Tag Archives: technology

BETTophobia

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I don’t like IKEA. I’ll tell you why. It is because of what I call ‘IKEA Fear’. The symptoms of IKEA Fear are a mounting sense of disquiet that commences the minute I pass through the large revolving doors. This disquiet worsens progressively as I meander first through immaculate living rooms, on through offices, bedrooms and kitchens until it becomes something visceral within my chest and stomach, usually around the time I reach the carpet, curtains and cushions – urging me to run screaming from the building clutching at my hair.

I have contemplated this feeling and the possible reasons for it. I have a theory based upon nothing other than my own tenuous guesses. I think my problem may possibly be similar to conditions such as agoraphobia or claustrophobia, and here are a couple of exacerbating factors:
• There is a disorientating absence of any reference to the outside world. If you are lucky, you might glimpse a rectangle of far-off, semi-industrial car-park through a distant fire door (the location of which is noted in the event of a panic-induced exit in due course).
• There is a disturbing juxtaposing of comfy, soft, homely environments in which you can sit and imagine oneself in the bosom of family relaxing after or during a meal… until you look up and witness the horrific, industrial tangle of ducting and steel. I don’t mind telling you that this contrast messes with my head.

Now, on to the BETT Show 2013. This year, it relocated from Olympia to Excel- a move I welcomed initially as it certainly improved accessibility for me. This welcome feeling was short-lived. On arrival at Excel, I attempted to feel upbeat and optimistic but that familiar disquiet, the IKEA Fear, started to creep up on me. I apologise to those friends of mine whom I encountered on that first morning, my brow knitted and jaw slightly tensed. I put on a brave face and greeted you enthusiastically but I wasn’t quite myself. Walking the (seemingly) mile-long boulevards, snickets and ginnels of the exhibition space, my anxiety mounted until I had to make a swift exit. David Mitchell and Julia Skinner were fortunately on hand to scoop me up as I composed myself over some lunch with them.
I struggled throughout the two and a bit days at the show. My misery was mitigated only by the wonderful encounters I had with lovely people. The social, the teachmeet, the laughs and the learning mean that I won’t be boycotting in future. I will take the rough with the smooth.

I miss Olympia. I miss the quirkiness, the characterful architecture, the nooks and crannies, the expanse of sky spread out above. I also miss the opportunities for out-of-body elevations to the balcony for welcome, reorienting breathers during which one could see the layout, establish the landmarks or spot a friend to pursue.

Oh, and I didn’t even see anything especially exciting or innovative in those long corridors of anxiety. Next year, I will dedicate myself to establishing quick exit routes whilst also seeking out people – after all, it is them that make a visit to BETT worthwhile.

3D Printing

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You may remember I’m involved in a primary school 3D printing project. We have come some way with this recently. We held a competition for schools to submit ‘Dragons’ Den’ pitches to have a printer located at their school. We have decided upon a printer, the Bits from Bytes ‘3D Touch’ and had it delivered to the winning school – Birkenshaw Primary School.

On 9th July, we had an afternoon at the school working with some Year 4 children. We were lucky to be joined by a key member of our project team, Dejan Mitrovic from the Royal College of Art. Dejan is a design specialist who also has considerable experience and expertise in the use of 3D Printing. He is responsible for Kide™ and Kideville ™, concepts that have led to young people engaging with 3D printing in exciting and innovative ways through hands-on approaches in a variety of contexts, from exhibitions at galleries (such as the V&A) and trade-fairs to primary school classrooms.

 

 

Dejan came to Birkenshaw with a well-structured, punchy afternoon of activity for the children to get stuck into. Recognising the need for learning to be relevant, he themed the afternoon around the design of a (Olympic) stadium. Initially Dejan talked about form and function and shared numerous examples of stadia from around the world. He then introduced a paper-based activity in which the children were asked to design their own stadium (in pairs). They were asked to do ‘front’, ‘side’ and ‘top’ views of their stadium as well as having a go at a 3D view. It was fascinating to see the children’s differing approaches and the diversity in creativity and technical ability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We then moved to computer-based design and the children were introduced to 3Dtin  – browser-based 3D design software. I love 3Dtin. It is intuitive and straightforward and children could get going straight away (it also has an interesting ‘social’ element). Having said that, they did experience varying degrees of success with regards to producing a finished design for a stadium. I think this was essentially down to time – there simply wasn’t long enough for them to tackle some new software and apply that to the project.

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As with any unfamiliar medium – whether it is clay, paint, a musical instrument or software, I am a real advocate of allowing space to ‘play and learn’ before applying that knowledge in context. Despite this, a number of children did produce designs suitable for printing. A quick vote decided a winning design to be ‘printed’ there and then.

