Augmented learning – mind blowing!

All in the mind
Nintendo took e-learning to the global masses with the DS and Brain Training. At the same time they gave us the Wii remote, allowing us to play tennis, box and generally get hot and sweaty while playing games. Then there’s the Wii Fit, a board that allows you to do yoga and exercise. Looks as though they’re planning to shape the future once again with a brain control interface.

The EPOC headset from Emotiv has 16 sensors on the scalp. The electrical activity in the brain is translated into actions on the screen. We already have prosthetic control by the brain for those who have lost limbs. The next step is to take mind-control to the next level, in learning.

This could transform the way humans interact with computers. When people communicate the use facial expressions, body language and intuitive judgments. Tap directly into the brain and computers can understand these conscious and pre-conscious thoughts which can be used to trigger actions. There are three main areas:

Expressive – facial expressions

Effective – emotional experience

Cognitive – ability to control objects by thought

The latest Emotiv wireless headset (with gyroscope to track head movements) will use head movements and cognitive control within games.

Augmented cognition
In the late 80’s I sold an application called ‘Managing Stress’. You put a band around your head, which measured skin resistance, hooked it up to the back of the PC, and had to get a balloon to rise as you relaxed. Not exactly brain control, but close.

This approach has morphed into augmented cognition is big news in military research, where the augmented soldier gets a significant advantage in the battlefield. There’s brainwave binoculars that detect objects see but not noticed. The binoculars are linked to scalp sensors which detect pre-conscious events. Another military project used augmented cognition to help military analysts improve their performance.

Augmented learning
What’s far more interesting is the possibility of augmented learning, where this technology helps us hugely improve performance by using thought control to learn faster and improve retention. Here’s why:

1. Dramatic increase in psychological attention leads to better understanding, storage and recall

2. Visioning in the mind is in itself rehearsal and practice, allowing efficient encoding and storage

3. Diagnostic potential will mean the ultimate in personalised learning

3. Recall can be measured directly allowing unmediated assessment

This is literally mind blowing. The problems teaching and learning is that it is very difficult for the teacher to really know what’s going on in the mind of the learner. With strong feedback mechanisms this could potentially do better than any teacher. The learner also has to literally understand and do the right thing. You can’t drift through class or wing it.

Mind blowing
It is not hard to envision a future where games become a normal part of a child’s learning process. I’m willing to bet that the increased use of something like a DS and Brain Training would already dramatically increase numeracy and literacy, and there’s a growing body of evidence showing that maths and basic literacy works gives dramatic improvements in performance. This stuff could push augmented learning into the position of being the most significant improvement to the productivity of learning that we, as a species, have ever seen. Truly mind blowing!

Diplomas – deepening the divide

There’s always been a distasteful apartheid in UK education between academic and vocational subjects. In practice, the use of these mutually exclusive terms is all wrong as most academic subjects would be better taught with a healthy dose of real world practice. It’s downright stupid to pump out GCSE students who can solve a quadratic equation but couldn’t tell you anything about personal finance, tax, mortgages and so on. We put aside practical literacy in a headlong rush to pump Shakespeare into every young child before they can even comprehend the themes. And to teach a dead language, Latin, rather than prepare young people to become autonomous adults, is just perverse. I could go on….

Diplomas – bad brand
At last, however, the government, or at least the civil service, have come up with a solution that was meant to solve the problem, but threatens to deepen the divide – diplomas. Rather than extending the A-level brand to cover these qualifications, they have created a separate brand ‘Diplomas’ that cleaves these subjects off to one side. Type ‘diplomas’ into Google and right below the DFES (yes that old brand is still hanging around) is the diploma company advertising ‘The best in fake diplomas and novelty transcripts!’ This is not a brad with enough academic kudos to carry this initiative forward.

Diplomas - teachers
BECTA’s recent Harnessing Technology report had a harrowing graph showing that most classroom practice is hopelessly outdated:

Common classroom activities

In which three of the following ways do you do most often in class?

