A few weeks ago Lisa Phillips, a Masters student at the University of Oxford, asked for my help in scoping ‘rebellious approaches to educational technology’. I found the questions she asked so provocative and appealing I invited readers of this blog to complete her brief questionnaire.

Lisa followed up that questionnaire by interviewing me yesterday. With her permission, I recorded the conversation and have made it available below (it’s also here).

This study is an exploration of how innovation is defined within the educational technology field: what values and conceptions are ascribed to innovation, how and why programs and ideas get named as innovative, and whether or how we form a shared definition of innovation.

It’s quite long, but I’d love to hear any feedback!

(note that my views aren’t those of JISC, etc.)

Last night, I came across the following passage. It must be quite famous as I’ve stumbled across it before:

But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.

This made me think about Purpos/ed. Andy and I are often asked when we’re going to produce a manifesto, or what the ‘next level’ is. Well, that’s the kind of thinking that got us here in the first place.

Pirsig reminds us that even things that seem purely physical (such as steel) are nevertheless human constructs. Despite seeming permanent and ‘natural’ steel is not a substance that exists in nature. It’s the product of human imagination.

Likewise, there is no ‘state of nature’ for education systems. No natural way that we should organise learning.

We’d do well to remember that sometimes.

On Thursday, Mark Clarkson wrote a blog post that started off like this:

I seriously considered leaving education today. And if I had a viable exit strategy I might have taken it further.

Note the end of that sentence: a young, talented teacher with so much to offer the world feels like he has no ‘viable exit strategy’. There are thousands of teachers up and down the country feeling the same thing.

I should know. A few years ago I was one of them.

You should go and read Mark’s post. If you’re currently a classroom teacher you’ll be nodding your head at the bullet point after bullet point of bureaucratic, administrative nonsense he (and most other teachers) put up with. And if you’re not a teacher, you’ll be shocked.

On top of the ridiculous workload teachers like Mark experience each year, he notes that the benefits aren’t exactly stellar:

At the same time I am told that I will have to work for another 36 years. That I will receive less pension than I was promised… That tests are too easy. That my subject is not good enough. That I need to solve gaps in parenting. That I should receive performance related pay. That teachers are paid too much. That public sector workers in the north are paid too much. That teachers ‘cheat’ when the watchmen come. And today I’m told that ‘teachers don’t know what stress is‘.

I’ve been out of the classroom for just over two years now. And already my wife, a Primary school teacher, has to remind me what it’s like. I consider setting off together for work five minutes late a minor inconvenience. But for her, and many teachers, it can make or break their day. I’m fairly sure teachers know what stress is.

Although I would say this, I think we need a review of what we’re doing when it comes to schools. We can’t keep cannibalising the goodwill of people in an underpaid, overworked, increasingly-attacked profession. I think we need a public debate about the purpose(s) of education.

I’ll give the last word to Mark. He echoes something I used to say repeatedly – until I decided enough was enough:

I’m not leaving teaching today, because there are still too many moments that I enjoy.

…

TEACHING is a great activity. Teaching, at the minute, doesn’t always feel like a great job.

 Image CC BY-NC paulbence

I’m co-kickstarter (with Andy Stewart) of an organisation called Purpos/ed. We’re trying to provoke and sustain public debate around the question What’s the purpose of education?

We’ve had a number of campaigns (and a conference) since we started in February 2011, including a very successful one last year where people contributed 500 words on what they believe to be the purpose(s) of education.

I’m delighted to draw your attention to #500words Take 2, running throughout May 2012. You can see the schedule here: http://bit.ly/purposedu500

If you’d like to follow what’s going on, why not subscribe to the RSS feed, follow us on Twitter (or the hashtag #purposedu), or add us on Google+ or Facebook?

(PS You’re very welcome to send us an ‘unofficial’ contribution – email us at countmein@purposed.org.uk with the link!)

I was delighted to be asked to participate in a DML Central Connected Learning Google+ hangout about Open Badges yesterday. The recording should be embedded above, but if not try clicking here.

The session featured a presentation by Erin Knight, Senior Director of Learning at the Mozilla Foundation, and was facilitated by Howard Rheingold.

If you like this, you’ll also be interested in the webinar Erin and her colleague Michelle Levesque ran for the JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme last Friday. In that session, they discussed Mozilla’s work around web literacies.

Check that webinar out here, along with Erin’s write-up.

1. The social element (you don’t seem to get this at, for example, Codecademy)
2. Filling in gaps in my knowledge (I didn’t learn any of this sequentially; sometimes I’m missing some building blocks)
3. Reviewing other people’s work (some people obviously do the bare minimum, others are super-dedicated)
4. The opportunity to become a mentor (once you’ve learned something, there’s the opportunity to then teach it)

An example of the second item on my list is the P2PU task Some Tags for You to Meet. I learned about the <time> and the <q> HTML tags, the former being used to provide a machine-readable way of parsing the start of, for example, an event. The latter is used for short quotations that are included within a paragraph of text. Handy.

