Teachers TV: dead at last

“Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.” Four years ago I blogged about the disaster that was Teachers’ TV. This DfES initiative at a cost of staggering £20 million a year, had a cost per viewer ratio that would make MPs expenses look like a rounding error. Even then, it was considered a basket case, having "failed to reach the majority of its target audience...".

Then there was the ridiculous defence that the channel was ‘difficult to find’. Surely teachers know how to use a remote control? Then there was the brouhaha about it being too close to the sex channels You couldn't make this up! Were those poor teachers in danger of being too easily distracted or indoctrinated by lusty lessons on Playboy TV or Spice Extreme?

In thrall with TV, government has been slow to grasp the significance of the internet in learning while propping up the broadcast model. Teachers TV was a bad, ill-timed shiny new balloon that deflated from day one under the lack of viewers. It didn’t so much die as just fade into obscurity. Even a Damascene conversion to online couldn’t save it. Perhaps the brand Teachers.TV was the problem!

There were several flaws in the idea:

1. Wrong medium. Why spend so much money on TV? Locking content into an obscure TV channel was just plain crazy. It locked the content into the ‘broadcaster’s’ mindset, producing second-rate content.

2. Synchronous is stupid. For busy professionals a synchronous medium is the kiss of death. To subject teachers to the tyranny of time is just plain stupid. They’re busy, usually whacked out when they get home and while on holiday like to forget about ‘teaching’.

3. Dull, dull, dull. With limited budgets they cranked out cheap (in both senses of the word) discussions and documentary style programmes that failed to have real impact. The headmaster at my local school, hit the nail on the head in the press, "even when our own kids are on it I can't be bothered to watch it". It was dull, dull, dull. Most of it feels like the cheap TV it is, or a bad school lesson.

4. TV is a one trick pony. Video is relatively expensive to make and broadcast and fails on a whole range of learning tasks, especially those that require detailed understanding or attitudinal change. What is needed in this complex environment is a range of appropriate media – text, graphics, reusable resources, audio and video.

5. Asynchronous is good. It was mind-numbingly obvious, from the start, that online resources would be better. So why start with TV?

6. Broadcasters often poor at online. Broadcasters are often ill-suited to online production and fail to make the transition to online production. This came to pass, but even that contract was given to a TV production company, compounding the original error. It went to Geldof’s Ten Alps, a company with no appreciable expertise in this area – oh how London government bods love some celebrity contact. Even that eye watering £10 million a year contract has gone, leading to a collapse in Ten Alps share price.

7. Why a TV channel? Why do teachers feel they need a dedicated TV channel? Other professions don’t have it, so why teachers? Why not a dedicated channel for primary and secondary school learners?

Reflection

Have we learnt nothing from Teachers TV, BBC Jam, C4 Education, and scores of other ‘broadcasters in learning’ initiatives? They are inevitably poorly managed, cost too much, and are doomed to extinction (Tecahers TV), disaster (BBC Jam) or a long, lingering, slow death (C4 Education). Let’s just embrace the medium of the age – the web, as it offers all media, collaboration, sharing, downloads, innovative pedagogic techniques and huge amounts of free content. In any case, it’s gone and I don’t suppose many people noticed.

Toxic tsunami of student debt

David Willets, our current Minister for Universities wrote The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future - And How They Can Give it Back. Read that title again, and ask yourself whether he understands the word ‘duplicity’! Having just put the burden of Higher Education firmly onto the next generation through interest-based loans, he’s not practising what he preaches. Is this, in effect, political short-termism, a ruse to protect baby boomers from tax rises? Or is it a progressive tax that makes the recipients of the benefits of HE pay their fair share? I’m not yet sure, but one topic does worry me – the normalisation of debt.

Is it worth it?

Before embarking on a loan-based degree students should do their homework. A four year degree may result in you leaving with a loan north of £30,000-£40,000. Current orthodoxy says having a degree means you’ll earn £100,000 more in your lifetime, but the gap may be closing and may end up being nil or even a loss. All loans have a risk associated with them and there are several risks that underlie student loans.

Falling earnings differential

The calculated difference in earnings between graduates and others may close, as more students hit the market (currently 45% of all young people are going to university). As this gap closes the rationale for the loan starts to disappear, as does your ability to pay. It is not at all clear that having a degree will always result in more earnings. Unemployment among the young is rising at an alarming rate across Europe. The assumption that you’ll have a job is now under threat, never mind your ability to repay student debts. It won’t be student debt that’s the problem, but social unrest. This really could be the generation that will be worse off than their parents. No one is expected to pay until they are in work, but if unemployment is a problem, so is the paying back of the loans.

Sacrificed earnings

What the orthodox argument doesn’t say is that you’ll be sacrificing three or four years of income while at university. This could be between £45,000 to £100,000 in lost earnings and career advancement. This may prove to be an unrecoverable sum in your lifetime.

Rising interest rates

A student loan is like a second mortgage, and similar in scale. Although interest rates are low at the moment, that is artificial unsustainable, and a feature of quantitative easing. Interest rates will rise, so mortgage payments will rise. Students can expect rising mortgage payments, when they buy a house, and a cumulative debt that could be beyond their ability to pay.

Dropouts

What happens to students who drop out of their courses? Do they still have to repay the loans? If they don’t the cost falls back on the state or loan provider? In the US three quarter of all student loan defaulters are those who dropped out of courses.

Debt collection and bankruptcy

The real issue here is how these loans are collected. They are given out by an arm’s length body, the student loan company but collected by the Inland revenue. This allows them to ‘sell’ the debt to the private sector, as the state effectively securitises the loan. But that doesn’t in itself solve the problem, if we have mass defaults.

