Play with Learning
Teens
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.
What is school for?
hand up
I was party to a fascinating discussion with colleagues from the RSA yesterday about the nature of education: asking the basic question – what’s the point of school? Catalysed by the change in UK government, there seems to be a battle between the idea of school being a place for ‘transferring a body of knowledge’ and education as an ‘interactive process of developing skills.’ Proponents of ‘traditional methods’ cite the high academic achievements of Singapore and alike as demonstration of the strengths of rote-learning. Ken Robinson and others argue we need a paradigm shift in education; that the existing system of industrial education (based on deductive reasoning and a knowledge of the classics) is ill-suited to the needs of the twenty-first century.
Knowledge without skills is pointless and skills without knowledge are useless.
Personally, I think that’s a false dichotomy: knowledge without skills is pointless and skills without knowledge are useless. For me, they are both essential elements of learning. Still, something is clearly going awry with the current system. Very few people seem to be happy with the outcomes of a childhood spent in formal education – employers claim graduates, let alone school leavers, lack core competencies and the population generally appears to believe that learning stops at the school gate.
Although most people’s experience of schools seems positive during their primary years (5-ish to 11) for many, secondary education doesn’t just strip fun and satisfaction from learning but sucks the very life out of it. I suspect that, because of the curse of competitive league tables, young people are being taught to pass exams rather than think. The deficit model of highlighting what isn’t known removes the possibility that learning could be enlightening and rewarding in any other way than acquiring a paper certificate.
School is where we’re taught what we can’t do
There’s clearly a need to have a standardised measure of ability to help identify strengths and weaknesses. However, I think that as a society we are suffering the consequences of School, and the exam-system foisted upon it, being the place where we’re taught what we can’t do.
Maybe initiatives like the RSA’s Opening Minds which place competencies at the centre of curriculum and help smooth the transition from primary (theme-based) to secondary (subject-based) education are part of the answer. At least as crucial as bridging the transition between Year 6 and Year 7 is a change in attitude that dissolves the boundaries of learning and dismantles the idea that learning is confined to formal education environments. One might argue that the key to a satisfying life (and all the wellbeing and economic benefits that that creates) is the development of a mentality that embraces constant and continual learning; that school’s greatest legacy, therefore, is providing us with the ability to think for ourselves.
A degree of value?
student demo
Today the UK parliament votes to triple fees to study for a higher education degree. Given the composition of the House of Commons, the outcome of the vote is largely predictable. The effect on future generations is less clear.
When student tuition fees were introduced in 2006, Universities UK (UUK), the representative organisation for the UK’s universities, commissioned PwC to assess the economic value of higher education. They calculated that over a lifetime graduates would earn £160,000 more than holders of A-levels without degrees. This extra income was assumed by many to mitigate the £9000 debt (not including living expenses) that young adults have when they leave university.
Of course, that’s not the whole picture. If we assume students can live off £80-100/week during term time (to pay rent, bills, food, clothes, etc) and enjoy the cost-free luxury of parents at other times, it adds another £9000 over the course of a typical three year degree. Even before this proposed increase in fees, that would leave the average 21 year old graduate with an £18,000 millstone of debt around their neck. {i’, being wildly optimistic with these figures, too. In 2004, before fees were introduced at all, the NatWest bank estimated the average cost of a degree was £26,000]
Graduates will pay that off over time. There’s no question of it but it means years of payments and the virtual impossibility of saving for any other cause, the deposit for a house, for example.
Before the government of the 80s taught us that living beyond our means was a good thing, ordinary folk avoided debt like the plague. Many working class families simply could conceive of borrowing that amount of money for something apparently intangible. It’s an entirely different proposition if one has the Bank of Mum and Dad to pay off any outstanding loans.
Now the coalition government wants to triple those fees. £9000/ year for the best universities. £27,000 for the typical degree, not including living expenses. Put another way, that’s £100/ month for 22.5 years with the students living on free air. If you’re a parent and don’t want your child saddled with crippling debt, you’ll need to start saving before your child is born. If you want a degree yourself, you’ll be university-debt free by the time you are 44. 44.
How many poor kids or parents do you know able to make that sacrifice? Would you in these economically uncertain times?
There’s a misconception that only the student benefits from a degree, it’s the reason many resent paying their taxes to support the university system. But, it is a flawed argument. We all benefit from having the most educated society possible. Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that everyone should have or needs a degree (although I passionately believe everyone should have the right to the best possible education to whatever level they choose). Every single one of our lives is improved by talented, educated people in all walks of life whether they are doctors, engineers, teachers, dare I say, even artists and musicians.
I oppose the rise in tuition fees because I believe they will stop poor but gifted young people from being stretched at university, exacerbating the already shameful inequalities on our education system. And I oppose the rise in fees because I believe our society will be impoverished economically, culturally and intellectually by fewer graduates.
The cost of education is high but the cost of ignorance is much much higher.
Social Media in Education (Part 2) – Value
In my previous post, I suggested that for learning providers, simply having a presence on social media networks is not enough to engage students: not only are teens fabulously fickle, they are wary, resentful even, of authorities encroaching into their personal space:
“Facebook is more a ‘personal’ thing and i don’t really want to get school involved in it,” said one 14 year old girl.
“i believe that the schools influence should remain on the premises and should not stray into your social life,” echoed a 16 year old boy.
Unlike the natural attraction teens demonstrate towards their peers, it seems fairly rare for a teen to show any intrinsic interest in their school or college (75% say they don’t or wouldn’t use a school Facebook page). In the main, they’re just not interested. If they’re there, they want something from it.
