When apprenticeships go bad (7 fails)

When I was growing up in Scotland I knew lots of people on ‘apprenticeships’. My uncle, adopted by our family at 16 (we shared a room), became an apprentice joiner, and went on to work all over the world in Africa and the Far East, eventually becoming a Director in the Local Authority. It served him well. But the whole system was dismantled by both Labour and the Tories, one seeing it as second-best, the other killing it off as part of the free labour market. Big mistake.

I have some sympathy, however, with the current government’s attempt to bring them back. With £1.4 billion of funding in 2011-12 it should have some impact. But ask yourself a few questions. Do you really know what a modern apprenticeship is? How long does it last? Can you name the politician in charge? Can you name the Minister in charge? Do you know what government department is responsible? This shows the  myriad of problems, here's just seven of the 'fails'

1. Brandless

What is an apprenticeship? Well, it’s been widened and diluted so much that it’s hard to tell. A qualification needs to be a brand that employers trust. If you simply rebadge short-term, low-level training as an apprenticeship, you do untold damage.

2. Lack of leadership

Ever heard of the National Apprenticeship Service? No? Hardly surprising. The problem is that it falls between two stools, the Department of Education, who are too obsessed with schools and HE to manage it properly and BIS, who don’t have the skills (sic) to manage the process.

3. Wrong people

Only 7% of the recent increase was in 16-18 year olds, the target audience for traditional apprenticeships. This is shocking, and a con. The reason is that most apprenticeships are being mopped up by older people in employment.

4. Wrong level

Apprenticeships are meant to be a clear route to picking up a craft, making you employable. But when they’re stuck at shorter Level 2 apprenticeships, they’re little more than mop up exercise for bad schooling. The recent announcement on increased numbers are really just low level placements.

5. Lack of quality

Believe me, there will be sizeable fraud and lack of quality in apprenticeships as employers see it as a shortcut to increased profitability and government lack the wherewithal to oversee the process. In its modern reincarnation, it covers too many levels and is still mired in an old mix of largely discredited qualifications such as BTEC.

6. Cheats

Employers have spotted the weakness. Take your older, low-paid workers, switch them to apprenticeships and draw down the funding. Supermarkets, like Morrisons, have been shelf-stacking apprenticeships like crazy, with 18,000 people over 25 atLevel 2, almost every single one an existing employee. Impact on youth unemployment – zero.

7. Really part of the benefits system

We have an opportunity here to create a vocational qualification that has a trusted, quality brand, led by a known organisation and targeted at young people at the right level. This should be part of or national growth strategy, instead it’s turning into a minor arm of the benefits system, a half-baked YOP scheme, without the Y.

7 reasons why Siri could be a breakthrough in e-learning

I thought the breakthrough in natural language would come through games - I was wrong, it’s come through mobile. My son’s friend has a new iPhone and asked, “What is the meaning of life?” It answered, “Chocolate”. Rude requests get “I’m not that sort of personal assistant”. Good to see that Apple still has a sense of humour. But it will be the serious applications that will drive Siri.

Voice recognition is not new, Android have had it for ages, but it was seen as something to use when driving. This is a good thing, and undoubtedly saves lives, so on this advantage alone, Siri has a head start. But Siri is different. It may become as common as people using earpieces, odd at first, then annoying, then mainstream. The problem with mobile conversations is that the person can’t see the environment in which the other is talking, so it gets awkward; secondly people tend to talk too loud as they can’t overcome the natural brain response that you’re talking to someone at a distance. But the fact that Siri senses when you’ve lifted the phone to you ear is wonderful.

So what’s a natural language interface’s potential in learning?

1. Talking means better learning

E-learning usually puts something between the learner and content – a device. It can be a keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, joystick… whatever. This physical device requires cognitive effort and almost certainly distracts and diminishes the cognitive bandwidth available for attention and processing by the learner. Ideally, there would be no such device. Voice is, in fact, how most everyday communication takes place. We see and speak to each other without any interloper. You didn’t have to learn to speak and listen but you did have to spend years learning how to read, write and use computers. It’s good to talk as it’s how we learn.

2. Siri as personal assistant

This has HUGE potential. The problem with much e-learning is the linear, over-structured approach that lacks the flexibility to respond to personal learning issues. These may be; getting stuck, not quite understanding a point, needing more information, needing more depth, wanting to know why and so on. The learner is an individual and needs variance in response. Siri may turn out to be the ancestral Lucy that leads to systems that really do provide powerful, personalised, adaptive learning.

3. Siri as coach

Going one step further, Siri-type coaches may help you resolve things or lead you through a learning process with prompts that suggest alternative sources, strategies and solutions. The Siri voice is already a calm, slightly robotic but friendly, coach-like voice. ‘PersonaI assistant’ is only one step away from ‘coach’, and I can see it being a coach for real, when the software becomes really AI driven.

4. Siri as reinforcer

We’ve known since Ebbinghaus, in 1885, that we forget most of what we try to learn and that the cure for this rapid and inevitable forgetting is reinforcement and practice. Siri, or sons of Siri, could offer the promise of prompts, reminders and practice that really does push knowledge and skills from short to long term memory. It’s something that you carry with you and ideal for spaced practice.

5. Siri and language learning

Learnosity has pioneered the use of mobiles in language learning. You do your homework or assignments as voice and get them graded online. Imagine using the language you’re learning and getting immediate dialogue and feedback from Siri in that language. They say the best way to learn a language is to get a foreign girlfriend, well this is the next best thing, a personal assistant. Backed up with regular prompts, as in the previous point about reinforcement, and you have a powerful, semi-immersive, language learning system.

6. Siri and numeracy

Numeracy remains a stubborn problem in education, with millions failing to pick up even basic skills. Here’s a way of making that dull stuff dynamic. You talk to the phone, and it takes you through maths using natural language. You answer with voiced answers. Analysis of your answers prompts positive feedback and a reasonably constructed system will know your personal level of competence, so you don’t get left behind and progress at a rate that suits you. Siri, unlike most maths teachers could be an expert, constructive, consistent and infinitely patient.

7. Siri as assessor

Learnosity have already used voice for assessment, but the principle of voiced answers, checked by a language recognition system has fascinating possibilities in all subjects. It also allows you to assess people who have problems with written language e.g. dyslexia or physical disabilities. In any case, all those written exams taken by kids who don’t use pen and pencils in real life is rather odd. If you ask someone a question you expect a verbal reply. This could be the answer to remote assessment.

Conclusion

Is this a breakthrough or false dawn? To me it feels like a breakthrough, as it could change a basic behaviour, allowing the device to do things traditional teachers do well – talk to you, give you answers to your questions, help you progress.  It’s a breakthrough because it’s part of the consumer electronics revolution and hasn’t come from the educational world (where breakthroughs are rare), that means it has a chance of succeeding and becoming mainstream. I'm not saying that Siri in itself is the breakthrough, but it's the hole in the dam for natural language computing. Most of all, it’s cool and interesting. The Siri sites showing ‘fails’ and Siri talking to Siri, have already gone viral and viral is what we need in learning.

