Play with Learning

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.

Underage gaming

18 game

I received this note from a friend recently, I wanted to share it and my reply because I think this is an important issue for parents and children.

“A lot of children in my son’s class are playing games well above their age, specifically call of duty. My son is 9. He was shown it on a play date and doesn’t like it and has no interest in playing it so we are pleased about that. Unfortunately there is a lot of cod [call of duty] talk in class because a lot of parents seem unconcerned about their children playing 18 rated games. We have mentioned it to school and they are concerned.

My question is should we be concerned about 9 yr olds playing 18 games?”

should we be concerned about 9 yr olds playing 18 games?

I think it’s right to be concerned about the underage use of games like Call of Duty (COD).  Increasingly parents are succumbing to perceived peer pressure and allowing their children to play these games because ‘all their friends are.’ I know lots of parents that have decided it’s okay.

I think there are a number of reasons to be concerned.  It’s not just the gratuitous violence that risks becoming normalised, COD and alike are riddled with bad language, sex and other adult themes.

It’s odd that many of us regulate our children’s access to TV but feel that the violence presented in games is somehow different and therefore harmless.  But visual realism in these games is increasing.  What’s more, it’s participatory.  COD Black Ops has a gruesome torture scene, Modern Warfare 2 has terrorists murdering innocent civillians in an airport, and the player can join in.   Computer games present violence in the same manner that porn shows sex – entirely casual and inconsequential.  I can’t imagine many of us would be comfortable with our children watching 18 certificate films but the content in video games is basically the same.

Killing is the point of these games – it is relentless and mindless.  But that might not be an issue to those of us who know better.  There is no evidence to suggest that playing violent video games makes well-adjusted players more violent in the long term but there is ample research that shows a rise in aggression and drop in empathy immediately after playing.  Current studies suggest that violent games can exacerbate underlying psychosis, that is, if you have a tendency to be violent, first person shooters will make it worse.  Thankfully most of us aren’t psychopaths and by our early-mid twenties most of us have settled into our skins.  Young people are still ‘solidifying.’

Children mimic behaviour that they perceive as ‘grown-up’ – they are building their life experience – however unpalatable, the characters in these games are role models.  While this effect may not extend to actually being physically violent, it may well increase bad and aggressive language, the acceptance of racial and sexual stereotypes and the believe that such conduct is not just normal but desirable.  With a natural paucity of real life experience, children use whatever they can to build their world view.

There is another worry.  Between the ages of 10 and 13, the brain undergoes massive development.  It is similar to the changes that take place when children are toddlers, defined as the Terrible Twos/ Threes.  As the brain finishes its development, pre-teens reflect and adopt dominant environmental conditions, just as babies do.  The exposure to external influences literally sets the mental pattern for how we think, what we consider normal behaviour and starts our moral and ethical system of beliefs.  These things aren’t set in stone but undoing them can be hard and painful for all concerned.

If you are an adult with a wealth of life experience, established relationships and a stable brain then putting these games into context isn’t too hard.  It simply isn’t the same for children.

The ‘Safer Children in a Digital World‘ report by Tanya Byron is particularly helpful read.

What are your thoughts?

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Postscript – if you haven’t played COD Black Ops and want to see its ’10 Goriest Moments’ there’s a video on YouTube.  Two points: total gameplay might last 30 hours so keep the events in this 3 minute video in perspective.  Secondly, it is genuinely gruesome – you’ve been warned.

Art and Play

pens and pencils

One of the projects I’m working on at the moment is a website that will help primary school children (5-11s) with their art work.

The audience for the resource is quite complicated because teachers are likely to be the standard bearers for it – they’ll be the ones that direct children to it (at least in the first instance).  So the site has to be teacher and classroom (i.e. interactive whiteboard) – friendly as well appealing to the under 11s.  The task is further complicated by the double-edged sword of being a ‘fun’ subject – anecdotally, we’ve heard that teaching can suffer both from unimaginative lessons (“it’s already engaging what else do we need to do?”) and from the cacophony of opinions about creative expression.

