Top trends in Learning Technologies: a bluffer's guide

Do you know your MOOCs from your OERs?
Are you BYOD while flipping the classroom?
Have a look at our quick guide to the top trends in Learning Technology. What they are. What they mean. And how to see through the hype enough to be able to talk confidently about them!

• OER - Open Educational Resources
• Mobile Learning
• Game based Learning
• Learning Analytics
• MOOC - Massively Open Online Courses
• Flipped Classrooms
• BYOD - Bring your own Device
• Coding for Kids

OER - Open Educational Resources:

Historically, there has been an uncomfortable relationship between publishers, and educators. Who owns the rights to the content used during teaching? How much gets paid for the books and resources? Is that profit going to improved content, or happy shareholders.
Enter the OER movement. Open educational resources that an be used, modified and shared, for free. Momentum seems to be moving faster in some countries than others, but many heavyweight backers, funders and institutions are starting to put their money, and weight behind the idea that educational resources should be made available, for free.
It is still a fairly disconnected movement, with many different stakeholders, and many different definitions of "free" and "open". But a huge range of very good resources, and publications have already been freed up, and in some admirable cases teams of educators are working together to write their own, collaborative text books as open alternatives to commercial ones.
Special mention here should go to Creative Commons, who offer a very simple licensing model, to help users understand exactly how free, or open some reused content is.
Verdict: OER is very significant. If you are using government funding to generate new resources, think seriously about making them available to all.

Mobile Learning:
Much hyped, only moderately understood. Mobile learning is a term used when mobile devices are woven into a learning, or training scenario. Often, but not always where the learner themselves is mobile. It has found some significant success in areas where traditional training, or learning are not working that well (hard to reach learners, travelling employees) as well as triggering a rethink about traditional e-learning modules - since mobile is great for instantaneous lookup, and small snack-based learning, but a poor tool for a drawn out e-learning course.
The most important thing to bear in mind is that it isn't one things. It is a toolbox of approaches that you pick from as needed. So conversations about mobile learning "at school", are likely to be massively different from "at university", and different again from "at work".
My team have been dedicated to this niche for quite a few years - if you want to dig deeper, look around the site!
Verdict: m-learning is already making huge impact in niche areas. and will continue to do so - but don't assume it replaces face-to-face experience. Think of it more as an enricher / enhancer, and be suspicious of vendors promoting shiny equipment, or mega complex systems. Make sure they are supporting real learning.

Game based learning:

This has been described as the "next big thing" for at least the past 10 years. Two disastrous models, often repeated are:

1. interesting game, often of first-person adventurer / puzzle solving variety, with really naff 2-d content quizzes scattered through it. A fun game ruined by lame learning.
2. linear e-learning style content course, with series of quizzes and knowledge tests that have been built up into a contest / competition format. But the "game" is just proving your content knowledge

(I may be being a little cruel - since there are some examples of the latter working well, where drill and practise is useful. Like language learning. Or maths skills)
Two interesting, and more successful models are:

1. playing a real game, designed for entertainment, but setting challenges within it that build on learning. (Tym Rylands has been doing this for years, with Myst)
2. doing real, learning tasks. But using a badging system to show progress, and gains. (Mozilla's Open Badges framework offer goodtools for this)

Verdict: Mixing play with learning has always been effective, and will continue to be so. But rubbish-quality resources don't magically improve by adding a quiz at the end, a leader board, and some badges. Make sure the learning is right, before diving into a large, complex system

Learning Analytics:
This is Big Data for learning. Using data management tools to pull in multiple sources of information about your learners, and then using that to understand, in greater depth, what their needs are. Why just look at data from the LMS, when you can also find out about sickness records, library access, unpaid fines, club memberships and even what they eat at the canteen!
This can work. But you need seriously advanced data skills not to be misled, and robust data ethics in place not  abuse what you know.
Verdict: Very powerful possibilities. Both for supporting learners in new, and meaningful ways. And for abusing what you know about them. Resist the urge to exclude failing learners rather than investing in them. Definitely worth engaging with - but keep a firm grip on the ethics :-)

MOOC - the Massively Open Online Course:

