in his village use the internet for education in deep rural villages. In his village role models emerged, such as the woman who went online to get a Degree in Divinity and became an important member of the clergy. His children use Khan and BBC Bitesize for maths, His wife, a doctor, is doing a MOOC on mobile health. Most education not accessible to the poor, so MOOCs are a real educational opportunity.

However, he says that Africa must transmit and not just consume MOOCs. There’s a real need for MOOCs in indigenous languages, sensitive to Africa’s oral tradition.  Content in just western languages is hampering progress. Even worse, it may strengthen colonial thought. He wants MOOCs ‘contextualised for Africa’ and sees them as an opportunity to ‘send an African knowledge to the world’. What does this mean? Ubunto – ‘my humanity is linked to your humanity’, Orality - used extensively in Africa, where instant discourse influences everything. He’d like to see MOOCs provide more long-term educational content that ‘withstands rampant individualism’, especially in the Africa where the short-term is unpredictable. This is fascinating and opens up the possibility for MOOCs that are far more oral, immediate and useful than using or repackaged western courses.

Conclusion

When these people presented their visions for African MOOCs, it was disappointing to hear predictable responses about drop-outs, certification and quibbles about the history of MOOCs. This is to apply old narrow narratives to something entirely new and disruptive. This was in stark contrast to the visionaries, who were actually doing real work, on real MOOCs, with large numbers of real learners. We needn’t worry. The digital genie has escaped from the Ivory Tower and caught the imagination of people who really care about access. Thinking of MOOCs in Africa makes you see the potentials for escape from the dominant and oppressive western model of Higher Education; remote, inaccessible, expensive, elitist and overly-academic. I wish them well.

E-learning Africa – 7 new narratives

Amazing event - 1500 people from all over Africa, to discuss, debate, dance, sing and celebrate. I’ve never been to a conference like it, and believe me I’ve been to a few. I was there to give a keynote, workshop and take part in the final event of the conference – the Big Debate but to be honest I gained much more than I gave. To give you some idea of the humour on hand, during a meal at which I was eating crocodile, zebra, kudu and springbok, a lad from Uganda asked of Channa (who’s vegetarian), “If you like animals so much, why are you eating all their food”.

1. New African narrative

Africa (whatever that is) wants to do things its own way. The people at this event wanted to change the old pessimistic narrative of poverty, starvation, AIDS, malaria and dependency, to a new narrative of optimism and self-sufficiency. I met nothing but friendly, enthusiastic, committed people, who want to do things the African way.

So what is this African ‘way’? What I think lay at the heart of the sentiment was the idea that Africa had been subjected to foreign influences for too long. I constantly heard calls for approaches and contents to be more relevant, contextualised and in local languages. I gave my own view in The Big Debate, a wonderfully, raucous event held at the end of the conference, where I presented evidence that Mitra’s Hole-in-the-Wall projects ad Negroponte’s Ethiopian adventure were dangerous, unsustainable and at times downright lies. "Don't let educational colonialism sneak in... with bucket loads of hardware and content that is inappropriate for your children." My formidable opponent Adele said something similar when she urged approaches “By the Africans for the Africans - and we will share best practice with you when it's done." This debate, on ‘sustainability v innovation’ was a hoot. Massive audience participation, loads of laughs and although we clearly won, there was a messy recount and the decision was reversed. When I asked why, the reply was telling, “Remember Donald, this is Africa!”

2. Mobiles as lifelines

My keynote talk was on mobile learning, small beer elsewhere but BIG in Africa. The Nokia 3310 has legendary status in Africa, but Samsung’s the new kid on the block. Africa loves mobile tech. Calls, text, health, finance – they’ve found a myriad of ways to use mobiles to enhance their lives. Tariffs are still high but youngsters would go without food for more airtime. As was explained to me in the Katatura Township, a mobile for someone in real poverty is far more important than for someone in a developed country. If you rely on piece-work, you need to be available to take a call at any time. It’s a way of managing and transferring what little money you have and receiving remittances from that relative abroad. It’s a way of switching on your electricity and getting medical help. It’s a lifeline.