There’s plenty more of these on the Mozilla Developer Network but, for the time being that’s enough.

If you’re an educator you should be all over P2PU like a rash. Seriously.

Lisa Phillips is a Masters student in the Learning & Technology programme at the University of Oxford Department of Education. She got in touch with me yesterday asking for some help.

Busy with the scoping part of her MSc, Lisa is looking for ‘rebellious’ approaches to educational technology – “approaches that challenge, subvert or transform educational norms.” She wants to understand how these approaches came about and what prompted/enabled individuals to think ‘outside the box’.

I’m really interested in this.

Instead of just give her my response and limited expertise, I thought I’d open it out to my readership. Here’s how you can help:

1. Read the following:

Many different groups, such as policy makers, educationalists, teachers, and the business sphere, generate ideas about how to incorporate technology into education. Yet, a critical look at the field would note that the majority of ideas in educational technology exist within a set “box” of education norms, replicating class-based, teacher-led, subject-specific delivery norms in the current education system. Therefore, approaches to integrating technology tend to reflect and reinforce the education structure that already exists. This dissertation will look at approaches to using educational technologies that have the potential to challenge, subvert or transform some aspects of school practice; what I choose to call, for the purposes of this study, “rebellious” approaches. An abstract is attached.

2. Answer the questions in the Google Form below.

[This survey is now closed - thanks to all those who helped!]

Thanks for your contribution!

Image CC BY-NC-SA Leonard John Matthews

Dave seems to have taken issue with the ‘over-simplification’ of badges. I think he’s arguing that (informal?) education is too complex a problem for badges to be the solution.

The more I think about it, the more I think we were talking at cross-purposes. He was (again, I think) talking about explaining complexity whereas I was talking about solutions towards solving complex problems. I may be wrong.

Additionally, I have read precisely zero articles or books on complexity and chaos theory. Dave probably has read lots.

I’d love to know what you make of it.

Dave:

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the foil. Everything i see here, however nicely argue and layer out, still leads to the same thing. Someone has to agree on what the targets are.

In the ‘automatic/skill’ sections, they are only automatic in time, at some point, someone had to create an artifice that separates the world into things that ‘can be reached’

In the application/Community section, the rewards are going to be as much about sociality and power than they will be about ‘recognition’. The problem with the badge in this case, is that it divorces the ‘reward’ from the context of power and sociality.

I don’t see how any of your practical applications allow us to apply badges to complexity. Given this… we move things towards simple knowledge. This is not the direction I”m hoping to go in… how about you? Do you see a way that badges can support complexity?

Doug:

Hi Dave, thanks for the comment.

In response:

1. For something to be credentialised there has to be a ‘thing’ to be credentialised. That can be a target set by anyone – but yes, there needs to be a target. Otherwise there’d be no point in the credential, right?

2. I find the ‘X will be Y’ part of your position problematic. As I’ve argued above, I see badges as an emergent ecosystem. I agree there’s going to be issues around power and control. But then, *every* system has those issues. Don’t they?

3. I believe that the ‘answer’ (if there is one) to complexity is simplicity. It’s something tangential to badges, as far as I see them, but to assume that complex problems require complex answers needs a bit more explanation/evidence to my mind.

I’d love to discuss this synchronously sometime.

Dave:

Hey Doug,

1. Credentialing requires a thing to be credentialised. Maybe not… at least not rings in terms of small pieces of knowing. I’m not purposefully trying to split hairs here, but I feel comfortable with someone who knows how to do something saying “that person over there can now do this thing”. That’s how mentorship and apprenticeship tends to work. We went down the DACUM road, for instance, to try and break that into pieces that could be ‘things to be credentials’. Many colleges have moved away from this because it kinda misses the point of knowing things. I see badges as a potential return to the DACUM view of the world.

2. Badges may or may not be part of an ‘emerging ecosystem’ whatever that might mean, but no, not every system has the same issue. Some systems try to leave things IN their context so they can be understood as part of a whole. Others are designed to REMOVE them from context. I think that’s pretty different.

3. I don’t know what “simplicity is the answer to complexity” could possibly mean… so i’m assuming we don’t mean the same thing when we say complexity. If answering the question “how do I raise my child to be a good person” (in my mind, a very important, and obviously complex question) has a simple answer I’d love to hear it.

I imagine the ‘parenting badges’ that would be the response to that, and I imagine them forcing ‘parenting types’ and ‘parenting stages’ and ‘child types’ and ‘child stages’ on the world.

