Technology makes a difference

Interactive tools engage learners

I have often heard the argument that there is no evidence that technology improves learning. This is a vacuous claim that is either a) based on ignorance of the available research literature, or b) possibly the result of a deep seated fear, mistrust or dislike of technology in general. My usual response to such a claim is that children with special educational needs are a classic example of technology improving learning. For children with special educational needs, especially those with physical disabilities such as deafness or vision impairment, technology not only improves learning, it actually enables it to happen. Without adaptive technology, many disabled children could not access certain types of education and would be marginalised from learning.

But there is a larger mass of evidence to show that technology is not only making the difference for all learners, it is actually creating new and previously unattainable opportunities for learning. Technology does make a difference. Let's start with widening access. Children (and adult) learners all over the globe are accessing content that allows them to learn. Even if we disregards the highly successful phenomenon of Massive Open Online Courses, there is an ever expanding menu of content that covers just about every subject and theme under the sun, available for free online. Further, social media and social network services can connect anyone with internet access to experts in any academic discipline for real time content sharing and discussion.

But what about the question of whether technology improves learning? There is a wealth of evidence that indicates technology can make a positive impact on learning outcomes. Below are just two of the available research reports (you can search for others on the Web).

A research study at Durham University in the North East of England suggests that multi-touch, multi-user surfaces can improve the learning of mathematics. 400 children were involved in the study, which demonstrated that 'smart tables' enabled better collaboration and problem solving during maths lessons. Class teachers receive a live feed of output from the children's interactions on the surface, and can intervene when necessary. Research has shown that the touch surfaces enable children to discover a range of alternative solutions to maths problems, simply through interacting with each other in new ways.

A meta-study from ARCC in the United States reveals that technology, when appropriately used can make a significant difference in learning outcomes in all subjects. The evidence from the various studies has a recurring theme: that technology can make improve student achievement if they are integrated appropriately into teaching and learning. When what technology can do best - offering online access, interactive capabilities and a vast range of options on content - is made available and meaningfully integrated into teaching, the results are undeniable.

Photo by Edward on Wikimedia Commons


Capturing the moment by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Capturing the moment

It was a great pleasure to give the opening keynote at the Social Science special interest group Higher Education Academy conference yesterday in Manchester. You can look up the Twitter hashtag for the two day event which is #HEASocSci15. The audience were a group of academics from across the UK and Ireland who specialise in social sciences. In the room there were lecturers in economics, politics, sociology, psychology and education. I had some very interesting, and at times intense conversations with a number of delegates as between us we tried to navigate the future of higher education from our various perspectives. Perhaps the standout part of the day for me though, was to see the wonderful artistic skills of Simon Heath, as he captured the essence of my keynote (illustrated above). As a consulting artist, Simon is incredibly talented because it's a rare skill to be able to listen to a speech, fillet out the key elements and then render them in real-time as a collage of images and words. He also live tweets from the conference as the images take shape!

On the left is Simon's later cartoon development of the strange pairing of Mickey Mouse and Superman - an example of the #twistedpair blogging challenge I instigated in the summer. He captures the idea perfectly, and adds the caption 'pedagogy of the unlikely', which perfectly captures what the blogging challenges were all about - finding meaning and learning together through seemingly bizarre and disassociated pairings of ideas, characters or objects.

I'm sure you will agree, his work is pleasing to the eye as well as informative. We need more of this at conferences! The title of my keynote was 'Learning in the Digital Age - Theory and Practice'. Just in case you want more detail though, the entire slide deck from my HEA Social Science conference keynote is below.

Learning in the digital age - theory and practice from Steve Wheeler

Photo by Steve Wheeler
Graphic by Simon Heath


Capturing the moment by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

20 tools for legacy learning

I'm not going to be around for ever, and neither are you. As teachers, we only have a short time to make an impression on our students, and that time goes by very quickly. So what legacy do we leave behind when we stop teaching? Is our influence as educators solely confined to the memories of those who have sat in our classes? I believe our influence can be much wider and long lasting, certainly in the digital age. There are so many ways teachers can continue to educate long after they have gone. Before the digital age, teachers could write books and articles to share their knowledge. Today, teachers are spoilt for choice. Here are five ways we can give our knowledge to generations of learners we will never meet:

1) Blogging. Blogs such as the one you are now reading have been set up to share knowledge, and also to encourage discussion. The more teachers share their ideas and interact on public spaces such as blogs, the more that dialogue and emergent thinking can be preserved for future generations to learn from and enjoy. If you want to blog, tools to look out for include Blogger, Wordpress (includes Edublogs), Typepad, Tumblr.