7 compelling arguments for peer learning

Learning lurches between extremes: the formal v informal, didactic v discover , self-paced v social, teaching v learning. But is there a bridge between these extremes, something that cleverly combines teaching and learning? Over the years, starting with Judith Harris’s brilliant (and shocking) work on peer pressure, then Eric Mazur’s work at Harvard but also through several presentations at a recent JISC E-assessment conference, I’ve been smitten by peer learning. The idea is to encourage learners to learn from each other. Compelling arguments?

1. Powerful theoretical underpinning

The bible for ‘peer’ pressure, and why parents and teachers should know about this stuff, is Judith Harris’s wonderful The Nurture Assumption, the work for which she received the George Miller Medal in psychology. Stephen Pinker sang her praises in The Blank Slate, and claimed that she had turned the psychology of learning on its head. I think he’s right. In a deep look at the data she found something totally surprising, that far from parents and other adults, like teachers, influencing the minds of young people, she found that 50% was genetic, just a few per cent parents and a whopping 47% peer group. The initial evidence came from linguistics, where children unerringly pick up the accents of their peer group, not their parents (I know this from experience).

2. Massively scalable

Given the massification of education, here’s an interesting argument. Peer learning may actually be better with large classes, as you have more scope in terms of selected peer groups. As many struggle with the challenge of large classes, here’s a technique that amplifies both teaching and learning. Peer reviewing and learning works because it is scalable, especially when good web-based tools are used.

3. Learning by teaching is probably the most powerful way to learn

Unsurprisingly, to teach is to learn, as peer learning involves high-order, deep-processing activity. In fact, the teacher may actually gain more than the learner. In any case, the peer’s voice is often clearer and better than teacher’s voice as they are closer to the mindset of the learner and can often see what problems they have, as well as solutions to those problems.

4. Encourages critical thinking

You can easily see how peer learning produces diversity of judgement. It is this enlargement of perspectives that is the starting point for critical thinking and complex reasoning, the very skills that Arum found lacking in his recent research in the US.. It also increases self-evaluation.

5. Group bonding a side effect

In addition to enhanced social and communication skills, peer groups bond. In one nursing case study at the University of Glasgow, the students started off a bit sceptical but soon demanded and volunteered participation.

6. Dramatic drops in drop-out rates

In all the case studies I saw, higher attendance and lower drop-out rates were claimed. This is not surprising, as continuing failure and disillusionment are often the result of isolation and a feeling of helplessness in learners, especially in large classes and courses.

7. Higher attainment

Mazur has recorded some startling improvements, not only in the core understanding of physics, but in general measured attainment through summative assessment. The peer learning was, in effect, the result of clever formative assessment. In a nursing course, they experienced better note taking and higher attainment and in a psychology course with 550 students, reciprocal peer critiques also led to higher attainment.

Problems?

Do students muck about? Apparently not, in the case studies I’ve seen the groups self-moderate. Indeed, the peer pressure prevents disruptive and non-participatory behaviour. It becomes cool to participate.

How do you know they’re not feeding each other false things? There’s certainly the danger of the blind leading the blind, but overall, the case studies show that real growth occurs. There’s real peer pressure in terms of not being exposed and not bullshitting the others. The approaches and tools help overcome this danger through the clever selection of mixed-ability, peer groups.

Of course there’s a difference between peer marking and peer review. Some advise against peer marking as it can be seen as a step too far, peer review, with constructive comments, however, seems to be more powerful.

Peer tools

You don’t actually need any tools to get started. As Mazur has shown, simple coloured cards that allow students to respond to the teacher’s diagnostic questions can be enough to spark peer group learning. He actually uses clickers, with histograms appearing on the screen, but mobile phones are increasingly being used for this function. However, for more technology-driven peer learning, Aropa, Peerwise or Peermark can be used.

Aropa is an open source tool from the University of Glasgow that allows teachers to set assignments then set up peer reviews between students. You review other students’ work, then receive reviews on your own work.

Peerwise is a free tool from NZ that flips assessment and allows students to create questions, share and see answers, a sort of peer-based, formative assessment generator. I like this angle as building good questions really does make you think in depth about the subject. It’s used by hundreds of institutions.

Peermark allows instructors to write assignments, from turnitin, the plagiarism folks. You set dates, can see how many assignments have been submitted, set how many students you want to review each assignment and whether you or the students choose what to review, pair up students, add review questions, reorder them. There's a nice video demo here.

Conclusion

I’m really convinced that this moves us on. We have to bounce teachers and learners out of that mindset that sees teaching as one to many and adopt the wisdom of the network. Pamela Katona at the University of Utrecht showed that students are less than satisfied with the teaching and feedback they receive. So many learners wait too long for feedback, receive cursory feedback, don’t have access to the marking scheme and often don’t see the final marked paper.

Arum, in Academically Adrift, has presented good research to show that critical thinking, complex reasoning and communications skills are all too lacking in our universities. So here’s a technique that moves us on, combing the best of teaching with the best of learning. All it takes is just that first step towards student interactivity and participation. And, to repeat, it’s SCALABLE, indeed, the more the merrier.

Only one thing lacking in Educating Essex – education!

Television has a nasty habit of showing state education as dysfunctional. If you have any doubt about Channel 4s intentions check out the sleazy publicity above. Suggests it's more about Essex Schoolgirls (nudge, nudge) than education. They view schools through a pathological lens, with an unnatural focus on problem kids. Channel 4 are obsessed with this approach. Educating Essex, like C4s ridiculous Jamie’s Dream School before it and again C4s The Unteachables before that, are a disgrace. This has become a TV genre all of its own promoted by the Tristams; TV types, who, in my experience, largely went to private schools, where problem kids are filtered out of the system.

The makers of this programme certainly lack the objectivity and professionalism of real documentary makers, as they simply select ‘discipline’ themes from hundreds and hundreds of hours of tape. It’s yet another example of a London-based, editorial class pushing their personal agendas. It’s the same with Channel 4 Learning, who burn millions year on year on dubious games to tackle social problems. It’s a patronising view of state education by a bunch of posh kids in Horseferry Rd.

The programme started well but I didn’t expect EVERY episode to descend into yet another ‘chav-porn’ series of portraits of individual children causing havoc in front of the cameras. It’s exactly what Owen Jones wrote about in Chavs, about the demonization of the state system. There’s precious little coverage of any of the hundreds of other ordinary children getting on with their education, only insanely detailed coverage of Sam, Vinnie and whatever lad they’ll choose next week as it makes for ‘good TV’. Have they no shame?

Where’s the teaching and learning?