Debt collection agencies in the US have been buying up existing student debt, as chasing young adults is seen as easy pickings. It’s sometimes suggested that bankruptcy is the way out, but in the US, this is rarely an option. Student loans are difficult to discharge through bankruptcy. In any case, bankruptcy in this country means severely limiting your ability to get credit and may seriously damage your potential future earnings. Interestingly, if the economy goes into another deep recession, which many think is likely, defaults in student loans are certain. The cost of debt collection is considerable.

Toxic

So, these loans may turn out to be toxic. With towards half a million students entering our universities every year, a huge amount of debt is piling up as they graduate. Those earning less than £15,000 will pay no interest, but the debt remains. The rest will be paying a variable amount of interest. This is a bubble and bubbles have a habit of…….. (fill in the gap).

Caveat

I understand that the above analysis, deals with a University education as a commodity and it’s much more than this.

Universities: Focus on fees wrong

Lord Browne was unsuited to head up this enquiry. Educated privately, then at Cambridge, and having spent much of his career abroad, he has no real feel for HE and the issues. It needed someone who understands the social and economic issues. We have a habit in this country of appointing this type of person into key advisory roles; Martha Lane Fox, Philip Green etc Sure enough he’s come up with a crude fiscal fix that pays scant attention to the wider issues.

Focus on fees wrong

The real story here is NOT fees. It is the redefinition of HE funding, pushing it towards a model that is better, more efficient and productive. To be fair to Browne, this is ‘progressive’ in terms of ability to pay. Remember that the majority of young people do not go to University and we need to focus more on alternatives. We also know that the current funding, post-cuts, is unsustainable and the rise is linked to the ability to pay (by the student). In crude terms the top third will pay more twice as much as the bottom third and it will come through the pay packet. Many people still don’t understand that there are still, no up front fees. But the report has a lot more around part-time students and change. There are other serious dimensions to this debate that have been ignored and Browne should have addressed them, after all, his brief was to look at the ‘funding’ of HE in general. I made many of these points in my much disputed talk at ALT, where I was accused of not putting forward alternatives. I've spent the whole of my adult life implementing the alternatives and talking about them. So here’s seven suggestions for a start:

1. Change academic year

By moving towards a full academic year, more flexible courses and access, the system will be able to cope with more students with a lower cost base. UK universities, apart from the OU and University of Buckingham, generally have three terms (all different). If we moved towards four terms (adjust and add a summer term) we’d cope with many more students and make much better use of the estate and staff.

2. More part-time, online students

Martin Bean at the OU was on the ball today pointing out that Principle number 6 is important, as 40% of students are part-time. The OU has over 250,000 students and the fastest growing part-time cohort is under 25. Under current regime, no access to student loans, you now can, free at point of entry and payback on salary threshold. This is terribly important for wider participation. If the other Universities followed suit and offered more part-time degrees along the OU model, we’d go a long way towards solving both the social and fiscal problems. More part-time, online students allows one to reduce capital expenditure and reduce the cost base.

3. Cut capital expenditure

Universities have been building too many buildings (of the wrong type) that are too empty for too long. In addition, they don’t budget well for maintenance. The occupancy rates should be recorded and funds linked to increased use. This is linked to changing the academic year to extend teaching into the long holiday periods. It supports the cost savings of with 1 & 2.

4. Cut second and third rate research

This is a big one. We have too many academics doing too much poor research. There’s been an explosion of journals, so that peer reviewed research is too easy a target (journals have increased but citations have plummeted) and an avalanche of poor research. If the research is ignored, why fund it? There’s armies of academics reading, reviewing work that is doomed to remain largely unread. There’s no added value here. There’s just too much research and not enough good teaching, too many research universities and institutes and too many grants. Cut back on this and better teaching will thrive.

5. Break link between research and teaching

Too many researchers see teaching as a secondary activity. With more resources spent on teaching and less on research (see 4) we can increase quality and attract more students with higher success rates and less dropout. In addition, we need a swing away from lectures towards more sophisticated pedagogic techniques and online learning. If you do have lectures, record them for reuse by learners.

6. Alumni targets

Universities in the UK have failed to develop a culture of alumni philanthropy, as they pay scant attention to their students while they’re at University, never mind once they’ve left. Universities generally treat students like second-class citizens. There’s a condescending whiff among many academics that leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of graduates, who leave without too much affection for the institution they attended. This isn’t helped by experiences of dull lectures, poor teaching and idiosyncratic assessment. Universities need to love their students more, increase the learning experience through better teaching and get more professional in continuing engagement with their graduates. The Americans have this sussed. I attended an Ivy league University in the US and was astonished at the level of engagement. Note how many US students are proud to wear their University sweatshirts.

7. Injection of private capital

More private Universities would take the pressure of the state funded institutions. We have made a start but far more could be done. Injections of private money have been embedded for a long time, through private funding of buildings and so on, so don’t imagine that this is in any way radical. Limkokwing University since 2007 London School of Commerce, the American InterContinental University and Amity have all set up in the UK. Foreign universities have and will set up here. We’ve arrogantly assumed that the word wants us, but that may change. US universities already have toe-holds here and with the increase in fees will become an increasingly competitive alternative.

PS

My own view is that you simply increase tax now and make HE fees free with mean tested loans. We Baby Boomers have grabbed all the wealth and should be paying now, for their education, not dumping it on them. Our children will be still paying off their University debts when their own children will be starting University. Another problem may be collection. These debts are approaching ‘mortgage’ type levels at over £30.000, so the incentive not to pay them back is strong. I can see this leading to all sorts of wheezes to avoid payment – keeping your stated earnings low, going abroad etc.

The Social Network – what’s it really about?

If you can’t Tweet and Fbook the hell out of this, what can you do? I’m sort of tired of people who don’t use Facebook, dishing it out as if they are the masters of authenticity. “But they’re not really friends are they?” and that sort of rubbish. 500 million and growing – enough said.