Our expectation and aim is for the site to help teachers integrate and delivery ‘good’ art education into the classroom and produce a vehicle for children to structure their projects.

A device we’re exploring to promote participation is a scoring mechanism: a simple mechanic that rewards effort.  I’m not going to argue with Huizinga (or indeed my post on game definitions) when he says such activity is not a game but we’re hoping that the playful rewards will add value to each child’s involvement.  Not only will the scoring recognise effort, it will create an internal system of value to the resource – harder activities will carry greater recompense.  For example, identifying more features of a ‘great work’ will score more points, writing a note on what you’d do differently next time will receive a bonus, and uploading an image of your work will give you a badge of achievement.

The rewards won’t be as sophisticated or varied as Call of Duty but we recognise that they will have to have a meaningful currency if the points are to be perceived as worth acquiring.  If the rewards are too easy, they become cheap and unattractive, too sparse and there’s insufficient wage for effort.  Likewise, what exactly does acquiring the points mean? Can users brag? Compete? Unlock? Level up?  If a dollar or a pound is theoretically worth that amount of gold, what’s out precious metal?  It’s an issue to address.

One of the other interesting aspects we’ll be testing during development is whether such incentives actually promote learning or simply drive the children to ‘play the game better.’

I’ll let you know how we get on, but I’d be interested in hearing of similar activities if you have them…

Facebook cartoon meme

dangermouse

You may well have seen the campaign on Facebook to change your profile picture to a childhood cartoon character.

The changes were accompanied by a status update like this:

Change your facebook profile picture to a cartoon character from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same. Until Monday, December 6, there should be no human faces on facebook, but an invasion of memories! This is for a campaign against violence on children.

I changed mine (and received all sorts of friendly abuse questioning whether I was young enough to choose this particular character from my childhood!).  About 30% of my Facebook friends changed their profile pictures too.

But lots of people have been sceptical as Mashable reported last week.  And of course, this wasn’t official charity-supported campaign.  Although some people inserted NSPCC into their updates, it was not an NSPCC initiative (although I suspect the charity wishes it had have been given the social infectiousness).

Many people got quite cross about it, some even Daily Mail* hysterical: “Apparently that picture change was a scam from those dirty bastards that would harm our children” but most were irritated by the claim that this would make any difference:”Can anyone explain how changing my profile pic to a cartoon character is going to stop child abuse?” posted one of my good friends.

Can anyone explain how changing my profile pic to a cartoon character is going to stop child abuse?

But that’s the theory of social advertising isn’t it? A small statement made by masses to promote a commonly-held view.  I agree with Malcolm Gladwell’s assertion that the “weak ties [of social media] seldom lead to high-risk activism” but I don’t discount them entirely as a vehicle for change.  However small a token, millions of people changed their pictures to make a personal statement.  It was a relatively effortless act but that doesn’t denude its value.  Granted it might have been better if everyone of us who changed our picture had made a donation to a relevant charity (and I’d still encourage you to do that) but more powerful is the badge that says “This is unacceptable to me.” This withdrawal of social acceptance is the basis for changed behaviour.

The vast majority of child abuse is perpetrated by the family of the victim or by a family friend.  This cartoon campaign is likely to have reacheed deeper into those dark recesses of society than any mainstream, institutional, advertising campaign because it’s been personal and social.  Maybe some of those who changed their picture might go on to support a child advocacy charity, maybe it simply prompted a bit of discussion but maybe, just maybe, it was the kernel of a shared belief that changing bahaviour starts in a small personal way. I hope so.

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Update – NSPCC put this note on their official Facebook page:

“Thank you to everyone who has been supporting the NSPCC! As a result of the Facebook cartoon campaign, we have experienced a massive jump in traffic to our website and an unprecedented surge in donations. How did the campaign impact you? We would love to hear your story.”

