Multimedia to Address Diverse Learning Styles?

If you take an education methods class, you will inevitably discuss learning styles. Do they exist? If so, should we create different types of instructional content to address diverse learning styles? How much time can a teacher invest in adjusting instruction to meet the needs of diverse learners? The questions go on and on.

What about learning styles? You’ll find a lot of research on this topic. Just do a search on Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com), using the phrase “learning styles,” and the search engine returns about 141,000 results. David Kolb writes about the Experiential Learning Cycle, telling us that adults learn differently from children and that often we need to “unlearn.” The Felder-Silverman Index of Learning Styles includes four dimensions: processing (active/reflective), perception (sensing/intuitive), input (visual/verbal) and understanding (sequential/global). The Honey and Mumford Learning Styles Questionnaire (LSQ) provides another way for people to analyze how they best learn. And if you are an educator, you know about Gardner’s multiple intelligences. Learning styles have been identified in the ESL/EFL classroom and associated with culture, race, and a whole slew of other criteria. How we view learning styles depends a lot on how we believe people learn.

Richard E. Mayer states that the learning style view works with the “information acquisition” theory of learning–learners are empty vessels needing to be filled with information. In contrast to this, the cognitive theory of multimedia learning is based on the assumption that (a) all learners have separate channels for processing verbal and pictorial material, (b) each channel is limited (limited capacity learning principle) in the amount of processing that can take place at one time, and (c) learners actively build pictorial and verbal models from instructional materials and build connections between them.

The multimedia principle is simple and straightforward: People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.

(Image Copyright 2010, Barbara Schroeder, Ed.D.)

If we believe the cognitive theory of multimedia learning to be true, then we can and should create instruction that is engaging, addresses all learners, and helps them build their own mental representations. After all, the goal of effective instruction is to encourage the learner to engage in active cognitive processing. Sure, there are exceptions to multimedia principles, such as expert learners not needing as much multimedia enrichment than novices, but the principles can be used by instructors to guide the design and presentation of instruction.

Instead of using multimedia to address diverse learning styles, use multimedia to address how people learn–by selecting words and images, organizing words and images, and integrating verbal and pictorial representations with each other and existing knowledge. This “knowledge construction” metaphor for learning presents people as active participants in their own learning.

Now some of you might be scratching your heads and saying–”But wait a minute. I learn better from text than from pictures.” Well, that might be true, but I would argue that this is not a learning style, but a learning preference. It just means that you selected the text to read instead of looking at the picture, too. Maybe the picture was of bad quality or a poor representation of the text. But if an appropriate picture is used along with the text, in the right place, then you will learn even better. And if you are already skilled in a certain procedure or concept, then a picture or text alone might do the trick. And if narration is used instead of text along with images, then multimedia research shows that this is even better than static text and pictures.

This post is not meant to resolve or incite the continuing debate over the validity and reliability of learning styles. And some may argue that “style” also means “preference.” That’s okay. I’m used to debating educational issues. However, using proven, research-based multimedia and other message design principles along with effective instructional strategies can go a long way in providing excellent instruction and encouraging learning. I’ve listed books below that will help you get started:

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• 10 Reasons to Use Multimedia in the Classroom
• Students as Creators of Multimedia Instruction

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From #BectaX to #ukedchat: Virtual CPD for Teachers

In March this year, I was lucky enough to be invited to one of the most interesting conferences I’ve ever attended: #BectaX. As its name would suggest, the event was organised by BECTA, a UK government agency that promoted the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning. This was one of its final acts before being shut down by the new government.

#BectaX brought 150 education professionals, policy formers and digital media experts from the UK to the Wellcome Collection in London to discuss how education might evolve in an increasingly connected world. To widen the conversation, and simultaneously demonstrate quite how connected the world has become, the conference also had a significant presence online. Discussions were filmed and streamed, with pupils from a number of schools linking up to the event via webcam and contributing their own comments both via Twitter and in an afternoon Q&A session.

