#LearningIs creative

Learning can certainly be creative, if the conditions are right. Firstly, creative learning requires active engagement. Teaching can be more effective when questions are posed or challenges are presented, than when content is delivered or knowledge imparted. There is a place for the latter, but if teachers wish their students to go the extra mile, they need to directly involve them in learning. This means learning spaces where just about anything is possible, where students are kept guessing, and where they are offered the chance to discover for themselves.

Creative learning in the classroom is almost always 'small c' creativity. If it were 'big C' creativity, then we would all be geniuses, discovering earth changing formulae and devising life changing inventions. But that is rarely possible. When the little boy or girl in your class comes up with a new way of solving a maths problem, or discovers a new painting technique, it may be something you have seen a hundred times before. But it's creative for them. It's something they have arrived at themselves, without your help. That's 'small c' creativity, and it's the basis for self regulated learning.

Creativity doesn't happen overnight, and it's not a sudden occurrence requiring no effort. On the contrary, creativity requires a lot of effort and commitment. It requires thinking space, time to reflect, time to experiment. It sometimes means failure and it requires persistence. Archimedes spent a lot of time thinking over problems before his Eureka! moment. Thomas Edison attempted hundreds of combinations and versions before he finally succeeded in his quest to design a commercially viable light bulb.

Children also need encouragement from teachers to improve chances for creative learning. Steve Jobs once said: 'Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they'd had and synthesise new things.' A teacher once peered over a little girl's shoulder and asked her: 'What are you drawing, Sophie?' The little girl replied 'I'm drawing a picture of God.' The teacher said 'But no-one knows what God looks like.' Without missing a beat, Sophie said: 'They will when I'm finished!'

'Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep'. - Scott Adams

Photo by AisforAmy91 on Flickr


#LearningIs creative by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

#LearningIs mobile

Much was discussed during the UNESCO Mobile Learning Week in Paris. The image presented here was ironic, appearing as it did on the door to the main venue of the conference, but as several pointed out, the device in the image is a reference to a bygone age when mobile phones were primitive. Hopefully we have advanced technologically and culturally in that time, but some of the problems we experienced then are still with us today. Here is my summary of seven of the themes and challenges raised during the conference.

1) A digital divide still exists across society, even for those who own smart phones. Significant problems include a lack of broadband connectivity in various parts of the world. Many more people now own mobile phones, but a large proportion of these are non-smart (i.e. don't have internet capability). However, these are still used effectively by those who desire to access educational opportunities to which they would otherwise have no access.

2) Literacy levels are still very low across many parts of the world, not just in developing nations but also the industrial world. There is a great need for basic literacy education, and several mobile learning projects are beginning to address this.

3) Learners need consistent, reliable access to learning materials, but also connections to peers and teachers if learning by mobile is to be effective. We cannot fully duplicate on-campus experiences, but we can certainly strive to provide an equivalent.

4) One of the most powerful methods of learning (and associated pedagogy) is to incorporate social media into mobile phone use. This addresses number 3, and provides learners with a lifeline when they are in need of motivation, inspiration and support.

5) Pedagogy supporting mobile learning is generally mixed and/or blended for many, with resources available inside classrooms, but also beyond the classroom, downloadable from a variety of platforms and providers. The quality of this varies but it is difficult to attempt to address this problem (but see number 3 above).

6) Mobile learning content for children needs to be engaging and activities should be focused on clear learning outcomes. Games seem to be an important element in children's mobile learning and has for example been effective in teaching refugee children new languages.

7) Interaction with others through mobile devices still appears to be the most effective method of remote learning available. Good content coupled with expert support and peer interaction that is consistent and reliable can result in quality learning outcomes.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


#LearningIs mobile by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

#LearningIs doing

Photo of Manon by Unesco

I was privileged to share the stage with a school student during the UNESCO Mobile Learning Week  symposium. Held each year in Paris, under the shadow of the iconic Eiffel Tower, #MLW2016 attracted delegates from almost every nation in the world, who came together to spend 5 days learning about the latest news and research on mobile learning.

