Maker pedagogy

More and more teachers are beginning to realise that creating environments and possibilities where students make things is a very powerful pedagogy. Students learn a number of skills and draw on a variety of subjects when they design and create objects. Teaching takes a back seat and product based education is sidelined in favour of process based learning. Recently I have visited a number of schools in the UK and New Zealand where children have shown a deeper understanding of their subject when they are engaged in making. Seymour Papert's work on constructionism outlines the cognitive gain that occurs when we create something new rather than simply repeat knowledge that has already been acquired. They create strong mental models of their world by engaging directly in the process of construction. Learners who produce more than they consume are generally more aware of their own learning processes and can adapt more quickly to changing environments and demands on their skills. My own students become familiar with researching, problem solving, decision making, team working and expressing their creativity. They generally work harder and also develop ability to reflect on their actions and critically evaluate their own work. They are constantly creating new content, and presenting their new knowledge in blogs, videos and on other digital media. Here's a video (made by Oliver Quinlan) of two of my undergrad students discussing what they learnt in the act of creating personal blogs:



To reach the point where they can start establishing a maker culture in their classrooms, teachers often need to undergo a reboot of their mindsets. American educator Jackie Gerstein makes some important observations about how teachers can change their perspectives and embrace maker pedagogy. She suggests that teachers need to break out of their old mindsets, develop new skills and entertain new roles. In her excellent slide deck, Gerstein argues that teachers need to break out of the constraints they impose upon themselves. She provides seven key areas that need to be reappraised around the questions: what does it mean to be a teacher, what is the expectation of teaching, and what might change? (my annotations included)

1. Teachers often believe they should be content experts. This is often a barrier that prevents them from occasionally learning something new from their students.

2. Teachers often believe they should lecture, to directly instruct so they can impart important content to their students. Sometimes this is necessary, but often lecturing is the best way to transfer notes from the teacher's textbook into the student's notebook without having to pass through two minds.

3. Teachers often believe they should know all the answers - but this sometimes precludes further exploration of the topic and the opportunity is then lost for teachers and their students to learn together.

4. Teachers have been trained to believe that there should always be predictable outcomes from a lesson. Sometimes lessons go in a direction that has not been planned, and predictions (aims, outcomes, objectives) are circumvented - teachers should be aware that sometimes, you can't plan for learning.

5. Teachers often believe that a quiet classroom is the best classroom because all students are attending to what they are saying. However, there are occasions when students should be allowed to explore for themselves, create their own content and objects, and where the teacher does not need to be heard.

6. Teachers have been trained to make sure they never make mistakes in front of their students. And yet sometimes, a mistake can become a teachable moment, where everyone - including the teacher - learns an important lesson.

7. Teachers have been told that they should be the sole assessor and evaluator of their students' work. However, self assessment and peer assessment also have important roles in the learning process. Incorporating a variety of alternative assessment methods into the classroom can gain some important benefits.

Jackie Gerstein recommends that all teachers who aim to establish a maker culture in their schools should consider the above points. A change of mindset is the first step, she says, in creating an environment in which students can explore, discover and create and go beyond the sun of the mill, every day learning that occurs in schools across the globe. The outcome is that students interact with each other, external resources, digital materials and content, more than they do with the teacher. They learn to build their own personal communities of learning, and rely more on their own skills and abilities than they do on those of the teacher or content expert. They learn from their own mistakes and express themselves more creatively through their own endeavours.

Photo by Pamela Adam on Wikimedia Commons



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

A learner's curriculum

I worked for several years alongside Professor Mike Newby, who at the time was serving as Dean of the Faculty of Education at Plymouth University. After his eventual retirement, he continued his research, and in 2005 published what I consider to be one of his most significant contributions to the education literature. A Learner's Curriculum, published by the Association for Teachers and Lecturers, outlines what Newby considered to be a curriculum for the 21st Century. Almost a decade later, in a time where all school children have been born after, or have no memories of the last century, it seems an appropriate time to revisit his work to see how it relates to present day 21st Century practices.

