* Thinglab ... Exciting New Ideas And Technology *
There has never been a more exciting time with learning.
With the Internet, social media and mobile technology we have never been more connected - there has never been a more exciting time to learn.
There has never been a more exciting time with technology.
With new technologies such as virtual reality, 3D printing, 360 imagery, 3D imagery, the Internet of Things, drones, robots and artificial intelligence becoming available to the general public - there has never been a more exciting time in technology.
Maker culture emphasises a DIY, informal, social, peer and shared learning motivated by fun and self-fulfilment. "The Web We Lost" emphasises open, connected social technologies and ways of doing things. Web Squared emphasises the exponential potential when new technologies meet Web 2.0 ideas of open, social, and DIY participation in the real world ... "when web meets world". Connectivism emphasises the role of social and cultural context - that people learn through contact, connection and experience. Connectivism embraces technology, diversity and continuous life-long learning - it is "a learning theory for the digital age" Surf and Learn
Inspired by Maker culture, "The Web We Lost", "Web Squared" and Connectivism inspireNshare Thinglab explore new approaches with education and technology - emphasising open, social, informal, "freestyle" and experimental methods ...... "where web meets world" we surf and learn.
Heads On Hands On .. HOHO Learning
InspireNshare Thinglabs are not just about ideas - that would be "Thinklab". InspireNshare Thinglabs are about ideas and experiences - Heads On Hands On (HOHO) to enjoy and have some fun :)
Any Thing
InspireNshare Thinglabs are not just about digital - that would be "Digilab". While digital technology is important, InspireNshare Thinglabs are about 'things" .... artefacts, paper, hand-tools, analogue, art, craft .... even magic, as well as digital.
Bob Harrison gives an update on recent education and technology policy and political movements in the UK further education and schools sectors.
Bob has extensive experience in schools and colleges as Teacher, Senior Manager, Principal and Governor and advisor to the UK Government Department of Business Innovation & Skills on the strategic review of Further Education. He is Chair of governors at Northern college, vice chair of governors at Trafford school, on the board of the UfI Trust and the YMCA, is a Judge for the TES FE Awards and is education advisor for Toshiba Northern Europe- you can read his full biography at http://www.setuk.co.uk/bio/
Three years on from the start of FELTAG Bob is pleased with the progress so far and the action “on the ground” - one piece of evidence of this is that applications this year for the TES award “outstanding use of technology for improving teaching and learning” are much more about the systematic application of technology across institutions rather than little bottom up piloted innovative things.
Bob finds that education bodies like the SFA, ofsted and ofqual are more sympathetic, informed and understanding about the use of technology in teaching and learning and as a consequence the barriers to the use of technology in teaching and learning and are being lowered.
Bob was invited to join the BIS advisory group for the FE area based reviews and has challenged the mindset of policymakers. The first guidelines that came out for the area reviews mentioned digital technology as almost a footnote and afterthought … it’s was almost like “in the new landscape of FE providers should look at the use of technology for back office savings”. For Bob this didn’t reflect the potential of technology in education and he feels comfortable that he took the opportunity to make sure that the spirit of FELTAG is embedded in the guidance for the FE area reviews.
Bob says that the FE providers that thrive after the area based reviews will have a digital mindset as they approach planning for the future and thinks that those colleges that don’t embed the spirit of FELTAG in their thinking about the future won’t survive.
Bob reminds us of the complete misunderstanding that some providers have of the FELTAG 10% -idiots that say that they will have to go round and check that 10% of every lesson is being done online have failed to understand FELTAG.
Bob feels increasingly confident that the principles behind FELTAG are starting to have an impact in the sector and that FELTAG has done more than BECTA and JISC managed to achieve.
As technology has diffused through the education system its application has become more systemic with senior managers focusing on its use for business, systems and “back office” functions rather than for teaching and learning.
One of the myths that Bob wants to dispel is that technology can be used to cut costs and save money. Bob publicly challenged the FE commissioner - in his naivety and lack of understanding about online, blended and digital learning and the false assumption that it is cheaper and leads to economy and less teachers. This is nonsense - it may lead to efficiencies in the long term but not from reducing teachers but from efficiencies in access - allowing learners to access resources better and for longer and in releasing some of the assets that are trapped in the land and buildings of the education estate.