(Magnificent example of an ungrammatical sentence, pouring doubt on BECTAs ability to write English)

Copy from the board or a book 52%

Listen to teacher talking for a long time 33%

Have a class discussion 29%

Take notes while my teacher talks 35%

Whatever way you cut this, the current school system is hopelessly underskilled in terms of delivering Diplomas. These methods won’t cut it.

Diplomas – schools
The only way to make this work is to share resources, something schools just do’t do, or at least don’t do well. They generally hate each other, having been placed in a position where they have to compete for pupils. From this position of mutual hostility, they are expected to share subjects and send pupils to various locations across towns. How will this work? Who’ll be there to welcome and look after these kids? How will they handle moving into another hostile culture? The planning has more holes than a barrel of Swiss cheese.

Diplomas – parents
Because of the general confusion around what they are and when they’re arriving, and an almost willful failure to inform parents, when these strange qualifications are offered, parents recoil. In some cases the take-up has been zero.

Conclusion
Rather than creating a single system, with a range of sensible options, this half-baked idea is being launched like an axe, dividing the curriculum in two, taking us back into a grammar/secondary modern model – all because of amateurish branding and planning.

Hapless Huveaux

Well Epic’s free from the clutches of hapless Huveaux’s John van Kuffeler, and his hopeless sidekick, Gerry Murray. Huveaux is basically a bunch of washed out, paper publishing guys (ex-Emap) who think the internet’s a sort of giant magazine. Their board was, and still is, a bunch of lazy boomers who can’t buy, integrate or sell businesses, especially online businesses.

Having bought Epic for over £22 million, Murray put in a series of his mates as managers, none of whom had a scooby about managing an online business. The collapse in revenues and profitability was predictable and it has now been sold for a song (£4.75 million) – got to congratulate the new buyer, as that’s a snip. They had to sell, as the debt burden was threatening to sink them. Of course, that’s not stopped them repeatedly rebasing all of their options to cash in on the collapse of value. This is not the first time that the incompetent Kuffeler has completely destroyed the value of a business. He was involved in the collapse of Eidos, which imploded after late delivery of Tomb Raider product under his watch. Only in the City do ageing, paper publishing men in pinstripes get to manage internet companies. ‘Success may breed success’, but in this case ‘failure breeds failure’. No wonder we can’t match the Americans. What’s amazing is how these guys hang on in there, kicking shareholders and fund managers in the teeth, no matter how much value they destroy.

The lesson in all this is; don’t let paper publishers anywhere near your internet or e-learning company. They’ll kill it within weeks. Thankfully it’s back where it belongs in the hands of someone who knows a thing or two about the e-learning market. What a mess.

Best show you’ve never seen?

I don’t watch much British drama on TV any more. All those rehashed genres; costume dramas (endless Bronte and Dickens), murder mysteries (same old plots, same old bit actors), cop shows (tired and weary cops chase tired and weary bad guys) and science fiction (set largely in disused quarries or London suburbs). It’s the same old commissioners, commissioning the same old writers, in the same old organizations producing the same old stuff (Shameless and Skins excepted).

Cut to the renaissance in US TV drama – The Wire, The Sopranos, West Wing, Lost, Heroes – the list goes on. They rip up the old genres and deliver contemporary drama that is absolutely gripping, and sometimes worthy of the term ‘art’.

I’ve put ‘The Wire’ at the head of my list, as it’s regarded by some critics as being the best TV series ever. Having watched the first four series on DVD, I can’t wait for series five, which starts on the FX channel on Monday. I’m not a fan, I’m an addict

The learning game
In particular, for those in the ‘learning game’, I recommend series 4, as it’s about schools. Well, not exactly, it’s about learning from your peers, the streets and why institutions like schools are now part of the problem and not the solution. It’s complicated, and that’s the joy of The Wire; it’s never what it seems. It’s not a ‘cop’ show; it’s a ‘city’ show. Actually, it’s a deeper ‘game’ show, in the Wittgensteinian sense – showing, not telling, sophisticated characters and issues through the many language games of the many interlocked groups; drug barons, corner boys, dopeheads, cops, lawyers, politicians, dock workers and so on.