2) Video. Creating videos of events, presentations, interviews, demonstrations... in fact anything that we can learn from, is another way to store up ideas for future generations to use. Video is also very effective for storytelling, and one of my favourite things to watch on video is documentaries. They capture my imagination and get me asking questions I would otherwise have missed. Tools to look out for: YouTube, Vimeo, SchoolTube, Daily Motion.

3) Slideshows. There are many tools available for sharing slides, and if you really want to give your slidedecks impact, record an audio commentary to accompany it. Most hosting site provide the facility for you to add audio that synchronises with your slides. Tools to look out for: Slideshare, Authorstream, Speakerdeck, Sliderocket.

4) Photographs. Images tell a story that goes beyond words. Powerful images can be used for a number of educational purposes, and students can engage with them at many levels. Some of the most powerful images of our time capture moments in history where everything changed. They can be a valuable legacy for our future generations of learners. Tools to look out for: Flickr, Instagram, Imgur, Photobucket, Pixabay.

5) Audio. Don't underestimate the power of audio. Some of the most evocative moments in history have been captured in audio format. Radio has been a powerful medium since it was first invented, and we live in an audio culture. Simply look around in any public place and not the number of people who are walking around wearing headphones or earbuds. Podcasting is a popular method for conveying knowledge in audio format. Tools to look out for: Podbean, Libsyn, Audacity.

So think about how what you know can be shared with others long after you are no longer around. Teaching is for a season. But learning continues for a lifetime.

 Photo from Wikimedia Commons


20 tools for legacy learning by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Narrative pedagogy 4: Connecting the dots

Teachers can learn a lot from the techniques writers use. In this short series I'm exploring some of the storytelling techniques that can be adapted for use in education. The first post featured a technique called Interrupted Routine; the second discussed Red Herrings in narrative. Number 3 in the series was about Deus ex machina (God out of the machine or 'an act of God'). Number 4 is Chekhov's Gun.

The Russian author Anton Chekhov believed that every element in a story should have a purpose. He offered the example of a writer describing a gun hanging over a door. He argued that the gun must be fired later in the narrative, otherwise it serves no function in the story. In other words, if something is not essential to the story, don't include it. It's a minimalist literary rule.

There are various instances of the Chekhov's Gun principle in popular fiction. In the first episode of the Walking Dead zombie apocalypse TV series, Rick Grimes takes a grenade from a dead soldier. We don't see the grenade again until several episodes later, when he uses it to blow an escape hole in a pane of bullet proof glass. Some might assume that the writers needed a means of get Rick to escape and so back-engineered the first episode to include the grenade. But I like to think it was just an example of brilliant story telling.

In Rowling's Harry Potter saga, there are numerous applications of Chekhov's Gun. Notably, Ron Weasley's pet rat Scabbers is introduced in the first book. Ron tries to turn the rat a different colour using a spell his brothers have taught him, but he fails. We don't know why the spell fails, and this element in the story seems somewhat irrelevant. The story moves on to other matters. It is only later in another Harry Potter book that we discover the reason why the spell failed. Scabbers is in fact a wizard who has taken on the form of the rat to hide. Comedians often use the same principle of Chekhov's Gun in their routines. They introduce a seemingly random topic early on in their set, and it seems there is no relevance. Later, toward the end of their set, they revisit the theme, and the entire narrative connects. It's a very effective method to help the audience join the dots.