This is a story worth telling, not because it’s about Facebook or social networking or the web – it’s about the doggedness, determination and drive of entrepreneurs. I used the plural because there’s more than just Mark Zuckerberg. Timberlake’s Sean Parker is the second but the movie doesn’t tell the real story here. The film could have explained a little more about the Naspter thing, as it was Shawn Fanning, not Parker, who was the real coder and genius behind Napster’s file sharing. Parker played a bit role. In the end Parker is just one of the money men, who really wants to play the playboy. He’s not the genius – that’s Zuckenberg.

As a psychological study of the post-dot.com internet entrepreneur, it’s masterful. First there’s the obvious implication that many of these guys have a degree of autism which allows them to a) focus on the difficult talk of analysis and code writing (both are hard), b) focus obsessively on the development of the idea, c) ignore obstacles and deflect people along the way. Let’s be up front here. These guys are super smart. Too smart for Universities, so they drop out, code and make their millions or billions. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker, Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg knows there’s oil down there and drills away through layer after layer of bedrock to get to the motherload – a million users. For him it’s all about creating something that gets the numbers. He knows he’s smarter than the lawyers, Harvard gents, financiers and university bods. This is not about the money, hence the movie’s already most famous line, “You know what’s cooler than a million dollars…. a billion dollars!” These guys do it because they want to, they have to, not because of the cash. The VCs, money men and suits are just bank tellers. This is true, believe me. Whenever guys with a fondness for suits arrive, the business crashes or is just a business. The ideas people or people with intellectual passion for what they do are the real deal.

I liked the way they digitally duplicated the one acrtor for both Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss

PS I didn’t really buy the hokey, romantic sub-plot around the Albright girl. It was too easy, too Hollywood, a script editor’s way of getting girls along to a movie about geeks and business. Nor did I buy the jealousy about getting into some frat type club at Harvard. They seem wide of the Mark.

7 tactics for training in recession

I've given two talks on 'Training in the recession' in as many weeks, the first was a rocky ride as some traditionalists dug their heels in and wanted to cling on like limpets to old diversity training, happy sheets and all the old accoutrements of traditional training. I had a fight on my hands, but it’s a fight worth having. The second was more realistic, with a Leraningpool audience of excellent Local Authority trainers, who really do know what’s coming. This is an opportunity to change gear, collaborate and drop old ‘last century’ theory, practices and courses.

7 tactics for training in recession:

Dump daft duplication

Last century courses

Courses too long

Tyranny of time & location

Crap evaluation

Non-scalable

IT’S THE TECHNOLOGY STUPID

Daft duplication

In the public sector the noises coming out of the commissioned reports are clear, and this is typical, ““find savings… new approaches need to be considered, including service redesign, more joint working and collaboration“ (Audit Scotland). In Local Authorities, Government Departments, Schools, Universities and all other government organisations there must be a push towards eliminating DUPLICATION of effort. Far too many courses are being run, far too many people designing the same course over and over again and far too many people delivering the same content in classrooms. Sure there’s always some localised content, such as ‘induction’ but even here, there’s going to be stacks of job losses, not recruitment. A full two thirds of the budget could be saved by sharing, collaboration and outsourcing.

Courses too long
How many courses are padded out to fit the hour, half day, full day, two day or three day timetable? Most, I’d say. Front-ended by boring learning objectives, unnecessary introductory modules, too much detail and irrelevant happy sheets, most could be cut back by 30% or more. Cut courses and you avoid the excesses of cognitive overload – too much, too quickly. We all know that the detail is quickly forgotten and the worst enemy of retention is too much information.

Tyranny of time & location
Old argument I know, but there’s far too many people paying far too much in travel and accommodation (especially those awful 3* brickwork hotels with tiny TVs and cheap soap). Let’s get those courses out of the way and spend the money on technology solutions that are scalable.

Last century courses

First candidate – ‘leadership courses’. Ruth Spellman (CEO of Chartered Management Institute) has called for an increase in ‘Leadership’ training during the recession. Sorry Ruth, that is the cause of the problem, not the solution. Ever since training got caught up in the fantasies of ‘Leadership’ we’ve had more corporate and banking disasters than crap Leadership books. Leadership has become one of those wide and meaningless terms that only exists in the minds of trainers and megalomaniacs. Which of the dozens of ‘leadership’ theories does she recommend? Charismatic (born not made), Trait (key qualities), Contingency (look at environment), Situational (different for every situation), Behavioural (one can learn how to lead), Participative (collaborative and inclusive), Transformational (inspire followers) or, as usual, whatever concoction the trainer drums up from books they’ve bought on Amazon? Enough already.

Second candidate – diversity courses. The old view of diversity, very much focussed on gender and race, which, I think was necessary in 80s and 90s, but the world has moved on, and left all of those dull, diversity trainers behind. Society has grown up, while diversity training is stuck in a clichéd time warp. The evaluative data shows that it never worked in the first place, and that diversity, important then, was best built through proactive management interventions and not training.

I could go on and on here, as my list of crap courses, is as long as a ladder, but it’s enough to say that STOP the courses, I want to get off.

Crap evaluation

Kill Kirkpatrick. Not literally, just drop the happy sheets, level 2 and level 3. Believe me, boards ain’t interested in your 4 levels of evaluation – that’s just old train the trainer theory. Happy Sheets are irrelevant, assessments often simply tests of short-term memory and behavioural checklists a joke in most places. Stick to the one that matters – actual impact so that good decisions can be made my managers to align training with the organisation’s goals.

Non- scalable

Don’t do anything that isn’t scalable. What’s the point of delivering talks and courses over and over again. Record them, and share the media. Video and audio are cheap as chips (because chips in cameras are cheap).

