Inventing the future

Scene from Fritz Lang's Metropolis

Brian Solis describes himself as a digital anthropologist. He is actually much more than that. Although quiet, and small in stature, he's something of a giant when it comes to explaining how our lives are shaped and disrupted in the digital age. He's a futurist, sociologist and author and he commands your attention. His book WTF (What's the Future?) of Business, looks inviting, and is on my must-read list.

Perhaps it was jet-lag and travel weariness that kept Brian fairly quiet over dinner on the eve of Learning Technologies. I noticed that he listened far more than he spoke. Brian Solis is not demonstrative. If anything, he appears quite modest. He doesn't tend to boast over his many achievements. Instead, he simply states it as he sees it. He made his apologies and left dinner early in the evening to get back to his hotel; he then appeared on stage the next morning to present his opening keynote, transformed, vocal, a little larger than life. It was as though a switch had been thrown.

Solis began his keynote energetically, engaging cleverly with his audience of almost 600 delegates from the world of learning, inviting us to share in his fascinating digital musings. He dwelt on organisational use of technology, and presented us with some challenges. He suggested that the future will either happen to us or because of us. In other words, it is up to us to shape our own futures, but our own inability to push forwards is often what holds us back. He argued that technology is a part of the solution but can also be a part of the problem, and unfortunately technology in organisations is usually imposed on us from above. There is no employee ownership, and that is often why technology becomes a problem within organisations, he explained.

Solis also spent time exploring the use of technology in education. He showed some statistics that reflect teacher attitudes to technology and our knowledge management in the digital age. His slide showing that more than 3 our of every 4 teachers see the Web as a great opportunity rather than a threat, and that it is not fostering bad habits and lazy learning, was positive and encouraging.

Brian Solis drew on the seminal work of Clayton Christensen, whose model of technology adoption is widely applied in industry. Disruptive innovation, the seemingly uncomfortable process that arises when new technology or ideas are introduced into a conservative environment, is generally unwelcome to many in the business world. We like certainty and abhor change. Yet disruptive innovation is actually an opportunity for creativity and problem solving in organisations, says Solis. When applied correctly, new innovations don't just disrupt the way a company works, they also open up new markets, and change forever the way business is conducted, usually for the best. He listed a number of disruptive innovations that arose out of a need to improve things, including Uber (a disruptive application that manages urban travel), Airbnb (already transforming the travel and holiday industry), Twitter (now not only a social network but also a tool to reflect the pulse of society), Instagram, which has changed the way we take pictures and perceive images, and Bitcoin, which although currently volatile, has immense potential to disrupt worldwide currencies.

We need design thinking if we want to innovate and take control of our futures, was the final message. Innovation, Solis explained, all starts with simple questions. Why do we do things this way? Why can't I do it this way instead? Why doesn't this exist yet? Why isn't this something we do today? These are all elements of design thinking, he added, and these questions can be simplified into four essential tenets:

1. Empathy (the why)  
2. Context (the connected world in which we build)
3. Creativity (in the approach to solving problems)
4. and Rationality (the logic of testing the rationale and feasibility behind the things we have created).

I can see why Brian Solis believes that the next ten years will happen because of our intervention. As Theodore Hook once said: 'The best way to predict the future is to invent it.'

Metropolis image source
Brian Solis image by Steve Wheeler


Inventing the future by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

I, cyborg

Slightly self conscious wearing Glass

Are we headed for a cyborg future? I'm not sure, but I tried Google Glass for the first time last night and I was conscious that I was looking like a cyborg. Once you get over the initial self consciousness, it's quite a lot of fun trying it out. That's one of the benefits of having dinner with David Kelly, Learning and Development Consultant, and owner of one of the infamous Google beta testing devices. He had to purchase it from the megalithic company, and now explores its potential use in learning contexts. Basically, he's doing their research for them and paying for the privilege. You can read his work here on his Google Glass blog.

Putting on Glass for the first time, there is no discernible difference to donning a pair of standard spectacles. They feel similar, and there is no perceived weightiness on the right side, where the arm is thicker. This arm contains a touch pad, trigger and all the essential electronics that make it what it is. Obviously, unlike standard spectacles, there is no glass to look through - just a small heads up device above your right eye. It was a minor surprise to see it light up, and a small illuminated square appear in my peripheral vision. You need to gaze upwards, straight at it, to see it clearly. The screen is adjustable to your eye focus. It is not as obtrusive as I expected it to be.

I quickly learnt for myself that touching the side of the right arm of Glass, the touch screen becomes multifunctional, invoking a variety of menu choices in your view screen. It was easy, once I understood that in the 'take a picture' menu, I could simply blink my right eye, and it would capture a picture of my field of vision. Next it displayed the image and asked me whether I wanted to delete the image I have captured with my eye blink. A quick tap, and it's gone. It captures short videos too, and can also overlay information about the world around you straight into your vision, giving an augmented sense of reality. With a little practice, I could appreciate that it would be unobtrusive to the wearer and less hazardous to wear than many might claim.