My keynote was all about mobile learning. The very first piece of technology was invented here in Africa – the stone axe. And for 1.7 million years this was the dominant technology – the first handheld device. But there’s something odd about stone axes, as many are found in pristine condition, unused, or as large axes, far too big to be practical. As pieces of useful technology, they had ‘status’ value. In that sense we have to be careful about m-learning as they may be seen by youngsters as ‘too cool for school’. My second piece of advice was to forget ‘courses’. Mobiles are the GPS for learning, rather than delivering learning itself. Think search, performance support, informal learning – not courses. Think of contextual learning, vocational elearning out in the field, reinforcement through spaced practice. Think different. Also, be careful with video, as few watch video on mobiles, think audio and text. Media rich is not necessarily mind rich. What I saw in Africa was the clever use of mobile technology to enhance literacy and practical learning.

3. Mobiles as motivators for literacy

In my workshop on ‘Mobiles and literacy’ I was pushing the idea that mobiles had produced a ‘renaissance of reading and writing’ among the young. It will, I think, be the single most important factor in increasing literacy on the planet. Why? Every child is massively motivated to learn to text, post and message on mobiles. The evidence shows that they become obsessive readers and writers through mobile devices.

I saw ample evidence of learning how to read and write through mobiles in what can only be described as ‘challenging’ conditions. Cornelia Koku Muganda showed us real evidence for positive results with girls and women in Tanzania, who not only had to learn to read and write (txt) but who couldn’t afford to make expensive mistakes such as wrong numbers, wrong codes for electricity switch-on and so on. Mignon Hardie had a wonderful scheme for young people in the Townships of South Africa, gaining not only literacy skills but valuable insights into their own lives through specially written narratives. Ian Mutarami and Mikko Pitkanen showed how games technology could deliver mobile phonics apps in local languages.

My own session focussed on the fact that Africa showed the fastest growth & massive use of txting. Txting is a significant form of literacy, introduced by youngsters, on their own, spontaneously, rapidly & without tuition. Oddly, some complain about poor literacy, but when a technology arrives that provides opportunities to read and write (constantly) some complain about that! So why the moral panic? Is it a linguistic disaster? No. Almost all popular beliefs about TXTING are wrong. It’s not new, not for young only, helps rather than hinders literacy and adds a new dimension to language use. Language is about being understood and txting has adapted to this need. Good txters understand that ‘Cnsnnts crry mr infrmtn thn vwls’ and play with language. Interestingly, women more enthusiastic txters, write longer txts, more complex txts, use more emoticons, more His & BYEs and more emotional content (Richard Ling  The Sociolinguistics of SMS)

More importantly, txting benefits literacy as it is a motivating factor in writing (Katz & Aakhus), requires phonetic knowledge, has links with success in attainment (Wood & Bell), helps one be concise (Fox) and helps develop social skills (Fox).

4. Hardware

A huge debate erupted over what devices should be used in learning in Africa. For my money, the good projects used mobile or notebooks/laptops. Tablets were being hyped but when I spoke to people they were wary of their lack of flexibility, low level learning potential, maintenance problems and costs. While they may be appropriate in some contexts, such as Merryl Ford’s work in rural S Africa and in early years or primary school, I have serious doubts about their efficacy in most other contexts. They are impossible to repair, difficult to network and can severely limit skills development in writing, coding and the use of more sophisticated software tools.

I was much more impressed  with the laptop projects. Nkubito Manzi Bakuramutsa was an impressive project manager from Rwanda. He stressed the need for proper infrastructure- it’s all about wifi, electricity, cabling and sockets. But where he was smart was in his capacity building of teachers. This is, “fundamental – they are your front line troops”. It starts with 5 days training for heads of schools, each with one champion teacher,  to familiarise themselves with tech, then teaching with the laptop. Education must come before technology. Then the bombshell – he pleaded for a proper academic study on their effectiveness.

5. Vocational v academic

The Namibian Prime Minister spoke on the first day of the conference. He was witty but also wily. I liked him, as he warned us against the ‘spectacle of hallucination’ where technology was used to create illusory progress. Shiny objects that dazzle but don’t deliver long-term solutions. He urged us to focus on vocational, not academic, context and content. Health, farming, tourism, entrepreneurship – employability was the watchword for Africa.