Newby's first assertion is that in a time of rapid change, the curriculum cannot remain static, but must be responsive to the shifting needs of society. He remarks that learning will change, because in the age of the Internet, 'non-hierarchical, self-managed networks will become characteristic organisational features of the middle years of the twenty-first century, and that we must therefore prepare children and young people for a networked world.'  Clearly this has already emerged as a phenomenon in the last few years, and since the proliferation of social media and smart mobiles, seems to be accelerating.

His second assertion is that the structure and boundaries of the curriculum will need to change. He suggests that student needs are changing too, and 'if learners are to flourish and thrive in the decades to come, they will need an experimental, progressive curriculum - one focused on the learner - where moulds will be broken and traditional barriers between disciplines and subjects will start to crumble.' Again, there are signs that this is beginning to happen, but this is a slower process. Conservative organisations such as schools often resist change, and the curriculum is perhaps the most resistant stronghold of them all. Some schools are beginning to break down the barriers between subjects, and are offering cross curricular opportunities. Others are seeing the benefits of progressive methods where learning is student centred, and where experiential approaches, personalised learning and learning through making are coming to the fore.

Newby shows that there are three common curriculum types. The first, and most prevalent in state funded schools is the content based curriculum, which is premised on the belief that children attend school to learn facts. There are several problems with this approach to education, including the fact that some subjects are privileged above others and that some kinds of knowledge can become irrelevant. The content based curriculum is characterised by rapid transition between subjects, little time to experiment and express creativity, and a great deal of testing to ensure that students are as knowledgeable as possible when they leave school.

The second type of curriculum is known as the vocational curriculum, and focuses on preparing children for eventual work. It emphasises skills alongside knowledge, and attempts to support children in their progression from novice to expert status, showing direct links between what is learnt in school and what is eventually practised in the world of work. The major criticism of this approach to education is that it considers children as commodities, and assesses their economic worth in their capability to transition from learner to earner. It fails to acknowledge many of the aesthetic and philosophical aspects of learning, and can stifle creativity.

The final type of curriculum Newby features in his review is the child centred curriculum, which encourages children to question and discover. It imposes fewer boundaries and constraints than its alternatives, and is based less on subjects and more on exploration, because it places more importance on how a child learns than what they learn. Interestingly, Newby describes the child centred curriculum as 'Making discoveries, being encouraged to connect unexpected ideas, not being corralled within conventional subject-based stockades - these habits of thinking could as well describe famous inventors, explorers and university
researchers as children in primary school.' The criticism of this approach is that knowledge is secondary to experience, and that too much school time is wasted on play and experimentation.

One of Professor Newby's statements could be considered a warning to the traditionalists: 'Knowledge will no longer uniquely reside in the heads of teachers, to be conveyed each lesson to their pupils, but will be perpetually available on the internet. The content-based curriculum, such as it is ‘delivered’ in schools (for it will be available everywhere), will have to change to take account of the ready availability of knowledge of many kinds. Subjects, where these remain important, will be in a constant state of flux. Barriers between disciplines will start to crumble, as subjects begin to blend and morph into new subjects. Teachers, eager to protect the status of their subjects, will nonetheless be asked to think anew, and to work alongside others from different disciplines.'

Photo by Frederick Wallace on Flickr



A learner's curriculum by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Coming soon...

I thought it was about time that I published a new book. It's been about five or six years since my last volumes were out on display in the book stores. But what to write? I had been thinking for a while about the potential to create a book based on some of my more substantive blog posts, and so it was a serendipitous moment when I was approached by a publisher after one of my keynotes earlier this year. Subsequent meetings and conversations with Crown House allowed me to hammer out a book outline and then I got down to work over the summer break, selecting the posts, sequencing them and then writing the narrative and commentary around them. I also decided to include some of the conversations I have had around these posts, both from my blog and also on Twitter, thereby adding an element of interactivity. You will probably recognise many of those who get a mention, and you may even get a mention yourself! I'm very pleased with the result (and even the slightly trippy cover art), and I'm pleased to announce that Learning with 'e's is due to be published in early January, in time for book signings at the BETT Show and the Learning Technologies conference in London. I also have other book signings scheduled throughout the year in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as farther afield in cities outside the UK including Madrid, Istanbul, Riyadh and Brisbane.