In one of the few glimpses (that’s all we get) of actual teaching, we see a teacher make the classic mistake of introducing PI without any adequate reason or explanation. The charming young Carrie’s reaction was pained but rational, “What is PI? Where did it come from?.....” Cue the difficulty of teaching maths. This could have gone somewhere, but it was only used as an amusing clip. In fact, look carefully and it shows a typical maths teacher with his back to the audience simply reading out a Word document from the and e screen, and has failed to break the solution down into steps comprehensible by the class.

I’d like to know if this absence of teachers and learning was the result of editorial bias or at the request of the teachers and/or the teachers’ unions. As a governor in a comprehensive school I and other Governors faced extreme resistance when we tried to report honest observations from our scheduled classroom visits. We were eventually told that classroom visits were banned! If this is true, it would be a shame, as I’m sure many of the teachers in the school are good, inspiring and professional. The problem the programme makers may be up against is the hagiographic idea, sometimes promoted by the teaching profession, of all teachers being brilliant and inspiring, when many, like any other profession, are just average. I would much rather have seen the truth, than this wildly distorted, corridor-only, punishment room view of the school.

Administrators galore?

The one thing you do notice is the relatively large numbers of support staff on camera. This is exaggerated by the angle taken by the editors (problem kids), nevertheless, from the Head of Inclusion to the pair who sit in the support unit, the sympathetic Miss Baldwin and Mr Tracey, as well as Mr Drew and a team who are always in and around his office, it seems that teachers and teaching have been curiously erased from the programme. We saw a lot of Miss Conway, head of house and PE teacher in the last episode, but we’ve yet to see any sport or teaching of PE.

Obsession with  uniforms?

I really like the Headmaster, Deputy Heads (the legendary Mr Drew and Mr King) but shouldn’t they be doing more teaching? An unbelievable amount of time is spent policing school uniforms. Is this really what matters in schools? High school students in Finland don’t wear a uniform and it is one of the highest performing systems in the world. Imagine if all that time, effort and money went on education, as opposed to enforcing uncomfortable and impractical ties and blazers.

They get through the exhausting and difficult days with a healthy mix of banter and humour. No shots of the staff room though. I wonder why! Could it be that these were edited out? Surely we can take some reality here. These are real people with a real sensitivity towards the children. Those we see do really care, we just don’t see enough of them teaching or kids learning. We’re four episodes in and I have no idea what’s taught or how it’s taught – hopefully the next few episodes will enlighten me.

Facebook saved my sanity - remarkable story of Jan Morgan

On September 15 2010 I saw this appear on facebook:

"hello , this is Imogen , Jan's daughter , just to warn you if you are meeting up with her or due in work from her or whatever - she is in hospital after a stroke on monday night so will not be able to do anything for a while."

Jan Morgan, a well known e-leaning professional, had suffered from a stroke. (This message came from her 12 year-old daughter. How brave and mature is that?)

iPhone lifeline

It wasn’t long before the redoubtable Jan started to post from her iPhone in hospital. At first the posts were a little scrambled, and the spelling amusingly idiosyncratic. But as she recovered the spelling got better, the humour kicked in and she was soon posting about the awful food, asking for all visitors to bring a Starbucks and my favourite, “Nurses telling meboff for playing with my phone too much”. What was interesting was the way the staff kept complaining about her using her iPhone, yet as she says “it is my lifeline and link to the outside world hugely reassuring”. Then this lovely message “It would appear that I am sending bizarre messages as my spelling is atrocious and I'm not noticing before pressing send so apologies to everyone jan”.

D-Day

Among lots of updates on her progress, including several on the slapstick process of physiotherapy, a genuinely moving moment, “Had a few blubbery moments over the weekend... I miss Imogen, I miss my home and I've had enough of this game can I stop now please? ... But I've made such a fuss about the food and gone on strike as I just can't face it anymore ...” But D-day was not far off, “20th December -my discharge date... I'm going home hip hip hooraaaaay:):):)thank you everyone for your support these past 11weeks”. The lack of stimulation in hospital was clearly annoying her, “Given that the only entertainment offered by the hospital is Wednesday "art&craft" classes- currently making Xmas cards and looking like a morning at playgroup or Friday morning bingo classes.... Watching kettles boil would provide more stimulation!”

Now if you’re fortunate enough never to have suffered a sudden unexpected deterioration in your health or spent an extended spell in hospital, this was an extraordinary series of posts over several months. Jan is currently writing a book about her remarkable experience. (if there's any interested publishers out there - contact me.) What was fascinating was the way she overcame the isolation of the hospital experience by posting on Facebook. She was humblingly honest, frank and downright funny about her own recovery. Listen to this, on hospital food,“Salad today consists of grated carrot, cress - slices of orange and lemons.......truly weird”. We all experienced her progress by proxy and it was always fun to see Jan post yet another reflection on her predicament (often in weird spelling). It was truly life affirming. This record, of her posts during recovery must be a mine of useful information about the early stages of cognitive recovery. Then a gear-shift.

“I went home this morning:):) gosh! My stomach has been burbling since 6 am and ive been shaking - bit like stage fright, a few tears too. I managed the stairs up& down and the front door step. Only need grab rails by front door and additional support rail at the bottom of the stairs so minimal. I failed on the coffee test though as my legs were shaking so much I couldn't stand, so Imogen made instead:)” We were living this realtime journey with Jan, always posting replies, not just out of sympathy, but out of sheer admiration for her gutsy refusal to get downhearted.

Benefits!

Finally Jan got home and started to adjust to the life she temporarily left. Again her posts were full of laughs as she struggled with the simplest of tasks. But it was her adjustments to the benefits system that were fascinating. The realisation that she had now to survive on a greatly reduced income hit home and I’m sure it was a dose of realism for all of us. Benefit cuts seem very abstract unless you know someone who relies on them. It was a laughable, at times harrowing, description from inside the Kafkaesque world of the DWP, disability benefits, disabled parking permits, phone calls, form-filling.

“They don't do home assessments and if I miss the appointment I will need doctors written statement saying why! No they cant see the medical information already held by DWP due to Data Protection... How often is the Data Protection Act misused and misunderstood ? Meanwhile I stiill only receive £65.45 per week”

‎”... I have to have a DWP formal fitness to work assessment - study scheduled my appointment for 8:45 next Thursday, in Birmingham- I was supposed to make my own way there on public transport …I can't even walk as far as the nearest bus atop yet.”

Again, it was a window to a world few of us know much about. The labyrinthine processes and exhausting complexity of the benefits system was a revelation. Then arranging care and support. How do I find people? How much do I pay?

Scans

In a truly remarkable act, she posted her own brain scan, showing where the artery had burst. This was merely another post with a minimum of fuss. I can’t say how much I admired this small, matter-of-fact post. It said volumes about her as a person. What we witnessed was her cognitive recovery, day by day, as the spelling got better and the messages more coherent. I have no doubt that the iPhone and Fecebook contributed greatly to diminishing her sense of isolation by keeping her in touch with the outside world. A bolder claim, and one which I hope she discusses in her book, is the claim that it helped her re-learn and recover that much quicker.