Big problems need big and innovative solutions. Time and time again I heard requests for approaches and content that are more sensitive to context and culture. Too many projects parachuted technology and English content that had little relevance for learners. The western idea of ’academic’ schooling was being pushed but was unsustainable. Schooling in itself is not the answer in itself, as almost everyone in Africa leaves school – then what? Millennium goals around schooling will not deliver unless that schooling is relevant.

6. Health, agriculture, public sector, entrepreneurship

I saw a myriad of useful projects around agriculture (look out for the www.ict4ag.org conference in Kigali, Rwanda, later this year. Giacomo Rambaldi is passionate about the use of technology in farming, especially around the use of m-banking (Robert Okine in Ghana), messaging on livestock (Darlington Kahilu in Zambia), iCow in Kenya, optimising the use of pesticides (John Gushit in Nigeria), vetinary projects – the list goes on and on. Then the healthcare projects, nurse licence renewal, HIV counselling (Fabrice Laurentine in Namibia), drug prescription (Lesek Wojnowski in S Africa). I saw innovative thinking around capacity building in the public sector. Then there’s the innovation hubs and entrepreneurship projects. Bloggers, like Mac-Jordan Degadjor, show that the new narrative must be created from within.

7. Sustainability

My contribution to The Big Debate focused on ‘sustainability’. You can keep on ‘taking the expensive tablets’, buy into the myth that is Sugata Mitra’s ‘holes in walls’ or believe Negroponte’s Ethiopian hype’ OR you can start with real problems and real, sustainable solutions. Tech-led projects can work but only if the risks are understood and assessed from the start. Innovation without sustainability is not innovation at all. If you want to avoid massive failure, then watch out for tech that lies at Gartner’s ‘Peak of inflated expectations’ as it will more than likely end up in the ‘Trough of disillusionment’.

Africa has had a swarm of mosquito projects, what it needs are more steady, long-lived tortoise projects. Sustainability comes in several forms; sustainable in technical infrastructure, stakeholders, teacher training, learner take-up, maintenance, context, relevance, languages and culture. Above all, Africa needs sustainability in terms of costs. 20% of the poor  exist on  $1 a day  20% 40% on  $2 a day. Now if the global average of ICT spend 3% of income, they can only afford $10-$20, and it would have to be relevant. In fact they tend to spend this on cheap mobiles. Think, then, on this. Tablets $200-$300but total costs - solar power, maintenance & support add much, much more. These expensive tablets have serious side-effects.

Conclusion

Monica Weber-Fahr gave a potent presentation with a focus on social mobility. The key point is urbanisation. This is what lifts people out of poverty. But she had a stark warning. Social mobility is not guaranteed and by no means certain. Africa has huge resources, huge challenges but also a huge reservoir of hope. I came away with a different mindset about Africa. Throwing hardware at the problems is not the solution. True solutions must be home-grown. African projects, run by Africans for Africans, using African content relevant to African contents and languages.

Even at the airport I was engaged in conversation with people from Nigeria and Ghana, all eager to talk and get on with things. On the plane I sat next to a young girl from Uganda who had been at the conference. She was from Uganda and was brimming with hope for the future and I look forward to seeing her next year in Kampala, where the next brilliant e-learning Africa will take place.

PS

Well done to Rebecca and her ICWE team for organising the conference. They were magnificent. From the warm welcome at the airport to the final sundown party at River Crossing, the whole experience was a joy.

Negroponte hacks off Africa

“Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.” Well, no, the only idiot in this story is Negroponte, as the hacking story is a lie. They actually pressed the reset button on the side of the tablet. On this definition the local baboon could have ‘hacked android’. So why would an MIT academic tell deliberate lies? All in his team knew the hacking tale was wrong, yet no one came out and said it.

When I wrote a critique of the project, I had my suspicions, now those suspicions have been confirmed. At E-learning Africa this week, I spoke to someone on the ground, who was furious about the publicity the project had received. He is doing sterling work with laptops elsewhere in Ethiopia and resents the TED hype that surround Mitra and Negroponte, as it distract from the necessity of training teachers and being sensitive to the context and culture into which technology is placed. 