The 3Dtin software allows for files to be exported in a format (STL) that can be understood by the printer and so it is a relatively simple process (via a USB memory stick) to get a file printing (an object emerges incrementally through the extrusion of a line of 0.25mm molten plastic). The printing process itself is mesmerising and children and adults alike find the emergence of an object a hypnotic experience.

The end result was a great little ‘stadium’.

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A trip to remember

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Any visit to a school is always a thoroughly enriching experience. However, my visit to Porchester Junior School in Nottingham this week exceeded my every expectation.

I have been a fan of Simon Widdowson (@xannov) and his work for some time now, so when a teacher colleague (Jenn Lucraft) asked me a couple of months ago if I knew of any primary schools doing anything interesting with mobile technologies (particularly ipads) or ICT generally, I thought immediately of Porchester. A visit would be a good opportunity to see first hand some of the things I’d only previously read about on Simon’s blog.

The day had been carefully planned by Simon and Headteacher, Graham Cullen to ensure that Jenn and I got the most from the experience. This meant that we had opportunities to spend time with Simon, Graham, staff (over a wonderful lunch) and with some incredible pupils.

The school has a technology 'museum'.

We began the day with Graham. I know from my own experience in school and from the many schools that I work with that one of the most important factors influencing a schools sustained success in moving forward, innovating and integrating ICT into learning is the support and vision of school leadership. Graham has only been at Porchester for a matter of weeks but I was certainly persuaded of his commitment to supporting Simon and his vision to keep Porchester at the leading edge in the use of technologies for learning.

 

 

From Graham, we moved to an ICT suite (Windows laptops) where Simon was working with a group of upper Key Stage 2 children who were using Scratch for the first time. The children were learning independently. I say ‘independently’; they were working from Youtube tutorials (on the school’s Youtube channel) on the fundamentals of Scratch but they were also collaborating and helping each other. This was great learning. Simon was an essential part of the process but, rather than run a ‘Blue Peter’ lesson from the front with step-by-step instructions to be followed in a linear way by pupils, he handed the learning to them, to work at their own pace and he acted as a facilitator, intervening expertly to move learning on when necessary. I loved speaking to these enthusiastic youngsters about the activity and asked at one point “What do you reckon to Scratch?” I was met with the answer “I prefer it to Kodu but I reckon my favourite is 2Simple, 2DIY.” The assertion was backed up by reference to software features that demonstrated a deep understanding on the part of the pupil. Impressive stuff so far!

 

Following this session, we had Simon to ourselves. These times when we were able to get Simon alone were brilliant. He shared his subject leader folder but, as is often the way, we would start discussing a topic only to find that we rapidly flew off, excitedly down a different path. We covered policy, planning, strategy, technical issues – everything an effective subject leader has a handle on. Simon has found that over time his planning has evolved into something less ‘wordy’. This is natural but also belies the fact that he builds in flexibility and responsiveness. He doesn’t want to be a slave to planning and cited the example of his discovery of the ‘Aurasma’ augmented reality app as a time when planning went out of the window in order to pursue an exciting new technology (more here).  The same was true for Epic Citadel and Silent Movie Maker.

All the stand-alone ICT lessons are led by Simon and, although this is something I worry about, it seems a very effective model at Porchester. He is timetabled to teach ICT but also gets into classrooms and will work with staff to get ICT embedded in cross-curricular learning. Conversations had with staff over lunch testified to the effectiveness of this way of working with teachers citing greater confidence and willingness to use technologies in the classrooms. The school website/blog has become a powerful hub, serving as a record of learning and a vehicle for demonstrating the school’s vision and ethos. Note the site has links to the school’s social media/media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr Amazon wishlist etc)

