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Digital Footprints, Blue Skies and Orange Shoes

By on 25/04/2012 in Blog, Education

Since our new collaborator Dr Abhay Adhikari told Suklaa a few weeks ago that we’re much more informal and “fun” in real life than our website profile suggests, I’ve taken this as a license to ‘jazz it up.’

We’ve had an exciting time of it. Two wonderful days hosted by the Finnish Institute: In Teachers we Trust and Lessons from the North. This deserves a whole blog post to itself… but I’ll need to assimilate, revise my copious notes and then work on saying something terribly intelligent. (After all, I was educated in the UK) But while on the subject of Finland, our partnership with the Finnish Institute working on our professional development project Flourish, continues to gather pace. Jussi Nissilä from the Institute is in Helsinki this week, where we hope the project will develop and gather momentum. This week in London we’re meeting with Saku Tuominen from Idealist to chat around our Flourish ideas and other things we both have in the pipeline. He’s an exciting guy who’s done a lot and we’re very happy to have the opportunity to collaborate.

Our first Blue Sky Classroom at William Edwards is really shaping up. It feels like it’s been a long time in the planning and as you can see from the photograph, it’s not finished, but we do have a completion date and our first twilight session with staff booked. I can’t wait to see it up and running as the fully flexible learning environment that we envisioned. And as for kids writing all over the walls… bring it on!

Switched on Schools in collaboration with Abhay, has it’s first booking. We’ll be working with Wroxham Transformative Learning Alliance. The inspirational Alison Peacock has invited us to run this training session for teachers in June. We want to offer a fresh perspective on internet profiles, social media and online interaction both in and out of the classroom. Bookings to open shortly..

And finally, we’re delighted to have been awarded the contract to organise the London Festival of Education which will happen on Saturday 17th November 2012 at the Institute of Education. This collaboration between the IoE, ARK Schools and TES, has terrific vision and we’re truly excited by the challenges of bringing an event of this size together. At the interview, I wore my orange shoes and got told off by Darina within the first five minutes for being over familiar. She rolled her eyes when I threw in my lucky interview word (which is “yonder” just incase you were wondering) and she shook her head when the conversation flow meant that everyone had to stop to look under the table at said shoes. I’m sure we’ll manage to imbue the same sense of “fun” in the event as we did in the interview!

 

 

 

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Big Birthdays and Ferrero Rocher

By on 28/03/2012 in Blog

I was just on a call catching up with the lovely Amy from NESTA when I remembered that on this EXACT day last year my waters broke almost 6 weeks early. Myself and Claudia were due to be delivering a workshop for learning providers participating in NESTA’s idiscover programme. We were not due to to be delivering babies. Nope this was not in the plan, not yet anyway.

Oskari Thomas Tapaninaho was born almost 4 days (!!) later on Sat 2nd April 2011. What a guy. We love him. Quite simply he’s AMAZING. Now I could wax lyrical about my almost 1 year old boy for hours.. but maybe you’d zone out or even worse unfollow me. And perhaps fair enough. The très cynical John Donnelly told me that he often unfollows people who ‘drone on’ about their love for their offspring. I see too little of you these days John to risk a lack of social media interaction as well. So I won’t. (maybe I also risk unfollowings for using Del Boy style French words unnecessarily?)

Anyway..these last couple of weeks have been very busy. We’re working up our ideas for Flourish our international professional development project we’re running with the Finnish Institute in London. In it’s first phase we are inviting UK and Finnish based teachers to take part. It’s nicely timed as we’re going to a couple of events about Finnish education this week, the first at the Institute of Education and the second at the Finnish Institute.
We have also be invited to attend a reception at the Finnish Ambassador’s residence. I made a Ferrero Rocher joke to my colleague Rachel and she didn’t know what I was taking about. Young people…

Last week we attended ‘Whose Curriculum is it Anyway?’ a regional conference run by Whole Education. It was a very well put together event. A particular highlight for me was Head Teacher, Jo Shuter, from Quintin Kynaston Academy and her talk about raising the game despite adversity. They have achieved some amazing things, including forming a charity within school to house homeless students. Jo referred to her school culture as a family where honesty is key. Crucially they have a joined-up thinking approach to education and work closely with feeder primary schools, colleges and university and they have outreach staff who continue the relationship with QK students once they leave.

Another highlight was the Innovation Unit’s Alec Patton’s breakout session ‘How can we make schools more engaging?’. This was a fast-paced workshop where we were challenged to think about a learning experience that worked for us. The outcomes were as diverse as the audience but a lot were to do with real life, out-of-school, failing and emotional attachment. It was great to see theory expressed so actively.