Thanks

So thanks Jan (and Imogen), for your bravery in sharing what was clearly a massively traumatic event in your life. Thanks for your honesty and humour. We’ve all grown through this experience.


PS
This was written with Jan's oversight and permission. Here's a message from the lady herself....
"You may say i have been an inspiration or whatever but from my perspective it was you and all my other fb friends sending me messages and just getting on with your daily lives that inspired me to get better - the world was still turning out there and I wanted to be included. One year on and attempting to live on less than 18% of my former income, there are moments when my hospital bubble suddenly seems attractive (apart from the food)"


"Adjusting to my new normality is all an ongoing experience, but this time last year my future was bleak. Now I have a future and it is going to be a damn good one and I'm going to have  fun:)"

7 reasons to put heads in 'cloud' e-learning

The future has just got kinda cloudy with iCloud and Kindle Fire. Forget the devices, that's just gadgetry. 


iCloud not iPhone
Reaction to the launch of the new iPhone4 was muted, as the gadget geeks expected more, but it was the other release at the launch that was far more important, the new version of IOS.  Look under the bonnet at Apple with iCloud and you see the future, your content in device-independent cloud services.It is expected (Forrester) that the number using personal cloud services will leap from 65m to 196m by 2016. That's a $12 billion market.


Kindle Fire
Just a few days ago Jeff Bezos launched the Kindle Fire. This is the big threat to the iPad because it's cheap, faster and has its head in the cloud with its EC2, cloud-focused 'Silk' browser that caches for speed. Amazon Cloud storage will come free. Again, it's all about device-independent content through cloud services.

Cloud nine promises

One view of the cloud is that it’s no big deal, that we’ve been using online services for yonks, without any fuss. Another is that it represents the most important shift in IT in the last decade. There’s even mention of that dreaded phrase ‘paradigm shift’. I’m in the latter camp. This is big news in IT and  for e-learning there are seven 'cloud nine' promises, seven major wins;  

1. Big migration

According to Gartner, this is the biggest shift in the IT world in the last decade, as IT turns itself upside down and flips applications, storage and processing power to the cloud. We’re now seeing a massive migration of e-learning to the cloud. When servers began to be clustered and virtualised, the real clouds began to form and this has fanned out to; infrastructure (IaaS), platforms (PaaS) and software (SaaS). The game changer was Amazon, with their EC2 and S3 services.

2. Full scalability

Cloud services offer contracts that allow you to scale according to actual demand, not forecast guesses on usage. This is important in e-learning, as uptake and usage is notoriously difficult to predict. You can pilot at low cost then scale up over time, in proportion to need.

3. Only pay for what you use

This shift from a fixed to variable cost model, paying only for what you use, can result in huge cost savings.  Learning services tend to be used erratically. It’s the equivalent of switching from using electricity generated by your own generator to using the national grid.

4. Buy less hardware

Dick Moore ran Learndirect’s IT for years and knows more than a thing or two about delivering complex learning services to huge numbers of people, 24/7, at the same time gathering huge amounts of data. He is an evangelist for shifting data to the cloud, virtualising servers, then using that acquired storage and bandwidth to deliver your main services - you don;t need to own all your own metal.

5. Buy less software

Like many in the business world, I first saw the real power of the cloud when I shifted all CRM activity to salesforce.com. The benefits, in terms of access and savings, were immediate. It was clear that such a move was necessary to remain competitive and that these SaaS services would mark out the e-learning innovators. But over the last few years more and more e-learning services and content has been delivered from the cloud.

6. Lower energy bills

Hugely efficient data centres, based in cold climates, such as Iceland (the ‘cold rush’), deliver much greener, lower-cost services. If you can wean your IT guys off their old ‘server hugging’ habits, you can benefit through considerable savings on all that electricity used to run and cool your servers. Then there’s the opportunity to run these services on thinner, less energy-hungry, client devices.

7. Device independence

As an added bonus, as we move to an increasingly mobile and tablet driven world, you can support more and more devices. Learning needs to be free, and this means letting it loose on as many devices as possible. The Amazon Fire points the way to a fast, cloud cached, thin-client device and, in general, cloud-based e-learning accelerates mobile learning.

Education

Many VLEs, from open source Moodle to Blackboard, now offer cloud-based services. Google apps, in the form of free email, calendar and collaborative tools, is being used by hundreds of educational institutions worldwide, more than 14 million students and teachers, they claim.  Monash University (Australia) has invited over 50,000 students to use the integrated services Gmail, Calendar for University and personal planning (shared) and Google docs. It’s accessible and efficient. The big advantage is the wholescale outsourcing of services. Google also have an open source, cloud-based LMS called CloudCourse. You can create content, track that content, schedule classes and it’s integrated with Google Calendar.

Organisations

Kineo, Learningpool and many others offer hosted cloud-based LMS services such as Moodle and Totara, with full scalability through Rackspace. Companies, like Edvantage, just sold to Lumesse (formerly Stepstone) have been offering a complete range of SaaS services for some time, showing that cloud delivery adds value. Cogbooks offer a sophisticated, next-generation adaptive learning solution, that you just switch on from the cloud. Organisations large and small see learning services, as something that can be easily migrated, unlike hardcore commercial, transactional services. And although there’s new distinctions, such as public and private clouds, the bottom line is that cloud computing is the next big thing.

Under a cloud of suspicion?

So the cloud on the learning horizon promises a scalable service with massive savings in cost, a greener service and device independence – what’s the downside? Well, there will be worries about security. This is not to be ignored, as once you’ve shifted your data up and out, it may be subjected to scrutiny by authorities such as Governments and legal plaintiffs. And when you have a breach, you may find yourself unable to have the same level of forensic testing available as you had in-house. Remember that the cloud is not actually a cloud, but a huge data centre(s) somewhere on terra firma, so check what arrangements they have if it gets hit by a tsunami or hurricane. One other point, as Dick keeps reminding me, remember to encrypt your data before sending it to the cloud, doing it there would be self-defeating. In short, you also need to know what you’re letting yourself into contractually.

Conclusion

Of course, we’ve had our heads in the clouds for some time, as email, blogging, Youtube, Wikipedia, shared documents and social networking are just some of the cloud services we use without thinking. But as we've seen, there’s several new imperatives that push us towards use of the cloud, and surely the saved money can be better spent elsewhere. This is not cloud cuckoo land, it’s the future.

