Play with Learning

Reforming education

The reason I do the job I do, is because I believe that education can change lives. I believe that is a universally applicable truth. For some though, the importance and potential impact is more significant.

I am privileged to work with a host of organisations helping them develop and deliver their learning provision. One of those organisations is the United Nations and specifically the school system it runs for Palestinian children across the Near East (that’s the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria to you and me).

Here is a video of the Education Reform program I have been working on with UNRWA, Palestinian teachers and my good friend Karen Ardley over the last year.

iPad vs Textbooks

With all the debate about technology in classroom, this infographic from Online Teaching degree offers an interesting perspective.

Created by: OnlineTeachingDegree.com

News that defined us

Helping young people to critically “read” the news is crucial if we are to develop a society that can make sense of unfolding events.  Increasingly, children are disengaged from “reliable” mainstream news organisation and instead use partisan or unsubstantiated sources for their information about current affairs and the world around them.

The News that Defined Us, a website that I produced for Tyneside Cinema, unlocks the process of making the news and allows young people to interrogate the production behind the stories.  By providing first-hand access to the media ‘machine’, the project helps to re-engage young people in this crucial form of communication.

The strength of News that Defined Us is the personal and intimate experiences associated with news production.  The project brings together broadcast journalists, eyewitnesses and schoolchildren from Whickam School in plenary sessions where the young people can quiz the adults.  Taking recent stories as a starting point, the makers and subjects of the news talk to students about their experiences and implicitly reveal the effects of representation, censorship and bias.

Danny Savage speaking to students at Whickam School

The opportunity to question professionals is enormously valuable but difficult to scale.  The News that Defined Us project captures the experience of the school question-and-answer sessions and disaggregates them to create a rich interactive library.  The shared legacy is a website where guest sessions are organised according to curriculum subject and theme.  The site provides archived copies of related broadcast material and interactive questions to recreate the school events.  By organising the content into themes, it provides a lasting resource that powerfully illustrates the principles and issues in topics such as conflict, culture and human rights.

Renowned BBC broadcasters such as Kate Adie and Alistair Leithead spoke of their experiences in the UK, Washington, China and Afghanistan.  Their experiences were complemented by visitors such as Private Scott Cooper (a teenage soldier who lost his leg by stepping on an IED), PC David Rathband (a police officer blinded by the killer Raoul Moat) and Councillor Stephen Bridget (a local politician).

From twenty sessions, the project run by Tyneside Cinema created over 200 interactive questions to support thirty hours of broadcast news footage.  The site provides a unique resource both for teachers and students.  Its structure helps educators include this rich media into their lessons while the design encourages young people to explore issues more deeply.

Today the project is launched at the Houses of Parliament in the illustrious company of Tom Watson MP, the terrier-like politician who has pursued the immoral journalists and corrupt management of the British Press, his fellow committee member Damian Collins, Blaydon MP Dave Anderson and our Bridget Phillipson MP.  It is an auspicious start to website that I hope helps young people think more critically about the news that defines them.

Public education in America

Interesting infographic from OnlineUniversities.com about the state of public education in the USA.

Will the same happen in the UK?

Via: Online Universities Blog

Childhood & Family articles

Special needs students and their teachers are the victims of a “muddled” approach to schooling, says Leicester Uni http://j.mp/qB5qcd

Socioeconomic status as child dictates response to stress as adult according to University of Minnesota http://j.mp/qDZRZ8

Parents are forgetting how to play with their children, study shows – article from The Guardian last year http://j.mp/jdoiSR

Teenage web habits: slaves to social networking but not so keen on apps, according to article in Guardian http://bit.ly/qiXS0f

Infants Learn To Transfer Knowledge By 16 Months, OSU Study Finds http://j.mp/lPOAsG

Surprisingly useful advice from Vodafone Digital Parenting Magazine http://j.mp/lhRvrM via @darrenbristow

Supportive home learning experiences in the early years boost low-income children’s readiness for school. From NYU. http://j.mp/j3JmWs