I didn't spend enough time wearing Glass to personally discover much more about it, but Dave is a mine of useful information and is generous with his advice. During his presentation at Learning Technologies in London this week, he talked his audience through a host of social, psychological and organisational issues. On usability, he was quite clear: The distraction comes not from the device wearer themselves, he said, but from all those who spot them wearing Glass, and approach them to ask questions, request a try out, or in some unfortunate cases, to hurl abuse. There is a stigma for Glass wearers at the moment, because according to Kelly, they are still a huge novelty. But, he predicts, they will become much more common place in the next few years, as they become more available, more streamlined and cheaper to purchase. His demonstration of additional shades rescued his Glass wearable from a slightly odd protuberance on the head to a more conventional pair of sunglasses. The optical device faded into the background.

Clearly there are ethical and moral issues for wearers of Glass to consider - it is hugely disruptive. Is it acceptable to walk into a public toilet while wearing one for example? Would that be a threat to privacy? What about those who have already fallen foul of the law by either being arrested for wearing Glass while driving, or being forcibly ejected from movie theatres? Google Glass has huge potential in the learning and development arena. All of us, if we are honest, could see practical applications that would enable us to enhance and extend learning. But the future of Google Glass will depend on how readily society is able to accept wearable technologies.

Picture courtesy of David Kelly


I, cyborg by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Memory full

In a recent blogpost entitled Memories are made of this I wrote about how human memory works in different modalities, principally through auditory and visual coding. The emphasis of the Working Memory model, and also Dual Coding Theory is that memories are strengthened when both auditory and visual stimuli are presented to the learner in an optimal combination. I suggested that the addition of text is useful if it doesn't impinge upon and overload WM, which is limited in its capacity. This is quite a simplification, and requires elaboration, so here is the second post in my blog series on learning and memory.

The work of John Sweller and Nillie Lavie on Cognitive Load Theory and Capacity Theory (based on studies by Shalom Fisch) is useful to help us understand how to optimise digital design environments such as the layout of virtual learning environments or online discussion groups. What exactly can Cognitive Load Theory do to help us to optimise students' memories?

To understand Cognitive Load Theory, we first need to revisit Working Memory (WM). Recall that WM is the dual modality temporary (conscious) memory that enables us to attend to and code content, and also to recall content previously stored in Long Term Memory. Lavie discovered that the more stimuli on offer, and the subsequent load placed on WM, the more selective attention performance will be hindered. In other words, there is only so much load WM can take. Mindful of this phenomenon, Sweller recommended that content designers should limit the amount of cognitive load in digital learning environments by strategically presenting worked examples and problem solving exercises.

Another principle is for designers to provide learners with the most appropriate media for every possible component of learning content. For example, to describe a circle in text form would take up a lot more cognitive processing than a picture, and the student would take longer to apprehend the meaning of the words. Seeing a diagram of a circle reduces the cognitive load (thinking effort) and enables the student to learn easier and faster.

The placement and juxtaposition of content on screen is also an important design consideration. The more closely together 'related content' can be presented on screen, the quicker should be the capability of the learner to understand it and remember it later. This is actually a Gestalt principle referred to as the Proximal Law.

How does Capacity Theory apply in digital learning environments? In any educational media presentation, WM (remember it is limited) competes for space to process and code the content. It has to differentiate between educational content and narrative content found in say, a YouTube video. Capacity Theory holds that the more closely aligned the two types of content are, the greater will be the chance that the student will learn more deeply. Thus the distance between narrative and educational content should be reduced as much as possible to promote better learning. This echoes the findings of the Cognitive Load Theory experiments and also mirrors the Gestalt law of proximity.

This is but a brief and superficial look at these theories. If you wish to read further, there are some excellent resources available here and here.

Photo by Rutger Middendorp


Memory full by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Big Data: Learning vectors and velocities

The most interesting session I attended at Bett 2014 was to hear Stephen Heppell speak in the main arena. Stephen was on top form as usual, and in his avuncular style managed to engage 800 or so delegates effortlessly for 30 minutes. He showcased some of his latest ideas for educational innovation using technology, under the banner of 'Big Data'. Much of his talk, thankfully, has less to do with Big Data, and more to do with how kids can use their devices to capture the data and use it to better understand the world around them.

Heppell showed a dynamic shipping radar map of the English Channel which tracked every sea vessel. Yachting is one of his passions, so it was inevitable that a marine illustration would creep into his presentation somewhere. He showed that you can interrogate the map by locating any vessel, click on it, and discover where it is heading, where it has come from, and what its relative progress is according to its speed, vector and environment. He argued that if we can do this for large vessels such as shipping, why can't we do a similar thing to track student progress. His point was that we plan highly complex systems such as school curricula, and place high stakes on the progress of students, and yet we know so very little about exactly how they do progress. Technology, he suggested could provide the answers through Big Data.