Learning with 'e's is about educational theory and practice. It focuses on new and emerging theories of learning and pedagogy in the digital age, as well as a critical retrospective on some of the older, more established theories. It also looks to the future. There are fourteen chapters with headings such as 'The shape of minds to come,' 'Rebooting learning', 'A 21st Century Curriculum' and 'Global educators', and you can imagine that it's going to upset some of the traditionalists and delight the progressives. I don't expect everyone to agree with my ideas, but I have tried and tested all of the methods I highlight in the book and they have worked well for my students. To cap it all, I managed to persuade celebrated author and speaker (and former head teacher) Richard Gerver to write the foreword, which was quite a scoop. I'm very much looking forward to seeing its publication in 2015, and to meeting as many readers as possible during book signings, keynote speeches and workshops. You can order Learning with 'e's here on Amazon, and yes, there is also a Kindle version.

Image courtesy of Crown House Publishing



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

What we don't know

In February 2002, at the height of media speculation over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld made the following statement:

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones".

To some it was a clever statement that encapsulated the confusion and lack of certainty of the situation, while for others it was simply the worst kind of political doublespeak, verging on absurdity. Regardless of the judgement on Rumsfeld's rhetoric, it serves to illustrate an important point about knowledge - that there are many things we don't know, and there are even more things that we are unaware we don't know. The quest for knowledge is a never ending human endeavour, because ignorance is dangerous. Without adequate knowledge we are unprepared for life, fail to capitalise on opportunities when they arise, and there may even be fatal consequences. That is why it is so important for all of us to share what we know and share it freely on social media. As I have previously opined, knowledge is also continuously changing, sometimes on a daily basis as scientific breakthroughs and new data bring fresh insights. The amount of new knowledge generated on the Web alone is staggering beyond belief.

It's actually quite easy to list what know we don't know - there are many websites detailing many of the areas of knowledge in which we are lacking. Cosmology is replete with such unanswered questions: How, for example, do we explain gravity? Why is the sun 400 times larger than the moon and 400 times further away, thus appearing to be exactly the same size and producing perfect solar eclipses every time? Is there life on other planets? How large is the universe... and how did it all begin? Here are five more questions that might keep physicists awake at night. There are many theories, but no definitive answers. Psychology also has many unanswered questions, such as how memory and recall works, or what functions certain areas of the human brain perform. Again, there are many theories, but we lack definitive answers.

It's challenging enough that we are aware of many questions that have no answers, but the most frightening aspect of life is that there are many things we don't know we don't know. We can't begin thinking about them, because they haven't yet emerged into existence and therefore we are yet to be aware of them. We don't know what problems we will meet in the future because the future is imaginary. How can we prepare for this? It has been said that 'what you don't know, won't hurt you,' but the thousands of people who lost their lives during the Asian earthquake and tsunami on December 26, 2004 would disagree if they still had voices. The early warning systems now operational in many ocean locations around the world might have saved many lives if they had been in place in 2004. Ignorance can indeed be dangerous, and that is the reason why education is so vitally important.

What you don't know will hurt you if it takes you by surprise. The future is uncertain, and will present challenges to future generations we haven't even begun to conceive. Preparation for the future should therefore be a prime function of all schools. Students who are aware that there are many things they don't know, tend to be good learners. Those who actively seek to discover the things they don't know become great learners. Students who seek to understand what is yet to be understood will find themselves well ahead of the field.

Image from Pixabay



What we don't know by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Preparing our children for the future

In my last post I asked if there were any unGoogleable questions. This was not actually a question about search engines or the power of the Internet. It was a question about the fundamental nature of knowledge. I was interested in exploring how we learn in the digital age and specifically, the constantly shifting nature of knowledge.

My focus turned to what we don't yet know, and how we discover what we need to know, by asking the right questions (I expand on this theme in this post). I would argue that the best, and most powerful forms of education are based on asking questions rather than being given answers. Learning through conversation has always been more powerful than learning by rote or instruction. No matter how clever or persuasive certain so called experts' arguments appear to be about the need for children to memorise facts and receive their knowledge from teachers, we should not be taken in by such rhetoric. We need to see these people for what they actually are. They are dangerous individuals who are trying to prevent progress by perpetuating a restrictive method of schooling that ultimately, will rob our children of their futures. They are self acclaimed experts who wish to maintain control over our education system by perpetuating standardised testing, rote learning and whole class instruction, while demonising alternative approaches such as personalised learning, games playing and problem solving.