A screen at the back of the stage displayed the twitterfeed for the event, with a monitor facing the speakers providing them with instant feedback on the session, and giving them a sense of the wider conversations going on around the conference. I’m sure we’ve all heard cautionary tales about the risks involved in making the back-channel public in this way, but on this occasion it most definitely added value to proceedings. The afternoon Q&A session was rapidly appended to the schedule in response to complaints from pupils that their voices weren’t being heard, while at least one presentation was rescued from being an ill-judged product pitch when the speaker realised quite how negative a response he was getting from his audience via the Twitter display.

After a morning of presentations, we returned from lunch to take part in a workshop. Pre-event publicity for #BectaX had raised five key questions to inform our understanding of how education and technology might interact in future. Delegates were divided into fifteen groups of ten and each group was allotted a question to consider. By the end of the session, each had to have produced a poster explaining their ideas, with the others voting on which was the best.

I found myself in a group discussing how technology might be used to create an environment in which teachers were encouraged and rewarded for continuous learning. After considering a number of tempting but implausibly idealistic possibilities, such as giving both teachers and pupils half a day each week to learn about anything that took their fancy, we finally fixed upon two key positives that already existed in the teaching community.

Teachmeets, those informal but organised meetings in which teachers share good practice, particularly with regard to using technology, were the first of our positives. The consensus around them, at least in our group, seemed to be that they were exceptionally useful, but that they’d be far more effective if better attended, since it was often those who would benefit most from ideas and assistance who were notable by their absence.

The other key positive was Twitter, and the way in which it too facilitated the sharing of best practice between teachers, by allowing them to swap ideas and links to useful tools quickly and publicly. Even more than teachmeets, though, Twitter tends to be the preserve of those already at least reasonably comfortable with new technologies.

This led us to probably our most realistic suggestion: that, as part of their teacher training, each newly-qualified teacher should be taught how to use Twitter, and given a list of tweeting teachers they might follow for advice and examples of best practice. New teachers would thus find themselves connected to good practitioners from the very start, while innovative teachers would have the opportunity to circulate their ideas beyond a sometimes small and already well-informed audience, in a kind of virtual teachmeet.

Though the closure of BECTA seems rather to have closed the door on #BectaX and its more ambitious ideas for improving education, this would seem to be one that could still be implemented easily and without much cost. For the moment, any UK teacher interested in learning from best practitioners would be well advised to get on Twitter between 8 and 9 on a Thursday evening, and search for “#ukedchat”.

From its debut in June this year as a more conveniently scheduled UK version of the popular worldwide #edchat discussion, #ukedchat has provided a forum for teachers to discuss subjects that matter to them. Each week, contributors choose a question for debate. Often these address the use of technology within the classroom, such as “How do we make the use of interactive whiteboards TRULY interactive?”, or “How can we use collaboration tools to get kids to learn from and about each other?” Then, over the course of an hour, teachers talk around the question, sharing best practice as they go, in what has been described by one participant as “Formula 1 CPD”. Anyone can contribute, and each week more than 100 teachers and other education professionals do so.

In addition to providing advice and examples of good practice, #ukedchat can also serve as a rapid introduction to some of the most interesting education twitterers around. An hour spent in the company of these practitioners will give the novice a great many ideas as to whom they might follow for regular suggestions and advice.

The wider community that is developing around #ukedchat is also impressive. Each week’s discussions are archived for those who’ve missed the discussion, or want to follow it at their own pace. (And with recent sessions producing more than 700 tweets, this may be an increasingly popular option.) Summaries are also posted on the #ukedchat blog, highlighting the most interesting tweets and links from previous sessions.

All in all, #ukedchat is an invaluable resource for the teacher looking for ways to develop their skills, particularly in the area of new technologies. With the demise of BECTA, and further cuts in education spending announced seemingly weekly, free teacher-led initiatives like this are going to become increasingly important.

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Become a Guest Blogger for Global Grid for Learning

If you don’t already know, Global Grid for Learning (GGfL) connects teachers and students at all stages in education to a network of over 40 international providers of high quality educational resources.