A perfect example of this type of cultural insensitivity, is the ‘Alphabet Game’ where they had to ‘recite’: A for Apple, C for Cat… O for Octopus – OCTOPUS! Did anyone tell Nick that Ethiopia doesn’t have a coast? You’d need a passport to see an octopus.

Wenchi Crater was a spot where dozens of tourists a day visit, ride horses and go for boat trips on the lake. He thought the idea that these kids had never seen any written word on packaging, road signs or print, preposterous.

Mosquito and the tortoise

This is one of those annoying ‘mosquito’ projects. In Africa, there’s ‘mosquito’ projects and ‘tortoise’ projects. Mosquito projects are noisy, short-lived, suck you dry and often have nasty side-effects. Tortoise projects, take their time, have a protective shell of sustainable self-sufficiency. They are quiet, often unobtrusive but long-lived.

A tortoise will have sustainable technology, sustainable stakeholders, sustainable teaching, sustainable learners, sustainable change-management, sustainable electricity, sustainable plugs & cables, sustainable resources. They will also be sustainable in their language, culture and context. Above all they need to be sustainable on COST. Sustainable innovation is what Africa needs not just innovation in itself, Without sustainability there is no real innovation, only 'bad' innovation in projects that fly for a short time and die.

Conclusion

Negroponte, like Mitra, is doing more harm than good with these short-lived mosquito projects. It’s nothing more than self-aggrandisement that detracts from more worthy and long-lasting efforts. Even worse, speaking to someone senior in the European Commission, Negroponte was shameless in getting his brother, John Negroponte, former US Deputy Secretary of State, to pull strings for meetings with EU decision makers (and others elsewhere in the world). This is the sort of stunt that amounts to little more than educational colonialism. I should add that I have no problem with the OLPC project in Rwanda,where an enthusiastic guy is trying hard to make it work.

More holes in Sugata Mitra’s ‘Hole-in-Wall’ project

“I wouldn’t take it if you offered it to me for free” said the head of the school I visited  in the huge Katutura Township on the outskirts of Windhoek in Africa. In 2008 some guys turned up started to drill four holes in the wall, installed dial-up computers, and left explaining almost nothing. Within three months the project was dead. Internet access was intermittent and larger boys dominated the computers, playing games. At best a distraction, at worst, yet another failed and misguided idea imposed upon a community that was neither asked nor consulted. Today the four ugly, padlocked shutters are all that remain, just as we saw in my last report on the ‘hole-in-the-wall’ report in India.

Hype cycle

Of all the learning technology projects I’ve witnessed over the thirty years I’ve been in this field, this is the one that most closely matches the Gartner hype cycle. Since 2007 Sugata Mitra has been doing the rounds giving exactly the same talk, same pauses, same anecdotes and same jokes. I have just seem him give exactly the same speech I saw him give six years ago. This is the only thing that has been sustainable in the project; the hype-fuelled marketing. It has, I hope, reached its ‘Peak of inflated expectation’ and is now plunging headlong into the 'Trough  of disillusionment'. When I asked a government official what happened she said “it didn’t work….we must do some research to see why it failed”.

Self-defeating

For Arora, who visited the sites in India, there was “little real independent evidence, other than that provided by HiWEL“. It did “not compare the amount of time spent on hole-in-wall material with same time in school….the comparison was meaningless” and in the end the project was “self-defeating… ‘hole-in-the-wall’ has become the ‘computer-in-the-school’”.

Project not effective

Mark Warschauer,  Professor of Education at the University of California, who also visited the now abandoned sites,  found that “parents thought that the paucity of relevant content rendered it irrelevant “ and “criticised the kiosks as distracting the children from their homework“. Overall there it was “low level learning and not challenging… with no Hindi content (only language they knew)”. In fact, “most of the time they were playing games”. On top of this, just as in Africa, “the internet rarely functioned”. To sum up, “overall the project was not very effective”.

Conclusion

At the E-learning Africa Conference, where I gave a keynote, workshop and debate contribution, I met practitioner after practitioner who welcomed by more sober view of the project. They too were skeptical as all the evidence they had suggested that teacher involvement was vital. Person after person shook my hand saying how glad they were that someone was standing up to the hype.

For my more detailed critique click here.