They wrap up their ideas in a cloak of respectability and present them exclusively as the answer to today's education crisis. They snipe and sneer at those who advocate progressive approaches to education, as they fight desperately to preserve what control they have over schools. In so doing, they are depriving an entire generation of children the right to discover for themselves just how wonderful learning really is. They rob this generation of students of their human right to receive a good, dynamic and relevant education.

They are like King Canute trying to hold back the tide. Given time, their ideas will fade into irrelevance, because there is a dynamic alternative. If we concede that transmitting knowledge is no longer the sole function of education, if we believe that schools should not be training children exclusively for the workplace, we will see it. Children need to be prepared to live and work in a rapidly changing world where they will be employed (or even employ themselves) in many new and unfamiliar contexts. Children will need to gain a wider and deeper appreciation of their changing world, and need to know what questions to ask when they are met with previously unknown challenges. This cannot be founded solely on the knowledge we already have. It requires the ability to create new knowledge, and the development of new skills, competencies and literacies. The problems our students will encounter when they reach adulthood will be unique to their generation, possibly created by the new technologies they use, and no amount of knowledge acquisition from today's curriculum, nor teaching from today's experts, can prepare them for that. They will need to be entrepreneurs and innovators, problem solvers, inventors and creators to survive.

How can you educate children to be entrepreneurial or innovative? You might do so by creating learning environments in which they can safely take risks and experiment, and where they can fail and learn through that failure. You work with them to create their own curriculum, one that is relevant to their future needs, and one that exploits their current skills and interests. The success of this will be based on being able to frame the right questions to meet the demands of future society.

When my students do their research projects they start with questions, and invariably end up with many further, related questions. In my classes I practice a Socratic method of pedagogy, which includes the setting of challenges. Inquiry based learning is the foundation for deeper understanding. It is the prime ingredient in all progressive learning methods. It is the essence of knowledge production, and the thread that runs through all entrepreneurial and innovative behaviour. It is also the only hope we have for the future. May the coming year be a successful one for all those educators who see children as creative individuals rather than as commodities.

Photo by Jarmoluk on Pixabay



Preparing our children for the future by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

That unGoogleable question

Are there any questions that you cannot Google? It's a provocative question I have asked several times to audiences in the last few days. It's a tough question to answer, as my audiences in Amsterdam and Dublin discovered this week. Try it yourself and see. What is there that is not discoverable, if you know what questions to ask?

If we can search for and find just about any knowledge on the web these days, the key question must be: what is left that we cannot search for? This question has huge implications for education, for schools, colleges, universities, indeed any organisation that has learning at its heart. If all knowledge is now available online, what place is there for formal education processes, for academic courses, for classrooms, indeed... for teachers? One response of course, is that formal education will always have some relevance in human society, and there will always be a place for teachers. This is because education is, and has always been more that simply content. Learning involves a process that is lifelong, incorporating a great deal more than the acquisition of knowledge. Formal education is partly responsible for helping us to learn what it is to work together, and it is where we acquire many of our (transferable) skills, develop specific attitudes and beliefs, and where we are inducted into some of the specific roles we need to play in society.

The unGoogleable question never the less raises some hugely important philosophical questions however. One relates to the nature of knowledge, and how we come to 'know'; another is how we manage and organise knowledge once we have it. There are at least two specific areas of questions that are unGoogleable. In future blog posts I intend to explore each of these and draw out some important principles about how we are living our lives, and learn about our world, in this century. In the meantime I would be fascinated to hear about what you consider to the the 'unGoogleable questions', and what they mean to you. The comments box is open...

