Bending the Elements in Education

Values into Action 3 - Explicit teaching of Dramatic Synthesis

2009-06-21T21:16:00.005+08:00

The importance of Synthesis as a pedagogic process is that you are using it to encourage student to apply and develop existing skill or to independently establish and acquire new skills .

In the case of Dramatic Synthesis, as we have defined it within the Department; we are creating performance through the synthesis of Form and Content for a specific Audience. The location of audience within the dramatic transaction is cause of much debate amongst Theatre Drama practitioners and educators and is not to be elaborated upon here.

Important to note at this point however; our definition of Audience does not excluded any form of theatre, ritual or dramatic experience; Shakespeare to fireworks and back again.

Not only is subject content (Dramatic Literacy, in our case) acquired and developed during Synthesis, so too is the meta-cognition of the process of Collaboration and Synthesis. From this reflection students will improve their ability to create collectively with their peers.

We have defined the Disposition of Collaboration earlier to give our student a scaffold by which they will de-construct and develop Collaboration skills. It is vital then to identify the stages or Actions of Dramatic Synthesis.

Again I turned to the corporate HR and management training to look for definitions. De Bono's lateral thinking underpins most theories, but I was looking for something a little more staged. I discovered Creative Problem Solving Process Osborn-Parnes and Tim Hurson Productive Thinking Model a development upon the earlier model.

These models were ideal. The first stages in these models (of defining the problem, assessing the capacities needed to solve the problem and the establishment of success criteria) are aspects that students often neglect and were important to maintain as the model evolved.

The main consideration however is that within the Theatre Drama context we are not only designing solutions we are simultaneously implementating. After the problem and success criteria are defined the participants in Dramatic Synthesis are then continually engaging in a cycle of creative and critical thinking.

Underpinning this repeating cycle are 2 definitive stages of divergent and convergent generation of ideas. The shift between these stages is characterised by the critical thinking shifting from an 'In the moment' position to an 'Out of the Moment' position as the creators consider the appropriateness of new material in reference to previous ideas that have started to coalesce towards a solution. This will be discussed further in future posts of Reflection.

Also during the convergent stage creators maybe actively seeking material to fill in gaps, elaborate, connect or clarify existing material.

Another aspect that is vital and often neglected by students and professional practitioners alike is the Finishing stage. This is the simple period of 'drill' when the whole performance is run (perhaps with additional technical aspects added) so all involved know what to do, when to do it and where they should be when they do it!

So the here is the working model of the Actions of Dramatic Synthesis the department will use as it moves into the next academic year. Most importantly is that it is inclusive of the unique and similar demands of the 3 types of Synthesis we engage with; Devising, Responding to text and Theatre Script. It is also scalable and could be applied to a 10 minute preparation for a brief class presentation to a whole school production ranging over 12 weeks.

Once the Actions of Dramatic Synthesis are defined it becomes possible to highlight the Disposition of Collaboration who should dominate during various Actions as here.

The final step is to then make the Dispositions of Collaboration one axis and the Actions of Dramatic Synthesis the other and generate a series of Reflections appropriate to each stage and person involved in the process.

Values into Action 2 - Explicit teaching of Collaboration

2009-06-21T19:55:00.015+08:00

I particularly like that discovering the a means by which the act of Collaboration might be de-constructed into teachable components was in itself because of collaboration.

I had work with De Bono's Thinking Hats before and had found it very effective, but they seemed too connected to phases of Synthesis or problem solving; rather than with 'Dispositions' that might permeate collaboration itself.

It was in this discussion that a colleague directed me to Improvisation Learning through Theatre D W Booth/C J Lundy 1985. In this text book the writers identify 20 types of people needed for successful 'Devising' - 10 focussed on Group (Inter/intra-personal) management and 10 focussed on Task completion.

Group Function

Encourager
Harmonizer
Tension Reliever
Communication Helper
Emotional Temperature Taker
Process Observer
Standard Setter
Active Listener
Trust Builder
Interpersonal Problem Solver

Task Function

Info & Opinion Giver
Info & Opinion Seeker
Starter
Direction Giver
Summarizer
Coordinator
Diagnoser
Energizer
Reality Tester
Evaluator

While there was some redundancy amongst the 'Dispositions' I really liked the way that the writers had divided the 2 areas of collaboration into social and task management. It is a vital distinction when diagnosing problems with students' collaboration - it is often vital to establish not only the what they are disagreeing about but the how they are disagreeing. To become empowering then it is also vital distinction to make as they start to manage their own collaboration.

After a former colleague and mentor dropped in while the department were discussing these character types, he suggested I look up Belbin (Dr Meredith Belbin to be precise). After a quick Goog I discovered this great HR site and discover the 'Characters' Belbin developed for Collaboration on the private sector.

Belbin Model

Coordinator
Shaper
Plant
Monitor-Evaluator
Implementer
Resource Investigator
Team Worker
Completer-Finisher
Specialist

In terms of teaching I now had more than enough to teach 11 - 19 yr olds; possibly too much. Identifying Dispositions and their roles and responsibilities during Collaboration seemed much more effective than devising or rehearsal techniques on their own. Most excitedly it gave the method application beyond the specificty of the Theatre Drama department.

Working on a Rule of 7 (items in the short term memory) in synthesised the list down eliminating redudancy and emphasising reiteration between the 2 models.

Group Focus

Motivator
Harmonizer
Translator
Interpersonal
Quality Controller
Active Listener
Process Observer

Task Focus

Chair
Out-of-the-boxer
Clarifier
Evaluator
Shaper
Finisher
Specialist

Again to aid memorisation of these Dispositions of Collaboration I created new titles from the first letter of the phrase Theatre Process

Group Focus

Translator
Harmonizer
Energizer
Active Listener
Total Observer
Relations Manager
Excellence Controller

Task Focused

Polisher
Reality Tester
Out-of-the-boxer
Chair
Evaluator
Shaper
Specialist

For full description of Dispositions of Collaboration here.

Values into Action 1 - Out-Think by Out-Source Thinking

2009-06-14T13:41:00.013+08:00

I posted some months ago about the success of a values exercise as an effective foundation to all that we do within the Theatre Drama Department I lead. Subsequently I followed up with a post of the final values and subsequent assessment criteria and rubrics we established. Through the year the department has been working through developing the curriculum and using the agreed criteria with increasing confidence and specificity.

A common approach to Theatre Drama education (and one we have formalised) is to deliver skills (e.g. Physical Comedy/Clowning); then have students engage in an independent devising/rehearsal stage (create a short 2/3 person scene similar to Chaplin silent film); leading to a performance/presentation (varying levels of formal/summative/peer/self assessment).

This pedagogic approach is dynamic and engaging; and is often at the heart of why students enjoy practical subjects over traditionally content driven subjects. A lot of good AFL practice is part of this approach as we challenge students to reflect in the moment on the quality of work and the social dynamics creating this work.

We had identified the 4 areas of Collaboration, Dramatic Synthesis, Dramatic Literacy and Reflection and were using them to articulate and identify challenges, targets and progress in a much more efficient way then previously in my teaching.

However, like a Japanese factory boss in the 80's I started to feel like we were reaching full efficiency as teachers and just didn't know where to go from here.

To varying success in the past this practical approach to learning has been layer with medium term targets to differentiate individual development, but these targets were often too generalised and were lost in the spontaneous process of shaping dramatic work.

What was need was a further refinement of the criteria in to clarify the language of learning in Theatre Drama and create specific and durable targets so students could become pro-active.

As teachers our brains were 'maxed out' so we had to create a scaffold to 'outsource thinking' to our students. While the pedagogic delievery in Theatre Drama is essetnial a co-constructivist model, it was still largely reactive.

I realised that through the specific teaching of Collaboration, (Dramatic) Synthesis and the Reflection assosiated with these process it would make the students much more proactive. This would also benefit students in developing research skills as they would be able to assess and identify the skill/knowledge (Dramatic Litaeracy) needed to complete a project.

The aspects of the criteria were then defined as

Dispostions of Collaboration
Actions of Dramatic Synthesis
Fluency of Dramatic Literacy
Positions of Reflection

See presentation below for how thinking eveloved.

Values Into Action

View more OpenOffice presentations from Gilbert Halcrow.

The approach we have designed is a Collaborative Creative Model which could be used to deliver any curriculum content where a Synthesis outcome is desired. It is its emphasise on the means by which the process is made efficient and demarcated which give it universal application. I am not saying that it is a major shift in pedagogic practice but it certainly provides clarity that I have not seen in any other models.

2012 – Get Digitally Literate or it is the end of the World

2009-04-21T23:25:00.003+08:00

Googled ‘Monster vs. Aliens this morning to show my youngest daughter that the ‘badie’ was no scarier then the tiger in Kung-Fu Panda and that Mummy (who actually wants to go shopping) didn’t need to come to the cinema tomorrow. Sprog 2 convinced and mother pleased (do only dads do animation? – save that for another post) I turn my attention to what ‘pop-up’ next.

