Alex Hall/Atmos‘ developed presentation shows a variety of installations, presentations and projects – all of which can be used to reflect upon the use of space, and how both form and function of spaces/lighting can be different in relation to social and technological changes.  It’s also just beautiful to enjoy.

The Vision 2020 asks 9 influential speakers to talk about both short and long term changes for education and learning.

Both useful, especially if you’re looking for something for journeys to BETT …

Education is a future-building enterprise.  One of the education system’s key roles is in preparing young people for the future world that they will inhabit and help shape when they leave formal education, whilst ensuring they are supported in making sense of the world in which they live now.  But in building learners’ capacity to live and work in this future world, it is vital to be mindful of the social and technological changes that have implications for the sorts of jobs, communities and relationships that will develop in the near future.   A child starting primary school this year will be leaving compulsory education in 2022.  So if we are to prepare these learners for this world, how can we begin to understand what they are being prepared for?

We can start by investigating a number of technological and social trends that have great implications for the role of formal education and in particular the aim of equipping people for specific vocations and the world of work.  Rapid improvements in digital synchronous communications and the development of virtual worlds are already challenging what it means to be ‘at work’.  In the same way, some of the technological developments that can be forecasted afford a range of new ways of organising learning and teaching: many already being investigated as new models for education.  The use of computer games as engaging activities where learners can play and investigate in different spaces, taking on a range of different roles and solving complex tasks and activities;  digital environments where learners can be immersed, not through graphics and sounds, but through investing their emotions in completing personally relevant challenges.  Computer simulations offer learners the chance to become involved in contexts otherwise inaccessible: dangerous environments (such as high risk laboratories) and remote or inaccessible places.  The opportunities afforded by the use of new and emerging technologies aligned with appropriate pedagogical approaches, offers new ways for learners to experience the work place and particular working practices.

Similarly, developing situated learning approaches that allow young people to learn within a real work context become possible and more realistic through developments in mobile, networked technologies.  Innovative examples of this approach to vocational learning can be seen at Boston College as part of the Learning and Skills Council’s MoLeNET programme, using mobile technologies to gather context appropriate assessments and providing appropriate support to students on a range of apprenticeship schemes.  At the same time, several companies are experimenting with linking their own bespoke training courses to national accreditation and to digital portfolios to support employees in demonstrating transferable skills to support them within a highly dynamic working environment.  These innovative projects may be signposts to wider scale developments in the future.

Other technological developments can support learning in activities that are currently prohibitively expensive. This is evidenced through projects such as the Haptic Cow where learning through manipulation and touch can become possible, but other complex tasks too can be assisted though haptic feedback: the ‘Phantom Haptic‘ is a design tool enabling budding (and experienced) designers to created 3D objects with force-feedback as the digital objects are manipulated and developed.  These technologies could provide ways for vocational learning to be moved virtually, if not physically, closer to the authentic contexts at which the training is aimed.

However, it is easy to imagine any future education as the current system with more technology.  Societal changes have equally great implications for the way in which the aims of education can be articulated and then successfully organised and achieved.  The forecasts of an aging population of 50% of the UK population aged over 50 and 25% over 65 years old is not a picture of a rise in the need for vocational training for nursing and caring.  Radical longevity represents a longer working life; a greater distance between the time of achieving school qualifications and final retirement, and a greater need for reskilling and later life training. The learners on vocational courses in the future may already have tens of years experience in other areas of work, so demand for vocational courses in this context may be job specific or even skill specific given the highly dynamic workforce that will be needed.  If data showing a below-replacement level birth rate and high levels of (inward and outward) migration is then taken into consideration, the requirements of diverse communities also becomes a factor influencing what vocational learning is needed:  Understanding how courses and training can be organised and delivered for a multi-generational, pluralistically financed, highly mobile student groups becomes a key issue for institutions and policy makers.  Does this then suggest a movement away from investment in formative education toward better funded re-skilling for older learners or does retraining become the responsibility of the commercial sectors or the learners themselves?