How might we use the principle of Chekhov's Gun in education? Teachers can introduce elements of a lesson that are intriguing, but at first have no meaning. Later, these same elements can be revisited, and principles learnt around them. The approach helps students to connect together the elements of the lesson or lecture and to see a more holistic view. In language teaching, the teacher may speak a phrase at the start of the lesson, move on to develop the lesson theme and then revisit the phrase during the plenary. In a science or history education, an object may be placed at the front of the class, and not used until right at the end of the lesson. Used appropriately, it can be a very effective method to prepare students' minds for when an important principle or concept needs to be conveyed. By the same token, teachers should only include in a lesson those elements that are absolutely necessary.

Photo by England on Flickr


Narrative pedagogy 4: Connecting the dots by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Education Readings for creative teachers

We need to avoid the political press for standardized teching!

By Allan Alach

I welcome suggested articles, so if you come across a gem, email it to me at allanalach@inspire.net.nz

Robert Sternberg

The Conversation: Why 1904 Testing Methods Should Not Be Used for Today’s Students “Testing is compromising the future of many of our able students. Today’s testing comes at the expense of validity (strong prediction of future success), equity (ensuring that members of various groups have an equal shot), and common sense in identifying those students who think deeply and reflectively rather than those who are good at answering shallow multiple-choice questions.”

http://bit.ly/1jlY5Dl

Avoiding "Learned Helplessness”

“Instead of coming immediately to the teacher, we want students to experiment on their own. Many of us wonder why students constantly do the opposite instead. I've got news for you. It's our fault. We, as educators, are often responsible for learned helplessness, and we have a responsibility to change it! How can we empower our students to be self-directed learners?”

http://bit.ly/1NaAVYl

Growth Mindset: Clearing up Some Common Confusions

Carol Dweck

“Recently some critiques have emerged. Of course we invite critical analysis and feedback, as it helps all of us learn and improve, but some of the recent commentary seems to point to misunderstandings of growth mindset research and practice. This article summarizes some common confusions and offers some reflections.”

http://bit.ly/1NRkTTS

Moving away from factory teaching

Levels of Understanding: Learning That Fits All

“In order to reach diverse learners, we need diverse teaching strategies. Student voice and choice lie at the foundation of a differentiated classroom. When voice and choice are honored, the one-size-fits-all model transforms into multiple pathways for student growth.”

http://bit.ly/1Hqwdd0

Why Understanding These Four Types of Mistakes Can Help Us Learn

“We can deepen our own and our students’ understanding of mistakes, which are not all created equal, and are not always desirable. After all, our ability to manage and learn from mistakes is not fixed. We can improve it.”

http://bit.ly/1OtT2fh

The Global Search for Education: Just Imagine – Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith

“The Global Search for Education consistently focuses on how to better prepare students for the21st century — an age which will be all about innovating and building. Today, we’ve invited education expert Tony Wagner and entrepreneur and filmmaker Ted Dintersmith to imagine the school of the future.”

http://bit.ly/1QJNPmT

Contributed by Bruce Hammonds:

Ditch cameras - draw!

Museum Asks Visitors to Put Down Cameras and Pick Up Pencils and Sketch Pads

“Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam, recently launched a new campaign called “The Big Draw.” It’s an effort to get museum visitors toditch cameras and simple snapshots in favor of drawing the artworks in order to more fully appreciate the easy-to-miss detailsThe tagline of the campaign is “You See More When You Draw,””

http://bit.ly/1lkf9uF

Are Schools Designed to Help Children Learn?

In trying to wrap our hands around learning about learning, we  need to understand how to personalize learning by focusing on the learner first. This article discusses three “space

One size doesn't fit all

invaders” that take up the space as teaching, performance and work instead of what they should be focusing on: LEARNING.

“When you see learners noticing and reflecting on their learning during their learning, that is the Wow of learning. This is the higher-order thinking skills we want our children to adopt: learning about learning and thinking about learning. This makes learning visible.”

http://bit.ly/1PQUITl

Teacher Burnout: What Are the Warning Signs?