Doug:

Hi Dave,

1. So the person over there who can now do this thing gets the Dave Cormier seal of approval. That may or may not be a badge. I don’t know.

2. I’m unsure of your point here – especially given that there’s an evidence layer to badges? Isn’t that the context right there?

3. I’m guessing you haven’t got a parenting manual. Certainly my two didn’t come with one. So I’m approaching them with love. A simple answer to complex behaviours. Working OK so far…

I’m definitely *not* of the opinion that badges are the answer to everything. Nor do I believe that badges should replace the existing qualifications/credentials/awards we’ve got. What it *does* provide, however, is an alternative that we all get to shape.

And I can’t see how that’s a bad thing.

Dave:

Well… a little rhetorical bantering and heart string tugging.

On twitter… you say “i’m falling into the either or camp”

Whether i am or not is not relevant to the discussion here. It’s a nice rhetorical move, but it doesn’t change the discussion. I have concerns about badges and the oversimplification of knowledge and attainment particularly as it decontextualizes power, social-ness and privilege.

1. Yes. a dave cormier seal of approval (assuming a community thought i knew anything) would be just fine. I don’t think that’s ‘badge’ as you have defined it here. Badge, as I understand your interpretation, is an ‘agreed upon standard’ by some standard agreeing upon group.

2. No. an ‘evidence layer’ is not what i mean by context. Context is the space in which the learning/knowledge/thingy was negotiated. Not the ‘things that the standards group decided was evidence’.

3. Love is a very nice sentiment… but all it means is that i have to move to a different example. How about the world energy issues or something else. Do you comune with love to decide whether it makes sense for you child to have a cupcake… or do you think about the balance between their wanting it and enjoying it and the sugar it contains.

I have in no way suggested that they aren’t an interesting option we should try. You have read that on to me. I have said that in your commentary you haven’t addressed complexity. You have responded by saying ‘complexity doesn’t exist, your jus tasking the question wrong’.

If that is your position… cool. But is it really? Do you really think the world is a simple place where simple answers to questions like poverty, overpopulation, education i the third world will actually work?

I got asked recently “how do we go about training 500 million new people in the next 9 years?’ Complex problem. Simple solution?

Doug:

Hmmm… this is exactly the kind of thing I want to avoid. :-/

“I have concerns about badges and the oversimplification of knowledge and attainment particularly as it decontextualizes power, social-ness and privilege.”

If you say that ‘X means Y’ and I disagree, then we’re falling into opposing camps. Neither of us can point to any evidence. Because there isn’t any. Yet.

“I have said that in your commentary you haven’t addressed complexity. You have responded by saying ‘complexity doesn’t exist, your jus tasking the question wrong’.”

Where/when did I say ‘complexity doesn’t exist’? I’m fairly sure I said that the way to approach complex problems is to try to apply simple solutions. That’s vastly different.

And the answer to your question about training 500 million people in the next 9 years? One person at a time. Not as facetious as it sounds.

Dave:

doug.

Re: x means y. There is always and never evidence. I have described how i think it moves towards the simplification of knowledge. Badges are not exactly ‘new’ in concept just because they’ve been branded differently.

re: complexity – if you are saying that ‘there are simple answers’ then we aren’t using the word ‘complexity’ the same way. If you say ‘apply simple solutions’ you are changing the meaning of complexity. Something that is complex, like a weather pattern, doesn’t have a simple explanation. If you say it does, we’re having two separate conversations.

Saying it has a ‘simple solution’ is saying it is not ‘complexity’.

If it’s not facetious, i don’t know what it is. 1 at a time isn’t not a scaling solution for India’s education problem.

Doug:

I’m not quite sure how we got from alternative forms of credentialing to weather patterns, but hey.

You’ve subtlely shifted from ‘solving problems’ to ‘explaining them’. They’re two different beasts. I can go to umbrellatoday.com to solve my immediate problem of whether to take an umbrella to work with me or not. I don’t need to explain how weather systems work to do so. It’s a simple solution to a (potentially) complex problem.

I don’t think India’s education problem has much, if anything, to do with badges directly. If you’re saying that it’s an example of a complex problem then, yes, I’d say that you/they/whoever are looking at it in the wrong way.

I’m out. Perhaps we could follow this up with blog posts?

Have YOU got any comments on our discussion? I’d love to hear them!

Image CC BY-NC-SA Dunechaser

PS The exchange inspired Terry Wassall to write this post.

My latest post about Open Badges has gone live at DMLcentral. In it, I argue that we don’t need to take entrenched positions towards what is, after all, an emergent ecosystem. I also give an example of badges in practice through Chicago’s Digital Youth Network.

Click here to view the post.

I’d love your feedback on this.