At school age, vocational learning may focus upon the skills, competences and attitudes of work-readiness.  Coping with change; working in highly diverse teams, and the ability to apply skills and knowledge to a wide range of contexts become the foundation of vocational teaching.  Other descriptors of ‘work’, such as effort, perseverance, dedication and target setting are those currently associated with the the literature on the benefits of playing computer games.  This broad range of skills and competencies may be covered then, by a range of formal and informal learning experiences.  But greater divergence in jobs means the specialism of specific industry may not relate to the expertise of teachers.  The role of the teacher becomes expert pedagogue whilst greater links with subject experts within industry bring the appropriate expertise into the ‘classroom’.

The implications of bringing work and vocational learning closer has obvious educational benefits, but what of other consequences?  Creative ideas generated by young people, as evidenced in projects such as Nuffield’s Young Foresite could be harnessed much more through links between industry and students’ access to 3D fabrication.  For the last 40 years, Moore’s Law has proved to be right and if it continues, as we expect it will, then a 3D printer that costs £0.5m today will cost around £500 in 20 years time.  Certainly affordable for every school and college, if not in most classrooms.  With creative learners producing production quality products as part of their learning experience, one could begin to question who is benefiting from the closer relationships between industry and learner, and the extent to which ‘vocational learning’ and ‘training’ are separated.

There is currently a growing recognition of the importance of vocational learning, not as a second choice to academic routes but as an equal (and even blurred in the case of some academies) route to success.  This developing trend has emerged from a range of campaigns and ties directly to current interest in personalisation: developing appropriate curricular and practices around the needs of the learner.  At the same time the voices of industry, highlighting the skills needed are becoming more clearly collected.  Yet is there a chance then, that as schools begin to take on andragogical approaches: listening to learner voice, providing greater choice and flexibility, an emphasis upon reactive teaching; that vocational learning for more experienced adults moves towards more traditional pedagogical models – where the teacher has far greater control over the aims, approaches and models used?  The focus of vocational learning becomes more strictly about short term responses to market need in a fast moving economy-driven market?

There are many possible long term vocational learning futures.  The important task now is to understand the preferable future and begin putting in place the practices and systems to work towards it.

Kevin Sander, director of corporate partnerships of the Arbor Day Foundation. “The ability to see the online impact of their tree planting, and knowing it will translate into an offline one, provides children with a sense of empowerment and a purposeful experience.”

Planting 15,000 trees to reflect the committment and enthusiasm of the Dizzywood players is a wonderful thing. What interested me in particular was the implication that planting a tree in a virtual world is an action that results in a tree growing in the real world, that there was some kind of continuity between the virtual and the real. For that magical thing to take place, for action to cross between different species of world, lots needs to happen. In fact, whenever a mouseclick implies a real-world outcome, a complex system of interrelated logistical events is summoned.

Anyone who’s shopped with Amazon knows this, of course. What I’m wondering about is more a terminological or perceptual shift in the way we describe work that might happen as this sort of transition becomes more usual. Currently, the jobs and activities essential to my books arriving from the internet are categorised variously and separately: ‘postman’, ‘order picker’, ‘database administator’, or perhaps ‘distribution’, ‘cataloguing’. But if we become more and more used to thinking that virtual actions have real outcomes, and if the chain that links the action and the result becomes less and less the focus of our attention, perhaps these different categories will end up making more sense as one single category: ‘people who make invisible things real’, perhaps, or ‘ontological transformers’, or perhaps just ‘the elves’.

As an analysis of economic develpment I’m sure this is naive and ill-informed. But I think it’s important to try and work out the ways that calling old things by new names might fool us into thinking there are genuinely new things in the world, when in fact it’s just our priorities that have changed.

There have been some great developments learning from Fablab, exploring the possible new activities when groups can not only investigate and design but actually create artefacts of use.  One of the best applications in this area is the work of Smartlab, where the wonderful Magic Playroom creates a space for investigating and then making solutions to real world problems, using a selection of 3D printers, digital laythes and other incredible equipment.  This equipment is still expensive and the skills to use them are high – but as the paper suggests over time this will change.