Being born & raised in a city is associated with greater lifetime risk for anxiety & mood disorder. From Nature. http://j.mp/jrjGpu

The quality of preschoolers’ social interactions is influenced by the ethnicity of the playmate. From Montreal Uni. http://j.mp/m8AxNQ

Parents prefer media content ratings system in national study led by Iowa State Uni http://j.mp/jS7Psd

How parents communicate with teenagers on mobiles gives insight into relationship according to study http://j.mp/mrfR5l

New study suggests that kids who eat sweets are *less* overweight than those that don’t. http://j.mp/lUbKlO

Informal daycare may harm kids’ cognitive development, Chicago Uni study finds http://j.mp/jLBYP7 (pdf)

One-Fifth of Grandparents Use Social Networks [STUDY] from @mashable http://j.mp/jjiX1i

Teens still learning to plan ahead from Child Development journal http://j.mp/kzyUhz

Youth cybercrime linked to friends’ influence from Michigan State University http://j.mp/iBAKm3

Apple promotes iPad for school

There’s a new TV ad from Apple extolling the potential of the iPad in classrooms.

A few months ago Edudemic posted this list of 50 Innovative Ways to Use an iPad in School.

What do you think? Does the iPad represent revolutionary technology for all teachers and students or simply another tool in the arsenal of the enthusiastic ones?

Beach games

pipe game

During the summer I went to North Wales with the youth group I help lead. While we were away, we played lots of games. Not high-tech, computer-based games but real-world, physical games. It was a timely reminder to me that play, even for teenagers, does not always depend on bits and bytes but can happily exist with a few bits and bobs. In fact, the simplicity added to the fun.

We played a variety of short games on the beach. Some were physical, collecting as much water as possible with a pipe drilled full of holes for example. Some were creative, such as making pictures with beach-combed artefacts. Some were simply sporty, such as volleyball. Almost all the games were faintly ridiculous.

The variety of games catered for everyone’s preference and skill and avoided the situation where any of the young people could feel excluded. They gave every one a chance to shine.

The young people played in teams. The competition was an important driver for participation and each game had a scoring system that rewarded achievement and more arbitrary factors such as teamwork and flair. Having said that, everyone recognised that the scoring was simply a device to provide structure and was at the whim of each of the game leader’s discretion. The scoring was wildly inconsistent but no-one really minded.

But team play is more than competition, it is dependent on collaboration.  The games were designed to leave no-one behind – every game required everyone to participate. No-one could fail individually, but the team could succeed together.

These lo-tech games worked because they drew on the fundamentals of play:

• the society of shared voluntary activity,
• simple rules,
• clear goals,
• boundaries in time and space, and
• no material consequence

The morning on a breezy Welsh beach illustrated beautifully the simple joy of playing together.

Psychology & Neuroscience articles

NCSU research: Study Shows Sports Can Help Communities Recover From Disaster http://j.mp/o0bzkz

Distract Yourself or Think It Over? Two Ways to Deal with Negative Emotions from Association for Psychological Science http://j.mp/l37Fnm

Too much choice is a bad thing – Journal of Public Economics http://j.mp/kJXbgT

Snooze you win? It’s true according to Stanford reseasrch http://j.mp/iCsjtQ

The sharing of stories or information may be driven in part by arousal according to new study. http://j.mp/jCeDqH

Text message support for smokers doubles quit rates. From the Lancet. http://j.mp/k9CmP7

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs key to wellbeing but order unimportant – University of Illinois http://j.mp/lfSR5O

Practising a little can make lasting impact on brain according to study from McMaster Uni. http://j.mp/kTz1Dz

Being born & raised in a city is associated with greater lifetime risk for anxiety & mood disorder. From Nature. http://j.mp/jrjGpu

Multi-tasking not all it’s “cracked up” to be? Stanford Study shows? bit.ly/16ko3N