IT’S THE TECHNOLOGY STUPID

Achieve more with less to optimise limited budgets and time. The world has changed and we can be reactive and get dumped upon, or take it upon ourselves to reshape our own learning landscape. Fast access to learning needs to be available 24x7 at point of need. This is the norm in the real word and it should be the norm in learning. We need to provide Satnav help for learning journeys, not big, thick, fixed atlases. Flexible responses to your organisation’s needs, not fixed, repeated, timetabled courses. Focus on productivity and promise impact, not happy sheets and course passes. Reduce carbon footprint, reduce travel & meeting costs and above all scale - EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY.

Change management

OK, all that advice is optimistic and some would say idealistic, even utopian. When it comes to getting things done, how do you change the culture and get things changed? Well, there’s tried and tested change management methods. If we take Kotter’s 8-step solution, we can match what we’re going through with each of the steps.

1. Urgency – DONE: CUTS!
2. Guiding team – SENIOR ENDORSEMENT
3. Vision – KILL KIRKPATYRICK, COMMIT TO GOALS & COST SAVINGS
4. Communicate – SAY WHAT YOU’LL B
5. Empower – COLLABORATION
6. Short-term wins – CUT CRAP COURSES (LEADERSHIP, DIVERSITY ETC), SHIORTEN COURSES, TACKLE ABSENTEEISM
7. Build momentum – SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY
8. Nurture new culture – BURN BRIDGES

All of this stuff about sharing and collaboration is simply doing what every schoolkid does instinctively. Collaboration is the norm for 12 year olds. They do it daily, even hourly (txting, Facebook, media sharing). We just need to catch up with their mindset.

Laura Overton is a tireless campaigner, so it's good to see this earlybird summary of Toward Maturity's Benchmark study. Most of the findings confirm a steady movement towards the use of technology in learning, but one (growth in language training) is just plain odd. However, I do think it avoids the hard hitting stuff, like; inevitable reduced public sector training, the failure of 'leadership' training, the reduction of dated compliance courses on diversity etc, reduced need for induction etc. I've given a couple of talks to public sector audiences on 'Training after the cuts' and this needs to be addressed at the next level of detail, namely how can we do more for a lot less.

However, that's not to take anything away from the higher level points:

The recession has had a positive influence on the use of learning technologies for most organisations, but 1 in 5 also found that their plans had been curtailed

As expected, cost saving pressure has led to an acceleration of the use of e-learning, tempered by overall budget cuts. As organisations are forced to do more for less, the scalability of e-learning on courses is the obvious strategy. Old guard are being forced to cut back on expensive, non-scalable classroom stuff and use scalable solutions. A new sense of urgency is pushing technology solutions in learning. I also sense that the recession is pushing some older trainers into earlier than planned retirement, allowing the younger one’s to express themselves and get on with the task.

Our appetite for learning technologies has increased significantly in last 18 months- there has been a considerable increase in demand for more access (at less cost); improved compliance; and better support of the rollout of new products, processes, IT systems and change.

As technology gets cheaper, faster, better, wireless and easier to use, it’s much easier to get the whole e-learning gig going. Technology is becoming less and less of a barrier. But th real lesson is a renewed focus on ‘performance’. Out goes those hokey courses on ‘creativity’ and other abstract nouns, along with lots of touchy-feely nonsense, and in comes core competences.

Technology tools and options continue to expand but we are currently not taking advantage of the full range of options available.

Not surprised here. Blended learning has always been more of a phrase than a practice. Few really consider the full range of offline and online options when designing learning interventions. Many are simply unaware of the range of options available. It’s still often a blended ‘teaching’ with a Velcro mix of e-learning and classroom.

Very few are planning to decrease their use of current learning technologies but over the next 2 years, social media expect the biggest growth.

Interestingly, fashionable interest in social media may lead to people ignoring the many (often better and more efficient) online alternatives. However, opportunities also exist for the important use of social media. The ‘formal only’ camp is fighting a losing battle.

More organisations are embedding technology in more skills programmes than in 2008, with health & safety, leadership & management and foreign language skills showing the biggest changes.

Health & safety is a boring, bread and butter topic that can be easily covered by e-learning. Leadership & management I’m not so sure about. This whole recession was caused by flawed ‘leadership’. If we keep pushing this button we’ll be taking one step forward and two steps back. And foreign language skills? Surely not. This must be a statistical blip caused by a skew in the sample. Most organisations don’t do this at all and why would there be a rush for such skills in times of recession?

In terms of working with external providers for skills programmes, over 80% of organisations say that innovative use of learning technology will be a deciding factor in their selection of an external learning provider in the future.

I should think so. Simply a matter of the training world catching up with the real world.

Stanford High School's faceless learning

Thanks to the ever vigilant Bob Harrison for putting me on to the Stanford High School project. This is yet another ‘shape of things to come’ project, that revolutionises secondary (high) school learning.

The learning is online but with a blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning (note that blended learning need not have any face-to-face component). The content is delivered via pre-recorded asynchronous sessions by teachers, along with a class web page with useful information, reading list, content outlines, course materials and assignments. This is where the students receive and submit their assignments. (Why don’t schools just bite the bullet and get autonomous learning (homework) going in this fashion?)

Online socially superior

Mandatory synchronous discussions with chat, whiteboard and so on, are also part of the blend. I find it interesting that the participation, because it’s structured, ordered and layered (students can contribute, comment, ask questions) can be much more intense and fruitful than real face-to-face discussion, where ion practice only one person, on one level, can speak at a time. You really can have several different interactions going at one time.

