Beta-Test A Next Gen Learning Management System?

This is 1 of 3 posts spruiking some really cool opportunities on my radar.

First is a chance to beta-test a next generation learning management system (LMS) (an LMS = Moodle, Scholaris, Desire2Learn, etc) which is looking for teachers to test it.

Just head here to get the gist of their system. See below for screenshots. Read on for a bit more info. If you want to pilot their system - click "join the closed beta" here.

You see, I've been meeting with these two 20-something geniuses, Rowan Kuntz and Yohan Dantan every month or two, with some other colleagues, as they've sought input into its development. "Geniuses"? Well, they're smart, insightful and passionate about learning, and have already grown their own medium-sized businesses while in their teens. Read their bios here. I won't be surprised if a big international tries to buy them out, because they've hatched a damn smart little duckling. 

Why am I so excited by it?

• they've been emphatic that they wanted great learning, not content-grinding.
• their system combines structured learning paths with Edmodo-style collaboration and social learning... integrated!
• it allows a central skeleton structure for a main course pathway... while also allowing drag and drop side quests for learners
• it has an integrated learning-analytics PLUS gamification layer, woven into the system, i.e. badges, progress bars, suggested-quests, etc. It's really smart.
• did I mention it's not designed for CONTENT-GRINDING!!  
• it is SCORM compliant... so you can import, for instance, a Moodle course
• the system looks beautiful. Let's face it, most LMSs are ugly. This looks like Apple designed it. 
• it fits BYOD like a glove, with apps for Android, iPhones/iPads, + classic web access for Mac and PC.

So, if the time is right for you, why not drop them a line. They're keen for tests this year or early next year.

(Sneak peek at next two blog posts: #2 is concept of "Big History" and #3 is an amazing new original-resource website by my buddy Adrian Bruce.)

Reflections on Games as Media

Early last year I blogged about how we construct definitions of 'gaming' versus 'real life'. For me, I am fascinated by the acknowledgement of artifice that is invoked as soon as we call something a game.

Just yesterday, Dean Groom posted a lovely long comment, and I thought it a shame to leave it languishing at the bottom of my post, so here it is, below.  Dean tweets here and blogs here. I find Dean's writing to be nuanced, insightful and subversive.

Here's the comment: 

************************************************ 

Hey, thanks for happy comment Steve. What I'm really interested in is this: How do games (as a form of media remediation) change the way in which families negotiate fantasy and reality. I'm mostly talking about kids 7-12, pre adolescents, as there is spotty research. I happen to think kids need to explore the bounds of reality, and have always done this though fantasy - playing out games with anything from shadows, to sticks and more lately games like Minecraft. What I think is significant is that parents now have to learn to deal with games as a media form - having no previous experience (as parents) even if they are players. It adds to the anxiety and dilemmas we all face. As much as I like games, my kids like different ones for different reasons. They negotiate playing them (and the media at swirls around them) in way that I might not like, or even be aware of.

Ultimately I believe that many kids are locked into a commercial hyper-reality which reflects the goals or vast corporations (be that Apple, Google or Rio Tinto). I find it unsettling that teachers are commonlt used as preachers for this. I guess I completely reject the Will Richardson "Blogs, wikis and podcasts" because it failed to deal with the ethical realities that schools (and society) are now dealing with.

To me, games allow some kids to find respite and connectedness. They need fantasy to deal with the relentless pressure for them to be what commercial and political interests wish them to be. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so we bought guitars and hung out in video arcades ... but today that seems impossible for most kids. So why not let them blow stuff up, and be knee deep in gore - as the literature that opposes it yet to prove more than debatable.

To me this is the role of teachers - to take kids to imagined reality of what they could be. I accept there are tests and content, but see no reason that they two things are separated. It matters nothing if teachers or parents don't like games, or don't like the kind of games kids want to play.

Games are simply another layer of the ever evolving cultural literature that is all around us. Play is absolutely real, because it is an autotelic function of the imagination being coerced by our conscious. What we think we are doing and what we are actually doing have been show to be quite different.