Student work on data logging light and sound levels

I caught up with Stephen and spent some time discussing these ideas with him on his stand at Bett. One of the Big Data projects he showed me involved children using free downloadable light and sound metre apps to measure their environment around them. He showed how this approach to data logging can enable them to understand the impact of loud sounds and different light levels not only on a school environment, but critically, how it affects their own personal learning experience. An extension of this approach saw students working feverishly to log data about their entire ecosystem, including their own motivation levels, facial expressions and body orientations to create maps of how engaged an entire school of students is at any given time. Such applications of big data (in this context a more appropriate label would be learning analytics) are clearly relevant for learning in a technology rich environment. The more information teachers have (possibly displayed as light arrays at the back of a classroom) about their groups of students, the argument goes, the better they will be able to plan, predict and provide for learning needs across a cohort. We need more information about the vectors and velocities of learning.

Some might baulk at this approach and argue that it's more Big Brother than Big Data, but if we don't try we don't know. Personally, I applaud Stephen Heppell's pioneering approach to the application of learning technology in new and innovative ways. It is refreshing, challenging and potentially ground breaking stuff.

Photos by Steve Wheeler


Big Data: Learning vectors and velocities by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Bett interview

The main arena wall is turned into a giant whiteboard at Bett 2014

While speaking at the Higher Education Summit at the BETT Show this week, one of my students who was participating in my session drew my attention to an interview with me in the conference brochure. It took me a little by surprise, because frankly, I had forgotten I had done it. I had to read it through to remember what I had said, and actually, it captures quite well where I am right now. So here it is, shared with you on my blog.

What is your background in the industry?
I started out working in education in 1975. I have spent my entire career specialising in educational technology, firstly in teacher education, then a spell of 15 years working in the NHS in nurse education. In 1998 I returned to teacher education, and I'm now working at Plymouth University where I am an Associate Professor specialising in learning technology. I have also worked on research projects in the UK and the USA, experiences that have given me a greater appreciation of the wider issues that impact upon education.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?
I don't actually need to work any more. I have no mortgage and no debts, and all my children are independent. I choose to continue working because what I do now gives me a real buzz. I continue to work at Plymouth University because I am a lifelong learner, and my local university is absolutely the best place to be to continue learning exciting things about my passion - education. I learn from my colleagues, and I also learn a lot from my students - which is a surprise to them! One of the most exciting areas of my research right now is personal technology - it is fast moving, ever changing, and is a big part of the future of education. I will give up work when I get bored, but I can't see that happening for a while yet.

How are your students' expectations changing?
My students are expecting more activity and less passivity in the formal learning setting, and rightly so. A lot of my 'lectures' now are based around discussion, question and answer, and student led activities that include personal research, blogging, video making, and other user generated content. They don't expect to be 'spoon fed' and they certainly don't get that from me.

What has changed most throughout your career? 
Technology has changed how I work. I am now a global educator with teaching opportunities around the world. When I'm not travelling somewhere to speak or teach, I am at home or in the office webcasting, blogging, making videos and tweeting out content, having conversations with peers and generally engaging with the international community of learning professionals in real time. None of this was possible for me even a decade ago.

What is the biggest challenge you face in your role?
To keep pace with all of the trends and emerging technologies. It's impossible. But I don't need to worry too much because I store my knowledge with my friends.

What was the last piece of technology your university invested in?
Several systems that have not been particularly successful. I don't believe the future of university learning will be contained within 'systems', but predict that smart personal technologies are going to be the future.

Have you seen any exciting technological innovations recently?
I'm excited by some of the new personal technologies that are emerging. The Google Glass and other Augmented Reality wearables look interesting but inherently dangerous. Touch screen tablets are still fascinating to me, but with new gestural computing tools on the horizon, we may not be touching computers to operate them for much longer. I want my own ultra-thin roll-up large LCD TV screen for home movie viewing!

What would make your life easier?
An extra 2 or 3 hours in each day please. Oh, and for someone to hurry up and invent teleportation.

What has been your career highlight?
Being on the keynote speaking circuit and meeting and making friends with many of the luminaries of the technology world, including Steve Wozniak, Conrad Wolfram, Nic Negroponte and Sugata Mitra. I have learnt an incredible amount from them.

What are you most looking forward to at Bett 2014?
Meeting new friends and renewing old acquaintances. Not getting lost in the vastness of the ExCel Centre.

Can you tell us what you will be talking about at Bett?
I'm going to be talking about how I have implemented some of my new techniques for engaging students in learning through a range of social media and personal technologies. I want to highlight the importance of collaboration, problem solving, interaction and critical thinking as transferable skills for the future. I also want to argue that digital literacies are becoming the new cultural capital not only for our industry but for our entire generation.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Bett interview by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Learners promoting change

Recently I blogged two posts about Student Voices and how learners are bringing their own technology into the classroom to enhance and extend their learning experiences. They use Twitter backchannels and hashtags to track the conversation around their learning, and also connect with others beyond the classroom walls to continue discussions around the content they are learning. They collaborate more, and create their own content on blogs and videos, and are generally becoming the 'nodes of their own production.' The videos accompanying these posts also reveal student concerns over traditional methods of teaching and learning, and a significant shift toward more autonomous, proactive and collaborative learning approaches. Education is changing, and it appears that many of the important changes are being instigated by the students themselves.