Note that the students don’t see any of this as unusual. For them it’s just learning. If anything there’s raised levels of attention and even more social learning than they normally experience in a classroom. “When I'm in Centra, I feel like I'm right there...Amazingly enough, I've had more classroom interaction over Centra than in a regular classroom. Bryan, Class of 2011.This is an oft reported effect of online learning, that the social side of learning is more focused and productive than the messy, difficult to control, social interaction in a classroom (often just chat or even disruptive behaviour). Online social interaction keeps learners on task and only involves people interested in the point or subject. The same software package is used for student clubs, instructor office hours, homeroom sessions, student club meetings, and parent-teacher conferences.

Cheap

What’s wonderful about this approach is the way it allows students to proceed to their level of ability at the pace they want, even up and into University standard content. Ray Ravaglio, director of the Stanford High School, claims that he could offer the entire maths curriculum for $40 per head (£26). The initial maths trial has been running with 1,500 students, aged 9-12, from schools in some of the most disadvantaged areas of California.

Problems?

Ravaglio is honest about the barriers, mostly from school Principals, who are locked into old, fixed methods of teaching and learning. For the students, it’s no sweat, even trivial "it is just going to school and coming to class…and not about the technology". But for many teachers and principals it’s a real challenge conceptually. They fail to see the real advantages of personalised learning and continuous feedback. For them it’s all about the technology, and technology is bad.

That’s to be expected, so there’s a real need to build confidence with principals, teachers and parents. There has to be empirical proof that this works. This is why they have gone for trials and have sought accreditation. Indeed, the programme is now accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. This is the main accreditation body in California that currently accredits Stanford University, Berkeley and all state and private schools.

Conclusion

OECD Secretary General Angel Gurría points to soaring student numbers and presents three options:

1. Spend more – NOT POSSIBLE
2. Make learners pay – MARGINAL EFFECT
3. Do more for less – LOGICAL OPTION

We must, as Gurria says, "optimise policy choices", improve the “overall management of education institutions” and "investments in education will need to become much more efficient".

Given the worldwide cuts across the educational sphere and the fact that we need to do more for less, surely this is an option. It gives access, personalised learning, good feedback and progression. In addition it takes the pressure off hard worked teachers.

Faceless schools?

Weird incident this year. A friend of mine’s son wanted to do an IT course at sixth form college that required a B pass in Higher Level Maths GCSE. His teacher point blank refused to put him in the higher class or enter the exam. I gave him the Higher Paper and he scored a C months before the exam, so couldn’t see the problem. If he was a C student with months to go, a B was achievable. Despite appeals by his parents, the maths teacher was belligerent and wouldn’t teach him at this level. Our one victory was that we insisted that he get put in for the Higher exam.

I do free maths tutoring for kids who are struggling with the subject, and helped him get his B. He’s now in college, enthusiatic about the subject, and even chose to do A-level maths. What annoyed me about this was the arrogance of the teacher and the school. They were clearly hedging students into lower qualifications to play safe on their exam results, a despicable and morally bankrupt approach that puts the interest of the institution above the students they are meant to serve.

Teacherless schools?

It was with some delight, therefore, that I saw the BBC report on children being tutored in maths by highly qualified teachers in India via headphones and computers. The service is being provided to 7-16 year olds by Brightspark and is available 24/7 for both parents at home and in some schools.

Ashmount Primary School’s Rebecca Stacey, Assistant Headteacher and Head of Key Stage 2 in Islington, comments:

“BrightSpark Education is effective because it provides targeted one-to-one maths help for students through online technology, which would otherwise be too expensive to facilitate. Each of our pupils who have used it have improved and become more confident in their maths ability. They have learnt to express their thinking and use mathematical vocabulary correctly…….It has also given pupils the perfect opportunity to work online and improve their IT skills at the same time. Many pupils intend to sign up at home to benefit from the service for their homework and revision.”

Given the poor quality of many maths teachers and the shortage of suitably qualified staff, surely this is the way forward. In fact, this approach may well prove superior to the maths teaching in many of our schools, in terms of both quality and cost. The fact that the service can be used as a supplement, at home, is a big plus. Parents are already paying way more than this for tutors, many who are working teachers, so it’s a cultural fit. The reaction of the children (watch the BBC interviews with the kids using the service and you’ll see that they value it more than classroom teaching) says it all.

Learndirect – faceless blended learning

One of the reasons I love this approach is that in my own experience, as a Director of Learndirect, I’ve sat in on lots of telephone and online tutoring sessions from the Learndirect call centre in Leicester. It provides numeracy and literacy training to people direct top their homes, with no face-to-face components. It’s heartwarming to hear people with very poor numeracy and literacy respond with real enthusiasm to telephone and online services, with absolutely NO face-to-face support.

The learners are pleased not to be attending a class, college or school, as that, for them, is associated with past failure in their own lives. They are learning in the comfort and safe environment of their own home, free from the tyranny of time and location. The system works by responding to telephone and web enquiries, doing a quick online diagnosis, then being helped through the learning by friendly tutors. The learners go at a pace suited to their ability and circumstances.

This is not so different from the 200,000 Open University students, none of whom are on campus. As the largest university in the UK by miles, and the one that scores consistently higher than the others on student satisfaction, we have the answer to education staring us in the face – get rid of the faces!

F2F free

Let me be quite clear here. We are now in a position of seeing learning delivered more efficiently to both children and adults that is free from face-to-face teaching, and altogether better because of that fact. We are not getting rid of teachers but positing an alternative to the classroom as the main environment in which teachers’ teach. Huge productivity gains can be offered by teachers who tutor online, handling multiple students, with good online resources that deliver much of the core content. The teacher can then focus on motivation, problem solving and feedback.

What’s next?

OK, having freeing learners from the tyranny of fixed time and location, the next step is to free them from fixed devices, namely fixed computers. This, of course, has already happened. The market penetration of mobile devices has outstripped that of fixed devices, and offer web services, apps, and access that will eventually outstrip traditional learning.