MOOCs are learning websites - often free - designed to offer learning to many thousands of students at the same time. They have been around for quite a few years, but suddenly hit the big-time, thanks to recent backing from some big universities, and some high profile start-ups. But the hype is also slightly skewed to one specific genre of MOOC.
Why the hype: Several big universities have started offering free access to their course materials. This is extremely cool (since a poor student at an under-resourced school can now access the same content as a MIT graduate), but has caused all sorts of uncomfortable knock on effects. Can the poor student now get a degree from MIT? Is the distance experience of an equivalent quality to a residential student? Should they pay?
Unfortunately these debates have entirely skewed the public perceptions about MOOCs. They are NOT just a vehicle to distribute pre-recorded lectures. Many of the most inspired MOOCs are not modelled on a traditional lecture / classroom based experience at all, but rather built on learner centered, connectivist ideas, where the students work.
To try to distinguish between these, one of the founders of the MOOC movement has suggested renaming them xMOOC and cMOOC - with xMOOCs being the ones modelled on a traditional lecture based experience (handing over the knowledge) and cMOOCs being the collaborative ones, where learners work together to generate the knowledge.
High profile examples of xMOOCs include:

• FutureLearn - launched by Open University in UK
• Coursera – spun out of Stanford
• edX – spun out of harvard & MIT
• udacity – originated with a stanford Artificial Intelligence course.

Or examples that break away from formal university courses, but use a similar model:

• Peer-to-Peer University (P2PU)
• Udemy

cMOOCs would include:

• MobiMOOC - annual event focussed on mobile learning

I suggest we add one more type: domainMOOCs. MOOCs designed for individual access to teach a specific subject. Or to make the content available for free, to be used in other platforms

• CodeAcademy - building software programs. Dynamic marking and guidance
• Khan Academy - custom paths through maths learning modules
• Open Study
• MIT OpenCourseware
• Ted-ed – not quite the same, but TED's own open learning initiative

And if this all feels like too much - there are even sites trying to offer indexes to all of these courses: www.class-central.com
Verdict: Are making an important impact on open, shared learning. But if you get cornered by a university lecturer with strong opinions about MOOCs destroying higher education, bear in mind that he may have his head stuck in one specific debate (xMOOC vs traditional university degree) and be missing the big picture. And the real gains!

Flipped Classrooms:
If so much information is available online, and quality time with your teacher is hard to find … why waste the time you DO have together by sitting quietly in your chair, and listening to a lecture. Far better, perhaps, to watch the lecture recorded before you come into class, and then spend the face-to-face time discussing it, asking questions, doing activities. This is the idea behind the flipped classroom, and it has some great success stories around it
verdict: Simple, yet effective reminder that face-to-face time is valuable, and ought to be used to help understanding, rather than just broadcast the facts

BYOD
Bring Your Own Devices refers to initiatives to allow students / employees to use their own, personal devices at work, or at school, as an official part of their day. There are a wide range of views about this, though in most scenarios it is a useful and empowering approach. In schools, the main concerns are about classroom management, and fairness of access. In the workplace, concerns range from privacy of personal data, to security of corporate data.
verdict: BYOD is here to stay. Organisations need to adapt their policies to support them, and minimise the risks, rather than resisting the use of personal devices (which puts them into an arms-race to provide equivalent devices, and access themselves)

Coding for Kids:

For some reason that nobody in the tech world can fathom, very few kids today are really learning to become coders, or hackers. Rather their use of IT tends to focus on using pre-made software packages (powerpoint, office, etc). This despite the awesome work done by people like Seymour Papert over 30 years ago encouraging kids to build and create with computers, rather than just operate them. The past few years have seen a strong revival in this area, with multiple initiatives spraining up around the world encouraging kids to code.
Just google "coding for kids" for a fantastic selection of them
verdict: If we truly want our kids to be in control of technology (and not the other way around), support your local coding for kids initiative!
(Having said that, I still haven't managed to enlighten my teenage daughter. Maybe doing the same work as your dad will never be cool, whatever it is!)



I hope you enjoyed our round-up of the latest trends in learning technology, and found enough in there to help you bluff your way through a conversation about it.

Wave Riding Theory - a fresh look at learning technology adoption

Is there a gap between mobile learning theory, and practice?

How should teachers decide which approaches, technologies, or approaches to adopt with their mobile learning?

As part of my session at MobiMOOC 2012 we explored some of the current theories often applied to m-learning, trying to map them to practice.

Together with my team, we have been deeply involved in mobile learning (both envisioning it, and making it) for over 11 years, but very little of that time has been spent in pure theory, so it was an interesting exercise mapping some of the current theories to live examples, and then discussing with the attendees where the gaps lay (and how we might bridge them)

In the process, we realised that the most crucial step any practitioners needed to take was realising that mobile is coming at them whether they are ready or not. It is not a flood that can be stopped, more a wave that needs to be ridden! This wave-riding theme kept growing, as we discussed the different approaches to coping with the myriad of available devices and approaches, until it became a theory in it's own right!