Bob says the whole asset base of FE is predicated on a model of education and training that is steeped in the industrial past, predicted on mechanical engineering, shipbuilding, coal, steel and textiles, so that the process thinking behind education and training limits our ability to take advantage of digital technology. Bob spends so much of his time going around the country speaking at events, running workshops and talking about the need to think differently and to have a paradigm shift away from the mindset that thinks “how can we ram technology into our existing processes … we’ve got this land, these building and these teachers on these contracts who turn up at these times now how do we add technology …. Let's put a few whiteboards in”. Bob says there are a lot of principles, CEOs and governing bodies who have the mindset that technology will save money on back office and that they can just “shove some stuff online and it will make things a lot cheaper”. This is time limited and restricted thinking - its this is not paradigm thinking, this is forcing new wine into old bottles.
Bob says that education and technology change are not technology issues but management process and cultural issues - we should thinking about how we can improve learning using technology and then about what technology we need.
Technology hasn’t had the same effect in education that it has in other areas .. there hasn’t been any paradigm change - Diana Laurillard sums up the problem - if you look at the cultural things that surround education (funding, regulation, ofsted, the regimes of inspection,audit, leadership and governance) - their mindset has yet to fully understand the potential of technology to enhance and improve learning and therefore, because they constrain and drive the culture within institutions it’s difficult for institutions to change and for any teacher to change anything within the system. Institutional culture change is crucial and nudging cultural inhibitors is a key factor in FELTAG. FELTAG is not about buying devices, or about “having a grant from BECTA” or having a framework - it is about dealing with the cultural inhibitors that stop teachers innovating in the best way possible to improve learning, engage more learners, hang on to the learners for longer and better and ensure they progress better.
How teachers, governors, leaders and policymakers adapt to the future is the challenge. Rather than technology just being used to save money through back office cuts - it can be used in a much more positive and productive way. We can’t afford to compete with technology but rather work with it, understand how it works and then balance and blend the skills and requirements that are necessary for learning, which is essentially about human interaction. Efficiencies come from greater numbers of learners studying for longer periods to higher levels of qualifications with more progression and emerging with skills which the country needs.
The anxiety at this very critical point is that we have the government talking about forcing every school to become an academy - the motivation for which is predicated on softening up the state education sector for ultimate privatisation .... the mcdonaldization of education. Bob mentions a blog post by Matthew Bennett “The Schools Business” - an analysis which shows that the majority of people on the boards of academy trusts are venture capitalists. Bob points out the coincidence that government ministers in charge of the academies program in their private lives own business that run schools. Forced academisation is a trojan horse driven right into the heart of the state sector in order to soften things up for privatisation and we should oppose it at all levels because it removes any local accountability.
The academy model is predominantly a capitalist\commercial model - trying to apply a commercial way of working to education where you don't even have to have boards of governors but board members instead. The suggestion that academies aren’t for profit is ludicrous - it may say “zero’ on the bottom line of the accounts but money being made out of state education profits are haemorrhaging out down the chain of command - monies to board directors and their companies and to CEOs earning over £300k a year.
Bob is anxious that the privatisation agenda may also lead to the things that have been happening in the US with charter schools and virtual charter schools - “pack ‘em in, get them signed up, get them cheap, get them on a laptop". Bob says that if you want to learn how not to use technology in education just Google the words Apple Los Angeles disaster Pearson - giving kids a tablet pre-loaded with all the national curriculum content and some test materials without involving teachers is a recipe for disaster.
Bob says that there is a real axiomatic point here - like anything in life, there is a real danger that if the wrong people get hold of technology with the wrong motivations then there will be a bad outcome. There is a moral imperative for technology enthusiasts who are connected to a reality built on pedagogy to argue for the potential of technology in the right hands - technology can help make our lives better but it can also make nuclear bombs.
Bob says that instead of going down the forced academisation route why don’t we agree every school and college have super fast broadband and develop the skills of teachers - this would raise standards and every school and college could gain access to the world of knowledge that the Internet provides.
