Standing on the shoulders of giants

Steve and Sugata at EDEN in Oslo

Yesterday I posted some of my first reflections on a memorable year of encounters. Today, as the year draws to a close, I think back on the past year and I am amazed at the incredible people I have had the pleasure to work with, interview or simply spend some time with. You can learn a lot from just listening to others, and occasionally asking the right questions. I'm very grateful to have such a wonderful job, and it really feels like I'm standing on the shoulders of giants.

In June I had the singular honour of being invited to host a unique keynote session in Oslo for the EDEN annual conference. The event was attended by delegates from many nations, and all were assembled on Day 2 of the event to listen to two of the greatest education celebrities of our time. In the room with me was Sugata Mitra, famed for his 'Hole in the Wall' computer projects, child driven education, and also more recently for his work around 'minimally invasive education' and the School in the Cloud. Just before the conference, it had been announced that he had won the prestigious TED prize of one million US dollars for his innovative research into learning. Sharing the keynote session with him, on a live link from California, was education guru Sir Ken Robinson, celebrated for his TED talks and his unique perspectives on creativity and learning. His TED searing critique of the education system entitled 'How Schools Kill Creativity' has alone received over 20 million views.

My job was an absolute dream - to introduce Sir Ken and Sugata, and moderate the conversation between them. I didn't need to do very much to be honest. I can't recall a better time spent on stage than I had listening to two of the sharpest minds choreographing such a fascinating, intellectual dance. The conversation was humorous, insightful and challenging in equal measure. To say the audience was enthralled was an understatement, and listening to the conversations after the event, it was clear that it had been the highlight of the conference for them.

During the 3 days of EDEN I also had the pleasure to record video interviews with several more well-known people who were attending the conference, including Michael Moore, Grainne Conole and the American Psychological Society president Bernard Luskin. EDEN in Norway will be remembered for many things, but for me, its keen focus on schools and compulsory education - not normally a major theme of the event - was an important feature. The children who took part, presenting their ideas for more engaging learning environments, was another great highlight of the conference. Read my review of the children's contribution right here.

You can read my interview with Professor Sugata Mitra on the EDEN site and watch our video conversation on the EDEN YouTube Channel. More reflections on 2013 tomorrow.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Standing on the shoulders of giants by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Learning from the legends

The year's end is a time for reflection. For me, it is a good time to reflect on what I have learnt and achieved during the year. This year I spent some time with a few unique, generous and very talented people. It's amazing what you can learn from others if you ask the right questions and listen to their replies. It was a great privilege to work alongside them and to learn from their experience, passion and knowledge, and not a single minute of the time I spent with them will go to waste. It is all stored up, and will be used, repurposed and shared in the coming years. Here's the first part of the story:

Nic Negroponte and me in London

In January, I was delighted to be invited to speak at the Learning Technologies event in London. This event is a two day conference and exhibition for Learning and Development professionals at Olympia each year. Unfortunately I was only able to spend the first day at Learning Technologies because the following day I was scheduled to give two keynotes at the BETT Show, across town. Event Chair Don Taylor invited me to dinner with several other invited speakers the evening prior to Learning Technologies. It was a great honour for me to sit next to Nicholas Negroponte, a man considered by many to be one of the living legends of learning technology. Nic was responsible for establishing the MIT Media Lab and was a founding editor of Wired Magazine. He has also broken new ground through his innovative One Laptop per Child Project. Nic's work has had global impact, and continues to positively influence the lives of learners worldwide. I spend a couple of blissful hours in conversation with him as he regaled me and my fellow dinner guests with tales of the early days of educational computing, and he even signed my 1995 first edition copy of Being Digital!

In February, I was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as an invited speaker at the Ministry of Higher Education ELI Conference.  Several other speakers from across the globe had also been invited to take part and I spend some quality time with author and speaker Richard Gerver, who impressed me with his passion for education and great evangelistic fervour to provide creative learning environments for kids. Richard and I also spent part of a day together with a film crew making a short documentary on learning and creativity for the Saudi Ministry.

Steve W meets Steve W. Wozniak and Wheeler in Riyadh

On the morning of my own speech at ELI, I wandered into the sumptuous speaker lounge the conference organisers had provided, and found myself face to face with a living legend - Steve Wozniak. Steve is co-founder (with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne) of Apple Corporation, and was the force behind the development of the Apple Mac personal computer and many subsequent household products. He is now one of the most sought after keynote speakers on the learning technology circuit. I spend 20 minutes alone with him discussing education, technology and the way forward. He spoke of his own school experience, the creative processes involved with developing Apple technology, and his relationship with Steve Jobs. It was a fascinating, unforgettable time, and I'm so pleased I was able to spend a little time with someone who has literally changed the world. I just wish I'd been able to record the conversation.

Tomorrow: Standing on the shoulders of giants - interviewing Sugata Mitra and Sir Ken Robinson.

