Minds on Fire?

This morning I came across a blog from 'Supercool School' which pointed me to the Educause document
'Minds on Fire', from last year. The document is well worth reading, even if a bit out-of-date now.

What particularly attracted me was the strapline to their recommendation, "In a rapidly changing world social learning will dominate over formal education."

'How daft', was my instant response. For ages we have recognised that more sex education is taught behind the bike sheds than in the Biology labs, that 5-year-olds are taught how to say 'please' and 'thank you' not by being told that this is the accepted norm, but by the fact that parents and grandparents informally and unconsciously teach these things by regular practice between themselves and also upon the informal correction, at the point of need, of the child.

Similarly, schools recognise that they only have an input to the child's education for some 12% to 20% of their young lives. Recently, through the Home Access Programme in the UK we are supporting the need for closer contact with parents and carers in order to reinforce good educational practice. (Use the search tool at the top right column for more on the Home Access Programme.)

Nowhere is the e-Portfolio a more practical and effective tool for supporting informal or social learning and documenting the transitory and ephemeral experiences of out-of-school learning. What I would like to see in the coming months is more examples of good practice in capturing that 'butterfly' of informal learning, particularly with younger students. - Any offers?

Cloud Computing for all?

Just a brief post in response to one from Tony Bates. He makes reference to a recent EDUCAUSE 2-page document entitled '7 things you should know about Cloud Computing' which is a well balanced paper and well worth reading.

As the abstract says:

Cloud computing is the delivery of scalable IT resources over the Internet, as opposed to hosting and operating those resources locally, such as on a college or university network. Those resources can include applications and services, as well as the infrastructure on which they operate. By deploying IT infrastructure and services over the network, an organization can purchase these resources on an as-needed basis and avoid the capital costs of software and hardware. With cloud computing, IT capacity can be adjusted quickly and easily to accommodate changes in demand. Cloud computing also allows IT providers to make IT costs transparent and thus match consumption of IT services to those who pay for such services. Operating in a cloud environment requires IT leaders and staff to develop different skills, such as managing contracts, overseeing integration between in-house and outsourced services, and mastering a different model of IT budgets.

However, before teachers all jump on the bandwaggon of 'free resources', as I have hinted at before, two things need to be considered which the author, P. Kurkowski, forgets to mention. Firstly, younger pupils, the less able, some disabled students and the elderly may require systems that are much more e-safe than the responsible average HE student may require. Secondly, Cloud Computing lends itself very much to the ideosyncratic choices of applications that teachers may never have experienced. The provision of support for an unknown number of different applications would become a nightmare if no forms of control were established. - But who would advise students to invest in a product that has no guaranteed future or who may be hooked into a system that suddenly starts charging for its services?

Addendum:

For a most erudite and lengthy exposition on cloud computing see Stephen Downes' article. He starts from the basis:

In the cloud of connections, we each become social neurons, mimicking the biological human brain but on a giant scale. This collective knowledge is far beyond anything a single search engine could index and archive. Intelligence is spreading everywhere, every minute, and cloud computing can draw new links across new ideas.

However, for an even more challenging read, see the site: Day 81: Ars Electronica Symposium Examines Cloud Intelligence one extract must suffice:

Jules Verne published his novel at the dawn of industrialised globalisation, when the steam engine and the colonial conquests of Europe made it possible for the first time to circumnavigate the planet in relative comfort, and in less than three months. In the 125 years since, the pace of globalisation has accelerated exponentially. Our cars, clothes, computers, and cupboards all depend on vast international networks of manufacturing, finance, and trade. This flood of globalisation has carried the economic and environmental crises to almost every corner of the world. Are these crises an inevitable part of human nature? Or is it possible to shape a new connected consciousness to tackle global problems collectively and equitably?

Welcome to the cloud. Welcome to new the social ecology of the 21st century. Welcome to mobile banking from a New York taxi cab direct to rural Kenya. Welcome to the wild wondrous web of blogs, podcasts, mailing lists and streaming video from camera phones the size of credit cards. All instant and all the time. The world has changed. We have changed.

But, I would ask, has 'Education'?

When do we start with an e-Portfolio?

For some years, now, I have repeatedly used the image of 'the Seven Ages of Man' to try and explain something of the problem of 'multiple transitions' and have invariably used the phrase 'from 5 to 95'. Even within the 5-19 age range there are many potential transitions that can befall the learner.