Neil Lascher’s phone2learn uses voice recognition and text to speech technology to provide what he tongue-in-cheek, calls just-too-late learning. True performance support on mobile devices. Google Goggles, the astounding visual search engine, promises a point and learn service superior to that of many teachers.

Like real journeys, we used to use printed atlases and maps (books), then journey printouts from websites (e-learning & personalised journeys) and now Satnav (realtime knowledge acquisition). The classroom is looking like an increasingly tired and inefficient space for learning.

Tweckled at ALT!

Missed the Tweetstorm after my ALT Keynote at the University of Nottingham, as I was on the road without a mobile for the following two days. I don’t have a mobile phone as I’m not really a Gadgetboy and enjoy my periods of solitude and privacy when I travel. Nevertheless, from London to Dundee I kept bumping into people who told me that the Tweckling was fierce. I even had someone come up to me and mention the tweets as I stood outside a burning building in which I was due to deliver a keynote. She had been watching my talk online. As I say, I’m not a mobile Tweeter, so will respond here.

Don’t lecture me
‘Don’t LECTURE me (yes I’m aware of the contradiction)’ was the title of my talk. A number of people objected to me criticising the lecture, using a lecture. Ho hum. First, I explained myself in the title and verbally at the start of the talk. I was deliberately provocative as I wanted to show that the lecture is an odd format and explained the weaknesses of the format as I spoke (one hit, psychological attention, dull, memory fade etc).
To effect change, which is why I do this stuff, you need to create a sense of urgency and that means getting to the people who matter. In this case, in HE, they happen to love attending conferences. I don’t, but that’s where they hang out. To catch fish, you sometimes have to trawl in the cold, cruel sea, a place you’d rather not be. And if you think it’s easy to stand up in front of hundreds of people and say things you deeply believe but know they won’t like – try it.
I did this talk because Seb Schmoller asked me and spent a day of my life getting to Nottingham to say what I had to say, for free, so was probably the only person in the whole lecture theatre who wasn’t being paid to be there. I have never deliberately asked to speak at a conference. I do it because I’m asked. I could, admittedly just say NO, but if my aim is to change things, that would be counterproductive.

Lack of evidence?
Another charge was that I didn’t provide evidence. Sorry, but almost every point I made was backed up by a published source and, often empirical studies.
My analysis of the Socratic method included analysis by Xenophon and Plato and I gave accounts of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum, along with a linguistic analysis of the word ‘lecture’, from it’s original 14th century meaning to its semantic shift in the 16th century.
I showed the covers and quoted from of five books; The Media Equation by Nass & Reeves from Stanford, What’s the use of Lectures? by Donald Bligh, Peer Instruction by Eric Mazur, Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman by Richard Feynman, Lectures in Physics by Richard Feynman.
In addition to the studies presented in these books I gave detailed slides showing the methods and results of large scale studies on the FCI test and the work of Eric Mazur. On the psychology of learning I showed research by Ebbinghaus and a contemporary study by Paul Kelley, and summarised the results from the Institute of Theoretical Physics (even promising to send people the papers on request). I also showed a summarising graph from a five year study on lecture attendance. In addition I showed two slides referencing Carol Twigg’s $8.8m research project on transformational learning. I also quoted detailed figures for the numbers of views of Lewin’s physics lectures. This, in my experience, is a great deal more than most conference presentations.
So to be accused of not presenting evidence seems to suggest that people were spending too much time tweeting and not enough time listening (one of my criticisms of the lecture format!)

Backchannel
The backchannel was showing tweets as I spoke. I rather like this, as it at least provides some form of feedback and a variety of views, although it would have been better if the chair had given me a chance to respond. Interestingly, it sort of indirectly reinforces my view that lectures are pedagogically odd (why cut out to tweet if you like the format so much?). It’s like a game where the speaker is playing shot-put and the audience darts.
However, pedantic tweets are infantile, and there were plenty of those. Puzzlingly, a fair number got upset because I swore a couple of times. There’s something deeply reactionary about portions of HE audiences, definitely a touch of the old-fashioned ‘schoolmaster’ or ‘angry from Tunbridge Wells’. Welcome to the real world, where people get passionate enough to say ‘bollocks’! Do they turn their TVs off when Frankie Boyle appears?
On the other hand some excellent blog posts have appeared from Stephen Wheeler and others, with some reasoned argument. I’ve never attended ALT, as I don’t like sitting around listening to conference lectures for two or three days but I do like the online material, Seb’s fortnightly newsletter and subsequent blog posts.

Want to read a thriller on 'training'?

Want to read a complete and thrilling book about training? Try The Junior Officers’ Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey. Don’t be fooled by the title as the book tells you nothing about reading, books or even the real Afghanistan. It is, nevertheless, a book worth reading, as a soldier’s story. Intensely autobiographical, it describes, in detail, his training at Sandhurst, the boredom of the Balkans and Iraq, then the terror of his time in combat, in Afghanistan.

Obsolete mentality

Officer training in the British Army is stuck in a 19^th century timewarp, as is arguably its army. Hennessey is honest enough to admit, at times, that his regiment is “stuck in the obsolete mentality of the Victorian era that was our heyday, so obsessed with pageantry and protocol”. He’s smart enough to see the need for tough training, modern enough to see through the antiquated bullshit and honest enough to admit that this model is not all it’s cracked up to be. He comes to love and admire the Afghan army he has to work with, “and fuck me if they hadn’t killed more Russians than we had ever seen”. The current operational model is unworkable, frenzied British regiments arrive and do six months with the Afghan army, who have to work with group after group of fresh British troops. Who’s doing the training here?