Photographs by Steve Wheeler


Learning from the legends by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

2014 - the year of the wearable?

Wearable computing is just one small step up from mobile technology. A large percentage of the world's population is already connected through mobile phones, e-readers, games consoles and tablet computers. The next stage is inevitable - that users begin to wear their tools as jewellery, clothing, eyewear and even as implants. Will 2014 be the year when wearable technology emerges as the next stage in our connected future?

Ben Hammersley seems to think so. In the January 2014 issue of Wired Magazine, he argues that whilst the last decade has been about smart mobile technologies, the next decade will be about wearable computing. Hammersley is convinced that it isn't the technology - the gadget - that is the driving force of this transition. Rather, it is the growing desire to have a device that is with us, or in the words of Gerd Leonhard - 'on us' at all times. The wearable device, whether it be Google Glass or some other as yet to be conceived wearable, is only the physical manifestation of something a lot larger and more complex. Wearables are the tip of the vast, complex infrastructural, social and technological iceberg that includes cloud computing, social interaction, content generation and sharing, context awareness and a whole host of other services, effects and influences. They are the next stage of the interface between humans and the vast world of computational intelligence. Can wearable technologies fulfil their promise to become 'mind extensions', or will they end up as just another expensive gadget that was a fad for a time, before disappearing into the mists of obscurity? I think not.

My personal view is that the time is now ripe for the widespread and rapid adoption of wearable computing. I believe this for a number of reasons: The stage is already set. Today's culture is rich in digital technology, and several generations have now grown up with the expectation that they can access information when and where they want it. Younger generations are wedded to their smart mobile technologies, both psychologically and socially.

Entire industries have evolved and emerged into the mainstream premised on the use and exploitation of smart technology. They would not be able to function without it.

We are also increasingly aware of the connections that make our world move forward, politically, economically and socially, and we are reluctant to step backwards or stand still to risk this progression. The rise in nomadic and itinerant working, and the flexibility that results, is also a very recognisable facet of life and employment in the 21st Century. Knowledge has radically increased and has been more widely disseminated as a result of access to smart mobiles, social media and the Web.

Wearing computers as jewellery, embedded inside our clothing or even as implants inside our bodies seems to be the next stage in our development as technology users. We are already comfortable wearing such enhancements on our person - wrist watches inform us of the passage of time, and spectacles enhance our vision when it deteriorates. Plans to embed digital tools inside wristwatches and spectacles are already well under way.

Finally - and this is potentially what matters the most - venture capitalists are beginning to invest heavily in businesses that are developing new wearable devices. Where the money goes, innovation usually follows.

These are the signs that wearable computing will not go away, and will probably emerge as the next stage in our increasingly intimate relationship with technology. We will use computers in increasingly social and personal ways. As Hammersley intones at the end of his article: 'We will wear it like we wear our heart: on our sleeve.' 

Photo by Antonio Zugaldia on Wikimedia Commons


2014 - the year of the wearable? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Drive like an Egyptian

Anyone who has visited Cairo will have experienced the city's incredible traffic phenomenon. When the drivers of the millions of cars in the Egyptian capital are not at a complete nose to tail standstill (which is often), they are racing and weaving their way along the city's roads at top speed, watching for small gaps to open up, missing each other by fractions of a centimetre, all amidst a perpetual cacophony of horns. From the fog of dust and exhaust fumes you see people emerge, walking in the road, some actually in between the cars, and fortunately, the drivers are skillfully able to avoid them too. This chaotic choreography all takes quite a bit of time to get used to it. For the first few times you venture out in a car (please don't attempt to drive yourself, ask someone who is local to drive you), you find yourself holding on tightly with white knuckles to anything that is fixed, holding your breath, staring wide eyed and horribly fascinated at the many near misses and high speed chaos that is unfolding before you. You need nerves of steel. You sit there praying that your vehicle is not going to be hit. And somehow, it never is.

And then you notice that amongst all this chaos, the blaring horns, the brinkmanship as two drivers try to manoeuvre swiftly into a space that couldn't possibly accommodate them both, and the endless revving of engines and clouds of exhaust fumes... that some kind of organisation is actually present.  Every driver is acutely vigilant (360 degree vision, one of my drivers called it), and regularly sound their horns to warn other drivers where they are in relation to each other. It is a kind of organised chaos that somehow works, because although the large majority of cars have dents and scratches, there tend to be very few serious accidents. Every driver plays the game supremely, knowing exactly what the limits of the rules are and how they are applied. In a city the size of Cairo with over 9 million inhabitants, this is both remarkable and expedient.