Writer – cop and teacher
Ed Burns, the writer, was both a cop and schoolteacher, knows his stuff, and makes the dialogue so rich and real that seasoned cops, teachers and other professionals often ask him how he managed to get the inside track.

So what does he show us? As solid institutions such as the church, work, family and community have fragmented in the face of awful city planning, drugs and increasing gaps between rich and poor, the one institution that has remained solid in this melting icepack is the local school. It is wrong therefore to blame schools for failing to satisfy this deficit in social needs.

No romantic ‘Poet’s Society’
What The Wire does, is dissect a school in the full context of other institutions; city government, police, criminal organisations and so on. This is no romantic, Poet’s Society tale of doughty teachers inspiring young people to succeed. It’s the grim reality of inner city state education, where the web and allure of crime becomes a rational choice for young black kids (Baltimore is 65% black, and in these areas, the schools are 100% black). The bright kids are sought after by the drug gangs to run corners.

The hopelessness of teaching literary criticism and other areas of an outdated curriculum to these kids is show with sensitivity. Yet the educational apparatchiks demand that teachers ‘teach to the test’. Computers lie in their original boxes in basements as the teachers don’t know how to use them. Violence is commonplace. Statistics rule.

Disruptive kids ruin any attempt at teaching in classrooms and only thrive when removed from classes, where they want to show off and play their own particular ‘games’. This is surely right. I’ve witnessed with my own eyes the hopeless attempts at keeping a small number of massively disruptive kids in class. Many of the kids are shown to be street-smart, and the writer seems to suggest that separating the serious problem kids out of mainstream classes, with plenty of outside support, is the only way to keep them and others learning.

Where it scores is in the irrelevance of much of the curriculum and teaching methods. Old fashioned teaching methods are shown in all their magnificent irrelevance, while more relevant, differentiated methods are show to work. Maths is the focus, and Burns shown why most maths teaching fails – as it is too far removed from real life and seen as irrelevant. The kids are delighted to find that probability can be taught by predicting the odds in street dice games. Girls who struggle to do simple arithmetic find they can do it when it’s rephrased in terms of street dollar transactions. The teacher tricks them into learning by making them feel that it’s not learning. He also excites them with a class computer. The less they are aware of it being learning, the more they learn.

Watch it (Mon 21st FX)
Ultimately, however, this is a dark tale that doesn’t pander to clichéd hopes and promises. It’s a deep and realistic analysis that will make you reflect, laugh and cry – the characters are unbelievably real (Omar is of Shakespearian stature), the stories complex and the end result lingers in your mind for weeks.

2 marks for swearing!

Fuck off
The only two words on the candidate’s English paper were ‘Fuck Off”. AQAs Chief Examiner, who awarded the marks, felt that the student had expressed meaning and feeling – 2 marks. Apparently, another mark would have been awarded if there had been an exclamation mark!

Actually, one could also argue that the student was bold, succinct and to the point. On a deeper level it shows courage, and a disregard for the conventions of language within examinations, the drudgery of the A+ essay with all of its dull conventions and playing for marks. It’s stunningly subversive and liguistically legitimate - Shakespeare and many more brilliant writers did it all the time. (Tongue in metaphorical cheek.)

Why do we swear?
For more linguistic depth on the subject of swearing, read Chapter 7 of Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought, where he explains why swearing is a natural form in all languages, along with reasons for the existence of swear words. He argues that swear words tend to be sexual or scatological as, in our evolutionary past, these things signified danger and disease. The blaspheming brain is particularly sensitive to the conotations of swear words ad patiets who lose their ability to use articulate language can sometimes still swear. Tourette Syndrome is evidence that swearing is a coherent neurobiological pheomenon. Blasphemy ad profanity is the other rich source for swear words.