2012. Now while tsunamis, particularly ones as high as K2, give me the jitters I steeled myself to dig deeper. I have been aware of have been aware of the winter/summer solstice 2012 since about 10am on the 01.01.2000, when a friend told me he always knew that that Y2K was not the real apocalypse and that it was still to come on that date.

Now of course along with the Mayan calendar ending there is a rare convergence of doomsday prediction on that date. But that could be said for most days of the week depending which prophecies you choose to read and how you interpret them. Equally most of the scientific theories put forward (even Planet X or an aberrant celestial body) probably include one or two ways in which the earth will eventually end.

Like a good 50s Cold War SciFi (On which Mars Attacks beautifully satires) it take a little science (“Well Johnny every four years Mars and the Earth’s orbit bring them to a position where they are closest. In fact let me check my . . . oh my God that’s right now!”) and a lot of fiction (“And if were a Martian wanting to invade earth this is when I would launch my attack”) We are not even talking about correlation here, let alone causation!

All that said 2012 is obviously a movie and this is a superb piece of imbedded marketing. From the ‘This is the end’ blog run by Woody Harrelson character to the Institute of Human Continuity site with its various simulations and lottery sign up for those who want to survive.

Beyond the official site for the movie, the Wikipedia and imdb listing all other 2012 Googs are anything from official ‘New Age’ sites to teen remixs of History Channel Documentary. Apocalypse may be on its way, but it will be the impact of educational neglect leading to a tsunami of digital illiteracy.

The issue Digital Literacy is a bad cold war sci-fi. It is always the teenagers who encounter the alien or monster first and have to respond unprepared for what now approaches them. There is usually some ‘hinting strangeness’ that the responsible adults blame on ‘youthful high jinx’. The young people plead with their elders, but to no avail and they are all sent home with a reprimand.

There is usually one adult, a fringe dweller or outsider, who considers the teenagers plea worth investigating. Usually he is the first victim of the baddies consumed or assimilated - I’ve felt like that at a couple of staff meetings!

After the body count or missing persons numbers go up, eventually all are aware of the presences of the evil beings, now usually willing to reveal them self and complete their domination.

This is where Digital Literacy and the 1950s Sci-Fi/Horror diverg. There will be no ‘visiting scientest camping close to town’ or US military might to subdue the evil doers.

As the Internet and commercial influences within it grows and becomes more sophisticated it will like ‘The Blob’ continue to consume the ignorant. Should we be leaving to chance our students’ capacity to prevent this impending doom. Or should we be explicitly teaching them the skills they will need to survive?

Professional Blogging, Social networking Responsibility before Benefit or don’t bother

2009-04-21T23:21:00.004+08:00

The latest stream of the edublogs on my feeder brings another plethora of post about teacher/students online relationships and conflict over teachers’ blogging about their schools. There is criticism of ‘Luddite’ administrators’ and school boards, and more bad news for FaceBook!

It is time for a lot of teachers and administrators to take a more evolved attitude towards publishing and interaction through social networks and blogging. Clay Shirky’s post about the future of newspapers has a great quote

“Society may decide that it does not need newspapers but we will still need journalists.”

The minute you put finger to keyboard you are now a ‘publishers’ your words and images go beyond you as a representation of you and your work. It does not matter if it is an academic blog or a careless twitter (Sound like a George Michael song) you are closer to a journalist than you are to some analogy with a private conversation. The digital permanency and plasticity of your text and images means that it is both an entitlement with huge benefits to the whole school community and a responsibility for all those users.

This is where the debate for me stagnates. Too much is being promotion of Web 2.0 connectivity and too little dialogue between all parties about what would be our responsibilities.

Is it responsible for administrators to just shut it down? Is it responsible for teachers or parents to openly criticise their school via web 2.0 applications and communities?
In the private sector the last 5 people I know who defamed their employer in media do not have jobs!

What is responsible on-line conduct for a teacher in their transactions with students, peers and parents? Most importantly where are the boundaries of discourse with others? Is it appropriate to seek worldwide collaboration to solve an educational problem and by divulging it on your blog you create a negative opinion about your school?

When I read the accounts in the press and blog posts from some schools of teachers’ online behaviours, administrators’ reactions and parental outrage it is difficult to know where to start with what seems in many schools to be an impasse.

No matter where you can brakes into the cycle, what ever ears are left to genuinely listen you need to have a dialogue about responsibility of the constituents of your school community before you promote the benefits of the technology.

I would add no one is going to take you seriously if you talk about the educational benefits of FaceBook. It is not because users of FaceBook score lower on standardised tests, because kids who spent more time doing anything but studying scored lower. Strike one up for the ‘claiming causation when its correlation’ bad science award. Did they test those kids back in the 50s who listen to that ‘danga rock and roll’? Did they test Gen Xs who watched too much TV and spent too much time talking on the phone (plug in the wall type)?

Stop trying to educate on FaceBook or as I call it DisgraceBook because at best it is the school playground or at worst it is a party where you watch your students copulate on their parents’ bed whilst under the influence of a cocktail of drugs!

Equally access to your FB/Twitter account by your students, their parents and your line managers, provides them with data that could be misconstrued, misrepresented, de-contextualised and/or re-edited and published elsewhere.

If you start with the responsibility of maintaining an appropriate relationship with your students, then you must become sensitive to the context of the environment in which you transact. More importantly is the context your students set for the networks they use. You are arriving in a location that is already defined by others, your students.

The users define the social transactions on FaceBook, My Space and Second Life and unless you are clearly defining the boundaries of your interaction, (your audience and content) within a strict partition within those networks, then you run a risk of being considered inappropriate.

To use an old media analogy – it does not matter how good the journalism is in Playboy, no one ever believes you buy it for the articles!

There are other platforms as easy to use where you can define the context of ‘learning’ not socialising. I think any teacher who say they need to be on FaceBook because ' . . . that is where the kids are’ is only fooling them selves. The ‘kids’ might also be out under-age drinking outside the local shopping centre – are you going to set up a science experiment there?

Evolve your on-line practice from your current schools professional code of conduct, even use aspect referring to Learning and Professional Development to leverage leadership to re-evaluate their attitudes towards technology. Also consider the codes and practices that have evolved in good media institutions for the last 100 years and use them as reference to how you might evolved an effective approach to publishing and collaborating on-line.

Power Point slide sorter as Storyboard planning tool

2009-02-24T09:37:00.001+08:00

Working in Drama to create physical/slapstick comedy scenes 3 – 5 mins in length. Also looking at developing key Theatre skill of devising over 4 – 5 lessons/weeks.

Challenge with devising is always recording/notating spontaneous improvisation that will be shaped into final performance. Difficult as this is a non-linear process and traditional recording means tend to be linear.

An example might be a ‘pulling the chair away’ routine that was created week one and appeared to be a good opening, will serve the scene better to be placed after the ‘3 Stooges eye poking’ routine devised in week 3!

To create dramatic tension and climax students need to understand the potential of effectively sequencing these routines. Unfortunately the routines are never created that way when devising.

The slide sorter (or any storyboarding software that allows manipulation of units) allows this process to be recorded linearly, but then for the modules (in this case physical comedy routines) to be manipulated laterally.

This could also be done if you ‘modulated’ basic narrative, like taking stock characters or the theories of narrative structure and asked students to plot out a scene or vignettes by using units as building blocks.

If nothing else it makes for great PowerPoint presentations with slides reading ‘Kick in bum and fall like a monkey’, followed by ‘Gauge eye while making whirly sound’

Durable Mutations

2009-02-24T07:01:00.002+08:00

I have always been a fan of distillation (both in thought and single malt) and while blog output has been minimal this academic year, I figured something would eventually manifest itself. Well it did:

In Scott McCloud’s TED talk (over right) he used a term ‘Durable Mutation’ when talking about comics transition into a digital form. The talk is illuminating on many level, comics, media, art and consumption, but ‘Durable Mutation’ stood out.
I’m not sure if it his own coinage or someone else in the ‘Meme’ scene; of course it borrows from Dawkins (et al) application of Darwinism on information systems (Memes), but it caught my fancy.

I expected given a new paradigm I went into search mode looking for resonance in my life. Without too much contriving I soon found it 3 days later.

While I am now fully immersed in the joys of running a Theatre/Drama department I have (as the old trouser salesman says) ‘keep my hand in’. I am currently on both curriculum reform and technology pedagogy working parties in my new school.

Last Monday I was presented with a ‘new way forward’ with 11 – 16 curriculum that was essentially Déjà vous of strategies, a working party I was on proposed and developed 2 years ago, but which were never implemented.

My first reaction was ‘Oh that’ll never work, I was doing that 2 years ago and it never took’ or ‘its just the system paying lip service, but there is no real willing at the top!’