The basic tenet of this, is an awareness that mobile consumer technologies are rushing towards us whether we are fully prepared for them or not. Already, more smartphones are sold than PCs, and a huge majority of our learners will use their mobile device as their primary reference / communication / collaboration tool (even if it is for Facebook!)

Rather than try to hold back the tide, our role as educational-techies is to help practitioners learn how to ride it. The wave is rushing at us regardless. It won't wait till we have perfected our art. Instead we just need to jump on, and learn as we ride.

We used this surfing-metaphor to look at various aspects of mobile learning, to extract our key advice. The next slides show advice both for Learning Designers, and for Implementers:

1: The importance of trial and error. Start small. Practice. Keep improving.

2: Keeping supple and flexible.

3: Building in resilience. Prepare for the unexpected.

4: Success is as ART as much as a science.

What do you think? Does the wave-riding metaphor work for you?

The mobiMOOC attendees certainly thought so, encouraging me to do this post, and proceeding to work with us to develop their own top tips for m-learning practitioners

I hope you find them useful!

MobiMOOC 2012: Mind the Gap

This morning I completed the second of two online presentations as part of MobiMOOC 2012 (an online, free to access course on mobile learning).

 Initially, when I was asked to do a session on "mLearning pedagogy and learning theory" I thought they had the wrong guy. I have been deeply involved in mobile learning (both envisioning it, and making it) for over 11 years, but very little of that time has been spent in pure theory.

Almost all my time has been spent trying to understand how to REALLY make mobile learning work, in a meaningful and practical way. Not just the theory, but the real down-n-dirty practice. Together with my team we have been building apps / authoring tools / SMS engines / platforms / mobilized content and then using these with hard-to-access learners across the globe, trying to figure out what really does work, and add benefit.

After confessing this to the organisers, it turned out that this was exactly why they wanted our input, so we did a session titled Mind the Gap (or, where mlearning theory meets practice)

This is the ppt we did. There is also a youtube recording of the entire session!



Our main approach was to:

1. explore briefly some of the academic theory, and frameworks often mentioned in mobile learning
2. discuss the challenges in really making use of them, practically
3. work together to propose some suggestions / guidelines
4. look at a few real life examples. Projects my team have been involved in.

Feedback from the online attendees was overwhelmingly positive, and we had an animated debate running in parallel (with huge thanks to my colleague, Jo Colley, for keeping it flowing).

What do you think of the issues, and ideas?

Mobile Learning at TEDxLondon

Geoff Stead presents mobile learning as a tool for empowerment at TEDxLondon – a TED event dedicated to shaking up education

Original slides available on slideshare

Presentations by the other (amazing!) co-presenters on the TEDxLondon site

Transcript:

I’d like to introduce you to a word. Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is an African concept that doesn’t translate easily into English. It means “I am me because of us”, “I grow myself by helping others around me to grow”.

It is an awesome word. I try to live my life by it. And it is the philosophy behind the projects I would like to tell you about.

Mobile phones have become part of our lives. There are more phones in the developed world than people. The developing world is catching up fast. Mobile connectivity is transforming how we communicate. And where.  And when. It has fundamentally changed how we look up information. It has generated new kinds of job that didn’t even exist 10 years ago. New types of entertainment.  New forms of art.

So why not new ways to learn?

This is already happening - it is called mobile learning. Bringing mobile devices and phones into the class to enhance learning.

Smartphones are like a swiss army knife, packed with school friendly tools:
They are cameras, writing tools, eBook readers, calculators, diaries, reference books. You have the entire web in your hand

But more importantly they are agents for change - encouraging new ways of teaching

    * Learner centered: Learning is mobile and can happen anywhere. It can happen anytime: in or out of school. It can be collaborative. It can also be intensely private.
    * Teacher is no longer the source of all facts, but rather a collaborator and guide
    * The encourage lots of future skills like those listed on the slide

In the UK I mostly work with learners NOT in school. Kids who have dropped out. Young offenders. The unemployed. Adults in training but struggling to read and write. People for whom traditional school didn’t work out. I build software to support their learning – regularly making use of mobile phones as a stimulus. But a few years ago I happened to meet a fellow South African who shared my passion for education, and wanted to take these same ideas back into South Africa, to mainstream schools

And we did! The projects are collectively called m-ubuntu, and use mobile learning as a stimulus to encourage critical debate between teachers, and improve the quality of teaching.

They take refurbished smartphones, with some educational software and tools installed onto them, and use them to improve teaching and learning. The results have been inspiring. Local teachers even won a grant from the US to go to Washington and share what they had learned with American teachers!

But the successes are not down to putting smartphones into poor schools – they are about using them as an agent for change.