Jay Z mash-up

Mash-up video from Jay Cross, with excerpts from London's Learning Technologies – Jay Cross, Ken Robinson, Nigel Paine, Donald Rumsfeld and the other Donald - me. You could say Jay is a Millennial mind in a Boomer body! I'm minded to call him Jay Z, as he thinks even beyond the Gen X/Y/Millennials.

7 'bad language' habits in learning

My first beef is the word 'learner'. Imagine walking into a room and calling the people in the office, library or cafe - 'learners'. They're not learners, they're people. But there's lots more...
1. Language of learning as work and punishment
“Have you finished your work? Have you done your homework? Get down to work. Stop working now. Show your working. This is how you work it out. I’ve finished my work, Miss.”

Research by Guy Claxton has shown that teachers unwittingly use the inappropriate language of industrial labour, for learning. This turns learning into a series of chores or tasks to be completed. It’s the language of closure, not learning. Completion, not competence, becomes the goal. Learning is further presented as a series of tasks that sound like punishments. To lecture someone in the real world is to patronize and talk down to them. To teach someone a lesson is to punish them.

2. Language of behaviourism
The lecturer, trainer, instructor are all rooted in deeply behaviourist models of didactic instruction. Is there anything more inappropriate than the job title Lecturer? We know that the 1 hour lecture is a hopeless method of learning. We also know that many lecturers are actually researchers, who are sometimes unskilled even unenthusiastic about teaching. There are few professions where the basic skills (teaching) are so loosely acquired, taught or evaluated. And in the training world, you train horses don’t you?

3. Language of time and place
Taking a class is another giveaway, suggesting that learning is synonymous with sitting in a room and being talked at. We have autumn, winter, spring and summer terms {prison-terms?), something you have to get through. Schools have other echoes of prison – gates, uniforms, corridors, incarceration interrupted by short exercise periods and detention.

4. Language of profession
And lastly, we have odious, professional jargon; the words learning styles, kinaesthetic, pedagogy, metacognition, learning objectives, competences and so on. There is no need to expose people to this nonsense. Ordinary language is just fine.

5. Language of opposites
A sort of apartheid exists in British education, between academic and vocational, between knowledge and skills. We foolishly want to mirror this in A-levels versus Apprenticeships. Much of this is simply linguistic. The boundaries, in real life, are massively blurred. We’d do well to stop using these artificially opposed and falsely exclusive words.

6. Language of assessment
Language of assessment is the language of fear and failure. We sit exams and tests. We pass or fail. It’s a red pen culture, where failure is failure, not an opportunity to try again, overcome and succeed. It’s the finality of failure – no second chances that make it all so depressing.

7. Language of accreditation
If the language of assessment isn’t bad enough, the English accreditation system has produced bewildering layers of confusing language and brands. As a student and parent the world of GCSEs and A-levels will quickly unravel into: Foundation and Higher levels, KS1, KS2, KS3, KS4, Levels 1-8. Then there’s the crazy fact that each subject has several awarding bodies, each with their own variants on the curriculum – AQA A, AQA B, Edexcel A, Edexcel B, OCR, NICCEA, WJEC. Then there are BTECs and dozens of other vocational acronyms. I’d be surprised if it’s any different in other countries.

Promote language of learning, not teaching
At West Kidlington school they’ve tried to shift the language of learning towards positive values. They have 22 words; trust, respect, quality, responsibility, unity, peace, thoughtfulness, happiness, patience, care, appreciation, honesty, understanding, love, friendship, humility, hope, simplicity, tolerance, courage, cooperation and freedom.

I like this but feel that this language is a bit abstract. It’s the everyday language of a school that determines its culture. It’s the language of encouragement, not censure and closure; let’s try, how come, how could. There’s Kipling’s ‘who, what, where, why, when and how’, pushing students to probe, explore and push beyond the task.

We need to simply stop defining learning as work, homework, lessons, classes, lectures and redefine these as aspirational activities; sessions, challenges, projects and clubs. Then there’s the avoidance of terms of incarceration. A school is not a prison, the school gate is not the prison door, and attainment, not attendance, is the aim. As for teachers, lecturers, instructors and trainers, surely tutors, coaches and mentors would be better. The branding of qualifications simply needs to adhere to Occam’s razor – the smallest number of entities to reach a give goal. Keep it simple stupid. Much of the language of learning is actually the language of teaching. In business the language of sales is the language of the customer, not the vendor. We need the language of batting, not bowling.