The Scott McCloud’s phrase ‘Durable Mutation’ saved me from the abyss of disillusionment and cynicism, which I had managed to climb out of since my new appointment.

Over the summer I had come to look at my previous 2½ years of work on Learning Technologies and Curriculum reform as largely unrealized. My personal and professional development and the mentoring I received were excellent. Because of it I am a better educator and leader of learning, but as far as making a difference or leaving a mark – only a few Google searches to PDF files remain.

Of course we consul ourselves with ‘One conversation at a time’ or ‘This is a hearts and minds campaign’ – but occasionally it would be great to have a definitive victory; visible and measurable. That was not to be the case.

So as I sat and listened to this ‘brave new plan’ outlined, as the gall subsided, I realized that it is all about ‘Durable Mutations’.

While contemporary and progressive, the strategies my colleagues and I had to offer 2 yrs ago, had not been sustainable. Perhaps this current crop of approaches to learning will be more durable? Perhaps the environment has changed now advantaging the reintroduction of the same mutation?

The lesson in this for me is that I spent too much time developing and promoting what made ‘educational’ sense not ‘institutional’ sense.
The learning and teaching strategies my colleagues and I suggested in the past hit all the criteria – empowering the students, customizing pathways and focused on 21st learning skills. Common sense however was not enough to make our suggested changes (mutations) durable.

This is not a final cry in the wilderness, merely a realignment of focus. I never found much solace in the analogies of war (civil or otherwise) that are often drawn by those engaged in challenging current educational values.

However, the scientific part of my brain (as opposed to the part of my brain I’ll leave to science) does find inspiration in that the uptake of educational reform is a question of intelligent design.

I use to start with the ‘new practice’ then try to sell it to the teachers/administrators. Now I see I must start with the institutional environment and design the ‘mutation’ that will endure.

I think this goes a lot deeper than simply telling them 'what they want to hear' or some sort of niche marketing; but this is what I can now start to explore as I shift my approach.

Gordon Ramsey Curriculum nightmares – Why isn’t Pattern Recognition a subject?

2008-12-14T23:46:00.001+08:00

Yes nothing for months but it back!
E.H. Gombrich if you don’t know of him then ‘do yourself a favor’ and seek his work out. He is largely noted as an art critic, historian and theorist, however his life was diverse and included a stint listening to Nazi broadcast for the Allies.

I have just completed Gombrich’s first work ‘A Little History of the World’, a history of the world for young readers. Just short of 300 pages (latest edition includes a final post WW2 chapter) the first edition spans from dinosaurs to WW1.

I first read Gombrich however when my wife was completing her MA thesis on contemporary art in the classroom. In Art and Illusion I encountered a concept that has interested me since.

Gombrich put forward the idea of ‘seeing-in’ essentially the human capacity to see recognizable shapes where none may be intended, such as seeing elephants in clouds or the hand of God in a water stain on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.

This ‘seeing-in’ is only one type of pattern recognition, visual in nature. However it was while reading ‘A Little History of the World’ I realized that Gombrich, in terms a 8 - 10 y.o. readers could understand, has noted the reoccurring patterns throughout history. He often bemoans the recurrence of dominant powers subjugating and destroying weaker, but rich cultures.

Content is now so overwhelming and temporary that it is vital that we explicitly instruction in ‘pattern recognition’ both as a general capacity and as a subject specific skill.

Amongst Howard Gardener’s intelligences there has always been the ‘Darwin’ intelligence; the capacity to find system and pattern in nature. But I believe that it is actually meta-intelligences that underpin all other intelligences.

Many individuals can read the patterns of their favored field of expertise. It is those individuals who transcend specialism and see patterns across areas of knowledge and can synthesizes new patterns, that have made the greatest contribution to our world.

So why do we not teach it explicitly?

Rubrics Cubed

2008-12-14T22:05:00.004+08:00

I have recently had to create 7 level rubrics for my Theatre/Drama department. In 15 years of Drama teaching I have have dealt with more rubrics then I can remember, but this was the first time I had to write some.

Assessment is everything, what we assess as educators defines our values and our pedagogy. It was important to the department that we developed criteria that reflected the shared values we had established earlier in the term in our value statements.

Reflection and Collaboration could be used in any subject, Dramatic Synthesis could be used in any subject where a 'text' is created for a specific audience. Dramatic Literacy is the most subject specific, but I imagine could with a bit of tinkering be developed as a pan-arts rubric.

I offer up these rubrics for your feedback

TouTube Annotation as Evaluation scaffold

2008-12-14T21:47:00.005+08:00

I have often given student rubric to analyse their dramatic work. I have also used video for over 10 years to capture students' performances to deepen self and peer evaluation.

The current Beta version of annotations on YouTube now provides the means to scaffold and model this analysis much more precisely. Below is video of Mumming work from my Year 10 students posted on YouTube. The annotation have produced mush more focussed and deeper reflections.

This would work well for all areas of education where ethereal process - PE, Dance, collaboration or to feedback on specific media texts being created by students.

iNet Video

2008-10-25T19:49:00.002+08:00

This is a video I did to promote student involvement in the upcomming iNet student conference.

Gordon Ramsey Curriculum Nightmares 2 – Why so much Math for everyone?

2008-10-24T16:00:00.001+08:00

Apart from math teachers, some science teachers, accountants, engineers and economist (not that they good for much); everyone else I know decries the wasted hours they spent in Math class. Even the most ardent supporters of broad education scratch their head to consider any peripheral skills they may have acquired through the ‘torturous’ hours spent in the math’s classroom.
For transparency I actually love math and even worked through the equations in Brief History of Time with glee.
This is perhaps part of a wider issue I will return to in further post about differentiation, pathways and choice earlier in our secondary career. At the heart of this issue is that if we subscribe to life-long learning then we don’t have to teach everything between 10 – 18 years.
For teacher struggling to get their students to just a functional level of numeracy much of what I say is mute. But it is the supremacy of numeracy and traditional literacy over other literacy that perhaps informs much of the self-esteem and motivation of those failing students.
Please if you are a math teacher and I have got it all wrong; if I’m naive then let me know.
For me its about opportunity costs. The reality is that even those capable students sitting in your classes will never use the math you are currently teaching them – couldn’t they gain more doing something else. Something more focused on the acquisition of broader ‘learning skills’? Engaging in authentic learning that motivates them to acquire great math skill to solve the challenges the tasks they face? Do you believe Math supremacy is justified?
Howard Gardener et al identify ‘Math/Logic’ as a discreet intelligence, they also identify others like, Kinesthetic and Musical intelligent – but Music and PE get no where the sign up or financial support in our schools that Math departments do.
In a world of increasing automation and outsourcing should we not focusing on other skills rather then continuing to educate beyond a point of usefulness.

Gordon Ramsey Curriculum Nightmares 1 – Its all Tertiary’s Fault

2008-10-24T15:59:00.001+08:00

I have attend various Learning Technology and Curriculum conferences where our Tertiary colleagues (some called gurus) espouse the need for us to reform our secondary curriculums to enable our students as ‘21st centaury learners’.
We all get 2ndry teacher guilt feeling that we are not doing enough and the Professors return to their students and continue to evolve contemporary practice. But the next stop for their students is the workplace.
The workplace that is demanding collaboration, creativity and communication skills like never before!
What is Tertiary demanding of us in Secondary? Exam results! A single competency to retain content and regurgitate it onto a written exam on cue. Many of my Primary colleagues engaged in trans-disciplinary enquiry based learning bemoan the way we start the ‘exam factory’ going the minute students cross phase to us.
The Edublogshere is full of exceptions to this, secondary schools evolving their curriculums and Tertiary institutes looking at more then exam results as entry criteria.
The general fact however remains that the keys to the gate of Tertiary Learning lies in your ability to do well in written exams in your final year of secondary school.
I know that the majority of secondary students do not go onto Tertiary education, but even those schools struggling with huge socioeconomic difficulties still end up competing with this ‘gold standard’ of University entrance. Sort of like Government funded media (AusBC, BBC or PBS) competing with commercial networks – they don’t compete but they do!
Space in our secondary curriculum is limited and serious discussion about reform must include how we could make more space for learning by reducing exam preparation. The pressure to perform well in exams will only diminish when all Tertiary institutes diminish the role of results in their selection of students.