And so into a classroom. Anne Ingle (Y6 teacher) was kind enough to allow us the privilege of visiting her class whilst they used ipads to ‘write’ their ‘Hare and Tortoise’ stories. It was fascinating to see the pupils working on ipads. They had one between two and were enjoying some really collaborative learning. I was keen to know what the pupils thought the ipad brought to the party and there was certainly an infectious enthusiasm for the technology. “It is really fun!” “They’re better than laptops because they’re just easier to use.” Now, if I’m honest, I could imagine the lesson being equally effective with paper and pencil or laptops and I have no doubt Anne has such lessons because she has the conditions right for learning. What the ipad seemed to bring was a simple, fast tool with an app that made the task easy and rewarding – they were able to quickly produce a professional looking story with text and images with consummate ease. Another thing that impressed me was how everything just ‘worked’ – I have first hand, bitter experience of flying around classrooms trouble-shooting troublesome technology. I know that Simon has worked tirelessly to ensure technical issues are minimized and that what we saw isn’t always the case, however. Impressive stuff again!
I was especially interested in how the lesson concluded. What would the pupils do with their finished projects? What schools ‘do’ with pupil work is an endless source of fascination for me. Save it locally? On the device? How? Save it to a school-based server? How? Where, exactly? Upload it to an online space? How? Share it on a blog? How? Etc. There are some excellent systems in place at Porchester and I was impressed to see some pupils emailing their (PDF) projects to themselves from the ipad in readiness to then upload them to their ‘Learning Space’ (basically a privatized blog). These learning spaces are ‘hidden’ blogs that can then be accessed by staff and staff can also ‘reblog’ or publicise examples of work very simply to the school website. This was seamless and there were identified ‘experts’ in Anne’s class who were able to help others with the process if necessary. Again, this worked well on the day but I’m sure takes some time getting it right and getting the technology to support it. Further, the vagaries of different apps means that output may be easier or harder to save or share, presenting new and different technical challenges. This whole thing is something I’d really like to see getting sorted somehow. There is currently just too much fiddling/faffing about between activity and sharing/saving work. Not the fault of the school but definitely irksome.

After this, we had some more time with Simon. We learned that if you are going to deploy ipads in school, you will probably want to have a Mac or Macbook to help things along such as synching apps and galleries (one way pupils effectively record work is by snap-shotting stuff to the device’s gallery).

I certainly think that schools should consider ipads as an additional device that will bring new and unique learning opportunities to pupils. As Simon said ‘We bought them for research but we are still finding new ways of using them”

My head is still buzzing. Porchester are certainly leading the way in primary ICT and, thanks to the vision, leadership and passion of Simon, they will surely remain at the forefront.

Thank you to Simon, Graham, Anne, staff and those wonderful pupils for an unforgettable and inspiring day!

Keeping the baby in the bath

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I have been spurred into action based upon a few coinciding events and conversations.

I had a discussion recently with an early years specialist for whom I have enormous respect. The discussion arose from her asserting that she advised early educators to avoid the introduction of technologies such as computers, ipods, ipads and the like until children were the age of two.

She was keen to point out the importance of ‘real-world’ play, exploration and learning. She described the urgent need for youngsters to learn through handling artefacts and objects, getting their hands dirty and getting outside. She was almost apologetic when she started putting her case to me (I’ve come across this before). I think that sometimes people think that because I am an advocate for technology that somehow any argument put forward for other routes to learning will be met with my disapproval or condemnation. Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe in youngsters having as rich an experience of the world as it is possible to provide. This experience must reflect the way the world is. It must include opportunities to explore the full gamut.

Regarding this, there is a problem, well two problems really. Firstly, there is a problem of imbalance and secondly a problem with a failure to ask two important questions ‘So what?’ and ‘Where’s the learning?’

Let’s look first at balance. If a child’s only creative experiences were in the use of paint, they would be missing out on some pretty essential and significant other experiences such as clay, play-dough, coloured pens, pencils, crayons etc. This imbalance would be wrong and would need addressing. Would we ‘blame’ paint for this? Would we suggest that the appropriate age for the introduction of paint should be 2 years old? If there is an overuse of technology in a child’s early experience that is to the detriment of the child’s whole development, does it follow that the technology is bad or that its introduction should be delayed? I would argue not and that to delay its introduction would be equally damaging (in terms of imbalance). There may be some research or scientific evidence to suggest that infants and babies being exposed to technologies such as computers and ipads is detrimental to their eyesight and/or health  - I would be very interested to see examples of such research if anyone can point me towards it. (UPDATE: Since publishing, I have been directed to this article - My response is that most of the arguments used against screens could apply equally to books and would we really argue that infants should be deprived of books until the age of 2? ).

Interestingly, the following video clip was cited as exemplifying the problem of introducing technology too early.

To me, it exemplifies the importance of providing a rich balance of experiences. I would extend this to the over exposure to plastic, wood, primary colours and so on. I’ll say it again – Rich. Balance.