7 reasons why Kafka would have loved assessment

I’m in Prague this week, speaking to the world’s test providers . Prague was Franz Kafka’s city, whose unfinished masterpiece The Trial tells of the accusation, arrest and relentless pursuit of Josef K. He doesn’t know what he’s done wrong but the whole world seems determined to put him to trial and find him guilty. This is not far removed from the modern obsession with testing. Young people are in a perpetual world of exams and are not sure why the world is so determined to accuse them and find them guilty of not knowing huge tranches of weird stuff. Here’s just seven Kafkaesque features of modern assessment:

Sell ‘cheating’

We tell people tests are merictocratic but the test community sells ‘tests’ and also courses on how to ‘cheat’ those tests. Companies like Kaplan and others sell expensive courses that tell you literally, how to cheat. Imagine a business school that runs courses on banking, and at the same time sells courses on robbing banks! (Then again….) This is immoral and a sign that the tests are not what they claim to be, immune from improvement through tutoring and practice.

Mindless maths

We a dull & irrelevant curriculum, teach it badly, test it endlessly and wonder why they hate it or fail. PISA set the wrong pace, with STEM close behind, so politicians have become obsessed with the weird world of abstract maths, despite the fact that the vast majority of students will NEVER use the quadratic formula, surds, trigonometry or any algebra at any point in their lives. Abstract maths is easy to test, so the tests drive the curriculum. The majority of learners actually need ‘functional’ maths, fit for practical living, not the tiny minority that go on to do STEM degrees.

Summative is too late

The educational system is structured like horizontal layers of impermeable rock. The learner has to punch vertically upwards through these strata, with exams at every stratum, designed to halt progress for the majority. This obsession with summative assessment also means that formative assessment suffers. Teachers teach to the test. In short, we test too late, when the damage is done.

Tests measure failure

Precious few people get 100% in any test, so testing almost always tests below full competence. Why don’t we test until full competence is achieved, rather than accepting second-best? This is what simulations and games approaches do and therefore offer. Why can’t we go for systems of smart, adaptive assessment that assure competence at every stage?

Test and forget

Most exams test knowledge that will be forgotten within days or at most weeks. Ebbinghaus proved this in 1885, yet we still operate a system that follows the ‘cram, test, forget’ method. Part of the problem is the fact that we have abandoned ‘learning by doing’. Tests favour ‘knowing that’ as opposed to ‘knowing how’. Imagine an Olympics with only a few medals available for a few, pure athletics races and the rest are rubbish.

Luddites

Most tests are still done using pens. Two points: 1) few students and workers use pens in the real world, they use keyboards; 2) not giving students the chance to restructure and rewrite essay answers leads students to memorise and regurgitate set essays and answers. Critical thinking through writing is all about rewriting, so why not give them the ability to word process? We test using primitive technology that actually stops them from showing competence.

Abysmal quality control

Recent A-level exams contained impossible questions in a range of subjects from major test organisations such as AQA, OCR and Edexcel. Their quality control was so abysmal that they hadn’t tested their papers with even a SINGLE student. They claim to have statistically eliminated the problem by adjusting marks. Just how did they measure the distress and distraction in trying to answer an impossible question?

Conclusion

We test to blame, whether its students, schools even entire educational systems, which at times has led to a pathological view of education, and the demonization of state schooling. There’s so much testing going on, that relevance, innovation, skills, honesty and quality have gone down the plughole. We’re stuck with a Kafkaesque approach that is relentless, bureaucratic, accusatory and often tests the wrong things for the wrong reasons, killing the desire to learn. We’ve turned our children into a generation of Josef Ks.

Higher Education? Myths, mantras, illusions and delusions by Hacker & Dreifus

It’s all in the ‘question mark’. Hacker & Dreifus are academics who have no interest in destroying higher education. They do, however, think it has gone badly wrong, in the US at least, straying from its real purpose. Their charge is that Universities have become insular, inward-looking and self-serving, abandoning teaching in favour of research. Politicians, parents, students and external commentators are waking up to the parallel universe that is the modern university, a feather-bedded, faculty culture that seeks to avoids teaching, with high costs, sabbaticals, endless conferences and dubious research. Does their analysis apply to the UK? Let’s see.

Teaching

Their cardinal charge is the high cost students pay, through debt, for low quantity and quality teaching. Now that people pay top dollar they are asking what they get in return. The reality, uncovered in detail,  is that academics seek to abandon teaching as their careers progress. The bulk of undergraduate teaching (70%) is now done by low paid, part-time ‘contingent’ staff. In some cases foreign students with English so poor they can’t be understood, especially in maths and science (a complaint I’ve heard many times from students in the UK).

The stronger charge is that academics don’t care much for teaching undergraduates “nor do they feel the need to”. They witness appalling attitudes towards students, and in particular, poor teaching with low preparation, poor skills, little eye contact, and therefore little attention by the class, also a propensity to blame students for lack of attention. Why? Because teaching ability is not valued. Research is what leads to permanent employment and promotion.

“Good teaching is only possible if professors are also active in research” is the mantra the hear time and time again. But the pressure to shovel more and more research into more and more journals, with fewer and fewer readers and attend more conferences, with fewer attendees, is a road of diminishing returns. Research, through the publishing virus, is now a reputation and resume issue, largely divorced from teaching. Indeed, newer teaching institutions have massively expanded research, at the expense, they say, of teaching. This research-led teaching myth also promotes the teaching of inappropriate, esoteric topics. In short, there’s a need to de-link or further disengage research from teaching.

Having attended both a US and UK universities and seen lots of academics present, I would say that, if anything it is worse in the UK. We have a more reserved culture, where highly analytic researchers find it difficult to face up audiences. Post-92 we also had a massive uplift in teachers who do research. I’m not convinced that this has been to the benefit of either research or teaching in the UK.

Dropout rates

Shocking figures are presented on dropout rates. Estimates for those who drop out in the first semester lie between one quarter to one third of all freshmen. Engineering courses have huge dropout rates, with faculty holding the view that their job is to ‘weed out’ poor performance, an approach they refuse to apply to themselves. This lack of interest from faculty astounds the likes of Eric Mazur, a physicist and teaching expert at Harvard, who claims that a meeting on falling teaching standards had the, “lowest turnout he could recall”.

We also have a problem with increasing dropout rates, with huge variations between institutions, but although less than the US. However, like the US, poor teaching and student experiences seems to be one cause, especially in the newer Universities.

Bureaucratic behemoths

Universities have also loaded up with odd (they give job titles), and in their view superfluous, administrative jobs and show that the ratio of administrators to students has doubled in 30 years. With these jobs comes office space and buildings, adding significant costs to students’ fees. This war of words between faculty and administrators is familiar in the UK.

Extravagant facilities

The costs of huge sports facilities and teams, and the distortions this places on finances and learning are explored in detail. This is not such a problem in the UK, but our propensity to throw up buildings, that are empty most of the time, is just as bad. At least in the US they have more commitment to summer schools and keeping campuses open for students year round.