Gordon Ramsey Curriculum Nightmares Intro

2008-10-24T15:58:00.000+08:00

I love watching ‘Gordon Ramsey Kitchen Nightmares’ on the BBC. Ramsey is a celebrity chef who is brought into restaurants on the brink of closure and/or bankruptcy and (if they heed his advice) usually turns their fortunes around.
Ramsey does not suffer fools gladly and his direct messages are peppered with a good serve of profanity. His gift (informed by intelligence, great mentoring and hard earned experience) is his ability to shift his perspective from the macro (restaurant’s interior design, potential market) to the micro (the presentation of food on a plate, how the position of oven in a kitchen effects work flow).
I admire this ability and while I do not claim such expertise in the area of hospitality or education it is with the same vigor I hope to interrogate some issues face us in educational reform.
The analogy goes further, schools like the restaurants Ramsey helps are ‘going concerns’; they have history; they are made of different people with very different perspectives on what the problems are and what the solutions might be. Resources are limited and most pressingly – what we work with is ‘perishable’!
My posts intend to be provocative, but only in so much as they stimulate dialogue and collaboration.

The Value in Values

2008-10-09T20:32:00.000+08:00

My posts have been very thin the last few weeks as I embrace my new job and department.
Before we moved forward I wanted to do a ‘values exercise’ with the department. Having another new arrival to the department and an existing member of the department; I was hoping we would discover shared values in our approach.
The exercise was to simply write down on cards 5 words (a phrase if you must) that represent 5 non-negotiable values you hold. In this case they were values that related to Drama education. Each card is then shared with the group and the individual articulates the value and why for them it is a non-negotiable.
Of the 15 (3 x 5) values 2 matched perfectly and 2 were near matches. The reaming values we all agreed on however we rated prioritized them differently so were no in our top 5.
I then took the cards and notes from the session away and created the action statements for our department. Over the years I have found too many mission/value statements to be disconnected from the reality of the classroom. So I hoped to achieve a set of measurable expectation.
In the last 8 weeks the synergy of these statements has been amazing. The articulation and sharing of these values have informed our classroom management, targeting and AFL, development of SOW and assessment criteria.
Have any other teachers had success with value action statements? Obviously the values exercise demonstrated that we already had much in common, has anyone done this and discovered that educational values were not shared within their department or school? Was this good or bad?

Question or Answer driven curriculum

2008-08-26T22:36:00.002+08:00

A colleague and I were try to scope out content terrain for IB Theatre Studies. We were looking for some sort dichotomy or tension to stimulate enquiry. Plotting cultural phenomena across time and space is never easy and Theatre/Drama is no exception.

With it origins in tribal story telling and ritual to the commercialism of London’s West End or Broadway – Theatre’s politics, practices and performances are as diverse as humanity. Needless to say we are still in the middle of a cloud – but what has emerged so far I believe has implication for a broader curriculum.

A distinction emerged at the turn of the century as theatre practitioner, in line with the prevailing spirit of the ‘clock work universe’ and predictability attempted to systemise approaches to performance and the rehearsal process.

Stanislavski and Piscator, influenced by internal psychology manifesting in characterization and narrative; though both unaware of Fraud in their early career, much of their work echoed his concepts. Brecht attempted to actualize Marxist theory in performance and was the first to recognize theatre potential to transform society. Meyerhold and Grotowski followed with a much more scientific approach to movement and audience relationship.

All these practitioners searched for answers, for systems to achieve repeatability in performance and consistence in communicating with audience.

On the other side of the coin is the huge body of theatre practice based in ritual and metaphysical communion. Most significantly amongst modern practitioners is Artaud and his ‘Theatre of Cruelty’. These areas of theatre and contemporary derivations generally revolve around questions.

Most practice in post-modernist performance is, as with most contemporary art forms, an eclectic mash-up of styles and forms. Even the practitioners and traditions above drift from purity in search of an equilibrium between form, content and audience.

Peter Brook possible one of the most influential theatre director of the last 70 years walks a beautiful middle ground – he systematically investigates theatre styles through questions – it is not so much about proof that is repeatable – as creating zones of probability – like fractals or quantum clouds.

As an artist and teacher of Theatre and Media I have always taught by interrogating the primary question how do I effectively communicate or evoke emotion in an audience using a particular form?

I am well aware of enquiry based learning and the futility of ‘teaching everything’. But this recent generation of schemes of work in Theatre Studies has led me to a starker distinction between an answer based enquiry and an enquiry in search of new set questions?

I attempted today to shift my practice students critiquing peers work - evaluating in terms of performers’ choices being effective in communicating content through form – to interrogating the presentations.

What questions did the presentation evoke? I found it incredibly liberating and far more explicitly connected to what I have been trying to achieve with my students for the last 10 years of teaching.

Have any other readers had similar experiences with these types of strategies? Any suggestion of how I might to develop this further?

My family was the Internet and the TV was Google

2008-08-24T19:23:00.003+08:00

I infuriate my wife by dialoging with the TV. I finish scripts; narratives; questions in interviews; analyse the quality of coverage and when Australia play rugby yell ‘helpful advice’ to the team. I helped a lot last night against South Africa!

TV, in my wife’s childhood, was consumed in silence and if there was any discussion then it was saved for the ads. TV in the Halcrow house was ‘interactive media’ long before Berners-Lee got out of shorts trousers.

With Irish ‘convict stock’ on my mother’s side and 1st generation Shetlanders on my fathers side; a subsequent parade of highly social storytellers and (in modern terms) ‘solution driven’ relatives passed through my childhood. All where passionate readers, travelers, observers of humanity and innately curious about the world in which they lived.

The ‘zone of proximal development’ stretched 4 uncles and 9 aunts wide plus their spouses, cousins and siblings providing depth. Both my immediate and extend family were/are huge silos of collective memories, knowledge, experiences and skills.

Like an Internet with limited or looped connections the family would repeat themselves, retelling old antidotes or having the same arguments; reaffirming social bonds through shear joy of the reiteration.

The TV and the content it delivered would shift family ‘information transactions’ out of ritual to a new level of enquiry. The content would stimulate information hubs that the family could ‘riff’ around for hours. Much as a ‘Google search’ can tangent us off in various directions (not always useful)

Politician on current affairs editorials and news would be praised, critisised and lampooned, but this would give way to reflection of the social, historical and economic conditions that contributed to the situation under analysis. Natural history documentaries would be supplemented with personal experiences from relatives’ lives; deepening and supplementing the information provided by the program.

My favorite learning experience was watching with my mother, the MGM and Warner Brothers classics. A passionate fan in her youth she would not only reminisce about the tabloid gossip of the time, but also her own personal experiences of 1930/40s Australia. Most movies would lead to tangential narratives even more interesting than the best ‘film noir’ or De Mille musical.

There is nothing new about this style of learning – in fact other primates and higher mammals often invested in their gene pool by instructing the off-spring of close relatives. Social learning is the foundation of our cultures and society, ironically then we have spent the last 150 years educating in precisely the opposite way.

My recollections of learning are not an analogy for social learning on the Web, but a scalable model. The network is not just an extended family, but billions of on-line users and the powerful search engines connecting information and catalysising enquiry, leave the humble TV for dead.

A hundred years of ‘content driven curriculums’ can makes us think that what we are witnessing in our schools is new and that we have to respond to the influence of technology in new ways. When in fact the system has been masking the organic way we learn and communicate through enquiry and narrative that is as old as humanity.

Content is now the terrain to explore and manipulate based on the purpose of our enquiry. The acquisition of content, unless it is making our students better explorers or manipulators is pointless.

Narrative is the medium of documenting those journeys. Within narrative; purpose, theory, evidence, process, outcome and reflection can all be contained holistically.

For the vast majority of the human history, learning has been; social; experimental; enquiry based; and about discovering solutions to authentic problems. It is only in recent times (relatively) that learning has become a buffet of data, facts and content to be consumed and regurgitated on cue.

I was fortunate as a child to have older relatives who saw content as terrain to be traversed as needed and narrative as evidence of learning and intelligence. If we are to empower our students in their use of technology and find a curriculum that will prepare them for an uncertain future then as teachers we too must become explorers and storytellers again.

Does anyone have similar experiences in their childhood that shaped the way they thinking about what 'learning' is?

Edublogsphere song

2008-08-07T21:31:00.003+08:00

Scott has got a song contest going on at his blog and this is my entry.

To the tune of "The Long and Winding Road" (sorry if you liked that song)

You can listen to it on my SoundClick or you cn listen to in the player down on the right
"The Long Blog"

The Long and Winding Blog

1.
The long and winding thread, That leads to your blog
Will never disappeared, You back tracked that comment before
RSS feeds me here, Edublogsphere
2
The wild and woolly post, That nobody reads
Make technorati. Rating hit the floor
I need an idea fast, For my next podcast
Bridge
We blog about technology, and Twitter all our minds
We challenge pedagogy a conversation at a time
3
And still and resisters cry. In long and whiney tones
"The kids know more than me, I feel I lost control
Don’t leave me standing here, Alone with Web 2.0"
Inst
4
Administrators muse, In long and winding ways
"The Parent body feels, A social networks and bad idea"
Oh save me my PLN, Edublogsphere

Rebooted and ready to Rock

2008-08-04T23:07:00.003+08:00

After some much need rest and reflection away from learning and technology I return determined to reduce my carbon footprint and increase my digital one!