My panel session featured three academic colleagues, and Manon van Hoorebeke, a 13-year old school girl from Belgium. Manon was 11 when she won the 2014 award of European Digital Girl for her work coding with Scratch and Arduino. She learnt her skills at Coderdojo events, and now passes these on to other children. Her dream is to encourage more girls to become involved in technology, and wants more schools to teach children how to use technology in primary schools.

When asked how she best learned in school, she was scathing about traditional teaching, preferring instead to learn by doing and making. She said that she and her school friends liked to be presented with challenges and problems they could solve, rather than being told what the answers were. As a representative of her generation of learners, it was also refreshing to hear her talk frankly about why it is important for children in school to be given access to technologies.

Photo courtesy of United Nations on Flickr

When quizzed on what she thought about schools exams, she declared that they had bad connotations amongst her friends, because to fail them would be to displease their parents. She was concerned that the pressure placed on children by exams in schools meant that they learnt little from testing. This was a shame, she said, because everything that happens in school should make good learning. Testing has the potential to help children to learn, she said, but failure is seen as bad. It should be seen as a positive thing which all could learn from. These remarks became the basis for some extended discussion about assessment by the rest of the panel.

Along with the hundreds of delegates present at UNESCO Headquarters, I was impressed by Manon's courage to sit on the stage under the lights in front of a large international audience, speak in reasonably fluent English, and teach the gathered experts in the room a thing or two about what school should really be like. And all at the age of just 13. My comment following from her remarks was that everyone in the room and all educators should pay attention to Manon and her generation of learners. They are not the future, I said, they are the present, and we must find ways to engage them in learning in ways that are relevant to them - and that includes embedding personal and mobile technologies into the mix. It will also require some changes in pedagogy, so that children become more involved in active learning, where doing and making situate their education.

Manon's blog Better be a Digital Girl is well worth a read. Also read her interview for UNESCO following the panel discussion.


#LearningIs doing by Steve Wheeler was written in Paris, France and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

#LearningIs everywhere

Photo from Pexels

It seems like a cliché, but it's true. Everywhere you look, everywhere you go, whatever you do, whatever the time of the day, you will encounter learning opportunities. How often have you discovered something new and thought - well... I never knew that! Often learning is incidental or serendipitous. Learning is so naturally a part of being alive, we are not always aware we are doing it.

Certainly we can set out deliberately to learn something new, either on a formal or informal basis. We can enrol on a course, or we can trawl the web. Learning experiences in a formal education course will be different to learning from our informal autodidactic efforts. Although we learn naturally, and learning is a process - a series of events - deliberate learning is caused by curiosity, a desire to discover more.

Schools, colleges and universities were established as attempts to harness these natural propensities and locate them in formal contexts. Concepts such as curriculum, classes, assessment, lessons and 'teaching' are artificial - contrivances that do not occur naturally. They have been devised because institutions require structures, with the intention to optimise teaching and learning. Clearly, optimisation doesn't always follow because sometimes intentions don't align with reality, and not every structure benefits the learner.

Yet for those who are determined to learn something new and significant, technology is playing a key role. Technology provides access for millions to education - something that was previously impossible or extremely problematic. Online programmes of study including MOOCs are still in great demand, and learning through mobile devices is at an all time high. Significantly, although a high percentage of online students do not complete their studies, many students argue that the end product is not as important as the process. In other words, the knowledge and skills learned have more value than the accreditation in many cases.

For many years we dreamed about learning any time, any place. Technology has made this dream a reality for many. We are very privileged to be living in the digital age, where learning opportunities are everywhere, and knowledge is more available than it has ever been.

Photo from getacover.com

#LearningIs everywhere by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

#LearningIs lifelong

As I remarked in my previous #LearningIs post, learning never stops. It is lifelong. Much of the time we don't even realise we are learning, but we are constantly being exposed to new information, and if we pay attention, we are likely to internalise that information in some way.

If you had told me during my school years that learning didn't stop when I left school, I would have been horrified. I didn't enjoy school for most of the time. I found it tedious, many of the teachers didn't seem to be interested in helping me to learn, homework was an invasion of my personal time, and I didn't come away with much for all my efforts. Any notion of additional learning after my schools years would have been anathema to me. I had confused learning with schooling.