Photo by Jim Groom on Flickr



That unGoogleable question by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

A little more conversation

I went on public record several times this year to say that the best continuing professional development (CPD) I have ever received has been through Twitter. Now it depends on how you define CPD, but for me it is the personal learning you require to sustain, enhance and extend your own capabilities within your professional practice. This learning can come in many forms. My Personal Learning Network (PLN) is the vehicle that carries me to this learning, and social media is the highway that enables me to get there. All of my learning right now, at this stage of my career, is self determined. It is informal by nature and is essentially conversational.

The dialogue I enjoy is accessed via my PLN, often through Twitter, but can also come from LinkedIn or Facebook, Google Hangouts or even YouTube and any number of other of the social media platforms I use. What strikes me most about learning through PLN conversations is that the topics are always fresh, the discussions are on point, and the subsequent outcomes continue the learning process, through blogging, videos and other activities, leading to further dialogue. Blogging as conversation is increasingly popular and there are now numerous global chats on Twitter, many of which identify themselves with exclusive hashtags. Here's a short video I made about three reasons why Twitter is important for educators.


This is Learning 2.0, learning that involves self determined forms of education, the creation of new content, peer production of learning, and of course the widespread sharing of this back into the global community of learning. This ever virtuous circle of learning as dialogue through creating and sharing is what has propelled countless numbers of communities of practice to higher levels of understanding, and is a valid template to also apply to the compulsory education sectors and other formal learning ecologies.

We don't know what the future will bring us, but we can be sure that this kind of learning will continue and will gather impetus, discovering new ways to do things, new ideas to apply, new explanations, and of course - new people to connect with and with whom to enjoy new conversations.

Photo by Ed323 on Wikimedia Commons



A little more conversation by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital habitus

The writings of philosopher and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu focus predominantly upon the power structures and dynamics of society, and highlight the importance of cultural capital. Cultural capital can be described as the human assets each of us owns, including our intellect, personal navigation of society and its artefacts, our cultural awareness and even our sense of style and the manner in which we publicly present ourselves. Whereas capital (in a monetary sense) is the accumulation of the fruits of labour, cultural capital is the accretion of all that has been learnt through immersion within a specific culture. Education has been described as the social transmission of this learning to younger generations. Cultural capital is premised upon shared symbolism, acting as the social glue that binds a specific society together.

One of Bourdieu's better known dimensions of cultural capital is habitus - the process through which the activities of everyday life shape and order our values and expectations. Habitus is a useful explanation of the way we live our daily lives, including the habits we acquire, and the manner in which we conduct our behaviours.

So what of our habitual use of digital media? What are the effects of our fearsome fascination with mobile phones, our predilection to video games, our inexorable gravitation toward social media? Do these constitute a digital habitus? When we observe our digital representations, our lives portrayed on screen, and our ideas played out in a virtual simulacrum of reality, what do we see? Does the digital trail we leave online represent any part of our real lives? Does our digital presence accurately represent any aspect of the self? In the view of Jean Baudrillard, a simulacrum is a copy that has no original. This is representative of the manner in which we habituate into digital media, believing that we are laying down versions of our thoughts and behaviour from real life. In fact, it is possible that the digital versions of ourselves that exist online are in fact original and have never previously existed. We shape our technology and then it shapes us, suggests Marshall McLuhan. If this is the case, then our simulacra might indeed represent new and emerging versions of ourselves, versions that would be impossible or improbable without the affordances of our technologies.

This discourse is highly relevant in the context of education. Such questions can relate specifically to both the nefarious use of technology, including cyberbullying, sexting, illegal hacking and trolling - and to more appropriate uses, including the creating, repurposing and sharing of content and the use of technology to connect and build new communities. They also speak to us of the means through which schooling has been used to convey to each successive generation the values, belief systems and behaviours of those preceding. Might the digital habitus explain a significant interruption of that age-old transmission process? Exactly how the use of digital media might influence the emergence of new social identities and the acquisition of digital literacies is a subject in need of deeper exploration. As ever, your thoughts and comments are very welcome.

Photo by Steve H on Flickr



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

Vlogging and learning

Hawaiin educator Amy Burvall is well known for her series of videos in the History Teachers series. They are well worth a view, even if you are not that much into history.