I start a new job in 2 weeks as Head of Drama in a new school, still in Hong Kong - so perhaps my writing will take on a more dramatic bent - but curriculum reform and technology will still be at the heart of it. I think a major sub-theme for this academic year will be a serious investigation of 'collaboration' in learning.

As I have long maintained 'collaboration' occurs throughout schools, but in a content driven curriculum it is often just seen as an activity - I have observed several class (not drama) where collaboration (group work as most call it) was undertaken, but no discussion of what effective collaboration might look like was engaged in. Often when groups were dysfunctional teachers' intervention resulted in students being excluded (usually boys) or the weight of the task falling on one or two individuals (usually girls).

The thing I have always loved about drama - particularly devising theatre - is that without group work drama/theatre does not happen. Of course in team sports or orchestra collaboration also occurs; but it is highly structured by the rules or the score (notation not number of goals). The creation of theatre is highly social and personalities must be managed to maximise creativity and minimise dysfunctional behaviour.

I hope to analyse what it is I have been doing all these years, so as to systemise it, improve it and most importantly be able to articulate it to other colleagues - as it is clear that any shift process/student based learning must have 'positive collaboration' as a core competency.

Summer Reading

2008-06-11T23:24:00.004+08:00

Under the illusion that I actually get more time during said Summer to read and That Halcrow minor or mini-minor will not expect poolside attention, or that album that I spent all that money on home-recording technology is going to record itself, or that the new job will not have to be planned for I offer you (drum roll and trumpet flourish) my summer reading.

First the ones I have read or am in the middle of

Understanding Comics - Scott McCloud
Johnny Bunko - Dan Pink
Re-imagine! - Tom Peter - 1/3 through (Most popular English language book in China BTW)
The Ancestors Tale - Richard (The Intelligent Design slayer) Dawkins - Just at where the anthropoids meet mammals, birds, amphibians, and fish.

On the To Do List

Shaping Things - Bruce Sterling (Edupunks thank you for sending me here)
Here comes Everybody - Clay Shirky (Well derr)
Groundswell - Josh Bernoff
We Think - Charles Leadbeater
Making Comics - Scott McCloud
Designing for the Social Web - Joshua Porter
Back of a Napkin - Dan Roam
Presentation Zen - Garr Reynolds

Plus a backlog of Wired and Sound on Sound magazines

Up until now I have only read the gas metre so summer is going to be a challenge

Collaboration - didnt that use to be group work?

2008-06-11T23:15:00.003+08:00

I commented on John Connell blog but thought it worth a reprint here as it is at the heart of so much that I do and believe about collaboration and how we have to facilitate and develop it in our students.

Comment:

As a Drama and Media teacher collaboration (we use to call it group work) is integral to creation and therefore I have explicitly taught and assessed it. But with the advent of Wikinomics, Wisdom of the Crowd et al, I have found new ways to articulate and reflect upon what has been apparent to me for years.

Students make meaning through dialogue.

It has been interesting that my foray into Learning Technologies over the last 3 years has been less about the technology and much more about developing practice (shifting pedagogy) that embraces dialogue. My concern is that too often in content driven curriculum the interpersonal skills necessary for successful collaboration are never considered.

The diversity of collaborators that networking through web 2.0 app offers is huge and it is clear from much recent writing (World is Flat, Here comes Everybody) that the need to develop inter/intrapersonal intelligence is even more acute than before for future success – actually it probably always was.

If the medium is the message and that the new pedagogy suggests the networking creates the ‘knowing’ as much as the content engaged with (Vygotsky – collective constructivism) then as facilitators/mentors we must ask:

How do you teach altruism?
How do you teach compromise and consensus?
How do you teach the difference between functional disagreement, personal conflict and constructive resolution of both?
How do you teach objectivity when so much personal/social collateral is involved in the process?
How do you teach the balance between the individual and the group desires?
How do you teach that even when a group is in agreement their solution or response might be inappropriate?
How do you teach leadership and collective responsibility at the same time?
Given that their maybe biological/environmental limits to inter/intrapersonal intelligence (autistic to the charismatic) how do you differentiate, challenge, target and develop an I.E.P. for each student?

The Wikiophiles claim a new dawn in ‘knowledge creation’, yet schools and curriculum fail to value collaboration skills or at best see inter/intrapersonal intelligence as fortunate gifts bestowed on the few. Students spend most of their English curriculum career attempting to understand the ‘forms’ of literature, or genre if they venture into Media/Film studies to better deconstruct meaning.

If our understanding of thing, our ‘knowing’ is social constructed through interaction with networks – why isn’t more time being devoted to this literacy?

Edupunk Feeds and Reads and New Sir Ken

2008-06-04T20:21:00.003+08:00

Did a bit of house cleaning a embedded (not Apture this time) some new favourite posts and updated my Sir Ken Video from Edutopia.

Edupunk - Whats that all about????Very much with the ideology, but I got a hoola-hoop once just as all the other kids got yo-yos so I never know when to jump in? Advice?

Been following its evolution for the last few weeks, have not commented or posted yet - but think one is brewing about who they define as their audience and aesthetics? If it is anti-proprietorial in approach will its aesthetic be that of 'punk' or will it employ the techniques of commercial media to reach the many?

Will their aesthetic try to please everyone, like the man with the donkey? Will the plebs grow weary of tribune-generated media and return to the senatorial proclivities? Or will Edupunk be 'Cloverfielderly' in between?

Any Edupunkers got any suggestion on the aesthetic?

Sir Ken

What a star - still riffing as before in the old TED - but great turn of phrase in this one " . . . we must make creativity operational in our schools in the same way we have done with traditional literacy and numeracy'

Thanks John Connell for switching me on to that gem

All down on the right . . . and mind your step!

Finding the Apture Equilibrium

2008-06-04T13:02:00.005+08:00

Only 24 hours in with Apture and I am more embeddable than a nuclear bunker!

This is an amazing piece of Web2ness allowing you to use pop-up links without leaving the main page. Some people are just so smart. Its interface so user friendly it needs a slap for being too fresh. I have always thought laterally (too much) so linking and embeddables have always been sexy - so Apture is the 'nth' for me.

As a teacher to keep students on the same page (figuratively and literally) is such a bonus as well. Look there is no shift in paradigm here but the product is excellent at what it does.

Problem (Human not technology)

Is that like 'Helen of Troy' your cursor could lunch a 1000 pop-ups that could become distracting rather than informative.

Check it out and please let me know if I am causing pop-up-fatigue

Johnny Bunko a productive algorithm running in a messy world

2008-06-04T10:21:00.010+08:00

I embedded Garr Reynolds slide show on The Adventures of Johnny Bunko by Dan Pink book of wisdom a few weeks ago. After waiting 'The Zon' sent me a copy last night and I devoured this manga style career guide - according to the author 'the last career guide you'll ever need' and he could be right.

For me, an ardent evolutionist, the most pervasive aspect of the book is it sets out 6 simple maxims/guidelines that would accumulate like a productive algorithm running through a life.

1. There is no plan
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses
3. It's not about you
4. Persistence trumps talent
5. Make excellent mistakes
6. Leave an imprint

We constantly emphasise the fears (20 jobs before your 25, doing jobs that aren't even invented yet, etc) and we keep talking about the competencies they need to cope (while only playing with a curriculum that teaches those skills) and I think this book goes a long way to bridge that gap.

For older (and trying to be wiser) readers it offers a good filter to assess 'how your travelling'. The end of year and the prospect of a new school has put me into a particularly reflective frame of mind. As I do the 5, 10, 20 year life audit against the above as criteria I would have to say that when I engaged in 1 or all of the above approaches I have been at my most engaged, productive and satisfied.

I often get lost in the self-help section of the book store (and of course no one can help me out because that would defeat the point!) and have read quite a bit in this genre - I flirty with career as a life coach (author, rock legend, animator and auteur) - but this one in terms of time spent reading verses what it offers is outstanding.

Summer read, go the 'Bucks, get a cup of adjectives (double decaf, skinny, Andulcian, mega-tropical-grande yogalattes) and read. Your wisdom cup will run'eth over before your coffee cup runs dry.

I'd like to add two more maxims of my own - perhaps subsets of the above

1. If you are unhappy then try to make someone else laugh
2. Grandeur always starts with delusions

Web 2.0, the Axolotl and Communication Literacy

2008-05-21T22:00:00.004+08:00

Making comments on Wikinomics and Practical Practice while reading Dawkin’s ‘An Ancestors Tale’ does strange things to a mind. An analogy however, was waiting for me in the amphibious realm of ‘The Axolotl tale’.

The Axolotl or Mexican Walking Fish is essentially the larval form of a Red Salamander that reaches sexual maturity without metamorphosing into the adult form.