Below is the third short video that features in my BETT Show Higher Education Summit presentation. It features some of my second year students talking about innovation and change in Higher Education. I asked the students to tell me what they thought they could personally do to influence how universities work. Some students set up their own learner group Facebook pages, so that they can communicate to each other more easily and regularly on course related issues. Facebook is a more familiar place for students to engage in a forum, and they find it easier and more convenient to use than the institutional systems such as university VLEs or e-mail.




Learners promoting change by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Backchannels, hashtags and learning

As a part of my BETT Show presentation, I featured some of my students on video talking about their use of technology. I wanted to capture the student voice on learning in Higher Education. One of the questions I asked my students was: 'How have you used technology to enhance your learning?' The short video below features Tyla Elworthy, Alex Druce and Aaron Fisher, who are training to be teachers and in the second year of their degree programmes at Plymouth University.

Their responses to my question revealed a number of areas that teacher could focus on to improve learning environments. One important point they make, is how useful the introduction of a Twitter backchannel and hashtags can be to help students to track course related content and conversations. Blogging and social networking platforms help them to extend their thinking and also enable them to participate more deeply if they have dyslexia.



Photo by Steve Wheeler


Backchannels, hashtags and learning by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Student voices

My presentation at the 2014 BETT Show is a little different from my normal presentations. It features several significant contributions from my students on video and also live on stage. I can only say so much myself about what goes on in the learning environments I work within. After a while, because it comes from me, it tends to sound like hyperbole, and I'm sure some of my audience leave with a 'so what?' response. I wanted to add another dimension at BETT this year. What better way then to emphasise the amazing things I witness every day while I'm teaching, than to get the students to say it themselves?

So, in preparation for my BETT Show talk, I asked some of my second year education students to take part by helping me to make a video. The short excerpt embedded in this blog post features three - Alex Druce, Tyla Elworthy and Aaron Fisher - who articulate far better than I ever could exactly why they bring their own technology into the classroom, and how they use it to enhance and enrich their learning experiences. They talk about student autonomy, and the need to collaborate and to be able to question their teachers. They also emphasise the importance of interaction during lessons, with each other, with their tutors and also with additional content. Alex, Tyla and Aaron highlight the need to extend their experiences beyond the wall of the classroom, connecting and creating, as they make sense of the content and its context within their professional practice. More videos of my students talking about how they have helped to change learning at university will follow in future blog posts.


Photo by Pedro Ribiero Simoes on Wikimedia Commons


Student voices by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Memories are made of this

Memory is very important. It is the basis of all human thought and learning. Without it, we would find ourselves in a world that is perpetually new and unfamiliar. Teachers everywhere make it their business to try to understand how memory works so that they can optimise learning for their students. Without at least a rudimentary understanding of how human memory works, teachers can make errors and students can become disadvantaged.

Over the years, many psychologists have investigated the nature of memory, and have formulated a number of theories about its functionality, scope and challenges. In my next few blog posts I intend to highlight some of the more important theories of human memory and offer some critical commentary on how they have influenced the design of learning experiences. We start off with some useful ideas around proposed cognitive architectures - how we image human memory is organised.

Dual Coding Model

Canadian cognitive psychologist Allan Paivio will probably be remember most for his work on Dual Coding Theory. Paivio's main argument is that we represent our learning through both verbal codes (logogens) and visual codes (imagens).  In other words, if you want to remember something, the best way to do so is to make sure you code it as both a verbal and a visual memory. Abstract words that have no pictorial analogue, says Paivio, are often harder to recall than words that you can associate with images. Consciously code (or make meaningful) words and images together, and this way, according to the theory, retrieval from memory will be easier.

This theory is similar in its architecture to that proposed by British psychologist Alan Baddeley. With his colleagues Baddeley proposed a version of Short Term Memory (STM) called working memory (WM). Baddeley argued that WM (our conscious dynamic memory) was composed of a Central Executive control component and two separate slave sub-components called the visual spatial sketchpad and the phonological loop. According to Baddeley, the visual spatial sketchpad can only hold one image at a time, whilst the phonological loop can hold up to seven (plus or minus one) auditory items simultaneously. The latter is time based, so has limitations if for example you wish to remember a large sequence of numbers. Working Memory is dynamic, ever changing, and relies on coding if content is to enter into Long Term Memory where it is stored for later retrieval. It has been proposed that unlike WM, LTM can store an infinite amount of memories - a theory that we will probably never be able to test.

Working Memory Model

Both Paivio and Baddeley saw the importance of identifying different kinds of memory and how they can be represented within cognition. Both also stressed that these different modalities of dynamic memory should be allowed to work together to strengthen long term, retrievable memory.