Now we want to connect teachers to a global community of fellow educators so that they can share their knowledge and expertise with one another. And we would like you to be a part of it.

Blogging Benefits

GGfL is looking for guest bloggers for our community blog. Whilst we provide over one million educational resources, we would like YOU to provide the advice and guidance on how these resources might best be used for teaching.

If you’re what we’re looking for, you could end up benefiting from the following:

• A global platform to share your thoughts and expertise
• Mutual links back to your own blog
• Opportunity to establish a reputation as a thought leader in your area

So Are You the Blogger We Are Looking For?

Whether you are an existing blogger or a blogger-to-be doesn’t matter. What matters is your passion for using technology in the classroom. If your area of interest is in digital content and online resources, then we’d love to hear what you have to say.

Here’s a quick list of ideas for topics that would be useful to our community:

• Thoughts and opinions on the latest in educational technology
• Lesson tips based around using multimedia – including video, audio, images, and interactive games and activities
• Best practice in using digital content in regards to eSafety and copyright
• Thought leader posts on the benefits of utilising technology in education

Get in touch now to find out more about this exciting opportunity to become a guest blogger for Global Grid for Learning.

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10 Reasons to Use Multimedia in the Classroom

By incorporating multimedia in their instruction, teachers can capture attention, engage learners, explain difficult concepts, inspire creativity, and have fun. However, there are many tools available and many ways to use those tools. If you are a teacher searching for a technology tool to accomplish certain learning goals or outcomes, you can easily be overwhelmed. Given the limited amount of time teachers have during the day, why should you take the time to learn about and use these tools? I’ll try to answer this question.

Following is a list of ten reasons you should use multimedia in your classroom. As you investigate and try these and other tools, you will notice that they are social–encouraging sharing, feedback, publication, and other experiences that support learning. By modelling social learning and learning with technology, you will be preparing your students for success in today’s rapidly changing world.

1. Facilitate and develop a community of learners through online ice-breaker activities. These activities offer fun and easy ways to get to know each other while also providing outlets for student creativity. A neat tool that works well for this is VoiceThread. Students can use a computer web-cam to record a video of themselves and view other students videos, all on one page.

2. Help students visualize difficult concepts or procedures more easily by using static or dynamic multimedia. I have used a very simple and efficient software called ScreenSteps, which allows you to quickly create visual handouts for learners. Teachers and students can use Jing software to record a screen shot or video, which produces a video tutorial or information about a website, embedding the video on their website or sending it to the student as an email attachment. These types of software provide a great way for teachers to make the most out of their multimedia and online resources.

3. Scaffold learning through activities enhanced by videos and online games. When assigning reading about an obscure historical event, you might want to create pre-reading activities by having students watch and comment on videos that fill in needed background knowledge. Searching for videos about events on Global Grid for Learning (GGfL), for instance, can provide needed support and add to a student’s gap in knowledge.  Then you could embed these videos on your class website, blog, or wiki. Or have students add to a playlist as they locate more videos on the topic.

4. Make language and culture come alive through the viewing and creation of audio and video instruction. Students could view videos and television programs available online and stay up to date on current events in that country. They could also create their own videos and share them with another class, comparing cultural norms and addressing other questions through a group blog or wiki.

5. Provide a “menu” of authentic assignment options for students to complete, allowing them to explore and identify their passions and talents. Encourage them to create and publish an original digital story. Have them produce a weekly podcast show for the classroom, highlighting events of the week, using blogs. They might also want to film their developing skills in a sport or record their progress in learning a musical instrument.

6. Enhance accessibility through the use of powerful multimedia software tools. Encourage students to use a speech-to-text tool to write their next essay or short story. This is especially helpful for students who have fine motor challenges or students who have trouble with keyboarding. Use auto-captioning features to create accessible multimedia for students with hearing challenges.

7. Enable visualization of concepts and their connections through collaborative construction and discussion of concept maps. One of my all-time favourites is CMap tools, a free, multi-platform software tool that can be downloaded to your computer. Students could work in groups, constructing a concept map and even recording within CMap tools this construction.

