Ingredients

Walking around other countries' markets I am always struck by how they are dull of ingredients - like these spices in Doha - bit also bits of mechanical and electronic things too. In Hong Kong they will make you a hard disc for example and of course everywhere rolls of cloths. Our markets in UK are full of finished things - meals, toys, clothes etc.

Similarly in schools our children have largely stopped programming - they consume with computers or phones but cannot create applications. They don't have ingredients either, any more.

Somewhere in all this we seem to have lost some things including the autonomy that comes from your own efforts, and it just feels wrong...

Dot to dot

This was a bit of a surprise. Climbing ;everyone does it) up the roof of the Oslo Opera House on Norway the cladding is this interesting pattern...

...but some of you will know exactly what the pattern is cos you punched and programmed those paper tapes in the very early days of computing. Me too'

Still without limits

Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti in Christchurh - on NZ's Mainland (as I've learned to say) remains the most wonderful evocation of how a school without limits can work so very, very well. The space remains open aspect, and multifaceted, with little teacher 'bases" tucked into alcoves and nooks. The currciculum also remains oopen and learner selected. I was delighted to go back there, some 10 years since my last visit and as John showed my round the impression was - apart from the original 50 students growing to some 400 - that very little of the original vision had been wrong. As we walked past students engaged in vigorous one-to-one tutorials with staff (first name terms) and in intensive group work with each other it was hard not to recall ex UK education minister Estelle Morris' wise comments to me a year or to back in an email:

"one of the things I learned from Government was that there is rarely a mechanism for rolling out successful pilots or research that has been commissioned.

The result is that we never really use what has been found to work. The only exception to this I can think of  really is the Literacy and Numeracy strategies"

Quite. It will be interesting to see how many of the new Free Schools in the UK emerge looking like this.

No, honestly...

Arriving in Christchurch just after the earthquake, but in time for a verty substatial aftershock, I was - er - interested to find that the floor between my hotel bedroom and the lift was a trench. Amusingly the next day this note appeared - I'm sure it is true, but it just reads like a panic-staions PR puff, doesn't it? Mind you, the hotel did get knocked about a bit - i was in bed in the aftershock and it really shook!

Most patient generation ever?

some of you will be old enough to remember the mods and rockers and the tensions between them, and between them and society. Others will have read Stanley Cohen's research and his term "moral panic" and been aware of the rather exaggerated claims of the media at the time (riots? hmm) - but there certainly was antipathy. The other day enjoying the Goodwood Revival meeting I was a bit surprised to see the mods and rockers shown here, all riding original equipment (the Revival is like that), but all together with no anomosity at all. One of the fishermen on the boat moored next to mine was / is a mod, he is a very nice chap. I asked him about this and he said "we go to all the events together these days, we're all great friends now - we are far too old to be kicking off these days".

Which led me to think about the chain of teddy boys, mods n rockers, hippies, punk, etc etc. and to wonder where are the protest youth cultures of today? Are today's children now so mature that they have already reached the point the mods and rockers took decades to get to ("too old to be kicking off") - I don't think so, or is it that they no longer clash with the older generations because unlike the previous generations they don't occupy the same space as old folk (previously the beachess, cinema, etc). Perhaps they are away in online social spaces, or texting, where they don't rub shoulders with old folk, maybe? Or are they just amazingly patient...

But as we force them through factory schools reminiscent of the mods and rockers own era back so many years ago, and load them with fees for doing what the nation needs, how long honestly do we think that will patience last. And what next?

Higher education innovation

Universities struggle so much with this new millennium. Their usual spreadsheet of a room allocation chart with its cells ends up all-too-often as a blueprint for building as the cells become physically just that. Of course walking round universities we find that most of the cells are empty for most of the time. Like most cells elsewhere, if you leave them unlocked, people escape.

So it was with a particular joy that I found this room in a university near the centre of England which had been set aside for "innovation". Inside it was just another cell with seminar style rectangular desks and dull office chairs. There was another innovation room - seen here - with exactly that room allocation timetable on the door - and even more dull furniture inside!

You could practically hear the conversation: "Innovation? yes we're on top of that - here it is in the spreadsheet, Room 250"

Oh dear, I'm not sure that many universities will make it, are you?