The language of the web is, I think, a good place to look for trends. It is the language of inclusion – myspace, facebook, youtube and so on. We could also learn from the language of games - challenge, game, play, player – to motivate students.

Politicians and e-learning

All of this fuss over political donations and MP expenses. A few years ago I was asked by the Labour Party to make a short e-learning programme on the new rules for donations. This we did. We never got paid and it turned out to be a veiled excuse to get a cash donation, which I refused to do.

Question Night
‘Question Night’ our e-learning programme, was a cracker. Loosely based on ‘Question Time’, we had a panel of politicians, an expert and a journalist, who answered questions from the audience. You were clapped, ignored or jeered by the audience, depending on your answers. It was beautifully produced but, sadly, never used. If it had been rolled out we may have avoided many of the excesses we’ve see over the last few years. Politicians, it turns out, are always carping on about skills and training, but refuse to accept the idea that they also need to learn.

Politicians and e-learning
So, it was heartening to hear that Brown’s bedside text this week is Leadbetter’s Me-Think, a book on user-generated content. He’s an internet freak, loves email and shoots them off to Junior Ministers at all hours. He was also the man who gave us UFI, an organisation I’m proud to support, and one of only two public e-learning bodies to have actually delivered anything of worth (the other is the OU).

Tony Blair is an altogether different creature. I once asked him whether he thought e-learning had a major role to play in education and training. Typically, he answered with an anecdote, “I visited an education centre last week,” he replied, “and completed an IT assessment test. I looked at the guy next to me and congratulated him, as he had a much better score than me. ‘That must make you feel quite good’, I said. ‘Not really’, he said, ‘You’re the Prime Minister and I’m one of the long-term unemployed!’

I’ve met lots of politicians over the years and most were sultry creatures, simply doing the rounds. I thought I’d show Robin Cook some medical e-learning, as I knew his wife was a GP in Scotland (I grew up in his constituency). He scowled throughout the demonstration, said nothing, and off he went with his grumpy entourage. Two days later, the news broke that he was leaving his GP wife for a younger woman –OOOPS!

Heseltine, was an open and witty guy, genuinely interested in the web. When I recommended that he get a hold of the Michael Heseltine web address, he quipped, ‘You know, I think I’ll need it!’ This was just before he resigned from his cabinet post.

Aitken was just a crook, Galloway a charming chancer, but one who really did understand the importance of the internet and television, as opposed to newspapers (a medium he despises), Margaret Beckett was sour-faced and shadowed by her husband who stood behind her in an old anorak and took copious notes.

Michael Gove is, without doubt, the one I dislike the most. I had a spat with him last year, when, during one of his rants about declining standards, he claimed that, “School pupils need to know the relationship between, the planets orbiting the sun in the solar system, and electrons orbiting the nucleus in an atom’. My request was that he find a better example of useful knowledge, “As the quantum positions of electrons around a nucleus have absolutely nothing to do with the gravity controlled orbits of planets in our solar system”. He glared at me, and simply answered another imaginary question.

My favourite politician was the best Prime Minister we never had – John Smith. He was smart, friendly and polite. I got to chat to him, on TV, two days before a general election. How very different the UK would have been if he had lived to fulfill his promise.

Politicians and e-learning now
Most politicians are cosseted from technology by layers of civil servants, advisors and lackeys. It’s all face-to-face posing. Their clumsy attempts to appear homely on YouTube are laughable. There’s absolutely nothing honest or spontaneous about any of this – it’s all polished, over-produced, central office nonsense. They really don’t get it.

What’s much more interesting are the YouTube speeches and assorted videos made about politicians, posted by ordinary people and the political blogs. Blogs, especially have breathed life back into politics, apart from those over-moderated marketing blogs by BBC journalists, another mob who really don’t get it.