“It is not a matter of teachers becoming superhuman and overcoming all horrible conditions and indignities trying to succeed in doing what is virtually impossible, especially in a sustained way. The students need their teachers to stay engaged and fight for them. When the conditions of teaching are bad, the conditions of learning tend to be worse, and children suffer in lasting ways. That's why the collateral damage of burned-out teachers is burned-up children.”

http://bit.ly/1Nwx9Pv

Teaching By Doing Something Meaningful

“The illusion of making progress in education, the continuous re-evaluating, revising, and reorganizing of educational principles and practices, and the use of flawed data to direct our course of action, are all part of a grand illusion that is producing much “confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.””

http://bit.ly/1TgVkju

From Bruce’s ‘goldie oldies’ file:

Reflection on my teaching beliefs

“There are many, including myself, who believe we are now entering a new age of creativity- some even call it a 'second Renaissance'. If this is so then many of our current organisations, with their genesis in an industrial age, will need dramatic transformation, as will, more importantly our mindsets. We will need new minds for a new millennium.We will need to create networks of creative schools so as to to be in the forefront of such exciting changes. To achieve this schools, and their communities, need to stop and think about what is required of education in such exciting and very unpredictable times. Traditional education just won't do.”

Get out for a better view

http://bit.ly/1zeOfrA

The power of visiting other schools

“It is my belief that focused school visits ( hence the need for a guide) are the most powerful means to gain professional development and, in particular, to gain insights in to what other schools/teachers feel important. This is all the more necessary as schools are increasingly under pressure to distort their teaching programmes by the need to respond to the reactionary and politically inspired introduction of National Standards.”

http://bit.ly/1LuEr3b

Narrative pedagogy 3: Out of the blue

Teachers can learn a lot from the techniques writers use. In this short series (on what I will call 'narrative pedagogy'*) I'm exploring some of the storytelling techniques that can be adapted for use in education. The first post featured a technique called Interrupted Routine; the second discussed Red Herrings in narrative. Here's number 3 in the series: Deus ex machina (God out of the machine or 'an act of God').

The world is full of problems. We encounter them every day. You're late for work, rush out to your car, and discover that you have a flat tyre. At that very moment, a friend is passing by and pulls over to ask if you would like a lift. Of course, that kind of miracle doesn't happen in real life.... or does it?

When I was 12 years old I was in a car accident. We were living in the Shetland Islands at the time. One winter evening my father was driving my mother and I home from a shopping trip along the sea road. We found ourselves in the middle of a blizzard, and the snow was falling fast. It was dark, the temperature was dropping rapidly, and the road was icy. As my father drove us around a sharp bend in the road, he accidentally hit the brakes, we spun around several times on the ice, and ended up at a perverse angle, with the front of our car pointing downwards looking at a steep incline into the sea.

We were terrified. There was no traction in the wheels. Try as he might, my father was unable to extricate us from the danger we were in. There was no way we were going to get out of this without help. But in the middle of a blizzard, in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, where would it come from?

At that very moment, we heard voices outside, and as if by magic two large men materialised out of the snowstorm. I heard them talking to my father, and there were a few moments of silence. Then our car was literally lifted back onto the road. My father wanted to thank them, but they had disappeared. There was no-one there. Our lives had been saved in a most surprising and unexpected manner.



Popular culture is full of such interventions 'as if from above'. The use of deus ex machina can be seen in the movie Life of Brian. Toward the end of the film, the main character is falling to his death from a high tower, but is saved by a passing alien spacecraft. It's an absurd, literally out-of-the-blue resolution to the storyline, but what else do you expect from Monty Python? A more believable deus ex machina can be found in H. G. Wells' novel War of the Worlds, where the seemingly invincible alien invaders are ultimately defeated by the smallest living organism on Earth - a virus.

Discovering strange and improbable solutions to big challenges is what science is all about. It is also the basis of problem based learning (or PBL). Students are presented with a problem and limited resources (e.g. time) with which to solve them. They have to draw on their expertise, prior knowledge and ... yes, sometimes luck - to solve the problem. Sometimes they don't know how they solve the problem, or where it comes from. It seems as though the answer comes from outside of their influence. Often, in the most advanced forms of PBL, ill structured problems are given, where instructions are sparse or ambiguous, or several potential solutions to the problem might be possible. Suddenly the circle is incomplete. Several possible escape routes have been explored and choices made. In Gestalt theory, all humans are assumed to have an innate psychological need to complete the incomplete, to close the circle. They join the dots together in their heads to make sense of the world around them.

