Singing is good for you!

I've just discovered a cool website which features the deeply held beliefs of a wide variety of people. This article by Brian Eno struck a chord (pun intended) with me, particularly the idea that singing can make you more attractive and that it might be a way of redesigning the British education system:

"I believe in singing. I believe in singing together.

A few years ago a friend and I realized that we both loved singing but didn't do much of it. So we started a weekly a capella group with just four members. After a year we started inviting other people to join. We didn't insist on musical experience — in fact some of our members had never sung before. Now the group has ballooned to around 15 or 20 people.

I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness and a better sense of humor. A recent long-term study conducted in Scandinavia sought to discover which activities related to a healthy and happy later life. Three stood out: camping, dancing and singing.

Well, there are physiological benefits, obviously: You use your lungs in a way that you probably don't for the rest of your day, breathing deeply and openly. And there are psychological benefits, too: Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness. And then there are what I would call "civilizational benefits." When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That's one of the great feelings — to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

Well here's what we do in an evening: We get some drinks, some snacks, some sheets of lyrics and a strict starting time. We warm up a bit first.

The critical thing turns out to be the choice of songs. The songs that seem to work best are those based around the basic chords of blues and rock and country music. You want songs that are word-rich, but also vowel-rich because it's on the long vowels sounds of a song such as "Bring It On Home To Me" ("You know I'll alwaaaaays be your slaaaaave"), that's where your harmonies really express themselves. And when you get a lot of people singing harmony on a long note like that, it's beautiful.

But singing isn't only about harmonizing pitch like that. It has two other dimensions. The first one is rhythm. It's thrilling when you get the rhythm of something right and you all do a complicated rhythm together: "Oh, when them cotton balls get a-rotten, you can't pick very much cotton." So when 16 or 20 people get that dead right together at a fast tempo that's very impressive. But the other thing that you have to harmonize besides pitch and rhythm is tone. To be able to hit exactly the same vowel sound at a number of different pitches seems unsurprising in concept, but is beautiful when it happens.

So I believe in singing to such an extent that if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing become a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for co-operation with others. This seems to be about the most important thing a school could do for you."

Tallis Tube

You may or may not be aware that Tallis Shorts, our unique online media player, is struggling to cope with the huge number of files uploaded to it in the year since it was launched. At the moment the dedicated server in the USA where the site is hosted is full. This means that we have had to remove the upload facility until we decide what action to take. This will probably mean the creation of a brand new Tallis Shorts on a different server with more space and a few new features.

In the meantime, we have created our very own YouTube channel called TallisTube. There is such a lot of great stuff going on in school at the moment that it would be shame if we didn't share it with the rest of the world and, now that YouTube has been unblocked in school (hurrah!) and we are developing a mature attitude to the use of Web 2.0 tools, it seems only right that we should have an official YouTube presence. There are always risks involved in broadcasting on the internet, but I think these are far outweighed by the massive advantages. We are also exploring the possibility of setting up an iTunes U presence. This is a service dominated at the moment by American universities who supply students across the world with pod and vodcasts of course material free of charge. Imagine if Tallis was able to publish its own curriculum material online for students. Some subject areas have made progress in doing just this using the school website with promising results. Staff and students are using Tallis Talk more and more to debate issues directly related to their learning in school. Recent examples include Mr Greig's question bout the Kobe earthquake in Geography and Mr Walsh's request for thoughts about the use of mobile phones as learning tools as part of the Personal and Economic Well-Being course. I have attempted to put all my current Year 12 photography lesson content on the site, including links to websites and access to relevant images. If nothing else, students can no longer claim that, because they missed a lesson, they didn't know what to do. This seems like a small issue but, I think, encourages them to think about their responsibility to manage their own learning and become more independent. It is always interesting to note which students find this a liberating attitude and relish the opportunity to exercise more control, compared with those who are keen to be spoon fed.

There is no doubt that the preparation and publication of these resources takes time and energy. My view is that the school needs a proper strategy and suitable incentives to encourage both staff and students to get more involved in this kind of "anytime, anywhere" learning.