Plug in, turn on

Oslo has racks of use n share bikes but it also has rows of sockets for these popular tiny electric cars.

Is is interesting to see the good impact of encouraging small footprint transport (as Tokyo does in other ways) here in Oslo. In the winter I cycle round London but a tiny battery car alternative would be good too.

The kindness of friends

Getting ready to sail our newly acquired 1907 Oyster smack "My Alice" back to her home in Brightlingsea and have been overwhelmed by all the good wishes and good advice. Pal John Saker who helped us assemble her from over a kilometer of rope and a mountain of bits dropped off this wonderful present of wooden spikes all machined on his state of the art CNC lathe, which usually does the most convoluted jobs making complex spirals for production machines and the like.

Wonderful mix of old and new technologies.

Common ground

Having an interesting chat yesterday about a community's need to have place where everyone can assemble together from time to time. I suggested that a well designed outdoor space could work well - we are in tough times in the UK for public service funding right now and economic solutions are needed.

Last weekend the place where I mostly live, Brightlingsea, held a Music Festival - not quite Glastonbury but great fun. Brightlingsea is blessed with a large village green set on a slope which is a bit useless for cricket but offers such a great natural amphitheatre. You can see here, despite some patchy weather, families and groups of friends gathered for a weekend of everything from Bach to Blues.

Communities need a heartspace: it needs some 3D shape, but in many countries (not too hot or too cold) it doesn't need to be a building.

We can learn so much from small communities with, in some places, a few thousand years of prototyping!

Up on the roof...

I been talking about converting retail space to learning space for ages years and there are lots of good examples around - from New Zealand and Bangkok to Anchorage but it looks like becoming a large scale reality in the UK too - and I'm involved in a one of the biggest initiatives in what is now looking like being called edu-tail.

It is amazing how much play space can be included within, and like this sports surface on a school roof in Blackpool, on top of, these urban spaces and the sense of a New Urban Campus reinvigorating our decaying retail centres is exciting - and staggeringly affordable.

Tomorrow today

I won't say where this was (to spare blushes!) but it was fun to find
a room dedicated to the 21st century in a school in 2010!. I popped in, but
there was nobody inside...

Although nice folk who ask me to conferences often pop the 21st century title into the programme (NOT my choice though!), I personally do get a bit fed up with references to 21stC learning. If you are a nine year old it's the only place you've ever lived!

Now we are a decade into this century perhaps we can all talk about 3rd Millennium Learning? Please...

Disarming

There is something quite shocking to European eyes about a sign like
this on a school entrance.

I tell my US pals that the Right to Bare Arms was about wearing T
shirts and it had all been a terrible mistake caused by poor spelling...

Su Valley High School, Alaska

Su Valley High School is an award winning, very green school, with a large open reception, library, social space at its heart. With materials needing to be shipped a long way to build up here, costs can be high, and transport energy significant. Local materials are featured thus for cultural and economic reasons. Keeping library shelving and other features below (children's) shoulder height leaves an eye line that is very typical of the new multifaceted spaces appearing everywhere. They bring a real sense of "us-ness", of community and of place. Here is a wider view of it too.

This glass wall, slightly obscured, is lit by LED lights in colours that reflect the northern lights which occur all year round up in these Northern latitudes and I love that local signature.

Chicago

I am just loving touring the architecture of Chicago - which is like walking through the pages of an student architectural textbook - art deco through to post-modern. And everything you need to know about structure thrown in.

Like many cities, the rediscovery of the river as a focus, a social conduit and a narrative has transformed the shape and flow of the place over time and now new buildings (like this one) are appearing that are sympathetic to - and indeed that add to - those functions: curving, mirroring, colouring.

I'm a great fan of water features in learning designs too - and there is much good research about their impact on calm as well as on air quality.

Anyway... how many styles can you identity in this image?

Are you sitting comfortably?

I had a very enjoyable visit to RM's demonstration room in Oxford - filled with ideas and solutions around ICT in learning and so well put together.