A clear indictation of this (delivered to me via Twine) is Shapeways.  A central digital printer that is essentially up for rent.  Your design printed and delivered to you.   So even at this stage – what does this mean for activities in science and DT?  What should the curriculum focus on if the production of artefacts – with high production values – becomes more digital?  How should assessment change to understand processes rather than product and what sort of expertise do we need to be able to teach and what sorts of expertise do we need to develop in students?  There could be a dramatically different set of practices that could take place in schools across the country in under 10 years time with some theoretical problems being tackled practically at low cost – but these possibilties raise even more immediate questions.  If schools will be able to change their practices within 10 years, what will industry be able to do in 5 years.  And what skills, competencies and understanding do students need to develop within STEM subjects over the next 2 years?

More questions!  So for the weekend then, a video of how it works.

Element 1. Different ways of organising social groups that (potentially) move away from hierarchical organisation to more collective approaches in making the most of the cultural capital of the group. Particularly, I’m thinking here about the way in which organisations share knowledge, expertise and ideas – not just schools and ‘learning organisations’, but workplaces within the knowledge economy. The three necessary categories for harnessing collective wisdom, according to Surowiecki, are: aggregation, diversity and independence – mechanisms must be in place to bring together the views and opinions of the group; the group needs to be diverse in experience and knowledge, and their views must be able to be shared independently (not altered through peer pressure etc). This relates to BCH’s Challenge 3, which is looking at trends in the production and definition of knowledge. It also relates to BCH’s Challenge 4, which is aiming to understand trends in work and employment.

Element 2. Democracy and citizenship become important topics for discussion in relation to understanding how groups can interact differently in making decisions. Those who advocate developing current democratic practices (based upon majority-rule) to more participatory forms of governance suggest that current democratic practices are more closely tied to oligarchical practices (claiming, for example participation stops when leaving the voting booth). Challenge 5 is looking that the trends in the relationships between state, private and third sector provision of public services – and in relation to this is it interesting to think about the demands from communities and citizens if they become or demand greater participation. Challenge 2 is looking at Identities, Citizenship and Communities and may provide interesting reading in this area.

Element 3. Participation. Within the BCH programme we have various different ways of encouraging engagement with a wide variety of people and organisations. The general model we’re using sees Communication approaches (such as the website, blog, newsletter etc) as a means of sharing information and progress; activities and events (such as workshops, presentations, comments on the blog, Million Futures and BCH Power League) as normative approaches to participation; and finally deliberative engagement with BCH through a Citizens Council, Citizens Panel, expert interviews and facilitated forums. (I’ll return to the Citizens Council and Panel in a later post). Making sense of many different voices and channels of communications is important to this programme both to ensure that it is built upon the values and aspirations of education’s stakeholders (that’s all of you!) and also so that it is informed by the diversity of ideas and expertise that Surowiecki talks about. In an earlier blog post I put a link to a Grupthink question to gather your views – interestingly in his presentation, Surowiecki mentioned this tool. (If you’re interested in participating in any way, get in touch and we can find a suitable approach!)

A fourth element relates to Technological trends. A paper from the Scientific and Technology Subgroup reported on some of the key trends emerging in computing, bioscience and maths that will develop over the next 15 – 50 years. It highlights Birnbaum’s ‘Once-per-decade-disruptions’ with a possible example being ‘large scale socio-technical Systems of Systems’ (page 12 of the paper). The paper is certainly worth grabbing a cuppa and a biscuit and having a read: the possibilities offered by the affordances of systems of systems is worth considering in relation to group dynamics and ways of working together, as is the stark warning about the rate of technological progress in relation to that of our reliance upon and understanding of complex systems.

Although of course, mass participation will not always lead to expected or perhaps desired results. Just ask Mr Splashypants.  (*Update – for more internet memes try this timeline*)