Learning in the WM needs to be coded consciously (made meaningful) for it to become a stronger more permanent memory, and learning can be strengthened further if both types of coding (visual and auditory) work in concert. This idea is exemplified in the classic 'show and tell' form of learning. If students strongly associate words and images together, then later a recurrence of either should activate the other.

Clearly, my commentary here is just a simplified version of the two models. Other components have since been added and models extended as research has progressed. There are also problems with these models of memory. For example, other sensory modalities have not been considered. What about tactile memory, or taste? Or perhaps our strongest and most evocative memory of all - olfactory memory? These modalities tend to be ignored in most memory models, but patently, they represent a large proportion of what we can recall about our personal experiences.

How can Paivio's and Baddeley's theories be applied in education? This link outlines Paivio's thinking around the application of his dual coding theory to teaching and learning. We already know that in the design of digital learning materials, both audio and visual content can be combined to reinforce learning. Video and film are prime examples of learning experiences that have impact because they combine audio and visual content. The addition of text can be helpful, but we need to be aware that overwhelming students with too much content presented in different modalities can also be counterproductive. More research is needed to discover what are the most effective combinations of text, audio and visual materials, and whether these vary according to individual learning needs and expectations, time of day, orientation of task, size of screen, colours, juxtaposition of items, and so on. We also know that WM has a limited capacity, and can be overloaded if not enough space is available to code effectively. In my next post I will examine cognitive load theory and its importance in the design of digital learning content.

Photo by Todd Martin
Graphics by Steve Wheeler


Memories are made of this by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

How will we learn tomorrow?

I had a very interesting year in 2013. My work was varied, travelling was extensive, and I met and talked with a lot of very interesting people. In May 2013, between keynote presentations in Ljubljana, Las Vegas and Doha, I found myself sitting in front of cameras in a West London hotel, giving an interview to a French TV crew. They asked me to respond to several questions as a part of a series on the future of learning, including: How will we learn tomorrow? How will distance education evolve? and What will be the impact on people and companies?

One of the best questions I fielded was 'How have learning methods evolved over the past 10 years? It was great to answer, because I have tracked the learning technology trends over the last decade, and have come to the conclusion that mobile (smart) phones and social media, in combination, have provided the world with the most dynamic, social and personal connections we could possibly wish for. It's also easier to talk about the past than the future, because if you've done your homework, you stand a far better chance of being right! The ways education, learning and development will harness these tools over the next few years will establish for some time how deeply they will reach into organisations, and how effectively we will develop our learning methods for some years to come.  We are living in interesting times, and there are many rich opportunities for us to grasp, if we have the courage and convictions. Here, below, is the final edited version of my TV interview. I hope you find it thought provoking and informative.

 


Open views on learning by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Bend your brain

Don't crack up
Bend your brain
See both sides
Throw off your mental chains...

The lyrics above are from the chorus of the 1980s synth-pop classic New Song by British musician Howard Jones. OK, so the chorus is followed by the somewhat less meaningful 'Ooh ooh ooh', but for a pop song, the lyrics are actually philosophically insightful. Jones hasn't only written a catchy riff and a great hook line. He also seems to be berating the fact that much of our society is blindly following the trends, closing our eyes to reality, and accepting what the media and popular culture feed us, without questioning. He is challenging us to wake up, and see what is being done to us. Why for example, do MacDonalds and KFC only show thin people in their TV adverts? Why does the voice over for all of the major movie trailers almost always have to be a male - and a 'deep, baritone with dramatic tonal qualities' one at that? Why do the tabloid newspapers always use gut wrenchingly bad puns in their headlines? Because they know they can get away with it, and it shifts more units, and makes them more money, that's why. No one questions it. It is what it is.



I have sometimes witnessed the same mentality when students come through the doors of the university and into my classroom for the first time. They sit down, open up their laptops or notebooks, and sit there wide eyed, waiting to be told what to do next. They expect to be spoon fed, and I swear they give the impression that they are completely open to being told exactly 'what to think'. And yet, because they have been conditioned into being told what to do at school, and have been continually fed a diet of idealistic images and lifestyles from the likes of Bella, Hello, GQ and Nuts magazines, they have already decided that this is what the world really looks like. They have a preconceived idea about what education is about too. They couldn't be more wrong. It is only when their lecturers point out to them that they are expected to think independently, to accept nothing at face value, and to question everything, that they begin to wake up from their slumbers. It is really driven home later in their course, when they realise that they will only earn themselves higher grades for their assignments when they actually articulate this kind of thinking in their essays and projects. I can appreciate the sentiments behind Karl Marx's thesis of class consciousness. It is only, he argued, when the workers begin to wake up and realise that they are being exploited and controlled, that a true revolution can begin. But we are not calling for a revolution here - simply for students to learn how to 'bend their brains'.

The music video to accompanying New Song shows Howard Jones (and that strange little mime artist who always accompanied him everywhere) breaking out of the drudgery of factory life, escaping from the rat race on the London Underground, and finally - quite fittingly - liberating an entire class of school children (and their teacher) from a traditional classroom, and out into the open air. A good education, when properly applied is just like that - helping us to throw off our mental chains and to begin questioning the world around us. Critical thinking and an inquiring mind are all we really need. That's the only way we will ever see the world for what it really is.