8. Encourage collaboration and feedback by integrating assignments with tools that support conversations and comments. For instance, have students post their slideshows and have them view their classmates’ presentations, and post comments. Or have students create video comments on video sharing sites such as TeacherTube. Use collaborative software such as blogs and wikis for students to easily create, edit, and publish their work. And make sure you provide information for parents to access these social media sites to see what their children are doing.

9. Make learning situated and personal with easy to access information from you and the rest of the world. Have students subscribe to your class Twitter and blog feeds and enable them on their mobile devices, if possible. Or, have them use a Twitter aggregator, such as Tweetdeck, to stay on top of news announcements. Show them how to subscribe to dynamic sites using RSS Readers and how to read and track updated content. Have them subscribe to podcasts and rate those podcasts. Allow students to contact you using SMS.

10. Help students document and present their learning through authentic assessments. Instead of taking an end of term test, have students collect their work and detail their progress on their Learning Log, using any number of free blogging tools. Show them how to tag their posts, how to create categories (which could be the course objectives or standards), how to link to artefacts, how to write reflections, and then set aside time at the end of each week for reflection and documentation of their work. At the end of the term or semester, students could then refine their Learning Log, turning it into a showcase Portfolio, presenting it to the class and parents, discussing their work, what they learned, and where they want to go from there. Not only would this individualize their learning experience, but it would make students more responsible for their work and enable them to experience learning as being life-long and active.

As you can see from these ideas, you can easily align instructional goals and empower instruction through using appropriate multimedia tools. It takes some planning, time, and expenditures (video cameras, software), but in the long run, your students will reap many benefits, such as taking more responsibility for their learning, becoming aware of their learning and how to document it, and realizing their own creative potential.

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• Students as Creators of Multimedia Instruction

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Enhancing an Education Strategy Through Digital Learning

With constant changes in the world’s economic landscape, nations are always seeking new ways to develop their citizens and prepare them today for the challenges of tomorrow.

Individual nations have different reasons for this. The drive to move from agriculture to industry and then onto a knowledge led economy. The realisation that existing resources and sources of income aren’t sustainable. Or perhaps it’s just the desire to try and keep a position as a global leader in one field or another.

Whatever the reasons, there is a constant need to prepare future generations – and that’s what we call education.

Education is recognised as the enabler in every nation around the world. To sustain and improve a country must educate its citizens. But education is changing. Literacy and numeracy are no longer the only basic skills; IT literacy is as important as any other skill today. Indeed, perhaps even more important as life becomes more dependent on our use of technology.

So as the world around us changes, so does our mode of education. Embedding learning in other processes we need is a very effective learning mechanism. It’s been successfully used to teach English in Malaysia – by teaching maths and science in English. And it’s used every time a learner uses digital content to explore resources and learn using a computer. Computer skills increase directly alongside subject specific skills. The act of information gathering itself becomes an invaluable learning experience in itself.

But is using digital resources more effective than other educational processes? Digital resources open up so many different ways of learning for users, such as interactive learning objects that cover a specific topic, image and libraries that allow users to browse historical archives, an e-book that’s accessed on a mobile phone and a wealth of tools that enable users to create and share their own content.

It’s the way that today’s consumers expect content to be delivered and why today’s publishers are embracing the digital revolution. It’s about supporting the student who plays computer games and uses FaceBook and who is used to their specific individual needs being catered to. Plus, if the content is managed and tracked, teachers can better understand each learner’s needs better.

So preparing citizens means new, improved curriculum design that embraces the benefits that digital learning provides.

That’s why the United Arab Emirates has an educational policy with Information Technology at its core, with access to computers to all students from kindergarten upwards. There’s an understanding too that self-learning by students familiar with technology forms an integral part of the learning experience.

It’s why Malaysia has actively developed a programme of education using technology because they are aware that a digital divide is bad for the long-term development of a knowledge economy.

And it’s why digital resources, online learning and information technology need to be a core component of any learning strategy development, whether it be an individual’s personalised learning programme or a national educational strategy.