Poor performance

Failing academics are almost impossible to fire, so poor teaching and lazy research abounds, with ‘academic freedom’ used as the shield to defend poor performance. On top of this academia clones itself, leading to groupthink and a lack of academic diversity. Indeed, the evidence they cite shows that an academic, like Ward Churchill, is far more likely to be dismissed for exercising academic freedom, something well documented by Lionel Lewis’s Cold War on Campus, where Universities caved into McCarthyite demands for sackings.

We’ve had no McCarthyism in the UK, but the sclerotic and over-protectionist policies towards faculty staff are possible more entrenched. As the evaluation in the performance in teaching is low, it is never a serious cause for the necessary weeding and feeding that Universities need to stay vibrant. Even when low research output is delivered, attempts to remove faculty are greeted with hysterical responses e.g. Sussex and Middlesex.

Skewed admission

Lazy admission policies lead to middle-class parents paying for personal essays (in the UK personal statements). On SATS, the rich pay thousands of dollars for courses from Kaplan and Princeton Review to ‘cheat’ the exam. Is there any other area of human endeavour where respectable educational institutions offer courses on ‘cheating’? It’s like a Business School offering a course on ‘Robbing banks’. (Mmmmm…)

Vocational/academic

The authors unashamedly support a return to a Liberal Arts model with undergraduate courses leading to vocational specialisms. They are rather snooty about engineering, MIT and CalTech. Although they have a pop at the Ivy League and rankings that reflect a “premium on prestige” and brands not teaching and learning. The Golden Dozen in the US come in for some heavyweight criticism for below par teaching.

This is mirrored in the UK, where vocational degrees (apart from medicine) are regarded as below par. On the other hand we have some worthy Universities, such as Heriot-Watt and Manchester and UCL that still carry the banner for solid, professional vocational courses. In may ways we’ve never adopted the Liberal Arts BA then Medschool/Lawyer model from across the pond. That’s to our credit.

Recommendations

They’re a bit lightweight on technology in learning (they call it techno-learning) but smart enough to see that it’s a solution, with a detailed case study on Humanities 2510 at a Florida  College, where the costs have been halved with increased attainment. Great to see the wonderful Carol Twigg research (LINK) being used as the inspiration for this course. There’s nothing quite like the OU in the US, then again, the great failing in the UK was the failure to apply the OU model, even for high-volume theoretical courses, where it clearly works.

“The future is here…it’s just not evenly distributed”, said William Gibson, so price and product are not aligned, so shop around. They name a whole raft of small colleges offering excellent degrees at a fraction of the price of bigger institutions. Some colleges have simply dropped excessive spending on sports teams and stadia, others are wholly committed to students and teaching, not research, even free tuition. Braver still is Evergreen College, where grades and fixed curricula have been abandoned; students get a long written evaluation.

Good advice in the UK. We have similar snobbishness around prestige and brands. The ranking tables are a disgrace, ignoring teaching. This, I feel, is set to change.

Toxic debt & bubble

The core problem is the indirect subsidy of 2^nd and 3^rd rate research. Reduce research and you improve teaching and reduce costs. It’s that simple. So they call for more student-centred institutions, less sabbaticals, less research, less administrators, more scrutiny of bad teaching and more leadership. How many people can actually name the Vice Chancellor of their local University? They have become anonymous apparatchiks, obsessed with research not teaching, building not technology, chasing gongs not glory. Couldn’t agree more.

It’s the debt that’s attracting attention. As costs have risen by 250% in real terms in the US and much higher levels in the UK, we should be worried. This has all the signs of a bubble. We have deferred payment through loans (debt) to a generation who may not be able to pay and bankruptcy is no escape. What if these debts turn toxic?

The bottom line is that students and parents are being short-changed by entrenched values that have sacrificed learning for research. Academia has adopted the same stance as the finance sector, refusing to hold itself to account, adopting a prickly, defensive posture. The worry, for the authors, is that we’re creating an “indentured educated class”.

This may be less of an issue in the UK, as loans are recovered from tax with a one third expected loss guaranteed by government (still a loss). But the debt bubble is still a possibility, through a combination of evasion and inability to pay.

In many ways the arguments in this book can be applied to UK Universities, the notable differences being the US commitment to campus sport and a much larger number of private institutions. I’d suspect, therefore, that the debate has already reached these shores with fees looming, as we are now third in the world on the cost of Higher Education to students, with only S Korea and the US ahead of us. We would do well to listen to what these researchers have to say.

Brilliant student tool that saves tons of time

If I had to name just one time-saving tool for students, researchers and academics, it would be CITEME, a simple Facebook application. How many hours do students and researchers waste in, first working out what format should be used for citations; second writing and formatting them?

CITEME – how it works

Simply type in the name of the author, title, subject or ISBN and it will drop down a list of properly formatted citations, which you cut and paste. It’s that easy. You can also choose from a range of formats (Harvard, Chicago, APA, Turabian or MLA) as required by your institution and/or tutor.

The first problem is that academics are often vague about what format they require from their students. Is it Harvard, Chicago, APA, Turabian or MLA? To be honest it’s nit-picking, as the differences between these are miniscule, such as position of publication date and whether the date should have brackets. One thing you have to do is check the policy for format.

Saves tons of time

This tool will save you hours of time and allow you to focus on the content, rather than the searching for, writing and formatting of citations.  It also means you spend more time learning how to use proper citations. Simply write that essay or paper then go through adding the citations one by one in your chosen format. I’ve yet to meet a student who wasn’t grateful for this tip.

PS Thanks to Millie thesocialnetworkingteacher, who put me on to this tool.

7 ways education contributes to rioting?

Many riots take place during the summer months when the rioters are not at school or college. They have time on their hands, are often bored and don’t have to get up for anything the next morning.

The education system, therefore, becomes a contributory factor in social unrest. It is the only area of human endeavour that sticks to a 19^th century agricultural calendar and curriculum, which has several downsides:

1. Facilities lie idle in schools for months on end – sports facilities, theatres, classrooms – as they are mothballed during long holidays.
2. Kids find themselves with little to do, especially te poor, who can’t afford holidays and travelling.
3. The cost of holidays is pushed beyond many poor parents because travel companies push up prices during the school holidays, leaving and poor to amuse themselves on the streets.
4. The cost of education is artificially high because the capital and maintenance budget is not spent wisely. For months of the year these buildings are largely empty.
5. Summer is a time for forgetting. We know that the long summer hols set back students, especially those from poorer background with less home support in learning. This in turn leads to low achievement and disaffection.
6. Pushing irrelevant educational content, such as the more esoteric portions of the maths curriculum, literary criticism and Latin, is a recipe for further disaffection with schools.
7. The educational apartheid and failure to give vocational learning the status it deserves leads to perceived failure by those who do not have an academic bent, again leading to disaffection.