I first saw these mobile "stacked" seating blocks at the thoughtful - and thought provoking - New Line Academy in Kent (see them again here) and again just the other day in the indefatigable Kate Holland's newly opened Imagine Centre in Essex (see elsewhere in this phone blog). But seeing these two blocks here, set at a jaunty angle to each other, I'm reminded of how tiny details really matter...

..ask any comedian and they will tell you they hate to perform in 1970s theatres - with all the seats in a straight row, and "lean-back-comfy" too. The problem with those theatres is that without turning in your seat you don't see the faces of other, are unsure of when to laugh, are socially quite isolated. Performances fall flat. Classrooms today are suddenly (finally!) embracing mutuality, collegiality, collaboration and teachers understand that eye contact is really important. New Line knew that when the built their curved seating (they called them their Bananas!) - students could see each other because of the curve. But many copies of New Line's work seem to completely miss the importance of that curve and the impact of height. The copies of New Line's idea seem good, but the devil as they say is in the detail.

In learning every little detail really matters - and that goes for our furniture too.

Oakmead College of Technology Transition School

Oakmead College of Technology is lovely - and led by an exceptional exec Head Dr Annetta Minard. Like many others they are worried about the huge number of children who potentially go backwards as they change phase in school - for example between primary and secondary. As Oakmead reaches out to form a proper alliance with their two primary feed schools, they are also introducing a schools-within-schools model and the first of these is a very interesting Transition School to properly blur that phase break - the new school is seen here (i was lucky to visit for the opening).

The school is staffed by primary specialists (and Dr Minard speaks of how much the secondary folk have learned from working with them). This big multifaceted agile space is roughly equivalent to six classrooms. As you see it is no vast barn; it has nook and corners - open aspect, but easily used for a host of learning approaches. See also this image.

There will be very little furniture for a term -as the children determine just what is needed and where - indeed the constant in the rather playful and enjoyable opening was the students' own voices. Much was made of the much older children's pleasure at helping younger children - reading, mentoring, being great role models, and more.

Note in passing the floods of natural light, plenty of sockets and connexions, and the way the pillars help break up, but without closing in, the space.... fab.

Imagine this...

The Imagine Centre has just opened in Colchester United's football stadium. It is a space that Essex LA have built to try out a range of new learning technologies all in one space, so that schools can visit and see what works best for themselves. Imagine's Director Kate Holland simply encouraged us all to use the space and suddenly a lot of serious, besuited grown-ups became playful children...

The Imagine Centre has some interesting features: Can you see the spherical monitor?!! Then there is an interactive floor - similar to the one that the new Chesil school will have, it has a huge screen, but that can also show smaller images from other screens - as you can see, hopefully. At the back is a huge interactive table "surface".

To the left is tiered seating - a bit like the seating in Kent's New Line academy (see other photos below) and any laptop or personal device, including phones, will work within this space.

Rather cleverly, all the devices connect to each other - you might see that the globe on the wall is the same globe that is on the spherical monitor - both coming from the same child's computer.

Bahá'í Centre of Learning

Hobart's Bahá'í Centre of Learning is, of course, a very spiritual place, but also a very clever learning space.

It is a hugely green building, but (perhaps unusually) this does not get in the way of the learning inside - the large central space with filtered sunlight, stunning voice acoustics and a host of playful little break-out spaces lends itself to learning for all, from the youngest (who love little details like the jigsaw block floor) to the 200 or so teachers whose company I enjoyed there for two days.

This little detail is indicative: a semi enclosed circualr space, with wrapping projector and screen and great acoistics (sound is beamed firmly down not not outwards) makes a wonderful space to provoke, debate, reflect and learn.

So much more detailing - see http://www.tasbcl.com.au/ for more details.

love libraries

I have often enough said that I love libraries and think librarians are an absolutely key role in our newest (and oldest!) schools. See for example the helpful  "Libraries and learning" video posted on my:  http://www.heppell.tv  media blog site.