There are threats and opportunities with technology - this is where it goes back to paradigms, ways of thinking, values and the purposes of education. We are at a tricky point - at one end of the spectrum we have the likes of Nick Gibb wanting to ban technology in education and the other end we have those who want to stick everyone in front of a computer, turn on the artificial intelligence and let technology be the solution to everything. Somewhere in the middle it’s about how teachers use technologies - the issue is about how we support, enable, empower and help teachers use whatever technology is available - not just for teaching but for learning as well. Bob reminds us that teaching is not just about passing on facts and knowledge to the next generation and then asking them to regurgitate it.
In terms of education and technology Bob is pleased with the way FE has moved forward with FELTAG but in terms of schools he says we have a major ideological blockage. The schools minister Nick Gibb (for whatever reason or motivation) is very luddite in his approach - he believes technology is a distraction and whose stock answer about the use of technology is “why can’t you do that with a book” .Nick Gibb's view about education is that it’s all about textbooks, memory and regurgitation - until he goes and we get a more enlightened schools minister or his boss goes Nicky Morgan goes and we get someone more enlightened who will challenge the current luddite approach to education technology.
Bob’s fervent hope is that after the EU referendum (whatever side wins) there will be some blood letting, revenge and rewarding and that there will be a reshuffle in the department for education and that the current blockages will be removed. Bob says that to be fair to this government the policies coming from other departments show more interest in the role of technology to improve standards e.g. the strategy being pushed by Ed Vaizey from the DCMS (culture media and sport) the digital strategy from Mathew Hanock and cabinet office and the number 10 policy unit. Bob is hoping that pressure on the department for education plus a reshuffle that there may be an opportunity in the summer to revisit the ETAG report and get this back on the agenda perhaps with a more enlightened view. However, by the summer we will know more about forced academisation - if that happens then we are very much in the hands of the academy trusts and what they believe in.
Bob says that what’s really scary about the academisation process is that the estate assets that the local authority owns and which you and I have paid for as taxpayers is in the gift of the secretary of state to hand them over to the academy trusts
Academisation is happening just at the time when the narrative about technology in education justifies reducing physical estates but rather than reinvest proceeds from the release of those assets we hand over the estate assets to private companies ... all very convenient.
Once the schools have gone out of the state sector and cease to exist as legal entities in the local authority and become part of a multi-academy trust there is no way back - it’s all very well Nicky Morgan talking about no reverse gear - there is no reverse gear in the forced academisation process - it’s like selling off everything that we and our parents have paid for and were part of the local community and handing it over to the private sector. ------------------ Bob Harrison Online Bob's Website is http://www.setuk.co.uk/
In 1961 Edward Lorenz made a tiny change to a weather simulation and forever changed the world .... or at least the way we understand it. Lorenz created one of the most evocative notions ever to leap from the lab into popular culture: “The Butterfly Effect". Lorenz helped trigger one of the most significant conceptual shifts in science - from understanding based predominately on a "simple", atomic, independent, predictive and deterministic view of the world towards understanding based on a complex, networked, interdependent and adaptive view. Much of the formal education system is a legacy of rational analytical reductionism and the "simple", atomic, independent, predictive and deterministic view of the world. Most education events reflect this atomism and split into many separate (even conflicting) sectors and levels that rarely mix. Rarely does a network manager mix in an event with students, someone in the school sector mix with those in the university sector or for the topics of flipped learning be on the same agenda as network resilience or art. The atomic view creates a form of educational fission that is good for the purposes of educational management and measurement but creates filter bubbles with all the conditions for memetic "in-breading" that reinforces the status quo. The aim of Teach Meet Tech is to embrace and pioneer a more contemporary complex, networked, interdependent and adaptive view of the world and of education. Teach Meet Tech seeks to pop the standard filter bubbles of education