Teach Meet Tech 2: Popping Filter Bubbles

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.

Bryan Mathers gave us “The bluffer’s guide to Visual Thinkery” where he talked about his businesses over the years and how in 2013 he started drawing and discovered "his element". Bryan presented a wonderfully refreshing collection of creative and artistic thoughts about education such as "why creativity is so important","teaching is not a delivery system it's an art form", "education is changing from centralised instruction to a broad network of creativity". Bryan spoke about "how dialogue liberates" in Paulo Freire's radical pedagogy. Bryan spoke about "capturing a visual thought" - starting with listening and asking questions, using visual metaphors, humour, contrast and just doing it.

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, Playposit that 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

Top social media ranking for inspireNshare co-founder Martin King

FE's top 50 social media users

inspireNshare  co-founder  Martin King has been named a top social media user in a national competition by Jisc, 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 Education and inspireNshare projects 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 his YouTube channel to 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."

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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

How To Change The Education System: Open The Box

'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.

Through its quality control cycles the education system achieves homeostasis and the reliability, control and internal validity it so desires - variables are regulated so that internal conditions remain stable and relatively constant.


"We see the world through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future" ~ Marshall McLuhan




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, 

The Managed Learning Environment

I started teaching in 1982 - as a trainee teacher it was quite an intimidating experience at first having to take a class of 30 boisterous young teenagers for 30 minutes to an hour - lesson plans were a useful way for a novice teacher to think about lessons. Some teachers used lesson plans as a useful aide, a guide - they weren't compulsory. I remember being impressed by an experienced and well respected seasoned teacher - walking down the corridor on our way to our lessons I was interested to see how he did his lesson plans and asked if I could take a peak ..."read my mind" he said ... he knew what he wanted to achieve but rather than have a plan - he had a strategy - the plans for which would emerge through interaction with the students. This teacher was always open and his classes were frequently observed and participated in by trainee teachers - the students were always engaged and gained very good results - he was an excellent and experienced teacher - he had little need to write down a detailed lesson plan.

Today, I continue to be impressed by excellent teachers who enthuse their students with the joy of learning, whose lessons emerge creatively through interaction with students in real time as the class unfolds and as when I started teaching - these teachers may not have submitted a lesson plan or may have deviated from their lesson plan in response to students. Today however, lesson plans are compulsory in many institutions and many excellent teachers are marked down by management if they deviate from lesson plans or fail to submit them. Lesson plans - a once useful aide has become a management bureaucracy.

The story of how lesson plans turned from teacher aide to management bureaucracy can be read in many of the changes I have seen in the education system over the last 30 years - one of the worst examples being how management turned the potential of the web in education into just another content delivery, tracking and control system. The mid to late 1990s enriched education with access to bountiful new and external connections - empowering teacher and student autonomy, the web was a virtual learning environment where students and teachers could curate and create their own resources. During the early noughties there was a  trend to create institutional portals ... gateways to prescribed on-line information and content ... much in the image of the standard model of formal education. Portals quickly became Managed Learning Environments - on-line centralised frameworks for content delivery, student tracking and the generation of management data.

It's no wonder that formal education has taken to Managed Learning Environments - management has appropriated education and engineered it in its own image and for its own needs. There is a constant need to manage - to set rules and processes; to check, measure, track and control - to test, measure, make reports and to generate data. Students, teachers and staff are treated like commodities that are selected, processed, measured and graded like clockwork oranges. People have been replaced by data - they have become data entities to be managed, processed and accounted. In the education system people have become dials on management dashboards.

The growth of data in education has presented new opportunities for the eduction industry to sell new products to satisfy education managerialism's need for efficiency, control and automation. The new products coming to market are automated data driven managed learning environments like the predictive analytics Adaptive Learning systems from the likes of Knewton, D2L Brightspace LeaP, Cogbooks and McGraw Hill's ALEKS. ALEKS for example is described as "a Web-based, artificially intelligent assessment and learning system. ALEKS uses adaptive questioning to quickly and accurately determine exactly what a student knows and doesn't know in a course. ALEKS then instructs the student on the topics she is most ready to learn .... ALEKS also provides 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."

I remember Cailean Hargrave's presentation at FOTE 2011 called "Student Analytics for Success".