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Proper Tea is Theft

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Getting the Most from Interactive Whiteboards

In the course of my work, I meet large numbers of teachers who use the interactive whiteboard (IWB) in their classrooms as little more than projection screens. I think that the current statistic is that over 60% of the whiteboards installed in English schools are only used in this way.

To me this is an appalling waste of money and equipment and one which can certainly be addressed by proper, and relevant, training. Installing an IWB without providing proper training is like giving someone a violin without violin lessons or an exercise bike without motivation! To persuade someone to use an IWB you have to provide both training and motivation and I would suggest that the training should be designed to provide motivation.

Training should not be a demonstration with a few people invited up to use the board but should be a workshop with all participants using the whiteboard software with the trainer. The trainer should set the use of all IWB tools into a teaching context choosing examples from the subject areas of the trainees whenever possible.

Let’s look at a few key questions. The obvious one is do IWBs really improve teaching and learning?

This is an easy one – there is plenty of research in the public domain that supports this. For example the report done by Somerset LEA which you can find here

So what if you have a board and don’t really know what to do with it – where do you start?

• Find out if your school, college or Local Authority provide training courses
• Ask the school INSET organiser to look for training. Suggest that they contact the company that provided the equipment. Be very specific about your training needs – it must be a workshop, you must be trained with a computer in front of you with the IWB software installed and you must be shown techniques set into a teaching context that you can then use in your classroom or preparation immediately
• Search the internet for training information. The manufacturer’s website and YouTube are good places to start.
• Set up an informal support group and get people to show each other ideas – things that they have done with their IWB
• Get the IWB software installed on your laptop and try it out for yourself. You don’t need a whiteboard attached to make the software work. Just try things out!
• Start with basic things like coloured pens and ask yourself what you could use colour for – prime and non-prime numbers, adjectives and adverbs, different parts of sentences. You are only limited by your imagination
• Be brave and experiment and, most of all, don’t be afraid to ask for help!

Michele Conway is a former Maths teacher and Head Teacher who has worked with computers and IT for 40 years and now writes and runs Hitachi’s IWB training scheme worldwide.

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Students as Creators of Multimedia Instruction

If you were in school during the 1960s, like me, you probably remember the anticipation and excitement when the filmstrip projector was brought out. If you’ve never heard of or seen a filmstrip, there is a picture below. The projector held the filmstrip, which was inserted vertically in front of the projector. Filmstrips usually came with a teacher’s guide along with a 33 RPM record to provide the audio. The person in charge of the filmstrip projector would advance to the next slide when a tone sounded. Even though the content was “educational” and dry, this multimedia device was a welcome diversion from the almost totally text-based classroom environment. Even turning the projector knob was fun. How things have changed.

Now, we have many more options to include multimedia (both static and dynamic) in our classrooms–to enhance a physics lesson, provide pre-reading strategies for a literature assignment, stimulate a discussion or brainstorming session, serve as a platform for research or debate, and a multitude of other options. As a teacher, you have many more ways to include multimedia, both content that you create and content you can locate online.

Of course, Global Grid for Learning (GGfL) provides an easy way for you to locate, organize, and present content to serve any number of instructional strategies and learning objectives you’ve identified for your students. With over 1 million multimedia resources for teaching, you won’t be running out soon. Whenever you can use resources that meet your needs, it will save you a lot of time. But what about when you cannot locate something or you need more specialized content for your classroom? What are your options?

You could: (1) create the multimedia instruction yourself or (2) have your students create it. For many reasons, it is often desirable to have students create multimedia for various applications, such as instruction, research, interviews, and other creative activities. In this way, you can free up your time to help students with the projects, learn along with them, and create an extensive archive of useful instructional and learning multimedia products. Because students create the instruction, they will have opportunities to learn about the multimedia technologies and about content. You will hear me preach this very often–teachers do not and should not create all of the instructional materials for the classroom. Students should increasingly take on this role and become more active learners.