A while back I had the honour of giving a big public lecture in the Victoria State Library and I was just back there filming a video interview - I couldn't help but photograph and post (bit blurry, sorry, iPhone not so good in poor light) of the centre of the place - with all it's carefully refurbished skylighted dome and shelving and seating... glorious!  And way more than just a place of / for books....

not sure what happened to the picture - I'll sort it out shortly...

agile, open, effective

Up in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, like many parts of the world, a lot of schools are appearing with large agile spaces (I approve) for a lot more than 30 children, and for more than one teacher too. 100 students and three teachers is not uncommon - in this picture there are 120 youngsters in one space, quietly getting on with their learning very effectively.

Teachers who haven't tried these super-classes wonder how it will all work - it clearly can work remarkably well, but only if the teachers have clearly defined team roles; for example in a three class space there might be a lead teacher, whilst another might focus on differentiation giving width and breadth to those who need it, and the third might be on remedial-repair duty - catching up those who missed a bit, or misunderstood a bit. A classroom assistant might also be sorting out logistics, checking that everything works and so on. The evidence emerging from these schools is compelling when it is done well. There are no hard and fast rules for these roles, but without them it is all too tempting to have three teachers doing a Dick Turpin lesson ("stand and deliver") in three different corners, or just as fatally have one teacher "in charge" while the others nip out for a bit of photocopying.

Children as making remarkable progress though when the "team' re ally sort out what they will each be doing - and with such a resource of other students on hand rules like "ask three then me" take a lot of the pressure off the teachers' shoulders giving them more time to carry out their role professionally.

Australian Football Final (soccer)

There is something seductively tribal about the way individuals pledge and display their allegiance to their team, with shirts, chants, flags, humour and a strong sense of mutuality. But it is interesting that everyone interprets their membership in different ways - no one size fits all here, despite the clearly binary memberships on display.

As we strive for a better and more 21st century sense of "us-ness" in our learning organisations maybe we can learn a little from the mix of personalisation and belonging on display here at Melbourne as the Victory go head to head with Sydney in their end of season final.

In this century I'm never quite clear what use we would have for uniform children, but children who can belong and work together as a team, bring individual strengths to that team, are scarce and valuable. The signification of colour, badge and more on offer here seems to offer a uniform that is not uniform... and that is very helpful.

Qantas it ain't*

But fun it was - an early morning flight up to the Hume Region Principals' Conference in Wangaratta took a bit longer than intended - we had to go round a storm (!) but was very enjoyable - they are doing cool things up in Wangaratta and it was nice to be able to suggest more...

Flight back was a bit delayed when a tractor parked in front of the plane for a while... By the way, this is a Life Saver Rescue plane - they use it to rush along the wonderful beaches and spot dangers - swimmers in difficulty, sharks, etc. But the service is being phased out to be replaced by a helicopter service - much more expensive to run. With the plane the pilot simply talked to the Lifesavers, who quickly took action. Sometimes systems find it really hard to cope with effective collaboration between folk and build autonomous solutions controlled by a hierarchy - exactly the polar opposite of where this people's century with it's collaborative mutuality is headed. I liked the little plane and its radio...

* thanks to Muartin Luevins for pointing out how to spell Qantas correctly - I'd initially added a U. His comment explains, below.

Sydney Opera House

I love the Sydney Opera House; its architect, Jørn Utzon, was a not very well known 38 year old Dane until January 29th 1957 when his entry, "scheme number 218", was announced as the winner of an international competition for a national opera house in Sydney.

It is only when you get up close that you realise the wonderful way that it seems to reflect daylight is a function of the many ceramic tiles that coat it from top to bottom. Iconic building don't get much better than this...

Passive shading...

...doesn't need to be dull as you can see from this Catholic school in the Parramatta district of New South Wales.

Beautiful and functional...

Where's a brolly when you need one?

This was a bit ironic really. Leaving the Channel 4 HQ in London - it's a
Rogers building so interesting as a design - and we'd had a good meeting - I like
Ch4 - but on leaving it tipped down with proper British London rain (cold and wet) and I needed to shelter, Where better, i thought, than under a huge installation of umbrellas forming the Ch4 logo. Perfect?

Well, no. Sadly despite HUNDREDS of brollies I still got drenched. Nice
installation though.

Powell's Books

Powell's Bookstore here in Portland OR, USA is a legend. Founded not so long ago in 1971 it is HUGE and has a wonderful mix of used and new books - with lots of good prices too.