After the conference I went to the British Council where all of their European representatives were together for a week of training in the ‘mothership’. The event was a rather small reception which I felt very lucky to be invited to. I talked to people from all over the world getting great tips for our Flourish programme. It’s brilliant to realise how small the planet really is. Lots of following up to do this week.

Another fab event last week was the opening of the latest Mozilla spaces in London’s St Martin’s Lane. I met with some brilliant education tech people including Digitalme’s Tim Riches, John Knight from Blackboard and his wife Erin Knight who heads up Mozilla’s own learning department read more about Mozilla’s learning vision here. I also very briefly met Doug Belshaw as he was rushing to get his train back up north, the next day via twitter I stumbled across his brilliant tedx talk on digital literacies. (note not digital literacy) Definitely worth a watch!

Now.. you’ll notice this blog post is refers to birthdays plural. It should not go unmentioned that the wonderful Claudia Barwell has had a significant birthday this week. Yes, significant. Let’s just say that according to some her life will only be beginning now. So Claud, what exactly have you achieved since Sunday? HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOU BRILLIANT WOMAN.

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Time to Create

By on 12/03/2012 in Blog, Education

I think I’ve finally figured out a problem that’s been really bothering me for a while.

Ken Robinson, in his book, The Element, explains that to find your ‘element’ and to be happy, you need to find your passion and be good at it. You also need to have the opportunity to make it happen and the right attitude, i.e you need to want it to happen. I really like this thinking and it’s something I’ve encountered a lot recently in various forums, especially in discussions around passion and happiness. I am a big believer in people doing jobs that makes them happy. I love my job and my own work in education often entails encouraging teachers and young people to focus on things they are passionate about.

What was bugging me, however, was that a lot of people, particularly young people, would argue that they are in ‘their element’ when playing computer games, watching films or TV or spending time, (a lot of time) on Facebook. Clearly most young people are passionate about this stuff and are very ‘good’ at them. But is this really enough? Should someone stop them and encourage them to do other things as well? Or should we all just relax and they can go on to get a job that sustains their basic needs and allows them to spend their free time doing what they’re passionate about? Even if it is leading a group of comrades to a raid in World of Warcraft, surfing the web or chatting with their friends on Facebook? I wasn’t sure..

A lazy option may be to say to young people “stop wasting your time on video games and do something useful”. But I guess that’s like saying “eat your vegetables” without explaining that they provide a good corner stone to a balanced diet. There has to be something deeper, a bit more of an open dialogue about it.

I think part of the problem with spending excessive time on WoW or FarmVille or Facebook or Friends re-runs or listening to podcasts is that too much of anything will overwhelm your brain. The brain will be constantly on the receiving end of information and doesn’t have any free cycles to spend on thinking. A lack of thinking results in drought of new ideas.

The crux of it, is that video games and films are entertainment. Entertainment is about consumption. Facebook is about communications as well as consumption. What’s missing here is creation.

Communication versus consumption versus creation. Those are the three main ways one can spent time. (Sleeping, by the way, I think, fits nicely within creation unless, of course, you’re a sleep talker.)

We, young and old alike, spend too much time consuming information and as a result, our brains don’t have enough free cycles to create anything new. Why is it important then to create something? Couldn’t we just concentrate on being really good at consuming or communicating to bring us happiness? Well, I believe that you get a more fulfilling sense of achievement when you’ve created something. (Trust me, you’re still consuming entertainment when you’ve ‘created’ a level 85 Paladin.)

But it isn’t about creation being the one important part here, it’s about the balance of all three. Communication and consumption and creation. They form a circle where each part feed to and off each other. See Kirby Fergusons series ‘Everything is a Remix‘. Creativity and creation don’t exist in a vacuum. Consumption and communication is needed as well.

Why is it difficult to stop consuming and start creating? Two reasons stand out for me. Those creating content for consumption, whether it be Blizzard making Diablo III or a Hollywood studio making the Jason Bourne series, are very very good at what they do. The second reason is because of that prevailing human trait: laziness. It’s just so easy to continue with old customs of crashing on the couch and switching your brain off. It is easier to receive than give.

(I wrote about social games and the sense of achievement as a response to a BBC programme on Facebook. It’s related, so have a look at that as well.)

Jane McGonical argues that skills learned in video games can be applied in the real world. It’s a very positive and inspiring talk and I’m not arguing that you can’t transfer these skills but how often does that happen, really? She does say that the benefits of video gaming to the human psyche start to disappear pretty quickly after 21 hours a week. Perhaps that would be a good limit for over all consumption per week? Gamers, like all of us, need to find opportunities and time to apply those learned skills, otherwise I believe they’re being wasted in pure consumption.

It’s time to switch off and switch on. Let’s all give our brains some space to breath. Let’s also open these conversations with young people in schools and help them participate in the design of their own education. Let them become future builders who question and discover their own passions and then make them happen in the real life.

