It's about Culture, stupid!

"The purpose of education is to focus on the culture of schools", says Sir Ken Robinson during his keynote on Day 1 of the recent EduTECH 2014 conference.

Along with 5199 other educators I sat in the dark of the Brisbane Convention Centre at 4:15 pm waiting for what (I'll be honest) I expected to be the absolute highlight of the conference. 90 minutes later I, along with most others in the auditorium, rose to give him a standing ovation. It was an incredible experience to listen to such a wonderful story teller.

Now - the messages? Well, there were some of the old ones. Creativity, industrial schools and the like. But the context had changed a little from the past. He spoke passionately about the current obsession with PISA results and their use as a ranking system. He is perfectly correct when he observes that education policy is now as important as defence policies in many western governments. He rolls out some incredibly powerful graphical representations of the changes in population growth in general, and the shifts from rural to urban in many of the big cities of the world. LA and Sao Paulo were particularly impressive with the scary growth that has happened there over the past 50 - 75 or so years.

Back the culture of schools as important. He talked at length about the nature of agriculture and the shifts in farming as industrialisation really kicked in. The shifts from diversity in the local farming area to one where mass production of crops, aided by machines and fertiliser, had changed the landscape (and the land). He spoke of the problems of soil health and disease that easily results from this type of farming, and a major response to this move has been to see organic farming increase in importance. Where if you get the conditions right (get the soil right) then diverse growth happens.

He talks of the 4 principals of culture: diversity, ecology, fairness and care.

He says that growth comes from beneath (and he shows a great visual of a tree to support this). He makes the point that politicians are usually only passing through, and very little of what they do will stick. Teachers must make the difference - the revolution must come from the ground up.

He urges teachers and educators to see the world through the eyes of students. Move towards more organic education. Move away from the battery hen format of curriculum and assessment to organic and free range.

He ends with two short videos - one that has been on Sunday (or 60 minutes) recently - the Landfill Orchestra and one from a school that I didn't quite catch - but was in the Middle East and looked at kids responses to the same task that had been worded differently. It was something around giving kids a partially completed drawing (in fact it only had a triangle in it) but one group of students was given the image with the instruction: "complete the house". The other was given the instruction : "complete the image". The difference between the outputs of the students was astounding. [I must find that video somewhere!]

I'll leave you with this short clip from Sir Ken's keynote. I hope more of it appears online in the coming weeks. It was an honour and a privilege to listen. It as the fastest 90 minutes of being "lectured" I have ever witnessed.


Sir Ken Robinson at EduTECH 2014 from EducationHQ on Vimeo.

The Future of Learning

Sugata Mitra is known for his "Hole in the Wall" research project in India in 1999. He's known for the TED Talks he has given. He's known for being the TED winner for 2013.

Today I had the privilege of listening to him for 60 minutes as the opening keynote speaker at EduTech 2014 in Brisbane. This post has a few of my observations and then links to his previous research.

Let's set the record straight from the start. This guy is so genuine. He's a modest, thoughtful, dedicated, intelligent, sensitive, reflective researcher. He speaks from his heart and his mind.

So - what did he have for us today? Sooo much ... where to begin ...

I'll begin where he did. He gave the now standard "today's schools are designed to produce conformity, obedience, instruction following" that is now the hallmark of many - Sir Ken Robinson in particular. But that's OK - because there are young teachers at this conference for whom the rationale for educations systems being constructed the way they are might be new.

But he quickly moved to the killer stuff for me. Here's my paraphrased backstory. He started some research in a non-English speaking area. The kids were Tamil. They were 12 years old. The question he left them with was something about DNA. They didn't speak English. The resources he left them with were basically Google and in English. As he states "a pretest would see then score zero, and when he returned in 3 months, a post test would show them score zero". He was stunned at the results. And so presumably is anyone who has followed the story.

So, he's gone on to show that 9 year olds left alone with an internet connection can answer GCSE questions and retain the information for 4 years!

He asks the question "Is knowing obsolete?" Not to say that "knowing how (and when) to know" is obsolete - quite different!

From his research and commentary we know that examinations see students at their lowest "ebb" for learning. We know that the "friendly adult" (aka Granny cloud) is a powerful motivator for kids. We know that his SOLE ( self organising learning environments) work. We know that these are potentially in conflict with what most think of  as 1:1 technology initiatives. We think (well, he does, and I don't know enough about them, but I know he knows more than me!!) that these SOLE environments are on the edge of chaos according to "Complexity Theory".

So what are my takeaways ...

• explore through practice these ideas 
• get some big questions applicable to our environment
• get some supporting "friendly adults" to support
• change the collaborative space
• enjoy the ride and the results

So - here are some of the backstories from Sugata. Thanks for the opportunity to share!

Ken Robinson at TED - How to survive education's Death Valley

If you are a Ken Robinson fan, then you'll like this new version of several of his earlier talks. This was presented just a couple of weeks ago as part of the debut of TED talks on the US public broadcasting system (PBS).

There are plenty of messages here - and well worth the 20 minutes you'll invest in watching this. There are messages about learning (and teaching), and messages about investment in professional development. I'll leave the rest up to the knight of the realm - it's his talk and not many deliver a message better than this man.

Sir Ken Robinson at RSA

Sir Ken Robinson is a favourite of mine. This presentation is a great animation and a different way of looking at Sir Ken's main points. If you are a visual learner, you might find this version of interest. In any event, RSA Animate is pretty cool!

"Tread Softly on My Dreams" - Sir Ken Robinson at TED 2010

He's back. Sir Ken Robinson spoke again at TED earlier this year. Entitled "Bring on the Learning Revolution" Sir Ken makes another passionate case for transformation of education systems - not just a reformation of them.
He talks of "dislocation",
He talks of "how do you innovate fundamentally?"
He talks of how we "are enthralled by the linearity in education" and how we take this for granted.
I recall hearing him speak at a conference on the conditions for growth to flourish in Death Valley in the US a few years ago. He makes this point again in this talk.
And he concludes with a very poignant quote from a Yeats poem - hence the title of this post.
Enjoy the 16 minutes.

Sir Ken Robinson extravaganza

I've been a fan of Sir Ken Robinson for a while. He's just updated his web site and has a number of videos on his site which are all examples of digital stories of our time, and the time of the near future for our students. Here are a couple that have some appeal ...

1. Trailer for Lord Putnam's new film



2. Speech to Hammer Museum at UCLA about his book "The Element" in Jan 2009 (1 hr 20 mins)



3. Q TV Interview about The Element (17 mins)



4. 6 minutes of student interview at the London International Music Show 2008.
(If you last to the end, the girls have their own reflections on what SKR had to say, and about their "education" and music. [There are no wrong ways ...]



Thanks for sharing your ideas, Sir Ken.