PBL calls on this specific human trait - the need to make sense. Unconscious knowledge can be drawn upon to solve most problems no matter how ill-structured they might be. Prior knowledge usually helps us to solve the seemingly intractable problem. New learning occurs when students study the problem space, and think of possible algorithms they have previously encountered that might apply or be adapted. This forms connections between the known and the unknown. Deeper learning emerges when students reflect and discuss their experience once the problem has been successfully solved.

Photo by Kabir Bakie on Wikimedia Commons

*Yes, I know that the term 'narrative pedagogy' has been used before, but in other contexts. My use signifies how storytelling devices can be applied to everyday pedagogy.


Narrative pedagogy 3: Out of the blue by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Narrative pedagogy 2: Maintaining the suspense

Humans have been telling stories since time immemorial. Narrative is built into our collective memory, and is part of what makes us human. Stories are compelling. Every story is a lesson, and every lesson can be a story. Teachers can learn a lot from the techniques writers use. In this short series on what I will call 'narrative pedagogy'* I want to explore some of the storytelling techniques that can be adapted for use in education. Yesterday I wrote about a technique called Interrupted Routine. Here's number 2 in the series:

Closely aligned to Interrupted Routine is another narrative device known as the Red Herring. It's a technique beloved of crime and suspense writers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie that is used to keep the reader guessing.  Red herrings are clues that lead the reader in the wrong direction. They are distracted from the real villain, and focuses for a while on other characters. Similarly to Interrupted Routine, the Red Herring maintains interest, because the reader is now engaged in trying to work out 'whodunnit' or what happened.

Warning - Spoiler Alert!
In a recent episode of  the zombie apocalypse series The Walking Dead, Glenn, who is one of the central characters, is standing atop a trailer trying to escape a seething mass of zombie 'Walkers'. His companion falls and takes Glenn with him. The next shot we see is a close-up of Glenn screaming in pain and horror as blood gushes everywhere. The audience is shocked. They believe he has been torn to pieces by the herd of Walkers. Confusion reigns as everyone tries to process what they have witnessed. Social media goes crazy with speculation and fans try to resolve their confusion. Is Glenn really dead? No-one knows for sure. But everyone keeps watching to find out.

It isn't until 3 episodes later that it is revealed in additional scenes that Glenn falls under his companion, and that it is in fact his companion's body that has been torn apart, not his. He subsequently wriggles free and under the trailer, and escapes to safety. So the first scenes were just a red herring to convince us all that Glenn had died.

I have occasionally used the red herring technique in my own teaching. I inform my students that I'm going to tell them a deliberate lie at some point during my lecture. Now their interest in piqued. They listen more attentively during the lecture to see if they can detect the falsehood. Sometimes the lie is real, but sometimes there is no lie at all. Except of course for the red herring - that I promised I would tell a lie at some point in the lecture.



Both the interrupted routine and red herring devices are used to focus interest and also to sustain the momentum of the story telling. Red herrings can keep students in suspense, or even in a state of confusion - something that may or may not be pedagogically desirable. The longer students are kept in suspense, the more they will be interested in what comes next (well, up to a point - you need to decide). I sometimes use a rather dangerous demonstration in the classroom to explore visual perception. It's potentially dangerous, because if it goes wrong, I'm likely to be injured and there will be blood. It involves a can of baked beans and my index finger!

The video above shows a version I recorded several years ago during a lecture. Because of the perceived danger, and the suspense over whether I will actually go through with the trick or not, you will see that the students are totally focused. When I eventually complete the trick, there is surprise and confusion. How did I manage to do it without getting injured? They discuss it for some time afterwards, trying to figure out how the trick worked. But it is just a red herring. There is no danger, because it is a sort of illusion. They now need to think about whether they actually saw what happened, or something else entirely. Or... was the whole thing just a red herring?

If used appropriately, red herrings can also encourage students to sort good information from bad information.

Photo by Daniel Hollister on Flickr

*Yes, I know that the term 'narrative pedagogy' has been used before, but in other contexts. My use signifies how storytelling devices can be applied to everyday pedagogy.


Narrative pedagogy 2: Maintaining the suspense by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.