The real wins happen when teachers work with other teachers to discuss how best to use these new tools.

<< stepping through a range of photos from the project >>

Of course these happy photos only tell a fragment of the story. There are some challenging new skills to learn for both students and teachers. What happens if they are stolen? Or if students give away personal data? What about internet safety? Or plagiarism. By working on these challenges together, the real value kicks in . Students get engaged and build real life skills

Mobile learning is certainly here to stay. It may be initially disruptive – but isn’t that exactly the stimulus we need to help focus education towards the future?

If you want to try this for yourself, here are my 3 top tips:

1. Firstly – don’t be constrained by pre-packaged learning resources. Think of the smartphone as a tool to do stuff. Record music. Film a movie. Build an app. This is what they are made for, and makes for the best learning.
2. Secondly – It won’t be right first time, but if you try again it will get better. And the time after than even better. It is OK to make mistakes – so plan in flexibility
3. Thirdly – Share the learning with your students. Discuss mobile learning with them. Let the kids learn the details about the phones, and become your technical support. By building autonomy and problem solving skills they will be learning some real future skills

mLearnCon presentation

I have just finished a very enjoyable discussion-filled presentation at mLearnCon – a mobile learning conference in Silicon Valley arranged by the eLearningGuild.

My session was all about helping the mostly US audience look a little wider at international m-learning projects, to see what lessons could be learned for the many current m-learning projects that are starting up right now

See below for the presentation we gave – comments (as always) welcomed

m-learning across the world

View more presentations from TribalSlides

m-learning at the White House!

Our work with m-uBuntu has suddenly gone global - two weeks ago we were sitting in a rural school in South Africa, and this week we are in Washington, DC with four of the students presenting our work!

We were picked as one of 3 projects to showcase Mobile Learning to the White House officials who spearhead technology-assisted learning initiatives in the US. 
 

By “we”, I mean Tribal (Jess) and Duke University (Lucy), masterminded by the ever energetic Theo at LearningWorldwide who turned this dream into a reality.

At the event, a Global Digital Media and Learning competition was launched in collaboration with Presidents Obama’s Educate to Innovate initiative, ‘challenging designers, inventors, entrepreneurs and researchers to create digital environments that promote building & tinkering in new innovative ways’.

Following Jess’s travelogue, it seems that the highlights were a double whammy of:

• meeting the Aneesh Chopra, first Federal Chief Technology Officer of the United States of America, and
  
• taking the students out for pizza!

See what the students themselves have to say.

This is deeply moving stuff. Children who had not even touched a mobile phone before using it to build literacy skills. And the project is working!

Go m-Ubuntu! it is a pleasure to work with you.

m-learning in South Africa

We are back in South Africa again this week, this time working with Spectrum Primary school, and Lucy Haagen (of Duke University) to continue the very successful m-Ubuntu project

Spectrum have been part of the m-Ubuntu project, and working with mobiles for a year already, though this is Tribal’s first visit – what a great group of kids! For a blow-by-blow account of the visit, as well as some great ideas for how you can use mobile devices in your own classroom, please visit Jess’s blog.

mLearning in the House of Lords

I am just back from a very enjoyable hour spent in the House of Lords with Lord Lucas, discussing new technologies for learning and looking at some of our mobile learning works.

A very interesting man. Like other IT-savvy Lords, he uses his blog and to be open and honest with his views – and has a special interest in home-access and support for parents.

He was very enthusiastic about many of our learning technology initiatives, especially any that encourage providers to have less dependence on short term funding initiatives, and more on successful learning.

In particular, he liked:

• m-learning (of course), both in the UK and the 3rd World. We was particularly interested in some of the big UK successes, like Wolverhampton’s Learning2Go, which for some reason hadn’t yet crossed the House Of Lords radar. 
  
• NCETM – the National Centre of Excellence in Teaching Maths that we run to support CPD in all maths teachers across the UK
  
• The online learning portals we run for Sainsbury’s, McDonalds, Wetherspoons, KFC and other employers (using our AdvanceLearningZone platform and an army of amazing home-based tutors & mentors)
  
• The learning Score – A lesson planning tool that is still in Beta, and just creeping out of our labs which we are lucky enough to have endorsed by many of the great and good in UK learning technology

Wow – heady stuff!

I learned a new term - “target chasing” – both providers, and suppliers focussing on current government targets and losing sight of the real goals of education that underpin that (and was secretly relieved that he felt our initiatives / tools / approaches didn’t fit that category!) 