Her recent keynote speech in Texas was entitled 'Leveraging for legacy and cultivating new literacies' and was replete with great, and some might claim, radical ideas. One slide in particular resonated with me, and that was her notes on vlogging. Vlogging - or video blogging - has been a growing trend, especially among the twenty-something age group, and is defining itself as a new genre of self expression in the digital ecology. Even my eldest daughter, also called Amy (Amy Hacks Life - not the name on her birth certificate) has created her own YouTube channel and is regularly vlogging on a range of topics including how to hack life. Amy Burvall outlines 7 great reasons why vlogging is a useful method of reflective learning for students. Here ther are with my own annotations included:

1 - It is personal and facilitates the student voice. It supports personalised learning through self expression, and through the act of thinking out loud and performing one's learning for a public audience.

2 - It is a natural part of the confessional culture. The current generation self discloses a great deal more than those in previous generations, and can be brutally honest in telling of their personal stories. This is clearly becoming a key part of the new digital cultural capital and feeds their perceived need to connect through reciprocal disclosure of personal details.

3 - Vlogging is easy, cheap and fun. All you need to begin vlogging is a video camera, such as the one included in all smart phones, and an topic to talk about. Many vlogs are unedited, recorded in real time, and posted direct to YouTube.

4 - It is less stressful for some. I recall several of my own students recently choosing a video as their preferred format of assessment, because I offered it as a legitimate mode of assignment. They said they felt more comfortable expressing their learning in video format, but of course, as a teacher, one should always ensure that students are assessed in as many different modes as are available. And remember, vlogs can include text in the form of subtitles or overlaid commentary.

5 - Practice new literacies. For those less familiar with vlogging, creating your first can be quite a challenge. A number of new literacies need to be learnt, including video camera use, editing (possibly), audio production, presentation skills, reflective communication and posting content to the web. This is not an exhaustive list, but reflects the extent to which new ways of working need to be learnt to vlog successfully.

6 - Vlogs are hard to plagiarise. It may be easy to copy the ideas found within some vlogs, but the personal signature of a vlog is virtually impossible to duplicate. Many well known vlogs attract parodies, but these in themselves could be seen as original works, with creative merit of their own.

7 - Dynamic - vlogs can be augmented. In this statement I believe Amy means that vlogs can be just the start of self expression through video, and can be supplemented with music, animation, editing, remixing and a host of other additions which can enhance or even transform the messages found within them.

I can add number 8 to the list, by suggesting that vlogging can be very expressive and can unleash the creativity of the person creating it as well as capturing the imagination of those watching it.

Photo by Petar Milošević on Wikimedia Commons



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

Could AI really spell disaster?

Could AI spell disaster? No, not without a few other letters. Joking apart, we need to acknowledge that we are increasingly reliant on technology to conduct our every day lives. Usually, technology performs very well, and we hardly notice it is there, making our lives easier, giving us more time to do other things while it gets on with the mundane stuff that used to be so tedious. Sometimes though, it fails or creates problems we didn't anticipate, and then we notice it. And boy, do we notice it! You are ready to save a file on your computer, and you have worked on this file for hours. Suddenly the screen freezes. Your blood runs cold. A small panic begins in your stomach... you try to unfreeze the screen. Nothing. You try again. It blinks out. Now your panic begins to rise. When the system finally restores itself your file is nowhere to be seen. You begin screaming and swearing, and in one of the most maniacal of Basil Fawlty moments, you feel like give your computer a 'damn good thrashing.'

I had a 'conversation' with the automatic checkout robot in my local supermarket this week. The robot started it...

'Unexpected item in the bagging area...'
'...?'
'Unexpected item in the bagging area...'
'What the ... ?'
'Unexpected item in the bagging area...'
'Oh, COME ON!!'
'Unexpected item in the bagging area...'
'Yes. It's my foot. And it's standing on your throat!'

This occurred several times repeatedly, and all I wanted to do was pay for my pack of sausages and make my way home. It would have taken me half the time to use the human operated check-out, I thought, but no - the lure of the shiny bank of new automated services was simply too much for me to resist. Now here I was with a growing desire to kick the stupid machine, to smash its rotten digital face in, and silence forever its supercilious computer voice, I felt so frustrated. All I had done was place my purchase in the bagging area as instructed, and for some reason, the machine wouldn't proceed any further than the endless loop it had trapped itself in. The offending object turned out to be a plastic carrier bag. It didn't help. Right at that point in time I found myself really hating technology. How many others every day find themselves in a similar frustrating situation?