I didn't know it at the time, but school was just the start of a learning journey for me, as it is for many millions of others. I fact, I only really started learning seriously when I began to direct my own studies later in life. This was when I became motivated to study because I was interested in learning more about my chosen topic - psychology. I did this all off my own bat, studying part time while holding down a full time day job and a part time evening post teaching at a local college.

The idea of lifelong learning only dawned on me during my time training to be a teacher. It also hadn't occurred to me that most of my later education came from informal learning - because I was interested, I went the extra mile and studied more widely than my job, or my degree required. It was here that the world opened up for me and I began to see the wider picture of life around me.

It's the same for anyone. The main ingredient is interest - self motivation - inspiration to learn something new. It's what students desperately need if they are to succeed as lifelong learners. It's also an ingredient that is sadly missing from many formal learning programmes, whether in schools, colleges of universities. It has never been easier to become a lifelong learner. The personal, connected technologies we now have at our disposal are an increasingly important component of informal learning. It will take a little longer to integrate such tools into formal learning spaces, and some believe this will never happen on a grand scale.

Regardless of whether we use technology however, we will all continue to learn, and some of us will also be fortunate enough to discover how to unlearn and relearn - ultimate skills for the 21st Century. Yes, learning is lifelong, because life needs learning. And when we discover how to self regulate our learning, then are we truly independent.

Photo by Geralt on Pixabay


#LearningIs lifelong by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The 'cheating watch scandal' - time for a change in our exams system

Oh dear. It's a scandal. Apparently there's a watch on the market that allows students to cheat during exams! What a shock! In a recent BBC News item, the so called 'cheating watch' is said to give them an 'unfair advantage', because the wearer can revert it quickly back from its 4GB display of exam answers to a conventional clock face. One head teacher is quoted as being worried that the watch may be a temptation for 'students who are stressed over exams'.

But stop one minute. (Here comes a rant). Why must our students get so stressed around exam time? What are we doing to our children? Isn't this evidence that actually, exams don't do much good for their well-being? What are exams for anyway? At the end of years of study, can the entire history and process of learning be reduced to a few numbers or letters? And who is the 'grade' for? The student, the teacher, or the school? Many would agree that the grade data are for governments to use. Ultimately, they aren't interested in how well the students are learning. All they care about is obtaining statistics that show how good their education system is in comparison to others.

Yesterday I asked a group of students what they look at first when they get their assignments back from marking... was it the grade, or the feedback? Most admitted they were more interested in the grade - the feedback was secondary. Haven't we got this all backwards?

Sure, students will bring devices into the exam room. Just try to stop them. This trend cannot be halted. Soon wearable devices will be less easy to detect, and there will even be biological implants. How are these going to be stopped? Our entire exam system will be proved worthless and irrelevant. Perhaps that will be a good outcome.

But dig down a little beyond the sensationalism of the headline*, and the BBC news item raises a number of questions around the education systems we perpetuate. In fact, the furore over 'cheating watches' says more about our rotten education system than it does about our students, or their teachers. If exams are only about getting grades and they are largely premised on 'remembering facts', then students are going to do their best to tip the balance in their favour, and that includes using personal technologies to improve their chances. No-one should blame them.

But what if the exam system was reformed? What if, instead of asking students to repeat what they had learnt in class, the examination required them to solve problems, show initiative and criticality, ask questions that haven't been asked, create something new they hadn't been taught? What if exams were more focused on assessing how well a student could learn, rather than what they had memorised? Then, perhaps bringing 'cheating watches' into the exam room wouldn't be a problem at all. But that would probably be asking too much, wouldn't it? Don't blame the students. Don't blame the technology. Change the exam system!

* Yes, my own headline is also sensationalist - taste the irony...

Photo by DC John on Flickr


The 'cheating watch scandal' - time for a change in our exams system by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

BETTing on the future

I'm flying out next month to a place I always wanted to visit - Abu Dhabi. Having already presented at the BETT Show in London's Excel earlier this year, I'm honoured to also be invited to keynote the BETT Middle East Show. Ahead of this presentation, the BETT Middle East team asked me for an interview about the future of education which I have reproduced here:

What are you responsible for day to day at Plymouth University?