Bend your brain by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Living with Aspergers

My students were inspired and entertained in equal measure by our closing keynote speaker at Plymouth University this week. The conference was organised for my second year student teachers, and focused upon special educational needs and inclusive education. Our closing keynote speaker was Dean Beadle, a 24 year old journalist who speaks on the subject of 'Living with Aspergers'. Diagnosed very early in his school life with Aspergers Syndrome, Dean struggled with a variety of challenging social issues and behaviours, and retold many humourous and at times emotional stories about how he gradually learnt to cope with his condition.

Many of his stories struck chords of recognition with his audience, and all went away inspired and enthused by his speech. As I escorted Dean back to the train station later, he told me that he had been very nervous about speaking in front of a group of student teachers. He was anxious, he told me, because he was more used to speaking in front of groups of much older people, and was worried that a group his own age might not be as receptive to his message. He needn't have worried. He rocked his audience of just over 200 students, with his courageous and brutally honest narrative, and left them wanting more. For those who missed the event, and for those who do want more, here is a YouTube video of Dean at the top of his game:




Living with Aspergers by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Changing perceptions

When my son was still quite young, he was diagnosed with semantic pragmatic disorder, on the autistic spectrum. It took many years before he was able to express himself effectively, and he would become extremely agitated when he couldn't make himself understood. If this happened in the school, many of the teachers were understanding, and intervention was usually taken sensitively to ensure he didn't hurt himself or other children, and that disruption and emotional upset was minimised for the entire class. The other children got used to him, and over time, he learnt to control his impulses, and to express himself more clearly and effectively. While some teachers were absolute stars, others were less than understanding, even though they were aware of my son's statement of educational needs, and there were occasions when his behaviour was very poorly managed. This, I believe, was possibly down to the fact that the teachers concerned didn't fully understand or appreciate his difficulties. We fought many long battles with his school over this lack of understanding. Similar scenarios still play out regularly in schools around the world, where SEN children are placed into mainstream education, but teachers are ill prepared to understand and effectively manage their behaviour.

At Plymouth Institute of Education's SEN and Inclusion conference for student teachers today, I asked how we could get teachers who had no personal experience of autistic spectrum disorder to better understand what ASD children and their parents go through. My thesis was that if certain teachers can experience for themselves what it is like to have a child who is on the autistic spectrum, then they might be a more sympathetic and offer more reasonable solutions. The answer may be to implement some sort of CPD around experiential learning. Not just learning by doing or making, but learning by 'being'. Might this alter teachers' perceptions?

Situated learning - learning within the context in which the knowledge or skills will later be applied - is a very powerful approach. But I wish to go beyond situated contexts, where learning is not just about doing, but by actually being immersed in the position to experience for yourself what you need to learn, effectively through altering your perceptions.

There are still many things that are impossible to learn solely through reading books, or by being told or shown.  How for example, could you convey to someone what it's really like to be blind? How would you get someone to experience what it's really like to suffer from schizophrenia? Just telling them would not be enough. Giving them a book to read on what it's like would come nowhere near to enabling them to really, fully understand all of the issues. This is where experiential forms of learning can be used.

I worked in nurse education between 1981-1995, and got to see some good learning through altered perception. Some of our student psychiatric nurses came into regular contact with patients suffering from schizophrenia. All they witnessed was the bizarre behaviour. This was disturbing for them. They couldn't get to see what was going on inside the heads of their patients, so it was extremely difficult for them to understand them, or appreciate the complex issues and experiences these patients had to deal with. How could we prepare our students to cope with such situations?

Some of my colleagues devised a method for allowing our student nurses to 'experience' schizophrenia at a personal level. They devised a system where one student would sit in a room talking to another student, in an interview situation. A small earpiece was worn by the first student. During the interview (unheard by the second student) our tutors, seated behind a one-way mirror, would whisper absurd, bizarre ideas - auditory hallucinations - creating 'voices in the head' of the first student. I tried this myself several times, and ended up either giggling uncontrollably or inadvertently repeating some of the weird comments I was hearing through my earpiece. The person I was attempting to hold a conversation with would look bemused and uncomfortable. All they could see was the strange behaviour. The situation was then reversed, so that students got to experience both perspectives. This form of experiential learning was very powerful and effective in preparing student nurses to interact with schizophrenic patients. It gave them a different perspective that they could never have gained through reading books, watching videos, or being told about. Their learning was deeper, because it was personalised and situated.

We set up similar experiential learning situations for our general nurses. Some were blindfolded and led around by their peers for long periods. They were fed food without knowing what it was, and taken to parts of the hospital without any idea of where they were headed. Others were strapped into wheelchairs and pushed around for hours, to experience what it would be like to be totally dependent on someone else. Experiences this altered perception where they were suddenly helpless and unable to make decisions for themselves really gave them a sense of empathy for high dependency patients who would eventually be in their care.