Such self organisation takes a little time to evolve, but those within it must learn quickly to survive. Imagine venturing out to drive on the streets of Cairo for this first time. You would need to learn pretty fast, and adopt the conventions of driving with your horn, or risk a serious accident. You would need to know that it is not unusual for two cars to occupy the same lane with just a centimetre between them, and that cars are weaving in and out of the lanes continuously. Driving at top speed and braking suddenly are also completely acceptable, and cutting across other drivers is just a fact of life. All of this is normal in Cairo, and its drivers know these rules implicitly by being immersed in the culture of Egyptian driving.

This is a metaphor of self organised learning spaces, where unwritten rules have evolved to maximise the potential of the tools and environments with which we are increasingly familiar. Learning is no longer linear. Learning in digital environments is a meandering experience, where hyperlinks take you down new and surprising avenues, and conversations take an unexpected turn. On wikis and other shared spaces, there is a need to simply let go of content once you have submitted it, because as sure as there are pyramids in Egypt, someone will come along and edit (or perhaps even delete) your contribution. Be prepared for others to openly (and sometimes harshly) criticise your ideas when you blog, or post your video up to YouTube. If in doubt, or you don't have a thick skin, don't post. There's your slip road out of the chaos. Avoid potential car crashes by checking your facts and ensuring that your arguments are defensible. There's your seatbelt. Check to ensure that images and content you repurpose isn't copyrighted material. That's being street wise. Watch out for those on social media who are simply out to scam you or rip off your ideas to make them their own. Moderate comments to your blog to eliminate spam and trolling. There's your 360 degree vision. And finally, maintain your digital presence, and protect your digital footprint - by engaging your brain before you tweet, post or upload, you will preserve your reputation (and maybe your job) - and your indiscretions won't come back and rear-end you.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Drive like an Egyptian by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The future of knowledge navigation

Will we ever reach the point in our human development where our relationship with our technologies becomes so natural that they become a part of us? Will we ever be able to claim that they are a problem free extension of our physical capabilities - seamlessly connected to our minds? Many would argue that we have already achieved this. Perhaps though, this would have been an easier question to answer in the last century than it is today. The answer then would have been 'yes - we have already achieved it'. The widespread use of diverse technologies such as transportation vehicles, manufacturing tools, weapons and even writing implements, have shown that we can create technology to extend our abilities beyond our natural physical skills, and also adapt our bodies and minds to incorporate tools. This an effect epitomised in Marshall McLuhan's famous declaration that 'we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us'. Although this has social and cultural connotations, it also reveals that we are naturally pliable, and can adapt our skills and expectations toward new ways of doing things. In this case, we learn to use our tools to extend and enhance our limited physical capabilities.

The problem is, as our tools become increasingly complex, so there is a need to learn more complex skills to be able to optimise our use of them. The computer is a classic example of complex technology that can be difficult to use. Things have dramatically improved since the introduction of Graphic User Interfaces, and Siri and Kinect have done a little to bring us closer to improved voice and gesture control. However, computers have also exponentially increased in power and utility, and we will always need to run to keep up. We can speculate that most of us fail to harness the full potential of computers because we simply don't have the skills to exploit their full potential.

Many skills and literacies required, to be able to maximise our use of computers so that they can navigate knowledge on our behalf. The fact that we now carry very powerful computers around with us in our pockets does little to change the problem - we are sentient, autonomous and emotional, whereas computers are simply cold, unthinking machines that blindly follow the instructions they are given. This differential is stark and unforgiving. We still need to be able to develop skills and competencies in the use of technology before we can reap its benefits. This takes time and effort, and no small amount of stress when things don't work out as we had anticipated.

Stephen Wolfram's recent announcement may change all that. The Wolfram Alpha natural language he has announced seems to be a solution to many complex human/computer interface problems. According to Wolfram, symbolic programming is the future of systems design. He says:

"There are plenty of existing general-purpose computer languages. But their vision is very different—and in a sense much more modest—than the Wolfram Language. They concentrate on managing the structure of programs, keeping the language itself small in scope, and relying on a web of external libraries for additional functionality. In the Wolfram Language my concept from the very beginning has been to create a single tightly integrated system in which as much as possible is included right in the language itself."

Wolfram also talks about the fluidity of the new language, suggesting that coding and data can become interchangeable:

"In most languages there’s a sharp distinction between programs, and data, and the output of programs. Not so in the Wolfram Language. It’s all completely fluid. Data becomes algorithmic. Algorithms become data. There’s no distinction needed between code and data. And everything becomes both intrinsically scriptable, and intrinsically interactive. And there’s both a new level of interoperability, and a new level of modularity."

Time will tell how much the Wolfram language will actually achieve to ameliorate the problems we face when we try to use technology and complex interfaces to solve human problems. Yet one thing is clear, and that is that the new language will present new ways to navigate knowledge, and may indeed represent a clear advance forward in how we manage data, and how it can be incorporated into our every day lives. Anyone who has used Wolfram Alpha as an answer engine would probably agree. I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing what the Wolfram language will be able to do for our use of computers in the future.

Image by Frankdzines


The future of knowledge navigation by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.