by networking as many of the different parts of education as possible - bringing together people from schools, community education, adult education, sixth form colleges, further education, higher education, non profits, enterprise - mixing students, teachers, IT people, education managers, the public and business people together. Teach Meet Tech 2 gave us robots, rockstars, AI, apps, video apps, Google apps, CPD, future tech city, visual thinkery and education. It gave us technology tools, community connections, art and philosophy across all sectors of the education landscape. Teach Meet Tech 2 was an inspireNshare education fusion event in association with Croydon Council, CCS Libraries, Toshiba and the LMN - all of whome are involved in various ways with connecting people and connecting people with technology. Croydon Council and CCS Libraries are seeking to re-think and re-invent local public libraries for the future - exploring their role within society, the content and technologies they provide access to and the activities that take place within them. Toshiba have been supporting innovative education meetups for over a decade - including their education ambassadors and support for student eAmbassadors and over 120 teacher led TeachMeets with 10,000 teachers. The LMN will be familiar to most network managers in the education sector - they ran the London wide high-speed data backbone and connections which connected us to the Internet between 1997 and 2011. Today the LMN are networking people - providing training, professional development peer exchange programmes and promoting excellence in IT services for students and staff. Teach Meet Tech 2 was held in Thornton Heath children's library - which is highly significant, symbolic and deliberate as public libraries are true life-long and community education spaces for everyone. A children's library is a space of learning enjoyment outside of school and the Thornton Heath children's library is stimulating, colourful, playful and flexible - a perfect venue for Teach Meet Tech. Teach Meet Tech began with a welcome from Martin King who described education fission, the filter bubble problem and the importance of diversity for survival and evolution. He went on to explain "fusion" concept of the event and talked about the need for education in the 21st century to move from fission to fusion. Martin Compton presented "30 Apps in 30 minutes" - a live Internet hands on whistle stop cornucopia of useful and easy to use tools for educators. There are so many free and ad supported tools available that match and outdo paid for tools - the key thing for Martin is that tools be capable of DIY and be very simple to use. Martin showed us tools for Presentation (eMaze, Google Slides, Blendspace), Instant Collaboration (Padlet, Piratepad, Pinterest), the huge collection of tools on Classtools.net (such as Randomiser,Timer and Fishbone), Mindmapping tools (Popplet, GoCongr,Instagrok), Quiz Tools (Zaption, Quizlet), Sli.do, Lyrics training, English Central, ESL Video), Digital storytelling tools (Youtube slideshow, Storybird, Makebeliefs, dFilm), Planning tools (Linoit, Start.me, Storyfy, Google Docs) and Audio tools (Vocaroo, Audioboom, Spreaker).
Nigel Dias talked about Croydon Tech City,Future Tech City and the need to connect young people with technology opportunities and technology startups. He spoke about future tech city education community projects that support adults and children with STEM skills, schools deliver tech curriculum, young adults explore tech careers, start-ups and scale-ups and to connect the technology business world with local students.
Wendy Peskett presented "Innovating with Google apps" and spoke about migrating a large London College to Google. Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College started using Google Apps in 2007 and has pioneered many leading edge uses of the technology - using Gdrive, Hangouts and Google plus extensively and officially switching all staff and students to Gmail in 2013. She described the college's continuing development of Google apps with curriculum areas, departments and projects. EHWLC has a group of six Google innovators to help develop and support collaboration, communities and innovation with Google apps. Wendy spoke about how useful Google features like G+ Communities and public calendars are in developing engagement, collaboration and sharing.
Wendy spoke about the college's work with and the potential of Google Classroom. She described the use of Google Forms in flip teaching and tacking learning - especially now that forms can include videos. Wendy spoke about new projects such as Google Expeditions (Virtual field trips with Google cardboard VR) and increasing use of Google Chromebooks - with a planned very large scale (2,000 chromebook) implementation for the 2016 - 2017 academic year. Wendy finished with a selection of useful Google apps and Chrome extensions such as Videonot.es, read&write, Google Translate, Input Tools, Mightytext, and TubeBuddy.