Cailean talked about the exponential rise of data and how IBM's tools help organisations work smarter with all that data. He described how the Memphis City Police department used data to "predict" crime events and then use police to "prevent" the predicted crimes in Minority Report pre-crime style. Cailean went on to describe how this type of predictive analytics could be applied to education to ensure student success with a system predicting a student's learning curve and fulfilling it by feeding students only the right content at the right time so that a student never fails. Ensuring success, fulfilling predictions and meeting targets - this type of language goes down well with management but didn't go down at all well with teachers and academics at FOTE who argued the value of creativity, serendipity and the fact that failure is an essential part of learning.

Within the education system as it stands today - the use of data driven managed learning environments seems to be inevitable - the logical conclusion to the appropriation of education by management. Many in educational management point out that while machines and computers have driven efficiencies in other sectors they have yet to drive the same efficiencies in education. Data driven managed learning environments offer management a way at last to realise the advantages and efficiencies of the machine age by providing "one-on-one instruction, 24/7, from virtually any Web-based computer for a fraction of the cost of a human tutor." For management - this is compelling stuff but is it education?

For me - data driven managed learning environments are for clockwork oranges - they are more like programming than learning.

Predictive prescriptive analytics create an artificial and self fulfilling filter bubble .. a predictive preparation for an environment managed by machines.

Education: Think Outside The Box

Education has become confused with formal Education Systems and the complications of their specific politics, institutions, resources and technologies. 

Formal education systems process people for exams - they provide limited, measured and managed learning environments geared to tangible skills such as rational-analytical thinking, attendance and punctuality.

However, don't let the system limit education - formal education systems are just a small subset of education - we are all natural learners - If we think outside the box then our education is unlimited. Education is a broad concept that overlaps all of our learning which involves other people.  We learn all the time - through our actions and experiences and through communication  - from dialogue with others and from others’ monologue - watching, listening and reading what others have to show and tell.  

Some of the best things I remember from my time at school were visits to the outside world - geography trips to the countryside; science and history trips to museums, sports trips to parks, swimming pools and sports centres. Public and common spaces have helped support formal education for a long time but more importantly - they have always supported informal education and learning. Parks, museums and libraries are easy to access life long learning environments - there are no qualification or minimum entry requirements - they are open, you can just walk in. Parks, museums and libraries won't ask you questions and examine you - they are places where you ask the questions and where you examine.

Libraries were established as education spaces for those who would otherwise have limited opportunities for education or self-improvement - they were open to everyone in a community who wanted access to books and learning. Libraries are adapting to social and cultural changes - they are evolving to become ‘read/write’ platforms where people are encouraged to contribute and exchange as well as consume. The Common Libraries initiative for example has its origins in Open Source, Creative Commons movements and community-led libraries - it draws upon the peer-to-peer and sharing economy as well as an enthusiasm for hacking and making. Leading edge library initiatives are seeking to decommodify or ‘commonify’ knowledge, to develop libraries as peer-to-peer platforms for knowledge exchange founded upon Commons principles to help build a social knowledge economy. New developments in libraries and other public an common spaces offer opportunities to think outside the box about what education is, what it can become and how we go about it - they offer viable platforms to explore parallel liberal forms of education to the established formal education system and its focus on examinations.

Public and common spaces help us think and see outside the standard school or college model - projects like Learning Towns and Scale Free Schools recognise opportunities for learning beyond the school walls and consider a new infrastructure of education. Based on conversations with pupils Learning Towns highlight possibilities for learning to be a catalyst and a driver for better communities. Scale Free Schools asks if dedicated school buildings are really the most appropriate model for learning in the coming decades and What is the role of the community in education, and the role of education in communities?

Information is a vital ingredient in education and never before have we had such opportunity to access information as we have today with information technology and the Internet. The Internet supports both formal and informal learning - from education system managed learning environments, through the multitude of MOOC hybrids and community learning environments like Peter Shukie's COOCs through to decentralised peer environments on social media and social networks.

Thinking outside the education box opens up new opportunities to innovate education and connect it with communities. 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.

Formal education is for exams informal education is for life.

Don't let the education system limit your education - think outside the box - unlimit your education.

How To Change The Education System: Gamification

At a simple level the education system can be considered a competitive platform game of levels, tests, rules, players and outcomes.

Players enter the game with cards they have been dealt and use these in the grading tests that divide the players and determine their fate.