Being at the SEN and Inclusion event today got me thinking - how might we leverage these principles for teachers who will encounter SEN children and their families? If you know of any experiential learning methods being used to support this kind of learning, please let me know in the comments box below.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


Changing perceptions by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Breaking down the silos

I have written previously about the artificial divide between school subjects. Yes, there are practical reasons for teaching art separately to science, or maths in a different room to music. And yet, the separation of the subjects seems increasingly anachronistic in our diverse, post modern, hyper-connected society. If school is where we prepare children to be independent, knowledgeable and reflective individuals, then we may well be doing them a disservice by perpetuating the silo mentality prevalent in state funded education. Life simply isn't about compartmentalisation any more. The working day often passes in a blur of recognisable, but highly connected and blended ideas, activities and objects.

The art (design) and science that went into creating your iPhone for example, is well documented. Photography is art and science combined. The mathematical principles you learnt in school are no longer recognisable as such - because they are often applied differently and in the context of other influences, in a multitude of different ways during an average week. It is no surprise then, that a movement is growing to incorporate discrete subjects together in schools. The very act of combining disparate subjects from the curriculum, proponents claim, helps children to understand the world in entirely new ways and opens their eyes to new possibilities.

An article in the January 3rd 2014 edition of the Times Educational Supplement expresses exactly the sentiments above. Entitled: 'Sparks fly when art and science interact', the article reports on what happened when one school decided to organise a festival where scientists and artists could dialogue. The author, Hugh Jones reveals how this cross-curricular celebration of two apparently unrelated disciplines actually found much common ground. 'Life is rich in the variety of ways in which we interpret, communicate, argue and predict,' Jones writes, 'and we wanted to encourage our students to have a broad vision of these skills.'

During the festival, students were asked to answer questions such as 'what is the right space for art and science to collide?' and did many activities including making video recordings of artists and scientists discussing their work. 'The event really broadened how artists thought of science and how scientists thought of art' Jones says, 'and hopefully, the lesson that the two disciplines can work together will be a lasting one.'

There are several approaches to de-compartmentalisation of the curriculum. At Albany Senior High School in Auckland, New Zealand, I witnessed a group of students in the same learning space, wandering between three seemingly unrelated classes as 3 teachers ran their lessons. Students were able to choose at what point they entered and left each session, and how they interpreted their understanding not only of the lesson content, but how the three subjects related to each other.

Another approach is practised by the teachers at Skipton Girls School in Yorkshire, England. Skipton is a designated engineering academy, and students at the school regularly learn through the combined delivery of two or more subjects. One small group proudly showed me their project which combined Physics and Music. They were very proud of the work they had done around the analysis of audio waveforms, frequencies and sound synthesis to create their own songs. When I asked one student why it was so important to combine subjects, she replied 'It helps me to understand the world better.'

What are your views on cross-curricular teaching? Should we make a concerted effort to break down the subject silos, or should we maintain the status quo?

Image by Mike Licht


Breaking down the silos by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

My ethos for teaching

The first time I saw my water colour paintings on display in an exhibition I experienced a real sense of pride and excitement. I walked into the gallery, and there they were - with my name on them for all to see. I felt similar pride the first time I heard one of my own studio recordings being played on radio. The excitement was repeated the first time I heard one of my compositions being performed (with full orchestration) by another artist on record. Later, I was delighted to hear yet another of my compositions being played as a background theme for a television programme. It was only a local TV information update, but it was replayed many times that year and the royalty cheques I received from PRS were very nice indeed. I think I bored everyone silly when my first book was published. I talked of little else for an entire week.

I felt this pride and excitement, because my own ideas and creativity, which I had worked so hard on, and had poured my heart and soul into, were now out there in the open, being appreciated by others. I had shared my mind for others to experience. I discovered though, that this was just the start - and that involving others in my creative ideas could be even more rewarding.

In the late 1980s, I took over the running of a youth group and formed a dance and drama group. One of the highlights of my youth leadership was when my group performed a dance routine that I had choreographed. It was incredibly rewarding to sit at the back of the hall, and watch as my young people excelled themselves in their dance routine, with the music, lighting and performance space all combining to showcase their talents.

It was around that time that something significant happened in my life. It dawned on me that I wanted to be a teacher. I had discovered a taste for developing excellence in the learning and performance of others. I had come to a realisation that creativity is not something you individually own. It is also something you share with others so that it can also support their own individual journeys. When the crowd applauded and cheered my young dance group, I experienced a different kind of pride and excitement than that which I had achieved with my own expressions of creativity. It was more fulfilling. I felt the reflected glory of others and what they had achieved, through their interpretation of my creative ideas, and through my efforts working with them. This for me, even today, is one of the most rewarding aspects of being a teacher. It is to watch as my own learners succeed - to reach out and achieve their dreams, and to be who they really wish to be. How will you share your creativity this year to facilitate learning for others?