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*Please remember this is the UK’s Daily Mail with no greater evidence than “one Facebooker.” It’s just wild unsubstantiated rabble-rousing nonsense. I’m almost embarrassed about including it but it is precisely this kind of irresponsible reporting that prevents us from tackling these issues constructively.

Failure, Friends and Finding your Feet

I love being a dad.  I find it the most astonishing, life-affirming, challenging wonder-filled experience I have ever known and my children keep surprising me and teaching me new lessons.

My little boy, Jacob, is 17 months old.  He’s been tentatively and briefly on his feet for the last few weeks but mostly he’s been on his knees.  He kept falling over.  Each failure to walk didn’t faze him.  He got up.  Tried again.

Each failure to walk didn’t faze him.  He got up.  Tried again.

I suspect he didn’t think to himself, “You know what, I’ve tried, given it my best shot, but this walking lark, it’s not for me.  I’m not a walker.”

The brutal reality of getting it wrong wasn’t the end of the world.  He dealt with it.  That nature prepares children for mistakes is something we seem to forget as they get older and particularly at school where we seem to adopt the attitude that we should never tell our precious little ones that they are wrong.  It’s as if we believe shielding them from the truth will somehow help it go away.  But sometimes, falling down is the only way to get up.

However, what struck me today was the influence of peers, even at the tender age of seventeen months.  Today was his first day at nursery.  He joined a class where everyone else was walking.  He came home walking.  I can’t be sure if it was the aspiration to be the same, competition not to be left out or inspiration that it could be done.  Probably a combination of them.  But whatever it was, the toddlers did something that Jacob’s mother and I haven’t been able to: encourage him to walk confidently.  And that’s what he’s been doing, relentlessly, joyfully and proudly since he got home.

Grown Ups and Growing Up

At the weekend I joined many others in celebrating my mum’s forty year’s service to the Girls Brigade in Coventry, England. Forty years. Forty years. Since she was sixteen, apart from a break to have her own children, she’s encouraged, supported and empowered thousands of girls by giving her time and energy to provide safe, worthwhile activity for them. I think that’s amazing. And utterly admirable.

She’s not alone, there are thousands of adults regularly volunteering their spare time to offer young people safe places to go in the evenings, weekends and holidays.  This is an invaluable, possibly life-saving, contribution to the lives of teenagers, particularly those from poor background who have few, if any, recreational options.

According to research from Boys Town published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, “youth from low-income backgrounds were twice as likely to report early sex onset (by age 11) and more likely to report early delinquency (by age 10) than those from middle-income backgrounds. By contrast, youth from middle-income backgrounds were 1.5 times more likely to report early alcohol use (by age 10) than those from low-income backgrounds. Furthermore, those that showed early and frequent involvement with risky sex, delinquency, and alcohol use beginning in late childhood and extending throughout adolescence showed an increase in long-term crime, alcohol use disorders (AUDs), and risky sex behaviors in young adulthood.” The report powerfully makes the case for early interventions to transform the lives of young people.  An earlier study by Cohen and Piquero (2009) calculated that a life of crime typically costs society £2.5m for each individual, £640k for heavy drug use, £320k simply for dropping out of school.

Even if one doesn’t recognise a moral duty to nuture and support our young people, there is a compelling economic case to give them every opportunity to excel and live a productive life.

Despite age and organizational rules forcing my mum to retire from an official capacity in the Girl’s Brigade, she’s still committed to helping each week. And I suspect she’ll continue to do so until the day she dies.

As she looks back over her life, I hope she recognises how her positive influence may have changed so many lives for the better.  I hope one day, I’ll be a be able to say the same.

