Downloads:
Emerging trends in social software for education (PDF, 470KB)
Connections, not Content: how simpler, social computing can support creativity in education (PDF, 6MB)

I have always had a theoretical interest in the way that mainstream IT-supported learning lags so far behind existing practice on the Internet, but this was brought into sharp focus a few years ago when I sat in a church watching a perfectly nice young man - my daughter's school IT lead - trying in vain to make powerpoint deliver a slide deck for the nativity with the fear of the headmaster, and possibly God as well, bearing down on him. It was just one of those moments when you realise how for some people, IT means struggling with badly designed desktop software rather than the exciting world of discovery and creativity I was lucky enough to grow up with as an early adopting kid in the days of the ZX-81 and Spectrum. I published my first software in a magazine when I was about 10 or 11 years old and moved on to learn how to make things move across the screen using basic assembly language before the hormones kicked in and I developed other interests.

The rise of social tools, and especially the DIY culture that surround them, is arguably as important in the evolution of IT-supported learning as the Sinclair, BBC and Commodore computers were in the early 1980's. So whenever people in BECTA (the UK's education technology agency) ask me to talk about the potential impact of social tools on learning, I jump at the chance.

BECTA have just released this year's Emerging technologies for learning publication, which contains a chapter from me about Emerging trends in social software for education (PDF, 470KB). It was actually written last November, but I hope it still stands up as an overview of some of the areas we need to focus on if we are to move towards a more empowering way of supporting learning through discovery and doing.

In January this year, David Ley (who commissioned the piece) and I spoke at the annual BETT education technology conference about emerging trends. David's talk covered longer term technology trends, such as ubiquitous computing, wearable computers, new access devices, RFID, semantic technologies and a whole lot more. My talk, entitled Connections, not Content: how simpler, social computing can support creativity in education, was a lot less 'future facing', but tried to provide some practical advice about how to take advantage of social tools to support creativity.

I drew upon a lot of great sources in thinking about this stuff, most of which are on our delicious links, but one very useful reference that emerged between the time of writing the chapter and doing the talk at BETT was Demos' excellent Their Space report by Hannah Green and Celia Hannon, which looked at children's own perceptions of how they are using online spaces and how this is impacting on their creativity and learning:

Chris wears a dark blue Nirvana hoodie. His curly red hair covers his eyes. ‘Have you ever read a manual?’ we ask. He smiles. ‘We haven’t even seen a manual’,he says.Do you find out how to do things online? ‘No, not really. Mostly we learn from the older people in the group.’

The report is a good complement to danah boyd's work with slightly older children on their use of MySpace and similar online social networks, which has contributed a great deal to countering media hype about dangers, risks and the need for control. This is a common objection among older people to the idea that kids should be taught responsible online behaviour and then set free to explore for themselves.

Another objection that was raised at another event I attended recently was the idea that you can't just sit kids down in front of a computer and expect them to learn something. Well guess what? It turns out you can!

One of the highlights of LIFT in Geneva last month was Sugatra Mitra's talk about the Hole in the wall experiment in which he demonstrated that not only that kids can quite happily learn through discovery, but they can also evolve the language skills to understand the computer's interface even if they don't speak English to start with! Have a look at their full findings if you are still sceptical. The videos Sugatra showed of kids teaching each other computing using a basic system built into a wall was quite a compelling argument for education to pay more heed to supporting children's self-directed learning and discovery.

I am aware of the challenges of doing and supporting imaginative IT inside schools, especially in the UK, where education is driven by pointless targets and measures from an early age, but I firmly believe that some fresh thinking is needed to revitalise IT-supported learning and generate the excitement and discovery young people enjoy currently in online social networks. Instead of lock-down based on safety fears, which is but a finger in the dyke, we need to teach responsible behaviour and trust young people to self-regulate just as we do with road safety and other basic life skills. We also need to abandon the idea of centralised e-learning systems as these are simply codifications of out-dated "best practice". All we need is a modern browser, some good data and a culture of experimentation in the way we explore the web as both a playground and a learning environment. There is probably a role for tools like e-portfolios and online lesson support, but they should provide a small core of simple functionality that can be extended using online services, which are evolving much faster. Above all, we must be led by the kids.