This is called neoteny and essentially means that sexual maturity is exhibited in a juvenile state of development. The concept of neoteny is at the heart of the analogy I making between the Axolotl and our prosumer students.

Web 2.0 means of production and distribution is having a ‘neoteny’ effect on the population; most importantly our students. They are still in their juvenile form while having access to the means to create and distribute content to an audience.

The maturing of the ‘content producer’ (A Salamander in our story) was a long and highly fatal process.

School band, to local pub band, to regional touring band, to city band, to city band ‘on the verge’, being seen by connected people, to limited release on indie label, to touting release at local record stores, to main label notice, to tester single (main label release), to more touring and touting, to 1st album, to owing a lot of money to the record company if you are a success, to pay for all those who are not.

For musician replace, novelist, journalist, film maker, photographer, presenter, entertainer and artists. It took a long time to mature to be a Salamander. Now we have a world full of Axolotls – people who now have the means of production and distribution (once so expensive) in their hands for virtually no cost!

The physiology of the real Axolotls now deepens our analogy. Axolotls come about because of a hormone that fails to trigger so they do not develop into the adult state. This can be counteracted in laboratory experiments by injecting the Axolotl with iodine to promote metamorphosis.

The question this analogy frames is, as educators how much ‘iodine’ are we adding? That is to say how much are we taking the emerging producing behaviours in our students and developing them?

As I write this I am watching ‘American Idol’ – the narrative framing the final is a ‘Boxing Match’. Immediately I realize that in a final between a grown man David Cook and a boy David Archuleta framed in a boxing match can only cause, even at a subconscious level, offense and favor David Archuleta; a boy against a man. Suddenly it is not two singers of equal ability going against each other it is ‘David and Goliath (or older David)’ conflict.

Outside your media department who is teaching your students to deconstruct this? I won’t even get started on how the frame size, vision and audio mix are far more favorable to the ‘Donny Osmond’ look a like then the bearded indie rocker?

I hear claims of ‘low culture’ doesn’t matter – no it doesn’t matter that more people vote (even counting repeated votes) for American Idol than will vote in the next US election? This is the influence! Produced by people who understand how every second of audio and image can structure your responses, employed by people who want us to do . . . what they want us to do and we’ll probably do it.

It would be very easy to keep our students in their Axolotl state enjoying their ability to create and publish in ponds and puddles. They have/are evolving to fit the environment.

Web 2.0 is an amazing environment and perhaps should not be tempered or directed by the values of old media – but old media had it right ‘the medium is the message’.

When you set a piece of course work how often do you consider the interplay between form, content and audience? How often do you assess the efficiency of the work in the context? While we share great new sites and applications to communicate with, how often do we authentically frame that communication?

In wild the real Axolotl with the onset of drought and the need to move more effectively between water sources may prompt metamorphosis. A lot do not and a lot die. That’s evolution - it is a cruel algorithm.

What are we doing as educator to increase the chance of our students’ survival when the puddles dry up? There will be a drought on Web 2.0 as the nature of audience (most viewed on YouTube, number of comments on my Blog, friends on Facebook) is essentially a cull.

Dealing with loss of audience and feelings of worth is a pastoral issue, understanding how to regain and develop a new audience is for curriculum.

Less axolotls more salamanders and don't spare the iodine!

Is this Your Classroom?

2008-05-19T13:45:00.002+08:00

I have mentioned the 'Victorian Classroom on Steroids' in a couple of posts. Well here it is! For the visual learners I gimped this one together. Enjoy and feel free to use.

Tag Mardi Gras

2008-05-12T12:53:00.000+08:00

I call it Tag Mardi Gras, because it is a Tag Crowd on the move. I thought of Tag Parade, but a Mardi Gras is so much more vibrant and enlightening than the predictability of a Parade.

When I discovered Tag Crowd about a month ago I immediately thought of Bertolt Brecht's concept of 'Gestus', an approach to acting in which the essence of a character or scene is distilled into a single image or physicality. I thought it would be excellent to do a production of a play by Brecht and distil the text of each scene into a Tag Cloud and project it - Brecht was also very keen on projected images and text.

From this my brain started to click over and thought about transition of a text through time (scene, act, chapter) and that while a Tag Cloud was powerful as a summartive tool - it could be very powerful as a comparative tool within a text.

Anyway this is my first go I my favourite play Hamlet. I just took screen shoots off the Tag Crowd Site then dropped them into iMovie (you could use Power Point as well). There are many areas for development

Colour characters (pronouns), nouns and verbs different colours
Colour recurring words same colour
Layer recurring words over each other to get a greater sense of their significance as they expand and contract
No audio, Voice over or Music?
Perhaps do the works of a writer in chronological order to see how they evolved over a career.

It could be used to introduce a text or to prompt discussion once students were already engaged in a text.

Also been thinking about a Tag Cloud as a 3D mobile with each word hanging from a movable slider - the weight of words and their relationship to each other would change as you change your position in reference to the over all sculpture or if you move the words on a slider. Make a great set for a performance. A summer project maybe?

Let my know if you see application of this in your teaching and any development ideas to make it more useful.

HTH

Burt

False belief 1 - If I redesign my school's Structure then we're Future Proof

2008-05-07T23:34:00.000+08:00

This will perhaps become a series of critic on initiatives in contemporary education. The criticism will reside in the fact that managers with analogue attitudes have hijacked the language of the digital revolution and have knowingly perverted them to maintain the previous non-progressive administration and pedagogies.

A post I made over on Wikinomics and a long-term concern has led me to ask:

What is the difference between structures and process?

What worries me is that as schools attempt to engage with the future, they seem to be clearing the decks by redesigning management structures to be ‘flat’; so as to encourage collaboration and knowledge creation. Subsequently the hierarchical structures of old are seen as counterproductive.

What really, really worries me is that old ‘skool’ hierarchical leaders have simply adopted the ‘sound bites’ of change and while redesigning management, simply rearrange people and still maintain previous command and control processes.

Flat verses tall management structures will move things in the right direction – but that is assuming information, power and choice is moving through those systems unmediated.

The annihilation or permanence of the learning revolution rest in the fact that we have to move in a system that evolves and is evaluated based on previous values.

The current generation of leaders and administers (gross generational generalisation – but we all know who I mean) because of their mind set are attracted to reform school structures. Structures are easy, assessable and visible things to changed. The ’change’ no matter how much it cost (fiscally and in ‘good will’) is comfortable for administrators, accountants and many parents.

The truth however is that people's status in the system can be squashed, their job description can change, they can go up or down (obviously not very far because management is flat), but unless the way they fundamentally work or interact with others evolves nothing will change.

Do people have examples like this? Where reform for the future has supposed occurred yet nothing has changed? How do we move past this? Structural change seems so popular, yet few people talk about process? Are we using the right set of criteria? Are we training our leaders in the right ways?

Structure is the pipes. Process is the water that runs through the pipes. We need water not pipes.

Cell Phone Horror Movies. What do I not see?

2008-05-06T14:37:00.000+08:00

A recent post at Dangerously Irrelevant and subsequent one over at Around the Corner has led me to post rather than to comment.

Where did ‘perspective’ go? When did the momentary behaviours of an individual come to represent the wholeness of their being? More importantly, when did momentary behaviour of individuals led us to generalise about whole section of society?

I am well aware that Scott’s question was the very real and logistical question about whether students should be punished or applauded. It was however the responses to his post that have led me to question not the content of the videos but the way they were consumed and the subsequent attitudes of viewers.

I showed these videos to my (16 -18 y.o.) Media Students whom I have taught for two years to always ask ‘What don’t we see?’. Particularly when they view video documenting ‘reality’.

They pointed out that in many we do not see or can not hear the incident that causes the teachers response. In a few (certainly the firsts – as he waves) my students were uncertain as to whether the teacher was playing to camera (perhaps on reflection foolishly). Many said they were uncertain as to whether there had been additional editing/mediation by the students prior to upload to You Tube. I asked why, and most agreed that it was because the perspective was so obviously biased against the teachers.

While my students laughed and ‘oh no’ed’ as they watch most felt the makers of the work had been irresponsible in portraying a single incident and empathised with the teacher. One of my students suggested that if you took a teacher for a month every day behaving in this way and used simple date titles – like a seasonal montage – then you have something really strong. They all agreed that ‘you can make anyone look bad out of context’ – thankfully my students use their media powers for good and not evil.

I would add to my students comments that the viewing of these sound bites as a montage (aggregated around tags like ‘Teachers gone wild’ or ‘My Crazy Teacher’) reinforces the stereotypes through saturation.

So you could ban it, but that will not stop it. You could educate to stop the behaviour, but the success of that within a school is only proportional to all other indicators of constructive behave.

The only way forward is to educate the consumer (all of us) to view and contextualise the unending amount of media appropriately. That way we teach our students to deal with the world in the way it is (and increasingly going to be) rather than trying to control it to be the way we want it.