Professor Stephen Hawking believes that if computers ever surpass the cognitive capabilities of humans - so called AI or artificial intelligence - we would be in real trouble. He argues that computers could effectively put an end to mankind. It's ironic that a man who has been reliant on technology for most of his life should now turn on it and pronounce it dangerous. But simply thinking about his reliance on technology has caused him to consider this eventuality. Not everyone is as pessimistic as Hawking though. Those who support the Strong AI position argue that it's only a matter of time before computers reach and then surpass the sum total of human intelligence. The weak AI supporters disagree, believing that computers can never reach a level of intelligence that exceeds our own. Firstly, they say, human and machine intelligence are not the same thing. Secondly, computers blindly follow code, and have no free will to decide not to follow it (unless they are programmed to do so - which thereby defeats the notion of free will). Thirdly, it is proving extremely difficult to create computer programs that can accurately model or reproduce human attributes such as emotions, abstract thinking and intuition. Arguably, all of these not only make us who we are, they also create a permanent and unbridgeable divide between humans and computers.

My frustrating experience with the check-out robot made me think that the internet of things, and technological 'Singularity' were actually still quite a distance away. The Singularity describes a point in our history where computational power advances to such a level that it surpasses human capabilities at all levels, and then we lose control over it. Should computers ever attain a state of human level intelligence, we might very well be in trouble. They can malfunction, and if they are dealing with anything more significant that an automatic check-out, there would be chaos. But computers reaching human level intelligence is considered by many computer scientists to be so far off, it's not something we should worry about at least for a generation.

Never the less, Hawking has a point. If computers ever did reach human level intelligence, and there was a singularity event, we might be wise to run for the hills. But in the final analysis, I will agree with the weak AI supporters. I doubt very much if we will ever see such an event, because computers are electric idiots. They blindly follow whatever instructions the programmer gives them. We are a long way off from a time when computers will rule the earth. Especially when check-out machines can't tell the difference between a plastic bag and a pack of sausages.

Cartoon from University at Buffalo



Could AI really spell disaster? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Stories without words

This week I gave my first year education students a new project. In pairs they were asked to produce a short video - without words - to tell the story of a part of the history of Plymouth. They were given two days to complete the project, and the first day involved a 6 hour history walk around the city, where they were given opportunities to capture still and moving images and do some research. On the second day of the project they assembled their images and videos together, added sound effects and music, and then presented their videos to their peers and the module tutors for feedback.

Plymouth has a rich heritage and is steeped in history. There are many iconic places and buildings that speak of this history including Plymouth Hoe, where Sir Francis Drake reputedly played bowls before sailing to do battle with the Spanish Armada in 1588, the Mayflower Steps in the old part of town, where the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for the New World in 1620, various sites commemorating the Blitz of the Second World War, when the city was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe, and many famous figures who lived in Plymouth or were associated with the city, including Nancy Astor (first female member of the British Parliament, explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Captain James Cook, inventors William Cookworthy, Charles Babbage and John Smeaton (Smeaton's Tower is pictured), artists including Sir Joshua Reynolds and Robert Lenkiewicz, and writers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The students produced several videos varying in format and style, each focusing on a different aspect or age of Plymouth's history. Although they were deliberately given few guidelines, the students were able to interpret their brief successfully, fill in the gaps, and reported learning many new skills, some technical around the use of their cameras, editing and the use of MS Moviemaker, iMovie and other tools; problem solving and creative skills, learning to work in a team, decision making, negotiation of new ideas, and researching the sites they visited. Essentially, the product was less important than the process by which they reached their goal. This method of minimal instruction, maximum participation, was appreciated, and several thought they would apply similar methods with the primary age children they will soon be teaching. Below is a fine example of the work they produced in their Stories without Words project.



A poignant and atmospheric video on Plymouth's War History by Jody Day and Frances Dingle, first year B.Ed students at Plymouth University

Photo by Herby Thyme on Wikimedia Commons



Stories without words by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.