Do you have any bright ideas about how this could be achieved? Would you like to have more access to learning materials online? Would you like to be able to email your homework to your teachers? Do you already do this? If the school created an iTunes U account and uploaded course materials, would you use them?

Colour Test

Knowing how much you like to take tests (!!) here's one to assess how well your left and right brain communicate with one another. It's quick and simple but much harder than it looks. Make sure you read the instructions very carefully before you begin. Strictly speaking, you should only take the text once. Let's see how well you do. Please comment with your first score only. It would also be good to know whether or not you approve of the three colours the Design Group have selected for the new school (see previous post). We may be making the decision pretty soon and want to know what you think.

Colour in School

Plans for the new school are now well advanced and we are being asked to make some decisions about the design of the interior. One of these decisions involves a choice about the colour coding of the building. The new school will be considerably bigger than the current one and the architects have proposed that the different blocks have a feature colour, partly to make the circulation spaces more exciting and also to help everyone find their way round. The Design Group, a group of teachers and students who meet with the architects to discuss the design of the building, have the task of selecting their favourite colours. We are hoping that there will be enough money in the budget to have colours we really like (some materials can be produced in any colour whereas others are more limited). Either way, we feel that the colours we choose could have a very positive impact on everyone's mood and ability to learn and interact effectively.

Here are the colours we like at the moment. They would be used on the floors of the circulation and main social spaces. What do you think?

Do you have any favourite colours? Do you think that colour is important in affecting how you feel and how you learn?

Teachers TV is one of my favourite online resources because it has lots of really useful films about all kinds of subjects. This film, "Colour in Our Hall", is one of my favourites. It describes how a group of students in a primary school in Cornwall worked with the designer Kevin McCloud to revamp their school hall as part of the Sorrell Foundation's Joinedupdesignforschools project. The idea behind this initiative is that students act as clients throughout the design process, learning how to identify problems, set challenges, write a design brief and evaluate the success (or otherwise) of the professional designer's solution. Occasionally, as in this case, the final concept is agreed and put into action.

The Danish Connection

Back in November, I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at a conference in Denmark about new technologies in education. Following my presentation, I was approached by Hanne Søgaard, a lecturer at University College South. We chatted briefly about our shared interest in Web 2.0 applications and Flickr, in particular. She mentioned that she was setting up a project for her students and we promised to stay in touch. We have managed to do this and I recently got this message from Hanne on Flickr:

"Our blog iscenesatte billeder in english "staged photos" is used for a project. I have tried to translate some of the Danish description:

Through the spring of 2009 Dorte Rizzi and I, Hanne Søgaard, both employees at University College South, Denmark, are working with staged pictures along with the students. Both during the process and in the presentations we will as far as possible use web 2.0 technologies: blogs, flickr, etc. On the blog, we will post inspiration material, links, manuals, tasks, etc. We will use labels that correspond to these categories. Everyone, including those not participating in the courses can comment on the blog posts and they are welcome. We will love it.

In the flickr group staged pictures - process the participants post photos in process and comments on these. Their final product will be placed in the group staged images - exhibition."

Hanne has used one of my photos on the blog header and we have set up a Flickr group called The Danish Connection, as a way of encouraging students in both countries to respond to photo challenges like Signs and Symbols and Emotion Capture. I'm really interested to see how Hanne's project develops and I've put a link to the blog on ours.

Have you come across any new applications online that might be useful for learning? What is your favourite online resource? Let us know so that we can all take a look!

Promise, tool, bargain

I'm currently reading a book called "Here Comes Everybody" by the brilliantly named Clay Shirky. It's about the role that social networking is playing in enabling people across the world to organize themselves without the need for organisations. The final chapter describes the common denominator in all the stories told in previous chapters about how people are becoming better connected using the Internet: "a successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users." The author goes on to outline what this means in terms of social networking technology but I began to read his explanation in terms of the bargains we strike as learners in schools. What do you think of the following as a summary of successful learning?:

Creating a promise that enough people belive in is the basic requirement. The promise creates the basic desire to participate. Then come the tools. After getting the promise right (or right enough), the next hurdle is figuring out which tools will best help people approach the promise together...Then comes the bargain. Tools don't completely determine behaviour...One possible bargain is: "We expect politeness of one another." Another very different bargain is: "Anything goes." A successful bargain among users must be a good fit for both the promise and the tools used.