James Kieft talked about "Assessment Through Use Of Video". James contrasted how difficult it once was to record and show video in teaching with how easy it is today - everyone is carrying around little video recorders with their smartphones. James gave us a
run through of his favourite sites and apps for using video for assessment and checking of learning today. He talked about Movenote - a Google Drive add on that lets you present documents (e.g. slides, PDFs, images etc) with audio or video - you can record a video showing documents with a cutout window of you talking. This can by the teacher giving feedback to students on their work by video (where the document is the students assignment). It can be used by the teacher to create flip learning content and can be used by the students to present assignments and develop their communications skills. James talked about Videonot.es - a Google Drive add which lets you upload a Youtube video link and add comments on a timeline - this is one of his favorite tools at the moment. Its a good way for a teacher to provide feedback to students who submit work as videos or by a teacher setting an assignment for students to make notes about key points in a video. James showed us Kaizena - a way to record audio comments on text documents - like an audio highlighter. Its a good way to give audio feedback to students on their written documents. He showed us Clipchoose a simple way to create polls with video - for example for students to choose which video shows the correct technique in a practical skill. James talked about Vialogues - where you can upload a video and have a text based discussion with questions and answers on the side. James notes that we don't have the time to create all the content we need and that there is a wealth of content already "out there" which we can curate, mix and re-provision existing content in interesting ways - tools like Zaption, Edpuzzle, Playpositthat allow you to add interactive content to existing on-line videos. James finished by showing us Telegami - an iPad app that allows you to create an animated character that can speak with your voice or from text you enter. James finds this useful with language students - if they don't punctuate the text properly then what the animated character says can be difficult to understand.
Hannah Tyreman was unable to present on the day but recorded on the Free Education Project with me about "CPD Design For Learning". Hannah talked about the need to shift from systems thinking to design thinking in education, about the importance of social factors in teaching and learning and about the role of networking, connection, collaboration, reflection and technology. She talks about applying the same principles we use with student teaching and learning to staff development - collaborative work and projects with time and opportunities for purposeful practice, reflective learning and generally being more experimental. Hannah talks about the value of teach meets in bringing educators together to share ideas in person so that rather than it just being ideas alone people can collaborate, talk, reflect, network and have those valuable conversations that turn learning into something.
Miles Metcalf presented "Robots, Rockstars and a future for education” a thought provoking talk about political and big business interests in the education system. Miles talked the rise Massive On-line Open Courses (MOOCs) and what could be described as the monetisation, commodification and consumerisation of education where hand crafted lessons of local teachers has to compete with global business mass produced content. Miles also talked about what could be described as the Uberfication of education - where large businesses
platforms host and monetise content that local teacher supplied free content.
Martin King had the last presentation "Artificial Intelligence: The Graveyard Shift" - a talk about "Artificial Intelligence" in all its connotations and implications for education - "Graveyard Shift" being symbolic as AI might be our final invention! Martin took us through some of the recent developments and uses of AI - from Eugene Goostman, Amelia and AlphaGo, through Toshiba's humanoid robots, driverless cars and automated installations like the Henn-na Hotel. He described the rapid advance of AI capability in recent years - in 2013 an AI system was tested with a standard IQ test and measured about the same as a four year old .... in 2015 an AI system passed a university entrance exam. He talked about the how the capabilities of AI together with labour cost savings put at least 5 million jobs at risk in the decades ahead. He spoke about how the education system is seemingly hypnotised by the education technology sector and walking "eyes wide shut" into an increasingly automated future of robot teachers and AI systems to give, as ALEKS puts it, "the advantages of one-on-one instruction, 24/7, from virtually any Web-based computer for a fraction of the cost of a human tutor." He spoke about how the obsession with testing and measurement had caused the education system to focus on developing in our young people the very skills that are under threat from AI - "teaching future generations to be drivers in a driverless future." He finished "5 ways of understanding the Fourth Industrial Revolution" - the warning and advice from the World Economic Forum to our education systems to "focus more on those qualities that make us uniquely human rather than machines - in particular traits such as empathy, inspiration, belonging, creativity and sensitivity. In this way we can reinforce and highlight essential sources of the value created by and within communities that is often completely overlooked in economic measurement – the act of caring for one another.” For more information about Teach Meet Tech London visit the event website at http:\\inspirenshare.com/tmtl2 For more information about inspireNshare visit http://inspirenshare.com
inspireNshare co-founder Martin King has been named a top social media user in a national competition byJisc,the not-for-profit digital solutions organisation for further, higher education and skills.