Now we know that there’s a need for better education and training. Surely we could find a way to add a fourth semester to school and colleges, to make better use of the assets, reduce the cost per student and get on with solving some of the problems in our society. I’ve already blogged a good example of how this could be achieved through practical, vocational, learning opportunities that sweat existing, unused facilities.

Isn’t it also ironic that the rioters shop of choice is JB Sports and their loot of choice sportswear and the irony that these riots took place in the shadow of the Olympic build. The rhetoric is all about participation in sport, yet the youth clubs in these areas are being shut down. This has been a lost opportunity. We could have used the Olympics as a means to create tens of thousands of apprenticeships and encouraged participation in sport through local initiatives. My kids have been training all summer in Tae Kwon do. It’s kept them fit and occupied. Note that this has nothing to do with school and PE – the PE teachers are all on holiday and the school facilities locked up. In fact the classes normally run in my two nearest schools have stopped because the schools are closed! This is madness.

Vorderman on maths – reactionary TV presenter, no maths degree, debt & property scammer advises us on maths!

We’ve had an endless stream of ‘I’m a celebrity, let me fix your schools’ types this year; Jamie Oliver, Toby Young, Joanna Lumley, and now, god help us, Carol Vorderman. (Interesting to note that this Conservative supporter wouldn't be allowed to teach maths, as Gove doesn't want teachers with anything less than a 2.2 - she has a third.)

Vorderman – a few unsavoury facts

Just a few words about Vorderman: a) She doesn’t have a maths degree, she has a third class degree in Engineering, b) She acted as a spokesperson for the rogue debt consolidation company First Plus, forced to cut the contract after criticism from the debt charity Credit Action c) She fronted a property company that collapsed leaving many with unfinished properties abroad which they had paid for, d) Sacked from Channel 4 after being seen as a money-grabbing lightweight on £1 million a year, e) After a disastrous appearance on question time, where she spouted extreme right-wing views, Dimbleby said in the Times, “It lasted an hour, this programme...it felt like more to me.” f) she also has a long history of being partisan on educational politics and attacking the Labour Party.

So let’s imagine the following conversation at Tory Party headquarters, who commissioned the report when they were in opposition; “Suggestions to sort out maths in schools? How about Carol Vorderman? Does he have a maths degree? Well no, and we’ll have to hide that fact that she’s encouraged dodgy debt management, fronted a failed property scam and spouts reactionary nonsense whenever possible. But, she does have one redeeming feature. What’s that? She’s ‘rear of the year’. Call her.”

To be fair, apart from Carol, the team is academically sound, and has made some interesting observations and recommendations.

Curriculum

They conclude, that the maths curriculum is a catastrophic, irrelevant mess, geared towards higher advanced maths at the expense of functional maths. I couldn’t agree more. Teaching 14 year olds how to use the quadratic formula and surds is just plain stupid. Roger Schank often asks his academic audiences whether any of them can remember the quadratic formula, and he rarely, if ever, gets a correct answer. Why worry then that, “Only 15% of students take mathematics, in some form, beyond GCSE” as the current GCSE is hopelessly geared towards high-level, irrelevant, abstract maths. I think 15% is reasonable, if not a little high. And if “Nearly half of all students ‘fail’ GCSE Mathematics, why worry, as it’s a flawed, overly-academic and partly irrelevant qualification.

The GCSE curriculum is loaded with esoteric algebra, trigonometry, geometry and number theory that 99% of learners will never, ever use in their entire working lives. Note that this is at the expense of functional maths in two senses, 1) it squeezes practical maths out of the curriculum, 2) it is a massive demotivator, reinforcing the idea among millions of children that ‘they can’t do maths’.

The suggestion that we have a mainstream Maths GCSE that focuses on functional numeracy is therefore wise. This is what I had at school in Scotland many moons ago. I did an O-level in Arithmetic (practical) and another in Maths (theoretical). Makes sense, although I’d reframe Arithmetic as ‘Practical Maths’. Employers aren’t complaining that people don’t have ‘maths’ skills, they’re complaining because they don’t have basic ‘functional numeracy’.

Teaching

At one end of the spectrum the team are spot on – primary school teaching. The teaching of maths at this level is woeful; mostly because the vast majority of teachers have very low numeracy skills, and partly because of poor teaching methods. In the same way that whole word teaching had a catastrophic impact on literacy; ill-informed, half-baked, non-integrated and inconsistent approaches to numeracy teaching have also been catastrophic. There is the recommendation that the teaching be rooted in the real world, through practical tasks – something that’s been recommended for decades but been studiously ignored in schools.

Almost all primary teachers stopped maths at 16

The recommendation of a minimum B pass in GCSE in maths before you’re allowed to teach the subject sounds like a bad joke until you realise that our children are being taught by largely innumerate primary school teachers. It claims that, “Almost all of those on primary PGCE courses gave up studying mathematics at age 16. So, by the time they taught their first classes, they had not studied mathematics to any meaningful level for at least six years.” Only about 2% of primary school teachers have a degree in science or any STEM subject.

Most maths not taught by maths teachers!

Another shocker is the fact that in secondary schools, “24% of all children in secondary schools are not taught by specialist mathematics teachers”. Read that again. Most maths is not taught by maths teachers! However, the team have fallen into the trap of seeing the solution to bad schooling as yet more schooling. Forcing young people to study maths until they are 18 is just plain lunacy. If you haven’t got basic, functional numeracy into your head after 11 consecutive years of maths, another two years isn’t going to matter and the idea of ‘maths citizenship’ is just weird.

Conclusion

The report points out 1) the people teaching maths are by and large amateurs, 2) the curriculum is too esoteric, 3) we need two separate maths qualifications. I agree with all of these findings but we’re chasing moonbeams here. First, the educational establishment is so wedded to dated PGCE recruitment and curriculum practices that it is almost impossible to reform without radical restructuring. You have to get teacher training out of the Universities where it reinforces the old academic model and change the methods of recruitment. Secondly, you have to break the back of the gold standard, A-level mindset, where University entrance is the primary goal of all schooling and everything else is classed as failure. It ain’t going to happen.

Download full report here.

Education at its very best - Brighton Rocks!

Rockshop – education at its very best

Last night I saw the fruits of what I regard as an ideal educational experience, run during the school holidays, yet none of the participants or observers would have seen it as ‘educational’ in any sense. Here’s what happens. Seventy to eighty kids attend a five day event called ‘Rockshop’ run by Herbie Flowers, who played with the likes of Lou Reed and David Bowie. He has several tutors who ‘tut’.

Goal driven

On Monday morning they have a goal: write some songs and perform them live, to a paying audience, on Friday night.

Learn by doing

The tutors don’t deliver formal lectures or lessons, they simply facilitate the process, helping where and when they can. The whole point is to learn by doing. The kids learn together, from each other and from the tutors, as they write, refine, practice and perform real songs.

Work with strangers

What’s great is the fact that many of these kids work with people they’ve never met before, which teaches them social, communication and work skills. They learn with and from other people who are not in their normal peer group. They make new friends, in some cases I’m sure, lifelong friends.