I am curriculum lead for two subjects - computing and science - on all of the initial teacher education programmes at Plymouth. I lead a team of academics who are engaged in developing the next generation of teachers. I also chair the Faculty’s Digital Learning Futures group which is there to think about and develop new responses to the needs of education, including the integration of new and emerging technologies, and the development of new learning spaces.

Why did you choose the education sector?

I have been involved in education, across all 4 sectors (primary, secondary, tertiary and professional) because to educate is to prepare, and an educated population can meet the needs and demands of society more effectively. I’m biased of course, but I don’t believe there is a more noble profession, because doctors may save lives, but teachers make lives.

What do you think are the main challenges facing educators today in the Middle East?

One of the great challenges is the decline in the oil industry, which has enriched the Middle East in recent years. The currently oil rich countries now need to look to new and emerging industries that will replace fossil fuel economies, and that are more sustainable. The unrest due to insurgencies in parts of the middle east are a concern not just for the region but also for the entire global community. Education, whether face to face, or technology mediated, can play an important role in improving intercultural relationships and raising awareness of social responsibilities.

If you could change one thing for education leaders in the Middle East, what would it be?

I would provide educators with access to all of the world’s knowledge in their local language.

How can schools help their students succeed in today's fast-paced, highly competitive global economy?
When they leave school, today’s future workforce will need to be agile thinkers, flexible and creative in their approach, and tech-savvy. They will need to be digitally literate and effective self-promoters to be successful in the emerging economies of the future.

Who was your greatest teacher and why?
My American music and drama teacher, Larry Domingue was a liberal, approachable and very talented teacher. He turned a blind eye whenever I turned up at the back of his lessons (and should have been elsewhere). I wasn’t allowed to study music, according the curriculum of the time, but his approach to education was to inspire rather than constrain. I successfully followed a career in music which included leading several bands, songwriting, and the running of my own independent record label in the 1980s as a result.

What are the best practice case studies you are aware of in using technology to enhance educational outcomes, either in the UK or the Middle East?
Involving students in the production as well as the consumption of knowledge is a radical shift in education and can be achieved through the use of the new social media and personal technologies. Students can now create, repurpose, share and remix content and more importantly, engage in dialogue with others beyond the walls of the classroom as a result. Some universities are now breaking with tradition away from standard didactic delivery to incorporate personal response technologies into the lectures. One of my PhD students is currently doing his research around the use of these tools in a Saudi university.

What does the future of technology in education look like and how long is it until we ‘get’ there?
Trying to predict the future, is like trying to catch up with a mirage in the desert. You can see something there, but it’s always moving away from you as time progresses. The best thing we can do is to watch the trends and anticipate what might be happening in the next 1-2 years. Any further down the timeline, and our predictions are often hopelessly wrong. The future of technology in education, from the recent trends, is an increase in personal technology, and a potential for wearable, smart technologies to be introduced widely.

How can student outcomes best be improved in the next decade?
By good pedagogy. All else is secondary and an extension of this.

What book are you currently reading?
I’m currently reading Andy Wier’s The Martian, which is a fiction book (recently a movie starring Matt Damon, but the book is better than the movie) about an astronaut stranded on Mars. Every page is replete with science, computing and mathematical solutions he comes up with to respond to life threatening, and seemingly intractable problems.

Which global visionary do you admire for their work on education?

I love the work of Sir Ken Robinson, whose ideas around creativity and school reform particularly resonate with me. I am friends with Sugata Mitra and Stephen Heppell, both of whom have offered a number of radical and at times controversial solutions to every day pedagogical problems.

Describe the biggest challenge you've ever had to face.

Trying to balance my professional life and personal life has always been a huge challenge. I have been quoted as saying ‘I live and work in the future, but I go home at weekends’. It’s partially true, but sometimes I have to bring work home with me!

What is the greatest achievement of your career?

Being voted as most inspirational teacher in the entire university by my peers and students has to come near the top of the list.

If you could do any job in the world, what would it be and why?

I am in the job I have always wanted. I’m a global educator with students everywhere. I will continue in this role until I retire.

Photo by Hisham Binsuwaif on Flickr

BETTing on the future by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.