Students as Creators: Ideas to Get Started

How do you get started? There is no one “right” way, and it really depends upon the students’ skills and the instructional product or material they are creating. You may find you and your students need to learn a technology tool together, such as a video editing program (try Windows Movie Maker or Mac OS X iMovie) or a game creation tool (Flipnote studio for Nintendo DS) before you can create instructional content or a learning artefact. Or you may ask them to create a collaborative slideshow to enhance an instructional unit using Google Docs (http://docs.google.com) presentation software in groups, which would require little to no pre-instruction.

You might decide to collaborate using a class channel on authorSTREAM (http://authorstream.com), requiring students to narrate and upload PowerPoint files and comment on other student work. Or students could research YouTube, locating videos that explain and synthesize a concept they are learning and create their own customized annotated playlist along with an introductory video using their computer webcam.

The list of ideas is endless . . . How about students creating cartoons in place of essays, writing their reports or other reviews in this genre? There are many ways they can do this collaboratively, such as Toondoo (http://www.toondoo.com), which allows them to create and share their cartoons online. You might want students to explain a concept through a video game, which they can also accomplish online, using a game creator called Sploder (http://www.sploder.com).

Students could easily create their own blogs (I like the easy interface of Blogger), upload their videos, and create a video podcast on a semester-long project. Everything involved in this would be free, as blogger hosts videos on Google Video and the blogging platform is also free. Included in this activity would be the necessity to learn about RSS and how to subscribe to feeds, an essential aspect of social media and Web 2.0 tools. Students could share their blogs and create a feed mash-up using tools such as Yahoo! Pipes. And if you don’t know how to do this, then again, learn with your students. Imagine the empowerment and sense of accomplishment that would accompany this work as students explore, create, share, and yes, teach.

So, the next time you think you need to create new multimedia instruction, think again. Research and use the multimedia already created and easily available online. And encourage your students to create rich and engaging instructional content and products. It’s a win-win situation.

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Learning About Content Standards at the ASPECT Summer School

Over 40 teachers from Belgium, Lithuania, Portugal and Romania came together to learn about the integration of digital learning resources into platforms (VLEs) and learning content packaging in a Summer School organised by the ASPECT project (http://aspect-project.org) on 8 May 2010 in Lisbon.

The main aim of the ASPECT Summer School was to explore how learning content standards, such as SCORM and Common Cartridge, can be used by teachers, and how different types of “content packaging” can add value to the learning experience.

ASPECT is a 30-month Best Practice Network supported by the European Commission’s eContentplus Programme, involving 22 partners from 15 countries. The aim of ASPECT is to explore how the adoption of learning technology standards and specifications can be improved. The programme will run until February 2011 and is now in its final phase.

The Summer School in Portugal was the third and final session, in which ASPECT obtained feedback from teachers.

First, four national workshops organized in October 2009 focused on how teachers search for and discover resources contained in learning content repositories such as the Learning Resource Exchange (LRE) for schools and what their impressions are about the LRE portal as a resource for their daily work. After that an online workshop, organized in March 2010, analysed teachers’ search behaviours and their attitudes towards reusability and sharing of resources i.e., under what kind of conditions teachers would trust or share resources, in particular when it comes to tags, ratings, authors (content providers), etc.

The third session, organised in May 2010 in Lisbon, concentrated on the integration of resources into VLEs and content packaging. First the teachers were asked to create a normal lesson plan using the Moodle learning platform in a “traditional” way by combining different resources. Then they were asked to repeat the same task using resources that had been ‘packaged’ by ASPECT content developers using both the SCORM and Common Cartridge standards.

According to Kati Clements from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland (part of the ASPECT Consortium) many of the teachers were positively surprised by the possibilities offered by content packaging. Teachers with regular IT skills could take content that had been packaged using Common Cartridge, download it into Moodle and easily create a lesson plan from the unpackaged material.

Generally, ASPECT teachers reacted to SCORM resources in much the same way that they treated unpackaged content. For example, they did not see much difference between having a SCORM resource and a PowerPoint presentation. In comparison, the teachers were very enthusiastic about Common Cartridge content packaging. After importing a CC package into Moodle, the teachers could remove parts that they did not need, edit the content and change the order of different resources.