Good social mix

There’s kids from a range of social backgrounds; private schools, state schools and kids with special needs who have found they have a talent for paying an instrument, and the whole group clearly support each other (give or take some teenage ‘attitude’!).

Peer learning

There’s classically trained violinists, singer song writers, mouth organists, jazz fans, drummers, base players, guitarists, keyboard players and brass players. And it’s cool if you’re not as good as the others – because they all know they’re there to learn, not to judge. They’re showing each other chords, base lines and twinning up on stage so the strongest can help smooth out the weakest. It’s all good.

Focus

The goal brings focus, so forget about lack of concentration and attention. They’re full on, 9-5.30, then evenings at home. Many even popped out to busk at lunchtime!

Performance

There’s no need for formal assessment as it’s all about real performance. This is what brings out the best in these teenagers is that the pressure comes not from the exam but something they care deeply about, their own performance and competence. And boy did they respond.

Family and friends

Friday night came and a sell-out audience, largely the friends and relatives of the performers, was waiting eagerly – no expectations then! I was particularly impressed by the number of young people in the audience who were there to see and support their friends. My lad had his parents, grandparents, two cousins and a friend watching – that’s pressure. But it was the whole family thing that made it work. Suddenly it was cool to have worked hard and practised. It was cool to learn.

The quality of the songs was outstanding both lyrically and in musical composition. We had jazz, soulful ballads, a sophisticated live, looped composition, rock and folk. And the finale, with all of the kids on the stage rocking out with the audience on their feet, was great. The kids had busked at lunchtime and gave the cash to Herbie and he promised to use it to subsidise the tuckshop!

Share it

But that’s not all. All the sessions and loads of photos will/have been uploaded to YouTube and Flickr. So the show goes on and performers, their family and friends can enjoy what they’ve achieved. It’s also archived for future use.

Conclusion

For some kids, learning is best done out of the confines of school and exams, by professionals with real stature. Herbie’s one of those people, as is my son’s drum tutor Phil and their Tae Kwon Do master, Howard. None of these people have teaching qualifications, but they’re among the best teachers I know. These people have enriched my children’s lives and deserve all the support they can get.

But what really fascinates me is the way in which institutional language and approaches are almost completely absent. There’s no talk of ’learners’ and ‘learning’. No one sees this as a course with lessons, sitting at desks and bells. There’s no ‘teachers’ just tutors who, as Herbie says ‘Tut don’t teach’. And there’s no written exam, just pure performance where everyone walks away with an experience they’ll remember for the rest of their lives, having grown as people, in terms of confidence and competence.

I have to declare an interest here as I’m the Deputy Chair of the Brighton Dome and Festival (a Concert Hall, two additional theatres and England’s largest annual arts Festival). Our wonderful Educational Director, Pippa Smith, supports this event which is run every year. There needs to be more of this during the summer months.

George Siemens - if social media goes so does connectivism

So George Siemens has lost interest in social media as “there is no there there” (plagiarising Gertrude Stein). Now I’m not an uncritical zealot when it comes to social media and have spoken out against the hype, but to claim there’s no substance at all to social media is wrong.

First he makes the general statement, “Social media=emotions”. I assume he means that social media only results in the emotional outpourings from the participants. So when I get invites to speak, write, exchange views, follow up links to useful blog pieces/articles/academic papers, read reviews and then go to movies/theatre, share photographs, rediscover old friends and meet up, keep in touch with distant relatives – it’s just a well of emotional mush? What George fails to understand is the fact that the networked world is causally connected to the real world. Real things happen in the real world because we communicate through these networks.

Siemens use of Facebook and Twitter seems to have been limited to, “attending to my emotive needs of being connected to people when I’m traveling and whining”. A bad workman blames his tools and if he sees Facebook and Twitter as ‘posting only’ media, forgetting that there’s groups, messaging and other features that are widely used for practical purposes, that’s his loss.

Connectivism not really there?

I should say from the start that I never bought Connectivism, as it muddles up primitive epistemology, dated social psychology and pedagogy to produce a nexus of thinly connected ideas around an abstract noun. Not for the first time have such vague, unsubstantiated ideas gained currency among educators. For me, the real problem is duplicity. Surely he's thrown out his connectivist baby with the bathwater of abandoned social media. So much for the idea of knowledge existing in the world of real activity by real people. Surely that also means 750 million on Facebook and hundreds of millions of learners on Twitter and other social media. And so much for the whole idea of creating a network for learning – unless, of course, that must mean George’s blog, online courses and speaking engagements. In a stroke Siemens has banished the largest and most potent networks on the planet to the dead zone, and with it connectivism.

Solution?

So what’s his solution? “The substance needs to exist somewhere else (an academic profile, journal articles, blogs, online courses” says George. He means, of course, ‘the academy’, namely academia and academics. George’s problem is to imagine that the academy is the focus of all intellectual and important activity. The conceit is the idea that if it ain’t about institutional learning it ain’t worth it. It’s an academic conceit that we all want to be lifelong learners taking their courses, attending their lectures, signing up for their online courses and hanging on their every word. Most of us couldn’t wait to get out of school and college, and wouldn’t dream of going back. Not leaving school at all is fine, but it doesn’t give you the right to look down upon others just because they don’t write academic articles and aren’t part of those networks. After nearly 30 years in the learning game, I truly believe that little has emerged from academia in terms of innovation, pedagogy and good practice. Indeed they themselves seem stuck in a primitive pedagogy that depends on lectures (which they will defend to the death). Time to move on.

Social media and politics

He ridicules Jeff Jarvis’s comments on the political power of the hashtag but the University of Athabasca ain’t Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen or Syria. Academics like Siemens can afford to disconnect because, to caricature Kissinger, “the stakes are so small.” “The notion of the Arab Spring being about social media is similarly misguided” says Siemens. Well, one can sit in some University somewhere and make these generalisations but YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have, and continue, to play a serious causal role in these revolutions. It's something I'm convinced of after travelling and speaking to young people in these countries. People are dying for their rights and using these media to achieve real political change and it's an insult for ill-informed academics to reduce this to an off-hand comment about it being 'misguided'.

Story

Let me end with a real story about Facebook. Jan Kaufman, a learning expert, had a stroke last year, and we watched with astonishment as she at first typed garbled posts, then over the following year got better by drawing nourishment from her friends on Facebook. She was inspirational and genuinely thinks that social media contributed to her recovery. We, in turn, learnt loads about what it really means to have a stroke, hospital life, claiming benefits and recovering cognitive skills. If George wants to dismiss this as useless ‘emotion’, he’s making a big mistake. It was a genuine learning experience for me, Jan and many of her friends. Social networks are, for him, “void of substance”. I fear, however, that it is Siemen’s arguments that are void of substance.