Learning Styles: The Cognitive Side of Content by Johnny Holland http://j.mp/izrUDk

Teens still learning to plan ahead from Child Development journal http://j.mp/kzyUhz

Youth cybercrime linked to friends’ influence from Michigan State University http://j.mp/iBAKm3

Social Justice articles

Upwards social mobility reduces stress – Journal of Epidemiology & Community Heath http://j.mp/nJfdO9

UC Research Points to Best Practices to Reduce Recidivism http://j.mp/pQCNVc

Socioeconomic status as child dictates response to stress as adult according to University of Minnesota http://j.mp/qDZRZ8

High technology, not low taxes, may drive states’ economic growth. Penn State research. http://j.mp/iqX536

Death by Poverty? The effect of wealth and education on mortality. Study by Mailman School http://j.mp/jiAGoT

Prisoners give their time back to community in pioneering project #timebanking http://tiny.cc/hu2d3

More evidence that the tax & benefit changes are hitting the poor hardest. From the Institute For Fiscal Studies http://j.mp/iDaUat

Youth cybercrime linked to friends’ influence from Michigan State University http://j.mp/iBAKm3

Riding a bike

bicycle

I talk about learning all the time, it’s often learning situated in classrooms or in the workplace. Of course, I see examples much closer to home too.

My little girl is 5 years old. She started school in January. She hasn’t stopped learning since the day she was born and whilst that might be true for all of us, a child’s development is so much more dramatic. Every day she learns something new, every day she applies some novel approach or improved understanding, every day she discovers something different.

It is fascinating to watch this process first-hand and to play some minor part in it. Often I just watch as she interacts with her friends, plays on her own or does something with one of the family. I know that much of Scarlett’s behaviour and approach to life is a reflection of my and her mother’s. We are modelling attitudes all the time either consciously or subconsciously. It can be a terrible responsibility especially when I see my worst habits reflected back to me through her. It is of course, a tremendous privilege at the same time.

A recent event has highlighted my role as “teacher” to my daughter: Scarlett’s attempts to ride a bicycle without stabilisers. Her bike is probably a little too small for her now and yet we bought it for her when she was too young. It has had stabilisers since the day it came home from the shop. I’ve always wondered about their effectiveness because they teach a child that it is unnecessary to balance and that you don’t have to  put your feet down when the bicycle stops. When you’re learning to cycle these are fairly catastrophic assumptions.

So today I took off the stabilisers and we set off for the Park. Although Scarlett has ridden her scooter to school all year, I wasn’t going to let her attempt to ride the bike solo straightaway.

Riding a bike requires three skills:

• Understanding the mechanics
• Developing balance
• Having confidence

Although we might take these things and this process for granted, for a 5-year-old each step is a real challenge.

She needed to understand the propulsion of pedalling, the effect of the brakes and the sensitivity of the steering.  These things aren’t academic – understanding the basis for movement is fundamental to moving.  Initially her understanding might be shaky but eventually she’ll do it and deconstruct, able to make sense of the information in the context of her new experience.

She needs to learn how to shift her weight and move her centre of gravity to keep the bike upright, and later how to take corners. What’s more, she needs to figure out how to do this while pedalling.  There’s a physical element to making sense of the knowledge.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, she needs to develop the confidence to challenge what she know and try something new. She’s learnt that the stabilisers keep her up; now she has to prove herself wrong.  It’s not just bravery, it’s turning a worldview upside down.

And so my role as teacher, isn’t just to explain what to do and stand back. Nor can I do it for her.  No, the explanation was just the start. Some of these things she learns by simple repetition – holding the brakes while she steadies the bike in preparation to push off, some she learns through experimentation, some she learns through a leap of faith. My most valuable contributions are a steadying hand and words of encouragement.

Being right next to her is absolutely essential until that time when she has enough confidence to go it alone. Only when she feels safe will she feel prepared to take responsibility for our own learning and even then, when she falls, which she inevitably will, I will be there encouraging her to try again.