Photo by Laffy4k


My ethos for teaching by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Shock of the new

Down through the ages, there has always been resistance to change. The infographic on this page bears testament to that fact. Specifically, there has always been opposition to new technologies. Sabotage - a word synonymous with subversion through deliberate destruction, was first coined following the 15th century attempts of Dutch workers to break the newly introduced and very unpopular textile looms. It was rumoured that the workers threw their sabots (wooden clogs) into the machinery to break the cogs, because they feared that the new machines would render human workers obsolete. The same mentality was present when robots were introduced into the car manufacturing industry late in the last century, although less overt kinds of opposition manifested then. Even today, many people still shun the automated teller machines (ATMs) because they don't trust them.

Why are people technophobic? Is it the shock of the new? Is it that people are simply scared of change? Often it's the uncertainty that new technologies bring which seems to faze people into resisting them. Fear of the unknown has a strong effect on our thinking. Some of the warnings are on the surface, quite reasonable, but if you look just beneath the facade of the caveats, there resides a kind of techno-panic - an unreasonable fear of what the technology might really bring to society.

Much of our fear of technology is represented in popular culture. In the Terminator and I, Robot movies for example, our own creations become a threat to our future, our humanity, our very existence. This trope can be traced back at least to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, and arguably even farther back in time to the myth of Prometheus. Bizarrely, there are strong links from Mary Shelly - via her poet husband Percy Bysshe Shelly - and a holiday they enjoyed with close family friend and fellow poet Lord Byron, to his daughter, the technophile Ada Byron (more commonly known as Ada Lovelace, acknowledged as the first computer programmer). Was there a connection between the two stances? One would surmise that the influences were there and that conversations between the Shellys and the Byrons might have led to discussions around the social implications of the emerging technology of the time.

Health warnings are the most prevalent warnings we hear today about new technology. When mobile (cell) phones were first introduced more than two decades ago, concerns were raised by health experts over the levels of non-ionising radiation caused by the devices. Many articles published during that period expressed anxiety over the long term legacy of using the mobile devices close to the head, and predicted an epidemic of brain tumours and other health problems. More recently, the naysayers are still at it, bad-mouthing those who are pioneering wearable technologies with labels such as 'glassholes'. Contemporary critics of technology such as Andrew Keen, Baroness Susan Greenfield, Nicholas Carr and Tara Brabazon have variously argued that the Internet has negative impacts on education, memory and perception, knowledge representation, scholarship and culture. There seem to be no end to the column inches in the popular press that are dedicated to exposing the failure of education and the role technology may be playing. History has shown us that the technophobes and doom merchants are always among us, and that they will not desist. But we also know this - technology will also continue to be with us, and it is just as resilient as its detractors. Technology does not stand still, but continues to evolve at pace. Yes, we know that introducing technology in education is not the silver bullet. But it is up to us as educators and learners to wisely harness its potential for better learning. Applied in appropriate circumstances and contexts, technology is making a difference to our children's learning. To ignore it or shun it means we are depriving younger generations of opportunities for authentic, real-world learning.

"Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives, and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time." - Voltaire

Graphic source: Fear of the New


Shock of the new by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The mobile agenda

2013 was quite a busy year for me. Alongside my own commitments to teach and research, I was also invited to participate in events held in several countries outside the UK. During the year I found myself travelling to Singapore, Las Vegas, Doha, Riyadh, Ljubjana, Oslo, Brussels, Berlin, Prague, Cairo, Sligo and Malta. I also presented over a dozen live webinars, including keynotes for the excellent Reform Symposium on the future of education and the influential eLearning Guild. However, it was a short series of events held in the UK that arguably provoked my most productive few weeks, at least in terms of thinking and writing. I was very pleased to be invited by Learning Pool to headline their autumn tour, at venues in the cities of Sheffield, Cardiff and London. During the conference series, I worked closely with Denise Hudson-Lawson and Andrew Jacobs, two of the other invited speakers, in workshops on mobile learning. This was a subject high on the agenda at Learning Pool, and remains a very important trend for work-based learning. Mobile has interesting implications for the compulsory and higher education sectors too, not least because untethering learning has radical consequences for the future of resourcing, curricula development, teacher roles and autonomy for learners. It also presents new challenges for organisations around interoperability, data protection/security, personal metrics and privacy.

Working with Andrew and Denise was a lot of fun - we were involved together in 3 excellent panel debates during the Learning Pool tour - and it was also creative and thought provoking to such an extent that between us we were inspired to generate several blog posts around mobile learning. Here are a few of Andrew's thoughts on our collaboration. The posts I wrote during this period are listed below, complete with the ensuing conversation from readers. I hope you find them as thought provoking and relevant to your own work as I have. As ever you are very welcome to leave your own comments on these posts and the ideas that they represent.

• Mapping mobile learning 
• Mobile learning and personal metrics
• Self actuated mobile learning
• Mobile content curation
• 'Always On' learning
• Mobile learning and blended interaction
• Courses or learning episodes?

Photo by Steve Wheeler

The mobile agenda by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.