The problem with GBL is that it is a commercial hyperbole, which should (but doesn't) present teachers with an instructional method that aligns with outcomes (and what is popular). GBL is simply the act of holding your hand to the sun in order to create shadows, and that is something being driven out of childhood IMO. 

While I can't knock down walls...

After spending a day working with staff at a local state school in Sydney, I received this comment on my blog from a teacher, Natalie Aoun...

“While I can’t knock down walls, I’d like to change the way my classroom looks inside. Can I send you a photo of what my classroom looks like?”

Classroom pre-makeover! 

"While I can't knock down walls, I'd like to change..."  !!!!

I replied and few moments later, Natalie sent my this photo, and some more information...

Natalie also told me her ideas: 

- black painted feature wall for chalk drawing (rather than the pinboards at the back)
- grouped tables
- bean bags/ pillows/ comfy chairs
- floating bookshelves
- 'fan' space (because the girls love their music bands)
- iPod ports for music
- iPad ports for charging, like the way they have it set up in the Apple store (we currently had 3 that were issued to our faculty that are not in use yet)
- fairy lights/ lanterns/ hanging bottles (as suggested by my students in roll call)

In my next reply I put Natalie onto these resources:

Inspiring videos by Ira Socol also here and here. Also the Third Teacher website and video. And blogs by Bianca Hewes and Henrietta Miller and Greg Miyanaga

I mentioned other stuff too, including the idea of using www.freecycle.org where there is a wealth of free stuff being given away by local people.

Before I know it, Natalie has started a blog, AND she's set up two spaces where her students can add ideas, including this virtual "padlet" where her learners contributed to the vision. Scroll down and right to browse through all their ideas: 

Created with Padlet

Where did it go from here? 

Well you'll want to high-tail it over to her blog to see! Here's a sneak peek: 

The blog is a wonderful read - in it you'll find a hilarious conversation with a student starting with "what's the point" and ending with "Omg this is really cool."

And along the way Natalie Aoun is resourceful, creative and proactive. She seeks (and receives) support from the school leadership, gets help from friends outside school, collaborates with the school grounds staff, gets hands-on painting a wall with the students. She puts out word on Facebook and various friends and colleagues get on board.

A transformation takes place!

Grateful that @KYNKgraphics is lending their talent to create a wooden display in our #classroom for student work!

— Natalie Aoun (@spoonofaoun) August 23, 2013

Water on every table!

Where to go with this? 

• first of all, three cheers to Natalie Aoun. Follow her on Twitter, read her blog. What a creative, resourceful, empowered, transformative person!
• from her blog, there is about a gazillion strategies for transforming a space  on a small or zero budget.   Don't tell me what you can't do - Natalie has already done it!
•  'While I can't knock down walls'... what can you do? Plenty!

Natalie's story also illustrates what I've come to see as mission critical in school transformation: Inspiration is a force-multiplier.  

Whereas I keep encountering this assumption over and over again: ???to get transformation we need to give teachers release time???

Why? It seems to be... because they're so exhausted, we can't take ANYTHING MORE on, so we need release time.  

Wrong diagnosis I'm afraid. Why are teachers exhausted? Well, lots of reasons, but release time isn't going to cure it.  

I'm not anti-release time, bring it on, but without inspiration and vision it isn't going to cut the mustard. 

Here are Natalie's words in a recent email to me:

“Hey Steve!

Are the exclamation marks indicative of the mood I am in right now? I hope so! I wrote a proposal last week for the classroom and it just got approved today. I’m so excited! ”

The answer to school transformation does not lie in money or release time, but in vision, inspiration, and resourcefulness.

Why not forward on Natalie's blog to colleagues who might like the inspiration? And if you have a second tip your hat to her on Twitter. 

 P.S. Taxonomy of Frames applied to Natalie's Project:

Note the layers of space involved in her project: physical (furniture, features, etc), virtual (the chalkboard wall), and cultural.

Cultural? Yes because look at the quotes wall: the students themselves have now imprinted messages like "Life stops when you stop dreaming" onto the space itself. It's not just physical & virtual space that will frame their experience from now on, but quite literally the building is clothed in ideas.  