Sandhurst “Hogwarts with Guns”

But nothing is as anachronistic as the class-driven, officer training at Sandhurst. The “factory” that is Sandhurst, has a selection procedure that borders on the corrupt, rejecting able people and accepting some who “struggled severely to learn fundamental lessons”. He's scathing about the process, although he never really addresses the apartheid of the officer/men distinction in the British Army, glossing over the obvious snobbery in many, if not most, regiments. To be fair the social mix has changed considerably, but is still, literally 'old school'.

The training itself is a massively, immersive, physical experience punctuated by classroom and (oddly) videos – Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator, A Bridge Too Far. I followed an Officer Training course at Shrivenham and found it laughably formulaic, with dull lectures and a pipeline of short-term memory experiences. As he says, the British army “stubbornly refuses to look round the corner, let alone into the future” with procurement a “Dickensian mess” buying the most expensive ships we’ve ever bough and no planes to go on them, and fighter jets that were obsolete before they were built.

Hennessey is well read and aware of the alternatives, having read The Utility of Force by Rupert Smith, Romeo Dallaire’s Shake Hands with the Devil, Michael Dixon’s On the Psychology of Military Incompetence and Michael Rose’s Fighting for Peace. But he is annoyingly silent on analysis and alternatives

The Cold War framework of the course was one thing, having to polish the soles of your boots another. Then there was the huge effort put into guard duty and tourism in London. Playing Tin Soldiers and being soft-feathered in the expensive mess.

Now Hennessey is a good writer and his descriptive passages of the physical training are excellent. You feel the discomfort, hunger and pain, as well as the pedantry and pettiness. But he is ambivalent about its effectiveness, describing much of it as “irrelevant” and a “mere irritant”, “progress being made in spite of the training that was being done”. He ends this third of the book with a serious and n ominous saying, “Let no man’s ghost say, ‘I wish I had been better trained’.

Iraq

Weeks of boredom, sunbathing, sit-ups, porn and still the pettiness; flip-flops and shorts were banned, even for guys coming in after 24 hour sweltering patrols. They watch more war than they fight; DVDs, PS3s, Xboxes, boxed sets watched in batches of five or more episodes at a time. It was fascinating that soldiers would play war games after coming in off patrol. Ipods are all pervasive, the sound of this war being rap rather than Nam’s rock. The surreal surroundings of the green Zone, full of steroid pumped contractors and mercenaries.

Afghanistan

The book explodes into action as he narrates fire-fights, injuries, the madness of combat and tragically; death. Forget the sanitised BBC reports on yet another couple of ‘they look so young’ casualties in Afghanistan. This is the truth of often fruitless territorial gain through tragedy, territory that is soon lost again, all told in bloody and terrifying detail.

What’s odd in all this is the lack of reflection and analysis. He buckles under the psychological pressure of being loyal to his employer, rather than the truth. In truth, this is a book about how people are trained not to think but to do what they’re told. It’s written by what the Americans call a ‘warfighter’ describing ‘warfighting’. That’s what makes it so interesting. In a way the training works by producing people who fight, unaware of the alternatives.

One could argue that this is the whole point, as it is the politicians that need to decide on policy. On the other hand he starts by reflecting on the anachronistic nature of the training but doesn’t relate it well to the tasks at hand. To be fair he’s being true to himself and his mates, not the war. A sign that he has been indoctrinated is his use of an army of acronyms, which infiltrated everyday speech in the military. For non military readers this can be infuriating as the book has a next to useless glossary.

Other Iraq/Afghanistan books

Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs by Lewis page is a superb analysis of hopeless procurement and waste in the military. He has a go at all three services showing the top-heavy structures, wasted expenditure on headquarters, pointless frigates, artillery, aircraft and tanks.

If you want to about the ‘real’ Afghanistan, I’d recommend Rory Stewart’s The Places In Between, his walk from west to east across the country in the depths of winter, experiencing the extremes of hostility and hospitality. Afghanistan, is not really a country, explains Stewart, and needs a deep cultural understanding, before parachuting in crude military or NGO solutions.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City is a depressing account of Baghdad’s green zone, where Muslims are forced to serve pork and “we have no French fries here sir, only freedom fries”. It’s a shocking description of US personnel, the majority of who had never been outside of the US before this posting (they had to get their first passport). A street-cop mentality where appointments were made on political credentials not competence.

My own favourite is Signal Catastrophe, the story of the catastrophic second Afghan war in 1842, where the British invaded, then left having been defeated by the complexities of the culture and idiotic, aristocratic leadership. This one will end in exactly the same way. Plus ca change.

North Korea - educational holocaust

I was one protagonist in a ‘knives out’ debate at Online Educa against Aric Sigman, on whether technology harms the mind or not. What surprised me the most about Aric’s opening slide of some smiling North Korean children, was the fact that he praised the North Korean system of education for its structured approach to learning, free from the interference of technology. Oh yeah?

Nothing To Envy

Well, this year has seen the publication of ‘Nothing To Envy’ by Barbara Demick, which just happens to feature, as its main subject, a defected teacher from North Korea. It’s a harrowing but worthwhile read, showing that education is not always an intrinsic good. In countries where religious fanatics or dictators who promote religious adulation, set the educational agenda, education is the tool by which people are enslaved in mind and body. Kim Il-sung modelled himself on Stalin and the Japanese Emperor, instilling a crude form of Confuscian Communism that saw him as God and his son as the son of God.

There is a legal obligation to have a portrait of the great leader in your home, and even a law that it must be regularly cleaned, enforced by spot-checks. Indoctrination also takes place in collective farms and factories, with regular indoctrination sessions. All enforced by a network of ‘snitches’. But it is in the schools that the real mind-games are executed, with chilling efficiency.

North Korean schools

Above the blackboard, all classroom s have double portraits of the Great Leader and his son. Each school has a separate room, a shrine to the Great Leader, where children must take off their shoes to enter and speak in hushed tones. This religious devotion has been extended to his son, who demanded that another room to be built, as his shrine.