Then better informed and skilled through deconstruction; students will then be more empowered to construct meaning and text that will stimulate positive evolution. This type of learning should start in pre-school, as soon as they become consumers (or as soon as they can identify the Golden Arches of McDonalds)

This type of media whether on You Tube or tabloid infotainment ‘news’ programs is now part of our life an the life of our students. We see exhausted, frustrated teacher and under stimulated low esteemed students cast as villains and victims. We are dichotomising and creating an ‘argument’ at the expense of the narrative. We have lost perspective.

In terms of Scott's question about 'praise or punishment' I would be reserved until I understood the 'big piture'.

Before we react emotionally to the content, consider rationally the form to contextualise the reality being represented.

What do I not see?

Gaming Krib Solution or Problem?

2008-05-04T11:42:00.000+08:00

Address to Michael Vitelli CEO Gaming Krib

Mike

I apologies for the mocking tone of my comments on Scott's Blog and the confusion over the spelling of Krib and Crib. You see I actually thought it was a joke and I was just having a bit of light hearted fun. I also got a html version of your front page (perhaps it was my Mac) and had not viewed the site in full until I used my PC today.

Now that I know it is real I will give your product and your following posts, the fullness of my ‘very poor comprehension’ ability. I can get over your ‘blanket bombing’ of us self-interested bloggers not living on the planet, but as Bill has already noted in this era of collaboration it just doesn’t make very good business sense.

So much of your model makes little sense to me, either commercially or rationally. You wish us to read a report that makes clear something that ‘us educators’ have been aware of for a number of years. Literacy levels are falling in general and more damaging for society at extreme levels in lower socio-economic demographics. Yet you are developing a game platform, an educational one, but never the less a game platform? Are you part of the solution or the problem? Please demonstrate how your product will improve literacy, better than effective school based literacy programs, before you play its’s-all-the-teachers-fault’ card?

Tim Hollaway’s comments makes your product operation and limitations a little clearer, however there appears no such modesty on your actual site. You tout your ‘addiction’ counseling experience yet your product would only serve to remove the addiction or at best moderate it – while positive reinforcement is an important factor of behaviour modification – to make lasting change in an individual the dis-functional relationships that have led to the negative behaviour must be reconciled.

So fact, your product will not solve the problem if parents are not willing to engage with their children over these destructive behaviours. What are you doing to make that message clear in your advertising and how is your company supporting this far more difficult aspect of parental education? (Perhaps a question for the Podcast)

It is very easy ‘to throw stones’ (in both directions), never the less to claim we are ‘not on the same planet’ is immediately adversarial. I am certain you are passionate about your product, tired and underpaid, trying to manage 35 other people who feel the same.

I know from personal experience the difficulties of such an undertaking. I also know that no one cares about that – your business, your profit if it works your problem if it doesn’t. We are all potential customers and potential supporters and even on your worst ‘bad hair’ you can not afford to loss sight of that.

You are your brand and what ever you think of us educators, you gave your brand a very poor showing on this blog – I hope on the Podcast, for the sake of your employees and your product, you do a better job.

In terms of feedback about your beta site – now that I know it is not a spoof I will attempt to more constructive in my criticism; as I am with the sites developed by my students to promote the goods and services they create for their Youth Enterprise program.

Endorsements or well wishes (what ever you want to call them), unless specifically endorsing your product by someone who has used it add no value to the perception of your product. In addition you run the risk of inheriting any negative value the consumer may associate with the person doing the endorsing – If I don’t like Amazon because they just mix up my book order then I won’t like Gaming Krib. I’d get rid of them or modify them.

Jay Cotton well wishes serious runs the risk of being at best a parody at worst an example of irresponsible parenting. Many customers might well consider that a person so involved in the game industry deserves everything he gets – I find it hard to see how this could be read sympathetically by your target audience.

Anonymous testimonials add no brand value and run the risk of creating mistrust in your target audience – I’d get rid of them and minimise the whole testimonial section unless they are demonstrating tangible aspects of your product. Consumers will disregard them particularly if they are all positively endorsing your product.

Colour scheme is vibrant and engaging but there could be some differentiation between areas directed at primary, early secondary, secondary and parent clients.

Mother and child picture on Parent Zone button has source ‘water mark’ on it – that’s just plain illegal. Get the right to use it or get another picture.

Suggestions

When you blog actually comes on line embrace criticism of your product and engage in a collaborative relationship with those who already participate in or may become part of your community – basically in these days of wikinomics the glowing testimonials are not believable

You have a diverse and highly experienced advisory board I don’t want their biographies on want their stories. Get them to post about their beliefs, opinions and why they are part of the Gaming Krib community. When your blog/forum gets up and running get the board members to post and comment regularly.

Get your tech team to start blogging about the development of the product and the challenges they face – again the narrative of the journey adds more value to your brand than the facts about your product or your board members achievement.

Perhaps you should become one of us self-interested bloggers – again to understand more about the way you work with young people (as a scout leader) or with those with addiction problems will bring credibility to your brand.

Suggested ‘Medium to long haul flight’ Reading

· Tom Peters – Re-imagine
· Tapscott/Williams – Wikinomics
· Daniel Pink – A Whole new Mind
· Steven Johnson – Everything Bad is Good for You
· James Gladwell – Tipping Point

All have respective blogs that a simple Google can source and probably worth RSSing

I hope this helps. I look forward to the podcast.

Savage Learning. Hunting and Gathering an educational model.

2008-04-24T15:47:00.000+08:00

Somewhere in something I read by Steven Pinker and/or Steven Mithen they cite the advent of syntax as responsible for the (relative) rapid evolution of culture and technology since Cro Magnon man (Early Modern Humans EMH) and contemporary society.

Teaching Year 8 Drama classes ‘Story Telling’ I have often evoked the image of the EMH proto-story teller; with Lascaux Cave paintings as a backdrop and ‘front-lit’ by dancing flames roasting away ‘Flintstone-style’ mammoth spare ribs. Class engaging anecdotes aside I have long recognised the power of narrative as a teaching and learning tool – also noted by Dan Pink’s ‘Whole new Mind’.

But when you think about it you suddenly realise the power of Syntax in a language. “Ogg, Argg mammoth” suddenly gets placed in time and space.

Location Dordogne Valley 30,000BC.
Two EMH enter a cave one has a spear in their leg.

Ogg: Argg you know next time we hunt mammoth
Argg: Yes Ogg
Ogg: And I say throw your spear now
Argg: Yes Ogg
Ogg: In the future throw it at the mammoth not me
Argg: What ever you say Ogg
Ogg: Now get me an asprin
Argg: Sorry hasn't been invented yet

Syntax allows us to cognitively divide the past, present and future. From that point on culture and technology has evolved as humans reflect upon the past and adapt for the future. That evolution has also occurred through transmission to other so people quite literally did not ‘reinvent the wheel’! As Newton said we have seen a little further by standing on the shoulders of giants.

So the great cannon of knowledge evolved, it’s delivery became a business, a social responsibility, it became about power and the process become disjointed through ‘assembly line’ industrial revolution efficiency (Thanks Henry). The ‘past’ became another ‘country’ that we learnt by rote and the ‘future’ was reasonable predictable and planned for us.

The EMHs lacking libraries or broadband connection were largely experiential learners passing skill and knowledge through bloodline. It is at this time we see the first archeological evidence of tribes devoting time to the care of elders; such as skeletal remains showing crippling injuries that had been incurred and healed many years before death - meaning tribes resources to feed them were given in return for some value other than hunting/gathering. Obviously even EMH new the value of ‘wisdom’ over just plain ‘knowledge’.

The problem with the ‘Victorian education model’ or ‘The Victorian Classroom on Steroids’ (as I sometimes refer to the schools saturated in technology, but dry on pedagogic evolution) is that it puts priority on the content its students must retain over the students ability to reflect on the past and adapt for the future.

Perhaps this could become a measure for a learning environment ‘The Syntax Barometer’? How much are you allowing your students to use the power of syntax in your classroom; allowing them to consider the present (context of task, define problem or terms of enquiry), reflect on the past (sourcing/synthesising appropriate content) and adapt for the future (planning, implementing of solution) and then consider the past again to (evaluate, reflect, evidence their learning journey), in readiness for the next learning cycle?

Digitalisation has added ‘Muscles on muscles’ to the Classrooms of Laura Ingles and Tom Brown. But transformational use of technology can only happen if we let our students be ‘Hunters and Gatherers.

Technology will only transform learning if we transform learning first. Let the savages free!

Intelligent or Unintelligent design? A blogger’s conundrum.