Taxonomy of Frames for Innovation

Here you have it folks, in a 4 minute timelapsed writing + voice narration video. 

Having published a few weeks ago my confidence is growing that this baby is a keeper. It's actually the toolkit of a generalist innovator. "Generalist" sound dull to you? Not me - I am one, proud of it. Study widely different domains and then mash them up.. We can transform education by playing anthropologist, and seeking insights outside the domain. Anyways have a watch - you'll know within seconds if you want to keep going: Read more here, contribute here.

Make Room

Make Room

I have a riddle:

What can you create by taking something away?

- remove tables and chairs...
- remove old displays from walls and windows
- remove the lesson plan
- remove established conventions
- remove the personal histories, and assumptions
- remove goals and expectations
- remove all storage and stored items

Let the clutter fall and a lightness take its place.

You've created a blank slate.

In the clutter, who owned the space? It wasn't the teacher! It sure wasn't the learners.

The space was its own creature, self-perpetuating. The clutter took up the room, vetoing unforeseen discoveries and unrecognised passions.

Now there is room.

Anything could happen. It's a fresh day. It's a new page.

Everything in our field of vision is heavily analysed and processed by our visual cortex and 'adaptive unconscious' - our executive functions are not aware of this, it just gets dished up on a platter... a very full platter.

Those old posters still on the wall are invoking a myriad of tired neural networks, and further, a cascade of associations. It's the weight of the past. The mind uses reference lookup as a default mode, and the process has a hair trigger.

Now you've taken the posters down, and made room. Your visual cortex scans and sees a blank canvas. Subtly the blood flow in your brain shifts to support higher functions; creating the future rather than referencing the past.

An ember-sense of capacity and enlargement grows. The learner feels more receptive and expansive. 

We add back in a few items: liquid chalk for writing on the windows, ordinary chalk for the floor, butcher's paper for the walls.

And we ask: what next? what's on your heart? where shall we go?

Post-Script Vignettes: 

Notes from Frames Taxonomy

Frames are discrete, identifiable, manipulable components of our physical, virtual, mental and cultural contexts. If we don't shape them, they shape us.

- items of furniture are o-frames
- habits, lesson plans, are s-frames
- goals and agendas are n-frames
- our personal histories and sense of established roles are also n-frames

We can create these frames deliberately, but mostly they are just 'spawned' or inherited from the past, and are very often artefacts of our collective neuroses, perpetuating anxiety.

Frames get coded in our the basal ganglia (unquestioned routine) and resisting them can activate the amygdala (fear of social transgression).

Make Room, by Rachel Collis

The notion of 'making space' or 'making room' has become for me a core value in every domain, every situation.

Though your heart's a flickering no-vacancy sign,
Though your heart's forever working overtime,
Though your heart's a suitcase fully packed,
Though your heart's a disregarded artefact -

Love is spacious, love is kind,
So make room. 
Make room.

Though your heart's the city crowds on New Year's Eve,
Though your heart's been struggling for years with no reprieve,
Though your heart's economy class,
Though your heart's perpetually half-mast -

Love is spacious, love is kind,
So make room. 
Make room.

Though the bus is standing room only,
Love's not leaving anyone behind,
So make room.

Though my heart's an insensitive practical joke,
Though you fear I'll strangle you with my yoke,
Though I fight and kick and scratch and scream,

And though I need -

Love is spacious, love is kind,
So make room.

Make room.

For Me at Home 

I try to make room at home, especially room to think/write/draw. 

Today I'm going to order 'aqua notes' that I've been aware of for ages - creating room to write in the shower! Ironically on their website they also have the opposite... pure clutter, in the form of a crossword to do in the shower.  

My love affair with GTD workflow is about finding mental space to be reflective and receptive in the midst of the insane complexity of school life.

In particular, I want to feel like when there is an interruption and someone needs my help or input, I can genuinely make room for them - have a sense of generous, abundant space for them rather than the scarcity of throwaway scraps.

And how much more important is this aspiration when it comes to young learners!