Similarly, the higher echelons of Government civil servants are full of ageing Boomers who really don’t understand, or even like, the internet. The policy makers are, unfortunately, on the wrong side of the new Digital Divide (see previous post).

Boomers on wrong side of digital divide

Scientific American report a study, by the University of Minnesota, of 600 urban teens, from families in the lowest socio-economic groups – almost all use the internet, three quarters have social network sites, most have acquired valuable skills, upload media, edit media, write text, even edit HTML.

I never really bought into the Digital Divide movement. It tripped off the tongue nicely, and lots of well meaning, but misguided, Boomers made lots of money publishing piles of paper reports that only other Digital Dividers read. It was obvious that with an emerging technology the glass would fill up nicely, yet the doomsayers loved to focus on the glass being half-empty, they’re still at it, eve whe the glass is almost full. Note how few reports there are on the new technical underclass – wealthy Boomers.

Digital Divide reversed
The digital divide has actually reversed. It’s the wealthier, middle-class Boomers who have lost out. They’re the anti-tech, game haters who see kids as plagiarizing morons and see their own delusional standards as being dumbed down. Working class people have always lapped up technology, whether it was video recorders, games consoles, DVD players, wide-screen TVs and computers. They have none of these middle-class hang-ups; boasting to people that they’re still on vinyl, hate computer games, don’t watch much television, or still have their 14” TV!

When it comes to life skills, it’s the Boomers who have a defecit. Most kids leave school with an unacknowledged qualification in IT. They know how to text, download, Bluetooth, troubleshoot, edit media, build a website and network socially. Boomers have been left behind and moan away with their culture of computer complaint. It’s they who are on the wrong side of the Digital Divide with a sort of sneering, inverted snobbery.

Immersive games beats classroom in maths

Well designed study
The University of Central Florida tested a hypothesis; that interactive maths games are more effective than classroom instruction. This was a well constructed study; The Effects of Modern Math Computer Games on Learners' Math Achievement and Math Course Motivation in a Public High School Setting, Mansureh Kebritchi, Ph.D., Atsusi Hirumi, Ph.D. and Haiyan Bai, Ph.D.

They took 193 algebra students, control groups and then did evaluation through pre- and post-study assessments, surveys, classroom observations and interviews. Over 18 weeks, on average, students in the experimental group made gains of 8.07 points (out of 25), while students in the control group made gains of 3.74 points.

They used an immersive video game world that engages students in the instruction and learning of mathematics. Pre-algebra and algebra objectives are covered through a series of missions that bring math into a world that today's students understand. Students become so captivated in solving problems that they forget they're learning but they don't forget what they've learned. The study has many detailed findings, but the main conclusion was a significant positive effect on student mathematics achievement in a public high school setting:

Gamers do better at maths
Students who played the math video games scored significantly higher on the district-wide math benchmark exam, F (1, 188) = 6.93, p < .05, and on the math performance test generated by the publisher, F (1, 188) = 8.37, p <.05, than students who did not play the games. While students in both the experimental and control groups demonstrated significant gains from pre-test to post-test on the district benchmark exams, students who played the games demonstrated greater gain scores from pre-test to post-test (mean increase of 8.07) than students who did not play the games (mean increase of 3.74).

Higher achievement in standard tests
Higher achievement scores and greater gain scores on district benchmark tests by students who played the games, compared to those who did not play the game are particularly significant because there is a high correlation between the district math benchmark tests and the state-wide math FCAT tests (as reported by the district).

Teachers and students report improved maths
Teacher and student interviews support the quantitative findings. The majority of the interviewed teachers (4 of 5) and students (15 of 15) reported that the participants' mathematics understandings and skills improved as a result of playing the mathematics games.

Positive teacher feedback
According to the teachers, the games were effective teaching and learning tools because they (a) were experiential in nature, (b) offered an alternative way of teaching and learning, (c) gave the students reasons to learn mathematics to solve the game problems and progress in the games, (d) addressed students' mathematics phobias and (e) increased time on task. As one of the teachers stated: "It [the games] makes them want to learn [math]."