2008-04-14T14:39:00.000+08:00

I looked at this tube from Cool Cat blog and was considering on 2 post from Jon Beker “The conversation is getting away from me…” (more reflections) and original starter of the vibe Reflections of a new-ish blogger and Richard Dawkins concept of the meme combined with Daniel C Dennett’s ‘Darwin algorithm’ chugging away through deep time really comes to mind.

The blogsphere is a harsh environment with what I would call the ADHAD algorithm working away. Readers ask ‘Does your post engage with my values and does it add value to me? Either 1. In my (the audience) thinking or 2. To my social collateral (rep points) through their engagement in secondary (your blog) or tertiary posts (other blogs). If it does not ‘rock their socks’ they move to the next line of their feed aggregator. (Or ‘alligator’ as my spell check just offered – I think I like that more – something lurking under the surface ready to eat you up

These are the only 2 currencies available to us to measure our ideas impact. The first ‘the effect on a reader’s mind’ is not measurable as our anonymous audience doesn’t get tested at the end of the course.

The second is hugely tenuous as without a predefined outcome of our post (as per media advertising) we are simple counting raw numbers – quantity of posts not quality. Of course we all know a good debate when we read one, but is it the debate that we wanted to happen?

I am not advocating that blog should have an intention I am just trying to define the dichotomy between the ‘Dear Diary’ riff approach and a designed media text. Most importantly what a blogger should expect from either end of the spectrum or somewhere in between.

Using the gene analogy memes (idea) will attract other memes and will prosper based on their fitness for the infoscape. Media texts when created intentionally are essentially ‘intelligent design’ identifying the values of a target audience and synthesising form and content to have the maximum measurable impact (usually behaviours modification – buy this now!).

For a blogger this means knowing the audience – think someone in Jon’s blog mentioned ‘swim wear’ tag; nice puller, but I do not think the ‘swim wear’ set would repeat purchase at an educational blog – still you never know?

The ‘Dear Diary’ riffer is ‘unintelligent design’ and like evolution, will win out over a lot longer time scale. The meme this blooger releases have a lot lower survival rate in the short term but when they do evolve and combine with other memes, they will perhaps touch something deeper and less disposable. I think that some of the traffic Jon Beker post got could been attributed to the to the resonance of ‘The Dear John letter’ meme that some posters explicitly played upon.

I offer the dichotomy then of the ‘Spin Blogter’ or ‘The Blind Blog Maker’, but the truth is always in the blend not in the extremes. The video’s tag suggest that value come from what ‘we share not what we own’. I am still too much the naked ape to be permanently a voice in a wise crowd.

We all need recognition; particular in what is largely an organic anonymous system like the blogscape. Just to keep going, just to know to we’re on the right track, and to believe, that how ever small our meme in the info-organism, that our contribution has been noted and appreciated.

So it really becomes an issue about motivation; no traffic no motivation. But if we just write purely for an audience then we may lose integrity. Integrity is always overrated when you can change your user name and gmail account however.

Amongst the riffing there then should be some well placed CNN or ‘swim wear’ tags just to ‘get the punters in’. How you set the intelligent/unintelligent design mix I guess is up to your own resilience to post in the face of nil traffic.

So from my very immature perspective it is about ‘blog for blog sake but traffic for my sake’.

Tag Crowd Too cool

2008-04-13T14:25:00.000+08:00

Put a recent paper on how to develop an uber Learnign Technologies infrastructure into Tag Cloud and got this below. Above is what my first post generated. Very addictive application

created at TagCrowd.com

Elemental Metaphor for Creative Problem Solving Cycle

2008-04-08T11:56:00.000+08:00

In this blog I will be using the 4 elements; air, fire, water and earth as metaphors for the various concepts, plans, transaction and reflections that evolve. In attempt to bring some order and perhaps offer a means of search the first metaphor I have attached to the elements is that of what I refer to as the Creative Problem Solving Cycle.

There are many models of this process, which is an attempt to segment the various phases of synthesises and implementation. It is clear that each phase has a distinct character; ways of working and thinking. This process can be approached as an individual or collaboratively.

Current curriculum redesign would suggest this process as a primary mode of learning. As a Drama and Media teacher, with content (technical or artistic) relevant only in how it enhances production, it has been my primary mode of working with students and adults.

As an educational manager within a departmental or whole school contexts it is vital that you adopted an explicate knowledge of this approach. Then you will be able to maximise yours and others capacities as you promote and engage in the most effective behaviours for the particular phase of the process.Along with other tags, blog post will be tagged with an element based on which phase of the process the post discusses. For example this post is tagged with ‘Earth’ as it is a discussing process at a meta-level.

Another aspect of the metaphor is that the intensity of the elements can be used as an analogy to further refine understanding of the particular phase and process.

‘Air’ represents the framing of the problem and initial inspiration. Sometimes ideas come fast and strong like a typhoon other times they evolve over years like a gentle constant breeze.

See below for the elements and their associated phase.

Air (Hurricane vs. Gentle Breeze)

Inspiration
Divergent Thinking
Suspension of Judgement

Fire (Volcano vs. Embers)

Rationalisation
Convergent Thinking
Judgement Engaged

Water (Tsunami vs. A Droplet)

Application
Practical Thinking
Concepts Actualised

Earth (The Globe vs. A Grain of Sand)

Consideration
Reflective Thinking
Evaluation of process, capacities and outcomes

The journey begins

2008-04-04T20:22:00.000+08:00

In Joseph Campbell's seminal text 'The Hero with a thousand faces' he sets out a cycle where by an individual is stirred from their every day life by a crisis, sets out on a journey and returns to their origins with new power to transform humanity.

Narrative psychology therapy suggests that if we cast ourselves as the hero of our own story then we increase our capacities and become more resilient. As an actor (The career of my 20s) I played many roles and I must say always had a preference for villains or clowns, who are often more interesting than heros. But Campbell is not talking about the cliqued 'function' of a hero that his adoption by Hollywood (Lucas and Star Wars) has diminished. The hero is complex and often unwilling to be called upon to make the changes to him/herself and once made not always happy to share the new wisdom with others.

That is a hero I am willing to play; uncertain, inconsistent and definitely not wearing white (I am a drama/media teacher - we only wear black). The crisis, what ever sort of hero I am, is very well defined and already much has been theorised, published, discussed and implemented across western education systems. The crisis I pose as a question, not mine I heard it first in Ian Dukes (future curriculumist) presentation

If you can Google it why teach it?

To unpack this slightly, why are we still emphasising the regurgitation of content in an exam driven curriculum, when retention of fact is only one competency (possibly minor) in the panoply of skills people need for a happy and fulfilling life?

Contents vs Process

As a drama and media teacher I have very rarely taught content without it very quickly being used in practical work. The nature of my subject, my experience developing Learning Technologies and Web2 application in education, my previous career and indeed my very being leads me to believe that our current models of education will soon be irrelevant to our students.

More to the point some entrepreneurs will realise this and will very rapidly (well 7 years of secondary school rapidly - still that's fast given most schools still teach and manage their learning environments on 'Victorian' modes of learning) attract large numbers of our students and their parents money, by delivering a much needed alternative and relevant curriculum.

So there it is the hero(ish) and the crisis. The tensions will be familiar, individual against the many, the individual against the system and the individual against inertia. There will be villeins, mentors, companions and perhaps even weavers of magic who will help and hinder as I evolve.

The Four Elements

I have chosen the elements of air, fire, water and earth as I hope they will offer many metaphors that can be instructive. I know I teach through narrative and metaphor and I see repeating cycles (with variation) everywhere. Metaphor is a form of synthesis (a competency I believe should be explicitly taught) and through it we can gain richer understanding and perhaps see new patterns (I would throw 'pattern recognition' is there as a core competency as well) that will benefit.

Combining the '4 elements' metaphor with Campbell's hero cycle is the story of 'The Avatar'. Originally a Hindu term for a 'god on earth' (I am getting ahead of myself - first a hero now a god?) most recently it is an animated series on Nickelodeon 'Avatar the last air bender' the my children (and I) love. The protagonist, a competent 'air bender' must set out to master the bending of the other 3 elements so to finally defeat the Fire Lord who rules mercilessly over the world.

Nothing to surprising in that for a 'prenager' cartoon, until you get to the complexity of the character and the multiple perspective character narrative. This demonstrates the way popular culture has shifted since my Saturday morning toons as Steven Johnson points out in 'Everything bad is good for you' the expectations of young consumers (probably anyone under and including Gen-X) has dramatically shifted, they have a sophisticated understanding of narrative and the meta-patterns that allow contemporary audiences to connect disparate data and emerge with a holistic impression of the work.

So the Ang the hero of 'The Avatar' (low culture version, not Vishnu and the Mahabharata) brings together many of the elements that will return throughout my narrative

The mastering of skill, knowledge and experience (The 4 elements)
The hero journey and empowerment (Campbell's complex hero)
A successful contemporary consumer narrative (Demonstrating the new minds educators must respond to)

Let the story begin