In terms of the above analogy (if you accept there might be one) between successful social networks and successful learning, what promises do we make to convince learners to make a commitment? "Work hard and you'll end up with a good job" perhaps, or "follow these instructions and you'll pass your exams". Mr Shirky reminds us that the message "Buy Cheesy Puffs" is a very different message to "Join us and we'll invent Cheesy Puffs together." Are there more interesting promises we could make? And do the tools we use to engage in the learning process make a difference? What, other than Cheesy Puffs, could we all invent together?

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Maslow and a creative curriculum

Apologies in advance for a relatively lengthy post! I was reminded recently of Abraham Maslow's Hierachy of Human Needs model (see above). The basic premise of the model, created in 1943 and adapted in the 70s, is that all humans experience basic needs. Beginning with physiological needs (breathing, sleep, food etc.), these needs progress to higher states, in clearly defined stages, until we are ultimately able to achieve "self-actualisation", a kind of wisdom. Until each stage of human need is achieved, we are unable to progress to the next. In other words, it is difficult to contemplate the level of your self-esteem when you haven't slept for three nights and are starving hungry.

One fascinating blogger has compared this hierarchy of needs with the rise in Web 2.0. Her theory is that social networking tools satisfy many of the mid-level needs in Maslow's hierachy because they are "open source" and positively require the active participation of users to develop the service, thus enabling them to achieve a sense of belonging to a community of peers and boost their self-esteem through acquiring the respect of others. Examples of these Web 2.0 services would include Wikipedia and Flickr, which are continually developed in partnership with users.

I began to wonder whether the above diagram would still make sense if you replaced the phrase Web 2.0 with School. Whereas needs such as security, belonging, learning and achievement all seemed to fit easily, I was less sure about ideas like control, ego, aesthetics and giving back. I've also been giving some thought to the idea of Open Source Education. More and more commentators are predicting the end of school as we know it Jim. This article suggests that a revolution in the free international distribution of online learning tools is just round the corner. The author refers to the massive amount of information (in all forms of media, not just text) already available online:

The number of songs available on iTunes – over 3.5 million

The number of books on Amazon – over 4 million

The number of blogs available online – over 60 million

The number of entries on Wikipedia – over 4 million

The number of user accounts on MySpace – over 100 million

The number of videos on YouTube – over 6.1 million

Several universities, such as the prestigious MIT in the States, have already made course material free to anyone in the world and initiatives like Wikiversity and Moodle are available to anyone who wishes to educate themselves. What does all this mean for the future of schools? Are classrooms the only place where successful learning happens? Do learners always need teachers?

So, if we put these ideas together, what have we got?

People want to learn. But what they want to learn isn't always what schools want, or are able through the limited availability of expertise, to teach. People like to learn. But not always in classrooms, at particular times of the day. If learners had greater control over the education process, there might be more opportunity to fashion it to suit themselves. If schools trusted young people (and their teachers) to work collaboratively to design learning opportunities not necessarily rooted in the classroom, everyone in school (regardless of their role or position in the institution) could learn together and from each other. If the objectives of learning were clearly defined by everyone with a stake in the process, and the relevant learning tools made available (in other words, made "open source"), could we not work together to create a new kind of education system that enabled all learners to progress successfully through a hierarchy of needs and ultimately achieve a measure of self-actualisation that includes, according to Maslow, the ability to be creative and solve problems?

Bubbl.us in action

My Year English Literature group have been investigating how bubbl.us might support their collaborative efforts to prepare for their A level exam on the Lyrical Ballads. Although it took a little while to set up accounts and to create the collaborative group, within about twenty minutes we were ready to make a start. We soon got to grips with how to make our own mind maps and found it relatively straightforward to amend and develop existing mindmaps. One difficulty was that you can't have two people working on the same mind map at the same time, but that wouldn't be a problem with homework tasks, and it is quite easy to make multiples of the same mind map - or you could even have a carousel of mind maps that you move around.

