At the glow seminar with Stephen Heppell, and will try my hand at keeping up with him..

A few hundred glow mentors here!

Why is online learning so imporant?

Historical look at online communities - prestel

A basic system like prestel was popular. Technology was very seductive to pupils and staff.

94 to 97: Schools online: Who’s online feature very popular

1998-00: Tesco SchoolNet (TSN2K) - the largest Internet Learning Project. £7 million - but system started with no content, however, contributions began to pour in.
1995 - University for Industry online learning network. Adults swapping ideas and experiences. Used ideas like “the broken train” to encourage people to share ideas.

1998-99: codename scoop (prototype for think.com). Prime Ministerial promise to have an email for every child. Sense of audience is hugely motivating.

1999- Ideas Board, a phone based ocmpany centric system. Using phones to post texts/pictures/etc. Orange use this tech internally to put up ideas.

1999- Inclusion Trust’s notschool.net - invent what you study (for childen excluded from school). Digital resource for self-help and peer to peer support. Again very motivating.

JellyOS - community operating system.

What was discovered?

Online learning communities are:

collaborative, transcultural, 24/7, global, inclusive, mixed age, seductive and engaging, project based, cross subject domain, transformed by technological opportunities.

Building schools now that engage learners in the same effective way as online

Glow is prototyping learning in 10 years time.

1000 people asked about learning experiences.

- actually doing something, not watching

- having support from teacher/coach/parent

- doing it with others

- having an audience for the learning - “people around here don’t know how good we are”
- sense of having learned

- a sense that the task was tough

- having some sense of personal progress

- some passion about the whole activity (from teacher etc)

- some eccentricity (from teacher etc) - it’s ok to be a bit mad!

Where is that in physical schools and online spaces?

It’s more present in online spaces.

(Questions now)
New Learning Spaces - not-school children that benefit from online communities. 98% back on track within 18 months. First graduate in 2002!

Hurdles in online communities: Genuine nervousness.

Showing youtube video that shows how to multiply using lines.

Nervousness of magnitude is one of biggest holdbacks.

Don’t try and proceed by best practice - instead effective practice.

Another Question: What’s the minimum number of participants?

Depends on the task. For instance, head teachers are busy so start with 1000. But two or three children can deal with a task also. Me, We, and See. Who is the greater community in Glow?

Getting the thing going needs a lot of attention - like running a great party.

New Questions: how do you overcome the challenge of where to take the community?

Teachers know how to make things exciting - but within the limits of the system. Same with online community but the limits aren’t as fierce. The setup etc is easier now - it is normal for the cool places to be.

Glow is the glue to join up things.

Showing speed stacking video! Great to see how poppular. But comments are something else - uncensored and can be dangerous.

Glow is the glue to keep interesting things together. And it has an audit trail of identification!

You can never keep up with trends but you can benefit from them.

Glow can keep evolving along with other technologies.

Kids are used to temporary nature of online communities.

New Q: What would you change?

A better expression of time - if Glow is here to stay, then show people’s progress through system. Older documents faded a bit. Just to show what is oldest. Represent time in Glow.

Australian school with open plan

How quick can you use open space?

Day one: build a classroom in the space

Day three: more organic, small conversations and learning experiences not in each class.

- this is a model of online spaces - a world of venn diagrams - all about overlap.

- schools are fantastic powerhouses of intellect! Policy limits what teachers can do. No policy for online yet so invent the future.

New Q: We have a freedom but there are constraints - assessment system constrains, and focuses us on improving grades. Adequately measuring educational achievement - how?

People still justifying themselves because achievements not fully recognised. Build a model of recognition which sits on top of accreditation. Workplace learning degrees - ability to narrate learning transcends grades - e.g. doctor’s facets, not grades.

Repuation online through peer to peer exchange and validation is very important. In the end, Glow will become a reputation engine

Glow is opening the door to embracing online networks and advantages.

That’s it! Excellent talk I think. I think he summed up well the connection between glow and online communities. Off to have another wander before games education talk (13:40 in Learning Teaching Scotland zone, if you’re interested.)