I hope that he left the meeting as enthused as we did … I assumed so (but maybe that is just British politeness!)

mobile learning in africa …

Much excitement in our Cambridge office as we pack our bags for … Grabouw (“where”, you ask?). Come on … Grabouw! Major fruit growing region a few hours out of Cape Town, South Africa!
For almost a year we have been sponsoring a few South African schools with online coaching, and access to all our software via the US based charity learningacademyworldwide, but thus far it was all virtual.

Together with Theophilus van Rensburg Lindzter and Lucy Haagen (Duke University) we are working on m-uBuntu (m-ubuntu.org) – trying to use mobile learning to deliver more project-based, reflexive learning into hard to reach schools.
Well – as luck would have it, the US team were unable to do one of their trips, and have asked us to help out!
Hooray!
We are travelling out there tomorrow to De Rust Futura Academy, with a oversize bag stuffed with mobile devices, cables, cameras and assorted bits & pieces in what Theo enthusiastically calls a mobile classroom, and will be spending much of the next two weeks working with the students and getting a crash-course in the South African school curriculum.

All the usual flurry of device-rollout has been going on:
- badging them all up / cataloguing so we can tell them apart
- upgrading all the e-book readers / media players / browsers
- download of our top software picks for learning
- e-books and audio files versions of the poems and stories they are studying
- custom built content (using our MyLearning Author)
And they are now all safely tucked away, and ready to travel

Jess hopes to post snapshots of her visit on her very first blog - http://m-learningtravels.blogspot.com so please stop by and drop her a comment or two.
wish us luck!

elearningdebate – but what are we learning?

I spent several very fun hours at the Oxford Union last night, enjoying a (non)debate on the whether e-learning is up for the challenge of preparing learners for tomorrow.

The good and the great of e-learning were there. Entertaining arguments were put forth both for and against. It was very enjoyable, and a great brand-positioning event for the sponsors.

But the frustrating thing is that there WAS no REAL debate! Both sides seemed in total agreement that:

• right now, there is some great e-learning, and some rubbish e-learning
• we should all strive to make it better / more inclusive / richer / more collaborative
• the term “e-learning” is sometimes shackled unfairly to the driest-end of the page-turning (“paper behind glass”) spectrum, when really we all know that it should embrace all digital modes and media
• e-learning is never the sole solution for all students. But it is a growing part of the solution for many students (including some who would never have studied without it!)

 

So – ermmm – not too much of a debate then!

 

Maybe I missed something. The twitter universe seems more positive. it just felt to me that much of the argument ended up around semantics and word definitions. Both sides effectively willing us to vote for them if we wanted e-learning to get better. In the end the NOs got more votes than the AYEs, but only by all asking us all to vote on the same thing!

That said – the speakers were fantastic fun, with some great quotes, we all enjoyed it.

 

The saddest bit for me was that there was hardly ANY mention of mobile learning, and mobile connectivity. It seems that for most of the speakers “e-learning” is still stuck on a big-screen multimedia PC connected to the web with a high speed cable.

Doh! get with it guys!

 

The real benefit of Learning with Technology is all about reach. Getting to learners where they are, when they need it, on their own terms. if you can’t do that with your e-learning you are missing the best bits of the experience!

 

thanks again to all involved

m-learning interview ...

Getting started with m-learning?

Interested in what works?

Jo and I were recently interviewed about all the work we have been doing in m-learning, trying to summarise what works, and what doesn't.

If you have 10 minutes to spare, sit back and have a look.





message to the m-veterans: please send us your comments and thoughts to the blog!

5 year olds need mobile, playful ICT instead of laptops!

Teaching ICT to primary aged children using tools designed for office-based adults isn't the best approach.

This is the result of a study recently completed at Stirling University in Scotland, which found that it was far more helpful to get them started with the technologies that fit more naturally into their lives: digital cameras, video cameras, electronic keyboard, barcode scanners and mobile phones.

The TES ran a great article on the study this week (pg 34?), and although the full version is not available on the university website just yet, it is expected shortly.

The Tribal m-learning team have had similar, very positive experiences with Key Stage One children using our resources. We recently visited a primary school in Wolverhampton, part of the Learning2Go initiative, and were bowled over by the inspirational mix of PDA activities, class-based learning, and paper-based worksheets.

Robin C, the class teacher, had used our MyLearning Autoring tool to build text based activities, using words from the Oxford Reading Tree scheme. He them made paper-based worksheets to extend these activities further. The mix of book, PDA, differentiated worksheets and class-interaction was very engaging. even the most hyperactive of his 5-6 year olds was totally absorbed in their task.

Kids with a 2 minute attention span were sitting, engrossed, for a good half-hour!

Robin, we think you and your class rock! Keep up the inspiration!