I would also add that it also highlights the importance of cooperative/collaborative engagement with technology (whether that technology is a book, magazine or an ipad). By this I refer to the power of an adult sitting down with a youngster and engaging with them and the technology together. Technology should never be a baby-sitter. See here:

This leads me to the second problem and this is linked to the seduction by ‘machines that go ping’ (more on this here on Pete Yeoman’s blog and here on Mark Gleeson’s ). For too many, technology in various forms is seen as a magic bullet. Let’s sit the baby or toddler in front of the TV, computer, ipad (whatever) cos they’ll inevitable learn loads by osmosis. Let’s buy a shedload of shiny stuff cos it’ll impress people and just look at how engaged the kids are! Let’s get some games consoles in class cos it’ll make learning fun. Please people, constantly ask yourselves these two questions: “Where’s the learning?” and “So what?”

The problem does not lie with the technology. It is in its use. It is not the tool… (heard that somewhere before?).

 

AM. The Future?

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I was recently invited to attend the ‘Additive Manufacturing Sandpit event’ at Loughborough University that took place on Wednesday 6th July. “What on earth is ‘Additive Manufacturing (AM)’?” I hear you cry and I have to admit I was initially a little unsure of what to expect. AM is also known as ‘3D printing’ and is a way to make stuff by adding very thin layers of polymers, metals or ceramics. This is generally done in liquid, powder or sheet form. So you can ‘print’ things. Things that have previously been designed on a computer (using CAD software). Here’s one:

And here’s a video clip of a printer in action:

I was so ignorant of this technology that I wanted to know at least a little more prior to the event. An enquiry on Twitter and a bit of googling led me to Dave White, a teacher doing some amazing things and blogging about it here. I also came across this amazing use of a printer. And why not ‘print’ your own chocolates?

The day started with three presentations.
We heard from Denise Stephens (of Enabled by Design) describing the challenges that she and fellow MS sufferers encounter. The lack of any design innovation in assistive technology in the last 40 years was driven home to me as Denise shared some truly disheartening images of AT such as crutches, stools, ‘walkers’ etc. They all looked like something out of a 1950s hospital with their sterile, beige features. Why can’t designers consider everyone’s needs? Needs that could be met with relative simplicity, as they are with the Breville Hotcup dispensing kettle for instance (removing the risk of a boiling water spillage).

We heard from Andrew Haslett, Director of Strategy Development at The Energy Technology Institute. Frankly, I was left depressed. In brief, there is a major energy crisis emerging and new and urgent approaches are required (no real surprise, I suppose). Oh, and what’s more, our feeble efforts at a domestic/local level are but drops in an immense ocean. Ok, this is perhaps somewhat gloomier than Andrew’s intended message, but rosy it ain’t.

Finally, we were treated to a presentation by Mike Sharples, an education guru from The University of Nottingham. Mike’s message was refreshing and optimistic in tone. Amongst other things, he lamented the demise of bricolage or ‘tinkering’ in learning. This really resonated with me as someone that is a passionate believer in the power of this approach to learning and it reminded me of my favourite TED talk by founder of ‘The Tinkering School’, Gever Tulley. I could see immediately how AM technology might be one possible route to the resurrection of tinkering. Mike also cited John Dewey, an advocate of constructivist, hands-on experiential learning.

The rest of the day was then spent ‘sand-pitting’. In groups of varying sizes and demographics, we discussed AM with a view to proposing a project that may be chosen to receive £5000 backing. The project/proposal could have a social, energy, assistive technology or education focus.

My group developed a proposal that would involve installing a printer in a primary school, a ‘Dragons’ Den’ activity and a Design Technology project to produce relevant, valuable, useful artefacts. The school in question would become a ‘hub’ for good practice in this technology. We weren’t sure whether there is a primary school in the UK with such a technology, but we were all convinced of the value it could bring.

So what might a school get out of this? Well, it would certainly reinvigorate a Design Technology curriculum. The sheer rapidity of the process of design/manufacture to artifact is exciting and easily allows for multiple iterations. This is where tweaking and tinkering can be exploited. Imagine the possibilities for DT projects: cups/containers, mobile phone cases, stands for MP3 players, jewelry, ornaments, action figures etc.  Children will certainly come up with endless suggestions for projects. Dejan Mitrovic has a portable printer that he has taken into a school where the children each designed there own building in Google Sketchup before they printed the class ‘town’.

Prices for this technology are tumbling and it is becoming ever more accessible. Once upon a time, the first computers appeared in UK schools and opened up a world of programming to a generation of youngsters. The UK is now a world leader in the computer games industry. Coincidence?

Who knows, the Christmas Present of the near future might be a personal 3-D printer. Print your own Lego pieces, Christmas tree decorations, earrings, jewelry, parts for the broken washing machine. Or, if you don’t have one at home, send your designs off to the local community printer and have them produced for you there.

My eyes have certainly been opened!