Positive student feedback
According to the students, the games were effective because they (a) combined learning and fun, (b) offered mathematics in adventurous and exploratory context and (c) challenged students to learn mathematics.

Consistent with previous studies
The positive results are consistent with prior empirical research on the effects of math games, including those reported by Ke and Grabowski (2007), Klawe (1998), Moreno (2002), Rosas et al. (2003) and Sedighian and Sedighian (1996), suggesting that computer math video games may improve mathematics achievement.

Consistent with meta-analysis
The results also support findings from two meta-analysis, including: (a) Vogel et al. (2006) who concluded that interactive simulations and games were more effective than traditional classroom instruction on learners' cognitive gains based on a review of 32 empirical studies, and (b) Dempsey et al. (1994) who concluded that students who played math video games and attended the traditional classroom instruction achieved higher mathematics score than students who only attended traditional classrooms based on 94 empirical studies.

Rate My Professors - Professors Strike Back

The 'Rate My Professors' site is huge in the US, and got into TIME Magazine's Top 50 websites for 2008. It now features English Universities. My local University of Brighton has 9 staff rated and University of Sussex 54.

Each Professor gets a name, subject, overall smiley symbol (good, average, poor), quality rating (1-5), ease (1-5) and whether they’re ‘hot’ or 'not'! At a more detailed level they rate easiness, helpfulness, clarity, interest prior to attending class, textbook use and the opportunity to submit (non-libelous) comments. They also have a Facebook app that lets you to search for, browse and read ratings of professors and schools. Then there's the Top 50 lists.

Professors Strike Back
The Professors Strike Back section is great. They come right back with some witty and sensible replies, “Yes - apparently one of the problems with taking College Classes is that you have to read ‘books’, and alas they’re mostly not thrillers, so I’m terribly sorry that you had to read those boring things.” And check out fantastic All Time Most Popular rant from the great Professor Andrew Tomasello (18+ rating).

Storytelling sucks

It’s received wisdom in learning that storytelling and narrative are unquestionably good. But is it? Plato warned against filling young minds with fixed narratives and I’m coming round to a similar view, but with a twist. I’ve always been a big fan of sports and more recently of reality TV. Add to this computer games, virtual worlds, blogging, wikis, social networks, email, messenger and skype, and I find that most (not all) of what I really love is relatively unscripted, open, fluid, and often with more than a touch of ‘play’.

The top-down, command and control, baby-boomer culture is really starting to annoy me. The more I watch prescribed movies ad TV, with their fixed plot structure, and abandon the publishing hyped ‘modern’ novel, the more I enjoy life. There’s an obsession with ‘stories’ that borders on the manic in learning, the arts and media. They really do want us to open our mouths and swallow.

Big Brother - superb non-narrative learning
I recently met Nick Hewer, Sugar’s sidekick in The Apprentice, who made a good case for the programme being a learning experience for future managers and entrepreneurs. I agree but think Big Brother is better. I've said this before but I do think this is one of the most educational shows on TV because it doesn’t have a fixed narrative. It’s not entirely real, but there’s enough rope for people to hang themselves. It teaches us about how groups form, how conflict emerges and more importantly it teaches valuable lessons about acceptable social behaviour. The viewers are quick to condemn any aggressive, bullying, sneaky or scheming contestants. Young people are pretty sound in their judgments. They consistently vote for people who are helpful, socially adept, non-judgmental and generally all round good-eggs. Even more important has been the exposure given to people who generally have difficulties in life.

Look at the winners:
Craig Phillips (Ordinary bloke)
Brian Dowling (Gay)
Kate Lawler (Ordinary gal)
Cameron Stout (Scottish Churchgoer)
Nadia Almada (Transexual)
Anthony Hutton (Ordinary bloke)
Pete Bennett (Tourettes Syndrome)
Brian Beno (Black guy)

My bet this year is Mikey the blind Scotsman.