Martin was announced as one of the most influential professionals in further education (FE) and skills for using social media to enhance learning and teaching in their organisation.
Martin's Free EducationandinspireNshareprojects have been instrumental in promoting technology-enhanced learning on Twitter, YouTube and Google Plus. Martin is generous with his time and knowledge, promoting colleagues' experiences of using free technology on hisYouTube channelto encourage others to take up on the best ideas in digital education."
Tom Mitchell, Jisc group social media manager, said: “We launched this initiative to capture and celebrate the countless examples of FE and skills professionals using social media to excellent effect, and to highlight their practice to inspire others.
“The wealth and quality of entries we received are evident of the myriad of ways that people in the sector are harnessing social media to deliver innovative learning experiences. Everyone in the top 50 should be commended for their work and I’d like to congratulation them all.”
To qualify for the list, entrants needed to show how they had used social media to:
Address a specific need or challenge
Have a positive impact at your institution or on the wider community
Overcome any barriers in learning, teaching or research
Create efficiencies such as costs, time savings or improved outputs
Implement best practice
The final line-up was then chosen by a panel of social media experts, including former principal education adviser and chair of the Government’s computing expert group, Bob Harrison, Times Educational Supplement’s award-winning FE editor, Stephen Exley, and James Clay and Sarah Knight from Jisc.
Martin King said “I’ve been involved with education all my life and have worked on both the academic side as a teacher and on the technical side as a network manager, systems manager and head of IT services. My passion is working with innovation and developing the value of people. My interest now is with inspiring and networking people - being recognised by JISC as one of the most influential professionals in further education (FE) will I hope inspire others." ---------
About Jisc
Jisc is the UK higher, further education and skills sectors’ not-for-profit organisation for digital services and solutions.
We operate:
shared digital infrastructure and services
negotiate sector-wide deals with IT vendors and commercial publishers and
'Do not limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time' ~ Rabindranath Tagore I wonder what my teenage self from the 1970s would make of formal education today? My guess is that he would find little real change - attend lessons and be tested - absorb a lot of information and give answers - cramming and writing essays with pen and paper in the big tests at the end of the term and at the end of the year. The education system is a safe haven for time travellers - nothing changes for people inside the system. The education system today would protect my time travelling teenage self from the culture shock of the 21st century. While people in the 21st century have smartphones. social media, real-time anytime, anyplace on-demand, personal global-local connectivity people inside the education bubble have none of that - students still sit at desks in a classroom to be taught in batches as they always have done. Why is this? "It's like déjà vu all over again" ~ Yogi Berra The education system strives for excellence and does so through rigorous measurement, testing and assessment. This sounds and looks good but the problem is that so much of this is self referential - measured against its own criteria of excellence education spends increasing amounts of its time looking in the mirror and navel gazing. Education may have internal validity but is losing relevance.
Is this a problem? “School makes complete fools of our young men, because they see & hear nothing of ordinary life there” ~ Petronius Arbiter AD 60 “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” ~ Albert Einstein A homeostatic education system wouldn't be a problem if it really was a closed and self contained system but it isn't. While the education system may be (self) satisfied employers and society in general want the education system to help prepare people for the real world in the 21st century and not just for the purposes of the education system. Through its walls and its disconnect with the real world the education system may be internally valid but increasingly lacks external validity - it is facing a crisis of relevance that is only going to get bigger as new technologies automate increasing parts of our future. Repetitive, ordered, routine, analytical, rational, logical and computational jobs will increasingly be replaced by AI and robotics in the future - future generations will have to live in a world full of machines and in a hyper connected technology mediated world life will be more uncertain and fast moving. Being able to continuously learn will be the one vital skill for the future - along with the accompanying skills of critical thinking, problem solving, information handling, communication, collaboration and creativity. What can be done?