It will be interesting to see how the mind maps develop, and also how effectively people collaborate. We might try to encourage the other groups that are studying the same text to join in , thereby creating a larger group of potential collaborators.

Can we think of other potential uses?

Mr. Hawes

Multiple Intelligences

Ever wondered how intelligent you were? The old way of measuring intelligence, the IQ test, is no longer adequate as a way of measuring a person's true capacities. So much work has been done on the way the brain works that we now realise more sophisticated ways of assessing a person's strengths, their multiple intelligences, are needed. Howard Gardner is someone who has done a lot of the research in this area. This web site, created by the Birmingham Grid for Learning, uses Gardner's concept of multiple intelligences to provoke discussion about learning and teaching. There is even an online test if you're curious about your own intelligences. Any discussion of creative learning must take into account the variety of intelligences that everyone possesses, the assumption being that everyone is good at something. 

This raises the question about the role of the teacher in helping young people to identify their particular strengths and weaknesses but not only in terms of their academic (IQ) ability. On a recent trip to a school in Denmark I spoke to a headteacher who had a very clear view about disruption in the classroom. She said that, in her opinion, a disruptive child is often one whose teacher has not found a way to engage him/her successfully in learning through a detailed knowledge of their preferred learning styles. In other words, the disruption is a symptom of disengagement with the curriculum, a situation for which the student and teacher are jointly responsible.  This is definitely food for thought.

Bubble.us

Bubble.us is a Web 2.0 application that provides online mind mapping. There is plenty of mind mapping software available but it's usually fairly expensive and/or not very good. I have only just started playing with this site and, in the interests of experimentation, have invited members of this blog to take part in a collaborative mind mapping exercise linked to our Food for Thought project. You should have received an email from me fairly recently asking you to get involved. Once you've become a member of the site, I will receive notification. I can then allow you access to the mind map so that we can work together on it. Let's see if this kind of process is useful as a learning tool so that we can recommend it (or not) for use in the classroom.

Scrapblog

I've just discovered this amazing site which helps you create an online scrapbook or journal. You can choose from hundreds of backgrounds and stickers to construct your page by simply dragging and dropping them into place. You can import your photos either from your computer or from sites like Flickr very easily. You can even embed YouTube videos. The finished scrapbook can be saved, exported as a series of images and/or published to the web to share with friends, family, or even an examiner. I had a go at making my own book this afternoon. What do you think?

I'm going to try to get my BTEC Media class to keep a virtual workbook using the site in order to maintain a critical record of their photography work for the Portrait of Tallis project. I think it will be an excellent way for them to consider how best to present their experiments in a visually stimulating way and keep track of their progress. I wonder if we could use something like this with Year 7 students as part of some kind of personal creative portfolio? We could encourage them to reflect on their preferred learning styles, make a self-portrait video or animation and include pictures of themselves and their family. This could then be published (online) and shared with their tutor and teachers in order to build a more rounded picture of them as learners. Since it exists on the internet, the students could continue to develop their portfolio/journal throughout the year, perhaps also reflecting on their learning at Tallis as it progresses.

Geotagging

For a little while now, via the magic of Flickr, I have been in contact with Zek Hoeben, a colleague who works at Fortismere School in North London. On Friday, we made arrangements to meet at the BETT show, following an excellent presentation by Stephen Heppell (more about this later). It was great to finally meet Zek and we had a productive chat about all things creative and technological. His school uses the Fonter learning platform and, as an associate AST with responsibility for art, photography and ICT, he is busy getting to grips with it, both in his own lessons and with his own students and promoting its use across the whole school. It may be the case that we are given a new learning platform as part of our move to the new school and this may turn out to be Fronter, so I was keen to get a behind-the-scenes view of the platform in action. Zek has kindly given me access and, this morning, I spent an hour or so browsing through the photography pages. One of the projects that caught my eye was a photo geotagging project which enables students to take photos near to the school and post them to Google Maps which, in turn, can then be viewed in Google Earth. It occurred to me that this would make an excellent inter-disciplinary project at KS3 in terms of young people's awareness of the local area and relationship to a variety of spaces and places. In terms of Fronter's capabilities, the jury is still out. I'll keep you posted after I've done a bit more research.