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Yesterdays Apple Event and Three Education Takeaways

By on 08/03/2012 in Blog, Education, Technology

Apple had their now annual iPad event in San Francisco yesterday. Here’s three things that came out that I think are brilliant for education and schools.

  1. With the last two iPhone announcements, Apple has left the previous models for sale with a reduced price. This time around with the iPad, they’ve left the iPad 2 for sale at a lower price point of £329. (Pretty good discount, especially if you’re equipping say 1000 pupils with them). At the moment, I think the iPad 2 is just fine for education settings where the saved money is better spent on (e)books, apps and other content. I would still recommend teachers being issued with the latest and greatest model as that does future proof it’s use for an extra year.
  2. Apple Configurator is a new piece of software from Apple that allows administrators to update, install apps, do backups and, yes, configure up to 30 iOS devices in one go. This will save a ton of time and releases the individual teacher from having to do any of this.
  3. New Apple TV (£99) and a tiny detail in its settings. This would easily be missed if you weren’t looking for this. In our Blue Sky Classrooms project, we’re using Apple TV to enable teachers to be wireless and mobile in the classroom. Up until now any iOS device (that’s capable of doing this) could use AirPlay to stream the screen or photos or video to any Apple TV on the same network. No password required. This is obviously an issue if you have a large network accessed by both teachers and pupils; it’s only a matter of time when someone ‘accidentally’ AirPlays something undesirable. Apple TV now has the ability to password protect AirPlay. Fantastic.

Extra bonus:
If your school is looking at doing something with iBooks Author, there’s an update for that to support the Retina display. You should also check out Tumult Hype. It’s a very very powerful HTML 5 authoring tool that can now also export in iBooks Author widget format.

 

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Boing! Boing! Boing! It’s a Leap Year and Spring Has Sprung!

By on 29/02/2012 in Blog

Optimistic I know, but the sun is in the sky in London and here at Suklaa in early 2012 we are feeling positive. We have spent time developing new partnerships and designing projects and programmes that fit our aspirations for the future of education.

Here’s a sneak preview of some of our exciting new projects:

Changing Spaces: Blue Sky Classrooms

Suklaa are partnering with William Edwards School to develop classroom spaces that are truly flexible and best fit the schools progressive attitude towards inclusive teaching and learning. We are just about to fit the first pilot classrooms and then we’ll let the staff and students loose for active feedback sessions. We will then go on to kit out all of the classrooms in the English and Maths departments. We can’t give too much away at this stage but lets just say the classrooms are playful, simple, have sliding walls, ipads and integrated technology! Watch this space.

International Relations: Flourish

As you may well know we are an international team here at Suklaa with British and Finnish colleagues working side by side in harmony(!) We are currently developing very exciting partnerships with: The Finnish Institute in London and Embassy of Finland, London and The British Council in Finland as well as many more great organisations in both countries. At a time when Finland is being celebrated for a great education model, it seems a fab time to collaborate. Flourish is a groundbreaking professional development programme for teachers from both countries to join forces and share the best teaching practice. Flourish will contain high calibre thinking from an international educational arena and encourage participants to build the future of education, collaboratively. We are envisaging that Flourish will be fully launched later in the spring and we’ll share details on how to apply to take part.

Education in the Round: Circumference

Suklaa are partnering with Whole Education and Roundhouse to develop a huge education event due to happen early 2013. We can’t share too much yet but it looks set to be a participant-driven game changer -involving teachers, students, business leaders and cultural institutions. To drop in another spherical reference- we’ll all have a ball!

If you’d like to get involved with any of these new programmes please get in touch!

 

 

 

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Startup Weekend EDU

By on 28/11/2011 in Blog

 

I was very pleased to be asked to come and mentor at this past weekends Startup Weekend London EDU. Backed by NESTA, Virgin and StartUp Britain, this 54-hour event saw experts collaborate and develop innovative web and mobile apps focusing on education.

In the event, hosted by the games-based learning start-up Education Games Network, participants began by giving a 1 minute pitch of their idea and then they teamed up with others to take forward the most popular concepts.

I joined them on Saturday afternoon to help mentor and steer the groups. I was especially excited to about Now I Know It and a CV builder for teens that let’s them connect to local businesses and volunteer groups for work experience.

On Sunday night, after developing a prototype and detailed business plan, each team delivered a nerve-racking pitch to a ‘Dragon’s Den’ panel of judges including Pearson’s Stephen Fahey, NESTA’s Jon Kingsbury and Promethean’s Ian Curtis.

The winner was the excellent Night Zookeeper which is a creative environment for kids to share art and literacy. Well done to them!

These kinds of events are excellent for educators and developers to come up with new and exciting ideas together and also make them happen. I’m really looking forward to seeing which of the products make it further than this prototype stage!

 

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