Books are rare photocopied things , barely legible and often copied by hand (by parents) if the children needed to study at home, even paper is incredibly scarce. The title of the book comes from a song that all Korean children know by heart ‘We Have Nothing to Envy in the World’. This is only true by virtue of them knowing little or nothing about the rest of the world. The country and its beliefs are a closed system, with no internet.

Curriculum

Kim Il-sung’s Theses on Socialist Education is the guiding manifesto, with political and ideological education at its core. Children learn by repeating key passages and phrases by heart. All other subjects are taught through propaganda related to the Great Leader. For example, in maths, “Eight boys and nine girls are singing anthems in praise of Kim Il-sung. How many are singing in total?” Or the even more absurd, “Three soldiers from the Korean People’s Army killed thirty American soldiers. How many American soldiers were killed by each of them if they all killed an equal number of enemy soldiers?” One song, taught to primary school kids is called “Shoot the Yankee Bastards!”

Teachers

Mi-ran, the main subject of the book, trained to be a teacher but even her training was a story of horrific suffering, with students living in accommodation with no heating and little food. A curious aspect of teacher training was the compulsory need to learn the accordion, regarded by the authorities as a portable and suitably stirring instrument for collective celebration. Malnutrition was rife. In the end she defected after not being paid and seeing the terrible suffering of the children she taught, and this is all recent.

Children

The real tragedy, as told by this teacher, was the malnourishment, starvation and deaths among the children. Over just three years enrolment in her class dropped from 50 to 15, through famine. She saw them get listless, bring no lunch because they had no food, their stomachs extend, then disappear, never to return. The system, propagated through propaganda-driven education was killing the nation and its children.

For Aric, it’s just another PowerPoint slide, for the people of North Korea it’s an engineered, educational holocaust.

Gates on learning

Bill Gates has some interesting things to say about the future of education in this video. All in all, I agree with what he says, with some additions.

Schools

Gates: K12 school is designed to baby-sit kids while adults get on with their jobs/lives. So he doesn’t see much change here, apart from home schooling which is still only 3/4% of provision. In fact, success in schools seems to be on even more schooling and immersion, namely longer school days, summer catch-up.

He’s fundamentally right here, in that the system will remain intact for a long time. However, he short changes the idea that technology may allow us to get better results without simply adding to the length of the school day. The answer to poor schooling has always been more schooling – but do we really want to inflict this on children? I’d say the answer is better schooling. It is not possible to do this through better teaching, curriculum change, revolutionising the concept of homework, vocational recognition, reducing costs through technology?

Technology

Gates: Feedback, discussion, video etc make technology an increasingly sophisticated method of learning.

Absolutely, we are nowhere near realising the potential of a) what we’ve already got, b) what’s available for free, c) increasing the productivity of educational institutions through the use of technology to manage and deliver learning.

Cost

Gates: Universities/Colleges need to be less place based. A $200,000 education is too expensive, inefficient, outdated and increasingly hard to get. Only technology can get this cost down to, not $20,000 but $2000.

Too true. The tyranny of time and location plague our system and have raised the costs to unsustainable levels. There’s far too many (mostly empty) buildings, far too many 2^nd and 3^rd rate researchers far too many poor teachers and far too little access to good content and real critical thinking tools and opportunities.

Innovation

Gates: No room for innovation in the standard system. Some experimentation but should be about 20 times as much.

This is his most profound point and the one that poses the greatest problem. The belief set, structures and funding methods mitigate AGAINST change and INNOVATION. Vice Chancellors settle, not for leadership, but maintaining the status quo. In the UK, as I was told by a retired Vice Chancellor, it’s chasing an OBE, CBE or knighthood by not rocking the boat.

Google Goggles – mind goggling application

We’re reaching a tipping point in mobile technology where the apps on your phone are better than the apps on your computer. One knockout application (killer apps are passe), and the one with massive potential in education and training, is Google Goggles. It’s a visual search tool on your phone. No more typing or voicing in your request – just point and click.

Point your camera at any object in the real world; a building, landmark, object, painting, business card, shop, food, car, plant, animal etc. Google will shoot back an identification, explanation or further details and links.

Google Goggles and learning

Let’s take this one step further. Imagine a world where, whenever you’re stuck on a problem, a tricky maths problem, balancing a chemical equation, identifying a tree from its leaves, translating an awkward word or phrase in a Shakespeare play, translating a word or phrase from another language, getting a word for an object in a foreign language, the painter of a painting. In the future this applications has the potential to provide help whenever there is something in the real or represented world that you can point to. This is the phone as performance support.

It’s a window into a future where performance support will be linked to just pointing your phone. Want to know what chess move to make – point and click. Want to know where to plant that plant you’ve just bought, how to repair that hole in your wall, set up that electronic device you’ve just bought? Point and click.

Android as teacher

The next level is not the provision of learning experiences directly related to that object. Rather than provide the direct answer or short solution, there may be a mode where you get tutored support or suggestions on how to get the right answer. The phone as a supportive teacher.

It's an application that has so many uses for both learner and teacher.

Android v Apple

Apple may have won the immediate battle but Android will win the war. Android’s an operating system not a proprietary device. It opens up the market and opportunities, not close them down. This is good for education and learning. The projections for iPhone growth are good, but for the Android they’re better. It’s that old adage about being second in a market being better. The development community is huge and code is written in Java. And with App Inventor, the Android market opens up application development to a much wider community that serious coders.

Layar

This is a related augmented reality app that provides layers of useful information over any real scene you point your phone at. Layar is useful for details about locations as well as information on nearest tube stations and so on.

PS

I'm working on an app called Beer Goggles - you take a photo of yourself or anyone you know. It first makes them a little thinner, then younger, then more physically attractive with every new snap.