The education system needs to open the box and let the light in - connect wholeheartedly with the outside world by opening its doors, by thinking outside the box about education beyond its walls and by learning from the open source movement. Open Source Education The education system is a pretty closed almost "incestious" affair with a wash cycle pouring old wine into new bottles every 5 years or so. The education system needs greater genetic diversity to evolve - and needs to connect and integrate more widely. The open source way is a good model- it promotes open exchange, collaborative participation, rapid prototyping, transparency, meritocracy, peer to peer activity and community development where anyone can create, mix and share. In the same way that evolutionary principles require diversity and the connection, mix and re-mix of genes to adapt to and survive environmental changes so the same can be said of education organisation - education needs a "sex life" to evolve and to survive. An open source education system would act as an ecosystem for connecting learning and like a platform for catalysing learning. It would have a start up mentality for learning through the interconnection between ideas where anyone can participate to create mix, remix, produce, share, explore and experiment. Everyone would be a learner inspireNshare projects and events are examples of an open approach to education. Our eAmbassadors projects facilitate learning through teaching where students act as technology consultants to staff and fellow students. Our Thinglab projects are inspired by the Maker Movement and provide true flip and peer learning environments where student "professors" show and teach staff and other students about new technologies. Our Free Education project provides an opportunity for people to share their education stories, ideas, resources, tools and tips and to free our thinking about what education is and how we do it. Our Teach Meet Tech Events can be described as "education fusion" - they mix up all aspects of education into one melting pot by bringing together schools,, AE, FE, HE, charities, tech startups, students, teachers, managers, IT people & the public to talk about education & technology. With an open source approach teachers act far more as facilitators, connectors and curators. Its well worth watching Chris Pickford talk about his peer learning experiment where, rather than lecture his students on a subject, he asked the students to form groups to research it themselves and prepare a video to present to the the other students for peer comment and assessment - the diversity formats and points of view on the subject was remarkable. The classroom is usually a closed box but it can be opened up and connected to the world using technology. A good example of this is Toby Doncaster talking about social media and his connected classroom - I came across this by chance one day when I dropped in to his class when he was saying "how can we make a difference" - this intrigued me ... how can students in a classroom make a difference. The students were concerned about an issue in Africa and Toby was asking them how they could make a difference - the students took to social media to engage with the topic - connecting their class activity with current affairs in the the real world! An open source approach to education for today’s future flexes the concept of a lesson as a rigid, subject-specific unit of time that takes place within the four walls of a classroom and instead sees that this embracing the idea that a lesson can be many things. Organic or structured. Long or short. Based within or beyond school premises. And as the structure of lessons diversifies, so too does the role of the teacher. Extending or shortening the lesson in a manner which allows for a more flexible style of teaching different roles, including mentor, coach and designer of projects that highlight the real-world relevance of subject material. This creates the potential for them to have a deeper, more fulfilling engagement with students, and a more creative part to play in the design and delivery of curricula Let the Light in Education establishments often have good community access but most can and should do a lot more - this is especially the case in Further Education where many of the buildings have very low utilisation. While college buildings can shrink to fit they can also be re-imagined to integrate far better with their communities. FE Colleges have excellent facilitates which could be used for college, community, business and technology projects and startups - connecting learners and staff with the community in ways that are real rather than simulated.. College spaces can be turned into open innovation zones, meeting spaces, maker spaces, co-working spaces, performance areas, workshops - the list goes on and on and many of these can be operated by students. Think Outside the Box Thinking about education outside the standard school or college building opens up new opportunities to innovate education and connect it with communities. Projects like Learning Towns and Scale Free Schools recognise opportunities for learning beyond the school walls and consider a new infrastructure of education. Tech City initiatives like Croydon Tech City apply the concept of Learning Towns to develop communities by embracing the startup mindset with an an entrepreneurial spirit of exploration, curiosity and a focus on possibilities. Tech City initiatives offer an option to embed education in real world activities - to use the resources in a community to develop ideas and make something with them. Schools and colleges really need to get out a lot more into the community and engage with education out in the world - if they don;t then eventually someone else will! Education: open up the box - let there be light. Education should be about opening minds and by opening minds to how and where - education will help humanity not only survive but thrive in the 21st century,