An establishment in Buckinghamshire provided a range of bespoke collaborative tools hosted on their virtual learning environment (VLE). But the tutors were disappointed to discover that no students used the tools beyond the induction session and the compulsory assessment exercises. Meanwhile there was an entirely independent and thriving Facebook community where students shared experiences and supported each other with assignments. It wasn’t that the institution’s tools weren’t good, on the contrary, they were far more tailored to the needs of the students than those available publicly; rather the issue was one of trust and management. Participation in the formal learning environment transferred ownership and authority to the college, students were effectively entering school property. And the contributions in that space felt more scrutinised than the open-to-anyone Facebook group. The knowledge that tutors were ‘lurking,’ albeit benignly, in the VLE gave the impression that every post was being assessed and this prevented any free-flowing conversation. The Facebook group, on the other hand, was theirs, and somehow psychologically isolated from prying eyes.
The case study also illustrates the challenge of managing online spaces. Bear Stearns (the global investment bank now part of JPMorgan Chase) defined 4 categories in the social networking space and Matt Locke of Channel 4 revised those categories into his six spaces of social media. If any activity can be compartmentalised into dedicated domains (e.g. science in the laboratory,
work email on the office computer) then switching tasks is as straightforward as swapping rooms but when the lines start to blur (such as homework), people seek the path of least resistance – how do I do this most easily? In these cases, the management of the online spaces often boils down to “Can I do what I need to here?” Unless the second online space has something new to offer, or perhaps more importantly makes life easier, users will generally make do with what they have: simply duplicating facilities is not enough to encourage people to transfer allegiance or manage both simultaneously.
Engaging learners isn’t just about making the resource fit the user’s space though. A recent research project in Scotland described a year-long study where students were given a host of social media tools to co-develop learning materials for their course. The team reported a number of positive findings including the value of contributing and the sense of feeling part of something. But they also described how users regarded participation as extra pressure and how it didn’t improve reflective practice. Most tellingly, no-one, not one single student, continued to use the tools after the study (and its associated payments and incentives) finished.
I think what these examples demonstrate is that you can’t force students to engage with social media and secondly if there is a genuine need or desire, learners will seek out the most convenient format, regardless of where that sits, but ideally in spaces they already operate.
Crucially though, neither initiative offered any real value to the learners. In their own words:
“I don’t think there’s anything on it that i need to know”
“I just dont bother to and im busy.”
We seem to forget that young people are not compelled to accept Authority coming into their personal spaces. At this age (14-19), perhaps more than any other, learners will never be ‘friends’ with their school or college. At best, the institution will be a ‘Dad at the Disco’ type acquaintance. The only reason learner’s will come, let alone participate, is if they believe they will profit from the effort – either through immediate gratification or by taking something away that improves their life.
Social Media in Education (Part 1)
I was fortunate to participate in the recent Social Media in Education podcamp at Doncaster College. In the midst of many people highlighting the benefits of social media, I speculated about the reasons so many initiatives from educational establishments fail to engage. Not to ridicule or condemn but to improve. This is about learning, after all.
My slightly provocative take on the issue isn’t because I think Facebook, Twitter, et al are frivolous and whimsical distractions. I don’t consider myself a Luddite. My whole career has focussed on education: I believe wholeheartedly that technology can enhance the learning process and we know that learning is dependent on dialogue so social media should represent the perfect learning technology. In that case, why do so many social media projects from learning providers not deliver?
I think there are three key reasons for our failure:
• We don’t appreciate online user behaviour
• Our projects don’t offer real value to learners
• Our social media schemes don’t actually support learning
Let me illustrate what I mean over this and the next couple of blog posts.
Many schools and colleges have Facebook pages. Some, like this particular centre in the Midlands, have an apparently respectable number of ‘fans’: more than 1800 from a total student body of 9500.
That seems quite impressive until one starts to examine Facebook usage by the 14-19 year old age group. Rather than rely on the official statistics, I conducted my own piece of research with some of the young people I have the privilege of supporting at a couple of youth groups in the UK.
I spoke to fifty teenagers, not a particularly large sample but broadly representative of the national socio-economic mix so I feel reasonably confident that we can draw some conclusions from their responses.
The first thing to recognise is that this age group has considerably more ‘friends’ than Facebook users generally. In my sample, the mean number of ‘friends’ was 402, and to acknowledge the distortion caused by the odd couple who had 1000 or more connections, the median value was 361. This is significantly more than current average of 130 (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics) and Dunbar’s Number of the most people with whom we can maintain a stable relationship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number).
What’s more, in this small group at least, the number of friends was increasing by 2% a week.
A few interesting aspects came out of the research: 46% of teenagers have ‘friends’ online they’ve never met, and while they are happy to be linked to parents and even real world enemies (frenemies?), they generally shun Authority. Just 2 of the 50 were online friends with teachers or tutors and only 24% would even consider ‘liking’ their college. Bluntly, teens would rather be friends with their enemies than their schools.
At the same time as acquiring large number of ‘friends,’ teenagers ‘like’ more than 320 pages each and it is indicative of the superficial nature of these endorsements that the figure is increasing by 10% a week. This is especially true of younger Facebookers. ‘Liking’ something on Facebook is a largely meaningless whim.
But, for me the most damning comment on our attempts to penetrate students social media lives isn’t the fickle nature of association, it is the lack of interaction. The Facebook wall of my randomly-chosen college consists 
almost entirely of officially posted statements. It is a broadcast. Not dialogue. Not conversation. Not a relationship. Not social in any way. That’s what condemns it. And it’s epitomised by the need of the College to ‘like’ its own comments. Because no-one else will.
Carlton Reeve
Carlton is the founder of Play with Learning. He has a PhD in the design, development and deployment of game-based learning resources. Complementing his academic background, Carlton has years of practical experience at the BBC and independent media companies producing and commissioning world class and award-winning media for the likes of the United Nations, BBC, National College for School Leadership, Open University and the Victoria & Albert museum.