At each level players must learn and remember specific things on which they will be individually tested - performance in the tests determines whether they can stay in the game and whether they can win enough points to gain access to the next level

The education game is a big investment with high stakes - performance in the grading tests is life changing - for some its a life sentence certified as failures for some its a life enhancement certified as winners.

Its no wonder that educationalists have taken to gamification and that the education system is comfortable this  - gamification is no threat to the way things are.

Performance managerialism exploits gamification to disguise, promote and condition thinking inside the box to reinforce conformity and control by authority using the rules, tests and finite outcomes of the game. At its worst data obsessive compulsive managerialism turns the education game into a Red Queens Rat Race of spiralling workloads from endless rules, tests, reports and the need for data that forces players to run ever faster just stay in the same spot on the treadmill. The players become exhausted - the game becomes everything - education has been played - its a strategic win for management and a loss for education.

While the Fins are changing their education game few countries have this type of political vision - for most they will need to change the parameters of the existing game and use the machinery of the education system and its penchant for gamification to bring about change. The power of gamification is all to evident in the UK education system - set up league tables and watch schools jostle for position, set up targets and watch the players attempt to hit them. The power of the system can be used to bring about change - the type of change depends on how the game is rigged - e.g. whether the game sets students to act like machines and memorise times tables or race with the machines using technology to carry out mundane tasks and develop as people as humans.

Education can be a game changer but first we need to change the game - ultimately this requires political vision!

How To Change The Education System: Race With The Machines

The cost of IT in education is clear but its effect is far less so - students, computers and learning is controversial to say the least!

The nature of IT has changed significantly over the time I have worked in education. In the last decades of the 20th century IT was rare and the education system was one of those places where you could learn about and use computers. Since the turn of the 21st century IT has become pervasive in the lives of our staff and students. Our students have "grown up digital" - they are used to using computers, smartphones, the Internet, the Web, social networks, social media, messaging apps and a whole lot more everyday and all the time - IT is part of people's personal and public life.

While IT in society develops and progresses apace (even exponentially) IT in education hit a wall at the end of the 20th century, flatlined and entered an induced coma. Time has stopped for the education system and it still dreams of IT like its 1999 - the the world beyond the dreamer is but a whisper, anything that might cause waking is blocked out and everything is assimilated into a Web 1.0 push\broadcast content delivery and testing PC model.

When I started teaching educational IT and management IT were separate - educational IT was diverse, exciting and full of potential. Today educational IT has been unified and appropriated by and for management and the education industry - its standardised, mundane and used for the measurement, management and control of staff, students and institutions.

The education system has a crisis of relevance with zombie IT - a monster mash that is complex, expensive, rigid, and slow moving – increasingly beneficial to the corporate education industry but increasingly ridiculous and damaging to education and learning.

The students view ... "education is not utilising technology effectively" - they note that "technology plays an important role in their everyday life but not when they are in education". They notice that on-line assessment simply mimics traditional assignment practice and ask for social, community and discussion type assignments and assessments. They note that smartphones improve ease of sharing and information access but note that there use is in education and learning is usually banned . Students ask that they be allowed to use their smartphones as this will be helpful in making their learning more effective. Students are aware how social media is widely used and established in their lives but that that the education sector is only now starting to see its potential for learning - the students ask that education use social media as a platform for sharing and in so doing boost learning. Students note that today a number of technology options are available that can boost the learning experience and make it more flexible, easy, comfortable and effective for students but the education system is not utilising technology effectively.

Its time for the education system to wake up and interact with the real world - a world where machine assistants we carry around with us everywhere do things for us.

In a race without machines we are bound to fail - technology (or at least the right type of technology) always provides an advantage - from the use of the wheel, through the use of arrows in warfare and even in the humble pub quiz - if you have a smartphone .... you can simply search for the right answer. Education without technology is nonsensical and damaging.

In a race against machines we are bound to fail - people are not machines -  there is no way the average person can beat a calculator - leave mechanical tasks to the machines.

In a race with machines we have a chance to succeed ... future generations will have to live in a world full of machines - we owe it to our children to prepare them for this. Our education system should use its time, energy and resources developing us as humans - leave mechanical tasks to the machines - we need to use and collaborate with machines as appropriate.

We need 21st century pedagogy matched with 21st century technology!

Its time for education to take back IT from management, use appropriate technologies and race with the machines to develop people as humans.