The vast section pictured is only the sailing shelves (you'll know why this made me happy...) and the place is quirkily chaotic with whole floors devoted to things like SF and fantasy - a whole wall in there just dedicated to armageddon and post apocalyptic stuff! Lots of support for local authors, vast swathes of poetry... and all enriched by a mass of little annotations along the shelves as staff (and others!) leave thoughts and recommendations.

It's way more than a bookstore it is a community of folk who care about the printed word (oh, swathes of graphic novels too - whole section) and obviously does coffee too.

I won't repeat why I care about community here - short version is, it matters. Great store - in both senses.

Referential

In Seville (Spain) for the EU's big E-twinning conference with teachers from twinned schools all around the EU, and with many, many languages spoken. I did a keynote - well, I am pretty keen on schools working together across the old national boundaries - and with over 500 folk there it was rather curious to talk to an audience with relayed translation in process. With a relayed translation system the translator generating the langauge you have selected for your headset may not be listening to the primary speech, but to a translation of it - so as a listener you may be getting "your" version quite a while after the speaker has said their bit, to be translated, and translated again first. Thus if I say something perhaps slightly witty, the ripple of smiles and chuckles takes a really long time to go round the audience - and some bits of the audience don't smile at all (lost in traanslation...).

I also rather enjoyed the national and regional "old" media cameras arriving to film what was a quite wired and connected conference - and then pointing camaeras the many delegates who themselves were filming for twitcam, blogs, YouTube, whatever. Old media filming new media... Hmmm. I smiled, but not all the press did - I wonder what message their brains had translated that image into...

I dream of learning

Back in 2009 Feltham City Learning Centre (CLC) in London's Hounslow ran a competition around the theme "I dream of learning" and there were some very high quality entries from students - of course!.

I was SO delighted that at the annual BETT Show in London's Olympia this january (2010) amongst the Lampton School students who were on my Playful Learning stand (and who were wowing the BETT guests and various Ministers of Education with their thoughts about the importance of Play in learning) were these four who were the winners of the competition!

Here they are making their acceptance presentation to an audience of some very senior and important folk upstairs in a presentation lounge at BETT. The four of them - Dharmbir (left), Ejiro, Yayra (speaking to the hand held microphone) and Steffan (at the rostrum) - are shown here as they make their school very proud of them indeed - not the least because the £££ prize is: enough funding to actually build their dream learning space, complete with chill out zone, astro turf floor, cognitive colouring, great tech and bean bags!

I thought their presentation was well paced and highly articulate, but also the way they fielded and answered some really tricky questions from the senior folk there was even more impressive, as a host of folk have made a point of mentioning to me since.

Well done students - and well done Tony Peaty at Feltham CLC for putting the competition on in the first place. "I dream of learning"... fab.

here is their Powerpoint from the competition presentation earlier in the year.

You BETT

Our Playful Learning stand at the world biggest learning technology show (eMAP's BETT show)was rammed with people throughout the first two days - a mixture of children from Lampton School (who had a really clear understanding of the role of play in learning and would bend any passing adults ear to show and tell why) and presentations about playfulness in learning by our stand sponsors: Google, YouTube, 2Simple software, MangaHigh and Satmap all added up to a lot of activity and visitors from all round the world.

I think everyone remembers, or already knew, how important play is in learning, but it took the children to show and remind them how easily technology can re-inject play back into important classroom tasks without being a distraction. In the end, engagement is a key variable in performance isn't it?

Choices

Our wonderful Be Very Afraid event was on yesterday - ten institutions with students all highly articulate in describing their work with ICT. www.heppell.net/bva

But, as guests arrived they were presented by this choice of 2 events, to much laughter. But it starkly shows the choices we face in changing the world: conflict or learning?. The yearly cost of one soldier posted to Iraq would support 20 school, perhaps more, at local prices... In Afghanistan it would BUILD 20! I type this as I listen to a senior Iraqi policymaker describing the challenges in taking learning forward today - and saying just how hard it was before with
www, phones etc banned (with a potential lifetime in prison for using them he reported).

No simple choices are there? But it seems to me that learning has a better chance of mending the world than the alternatives...

We are at that crossroads right now.