Dr. Agueda Gras-Velazquez, from European Schoolnet (part of the ASPECT Consortium) was delighted to see how teachers’ positive attitudes towards and interest in resource repositories, content packaging and, above all, the ASPECT project, had increased drastically since the first workshop: In the national workshops in October 2009 teachers had been sceptical about the uses and advantages of the LRE portal and content packaging. However, they left the Lisbon Summer School eager to know more about how to include Common Cartridge plug-ins in their own virtual learning environments (VLE) and were keen to use learning content packaging in the future.

For more information on the workshop and more initial results please see:

http://www.aspect-project.org/node/84 and http://www.aspect-project.org/node/83

About ASPECT

ASPECT is a new 30-month Best Practice Network supported by the European Commission’s eContentPlus Programme that involves 22 partners from 15 countries, including 9 Ministries of Education (MoE), four commercial content developers and leading technology providers, including Cambridge University Press. Currently Cambridge University Press is working with ASPECT and its partners to develop best practice approaches to implementing standards for both educational content discovery and use.

http://aspect-project.org

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Reflections on the 2010 E2BN Annual Conference

It was bright and sunny in Bedfordshire for the 2010 E2BN Annual Conference. It was both GGfL’s and my first time at the event, and on reflection it was a pretty positive experience for both of us.

From the amazing food (thanks goes to both E2BN and the Robinson Executive Centre), the entertaining mind reader/comedian (Graham Jolly – I highly recommend checking him out) to the great conversations we had on our stand, it was a really enjoyable experience.

A particular highlight was some interviews we did for a bunch of students from Harrold’s Priory Middle School. A number of the students converged on our stand at different times throughout the conference to ask about GGfL (and receive some freebies of course), whilst recording interviews for their projects.

Being camera shy, I let Ian, my colleague, field the questions. It was really encouraging and refreshing to see that their teachers had provided a project for them based not only on using multimedia (filming with their camcorders and uploading it to the web), but also on learning about the range of different technologies that are currently available to them.What’s more is they seemed to find it a fun experience – and all the best to them for it!

Some Thoughts on the Workshops

In addition to talking to delegates on the stand, I’m always interested in attending seminars, keynotes, and workshops whenever I can, and one of the talks that immediately caught my eye at E2BN was ‘Copyright, Copywrong’ by Simon Finch – the alternate title being “Why are we happy to teach our learners to steal?”

It was a great session, and I thought I’d share some of the insightful points with you. Simon, a presenter and consultant on elearning, esafety, and Intellectual Property Rights, explained to a small group of ICT coordinators, advisors, teachers, and myself how we have been brought up in a ‘culture of theft’. Strong words – but they really do encapsulate online behaviour these days – if we are to be honest with ourselves. From the advent of the photocopier, the tape recorder, and eventually the internet, it has become easier for us to access and share copyrighted material. However, in the words of Simon himself, ignorance of copyright laws, whether blissful or intended, is neither ‘morally or economically sustainable‘.

Another aspect of our online behaviour is that we’re entering an age where we’re increasingly becoming producers, editors and creators of content online. We are all publishers in some sense. So shouldn’t we be ever more mindful of copyright? I think so – but I also think it will be a slow and long process to get where we need to be. But the sooner we begin the sooner we get there, right?

And I wholeheartedly agree with Simon when he suggests we need to begin instilling in kids the practice of acknowledging sources, while at the same time teaching kids at a young age to ask for permission to share and build on ideas. A core principle Simon put forward was to be less reactive to copyright,  simply fearing getting caught and fined,  to becoming more proactive in respecting others, getting permissions and clearance, and ultimately giving credit where credit is due – to the original source.

So, what’s your view on it? Are we a nation of thieves? Should we know better? And ultimately how do we move to a model of increased respect for Intellectual Property Rights?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue.

Links

E2BN Website

Photograph of Simon Finch from E2BN Conference 2008

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