This show had done more for diversity than all the diversity courses put together, and it's fun!

It's interesting asking Boomers and Gen X/Y people about the show. To be fair, it isn't made for Boomers, they don't understand it, and they generally don't like it. Boomers like their TV polished and pre-packaged and if they're not being officially 'taught' it ain't real learning. Oh how they love those management training courses. They really can't take the chaos of real people. Bit of a cheek from a generation that seems to lap up antique, property, cooking and make-over programmes, reflecting avarice, greed, gluttony and narcissism. They’re always on about ‘celebrity culture’ yet fawn away at book festivals getting their narratives ‘signed’. On that note, literally millions used to turn out for 30s film stars (celebrities) when they arrived in London from the States. Baby Boomers are also obsessed with the Royal Family, basically a bunch of clapped-out celebrities.

With GenX/Y, it's different. They're more attuned to social observation and participation. They don't mind 'user-generated' content. It triggers endless conversation about who they like and don't like. More importantly, they discuss 'why'. Race, gender, sexual orientation, class differences, regional differences, bullying, cooperation, narcissism, styles of communication, friendship, leadership. This is genuinely informative and instructive. That’s why Big Brother works.

Sports- non-narrative learning
I love sport because of its unpredictability. The story is ever fixed and from this one can learn a lot through being a spectator or participation. My children have spent years learning Ta Kwon Do and it’s done wonders for their application, attention, sense of achievement and self-confidence, and that’s before we get to the more obvious mental and physical skills.

Computer games – non-narrative learning
Games do, sometimes, have a narrative arc, but it’s gameplay and participation that really matters. This is what makes them such powerful learning experiences. The unpredictability is what makes them challenging. When the narrative is too strong, or the challenges too narrow, the game suffers.

Wikis – non-narrative learning
Baby Boomers feel uncomfortable with Wikipedia, not because of the content but because it doesn’t fit their expected fixed-narrative expectations. They can’t abide the idea that ‘experts’ need to ‘author’ content into ‘fixed’ packages. This open, fluid and on-going debate around knowledge is epistemologically sophisticated, but they can’t live with the uncertainty. They crave certainty.

Blogs – non-narrative learning
There is a clear gradient now in ‘journalism, from comments to posts to blogs to online and print articles. Bloggers are, of course, despised as amateurs by so called professional journalists. Yet who are these journalists? I’d say the bloggers, as a group, are often a stronger in terms of their experience and knowledge. They can often be more objective, as journalists can be constrained by fear of upsetting advertisers. They also present a less fixed narrative, open to comment and debate.

Social networks - on-narrative learning
Every person’s a portal, every person’s a publisher. Online identities evolve and change within rich networks. There is no fixed biographical story here, only millions of people creating their autobiographies as they live their lives. Baby Boomers carp on about privacy but what they really don’t like is the erosion of identity as a fixed narrative. They need control. Young people are relaxed about identity. They don’t see it as fixed and immutable. It's also a great soccial lering space, where people learn about how to commuicate with each other.

Every Baby Boomer has a bad novel in them. Let them stick with their peripheral book groups. They seem only capable of feeding on what they’re served up, receivers rather than givers. And don’t tell me that this is a story I’ve just posted…..

Learning Light snuffed out

So another crazy quango gets extinguished, presumably because of its illegal governance (CEOs illegal board meeting behaviour), miserable performance (read appallingly low income) and the crazy idea that a regional initiative would have national significance. It's been mothballed and folded into the Government Office for Yorkshire and Humberside, which is tantamount to being strangled to death, then buried in a very deep pit. What a tragic waste of time and money.

After spending silly money on an array of consultants and stupid services, the money has clearly run out. The aim was to give it hefty funding (millions), which would lead to it being finacially independent. With its hapless management and stupid, provincial in-fighting, it stood no chance.

The good news is that Sheffield is shaping up nicely to rival my home town of Brighton, as the UKs leading e-learning cluster. In fact, the expansion seems to be a combination of southern companies setting up northern bases (LINE and Brighto based Kineo).