This Week’s Review

Some of the articles that have caught my eye this week:

General Issues

• Did you know there have been more than 2000 nuclear explosions on the planet since 1945? I didn’t. Displayed in an animation from Pink Tentacle
• Guillermo del Toro to make games – but what other film directors would you like to see join him? Article in the Guardian
• Black Friday for many strategic players in the voluntary and community sector. The UK government cuts funding to Third Sector.
• Nicholas Lovell’s graph showing massive rises in game sales against consistently falling violent crime.
• UK government cuts funding for 1000s of playgrounds. BBC article. Emma Kane organises a campaign to fight the cuts.
• How the Economist sells cleverness.  Thoughts from the NYTimes.
• Ushahidi launches simplified crisis-mapping service. From the Guardian.
• DeviantArt’s Muro Drawing App Is Pure HTML5 Awesomeness. From Wired.com
• Poverty linked to mental health disorders according to study funded by Wellcome Trust

Learning

• Student Undergrads study ineffectively on computers according to research published in the Journal of Educational Psychology
• Research from NSF shows a good kindergarten education makes dollars and sense.
• Focus on results can make children do worse, Institute of Education study finds.
• Learning a Language From an Expert on the Web. Article from NYTimes.com
• Microblogging in higher education. Research from Upper Austria University and others.

Games

• Study in BioMed Central of medical students attitudes towards video games.
• Women Set the Pace as Online Gamers from NYTimes.com report

Psychology

• Negative stereotypes have a lasting impact according to University of Toronto study (pdf).
• What your perceptions of others say about you – research from Wake Forest University (pdf).

Stopping Children’s Play

Children's Playground

The news today made me cry out with primal rage.

The UK government is cancelling the funding for thousands of community playgrounds. The Playbuilder scheme was a key element of the 2007 Children’s Act and was establlished in response to the universally acknowledged need for safe outdoor places for children to play. Now the government has decided that we cannot afford them.

Play is the cornerstone of child development.  By cancelling this program the government diminishes many children’s opportunity to play safely and socially. In doing so they damage their chance of acquiring all of those skills that come from playing; not just the physical health benefits (such as reducing childhood obesity, tackling vitamin D deficiency, improving dexterity, strength and flexibility) but the cognitive, emotional and social  skills of building conference, experimentation, problem-solving, teamwork, the ability to deal with failure, imagination and role play.  The benefits of play and public life are beautifully described by Alison Kadlec for the National Civic Review (pdf) (Thanks for Pat Kane for that reference).

Removing opportunities for children to play reduces their chance of developing their potential. This cut of playgrounds across the country will amplify the effects of previously announced reductions in the education budget (including the cancellation of the schools building programme).  This short term budget-saving will not only impoverish the lives of a generation of children, it will reduce our nation’s long term ability to recover from economic collapse.

Google Brain

I recently saw this on Facebook:

i dont need a brain... ive got google

Written by Matthew, an 11 year old boy.  He’s not being ironic.  It’s an attitude that is permeating society, particularly among the young.

In a sense I think Matthew is right.  We’ve never had access to such large amounts of information before so the majority of school activity suddenly feels redundant.  Knowledge is almost universally available through our web-enabled mobile devices so what’s the point in trying to remember it?.  If Francis Bacon was correct with his idea that “Knowledge is power”, we’re now all incredibly powerful.  Except of course that businesses continue to complain that even the most accomplished students don’t have the core skills to operate effectively in the Information Age or indeed, think for themselves. It’s a sentiment described by a 2008 (pdf) report by the British Library and reiterated in this week’s publication by Northwest University (pdf).  Both pieces of research draw the same conclusion – though confident, young people are not discriminating in their use of information searching – they tend to trust and use the first results that come back through Google without prejudice.  Trusting Google uncritically is making us lazy and vulnerable to manipulated misinformation.

The Google-isation of human knowledge and expression is not a bad thing but there are some challenges before it achieves its full potential to empower.  Knowing facts and figures is the lowest level of cognitive ability – important but not the be-all-and-end-all as some commentators would have us believe.  If we’re really going to make the most of this ubiquitous library, we’ll have to start placing more emphasis on the mental skills needed to manipulate, make sense of and evaluate this wealth of information.  This is where Google is a massive enabler: it frees us from the need to learn simple data and offers us the chance to concentrate on doing something useful with it instead, it releases us from merely exercising our memories to actually think.