However, I was recently reprimanded by one who is responsible for 'Early Years Foundation Stage' learning. He pointed out that staff in 'Early Years' had to cope with reporting on some 119 criteria as and when instances occurred - and I can see the common sense in using an e-portfolio for this type of recording. - Possibly even parents could complete instances as well as education staff?

Once on this train of thought, I reflected on Dr Helen Barrett's suggestion that Lifelong Learning is actually from cradle to grave. And one of her suggestions was that at the 'Baby Shower' party celebrating the birth of the child one of the gifts to the babe would be an e-Portfolio wherein all the milestones of baby's progress would be recorded with photographs and a checklist of dates/occurrences etc. So, which County Registrar is going to be the first to recommend instituting e-Portfolios for babies?

The Rose Report

Here in the UK a government commissioned paper 'The Rose Report' (on the Primary Curriculum) has just been published.

I was particularly interested in how ICT and in particular e-Portfolios might be able to assist in this revised approach to teaching and learning. I quote one opening paragraph:

"The report explores a curriculum design based on a clear set of culturally derived aims and values, which promote challenging subject teaching alongside equally challenging cross-curricular studies. Placing literacy, numeracy, ICT and personal development at its heart, the provisional model aims to secure high achievement in these vital skills for learning and life. Six areas of learning are proposed to give schools optimum flexibility to localise the curriculum and respond to children’s different but developing abilities, to provide ample opportunities for cross-curricular and discrete teaching and to help smooth the transition from the Early Years Foundation Stage to the primary curriculum. The areas of learning are shaped by the key ideas which are deemed essential to a child’s understanding."

As far as I am concerned, ICT should support and be developed in each of six proposed "areas of learning":

• Understanding English, communication and languages;
• Mathematical understanding;
• Scientific and technological understanding;
• Human, social and environmental understanding;
• Understanding physical health and well-being;
• Understanding the arts and design.

However more relevant to this blog: ICT is one of the central "skills for learning and life" which should be developed across the curriculum, along with literacy, numeracy and personal development.

The question about how ICT can support this required combination and how in particular an e-Portfolio strategy can be used to address these issues follows:

Use of e-Portfolios in Primary Schools
The ability of even the youngest child to select what they are proud of, to compare with others' work, to listen to suggestions, to be able to review one's activities and explain why certain procedures or processes were adopted is an essential part of learning. However, the documentation of these often ephemeral activities is not always easy to do.

The e-Portfolio is by far the best way to capture any of the above, in text, scanned images or any form of 'rich media'. So long as the e-Portfolio owner (ie the pupil) has access to the web, an e-Portfolio becomes independent of any LMS, VLE, stand alone laptop, home PC or for that matter any web-enabled device.

However, I was recently reminded that valuable information needs to be transmitted TO the Primary school from the Early Years Foundation Stage assessment regime. What with 119 stages to report on, all at different times and possibly in a different order from one child to another, the e-Portfolio is quintessentially apposite.

'Learning for Life' not only embraces those generic ICT skills which will last one's lifetime and evolve as new technologies become universally acceptable, it also has connotations of selecting and capturing those artefacts which have some enduring qualities related to learning processes which are worth keeping and reflecting upon both presently and at a later date.

Again, the e-Portfolio is most apposite in providing a medium of portability. At one time when a child moved from one school to another, either 'sideways' as when moving house or 'vertically' as in moving to 'the big school' children would take an envelope or the school would post on a parcel of exercise books and other artefacts (which invariably would not be seen by many staff). Now that much more work is done electronically, these transitions can also be performed through the learner's e-Portfolio. Sometimes called 'capstone' events, the learner has the opportunity to carefully select those artefacts which best represent 'ME'. (And they can be seen at any time, by any number of staff.)

However, the e-Portfolio also provides the site for a number of e-safe activities, such as peer review, collaboration, surveys and informal formative feedback as well as inputs from parents, carers and mentors.

Where the e-Portfolio is hosted externally and therefore is not limited by the constraints of the VLE, the young child can begin to organise one's site, selecting from various templates, skins, fonts and avatars in order to create a web-presence or 'digital self' which helps to reflect a personal self-image. See this web-page for examples of how the one e-Portfolio can evolve with the child.