The Unreasonable Man

Ouch: Virtual Learning Environments are Expensive and Ineffective

Wow. According to the BBC, Ofsted have produced a hard-hitting assessment on the costs (high) and benefits (err, very few apparently) of the VLEs that we are all supposed to be purchasing.

Some of the quotes:

• The use of online materials to help students with their lessons has been "slow to take off".

• In many schools and colleges VLEs are still on a "cottage industry" scale.

• The benefits to learners are so far "not yet obvious".

• "Despite expectations", dating back some 3 or 4 years, the arrival of these online support services for learners are "still in the early stages of development".

Here at Radley, we bypassed a formal VLE and went for a simple school-wide wiki - using CourseForum software. Much simpler. Surprisingly powerful. And it works.

BBC Education

You get an ology, you're a scientist

Lots of students are doing public exams at the moment.

One of them (thanks James) sent me this:

From Randall Munroe's hugely entertaining xkcd - a site which not only offers "romance, sarcasm, maths and language", but also makes very clever use of img tags if you mouseover his cartoons.

All of which led me back to this tv ad from the late 1980s

The ad, created by agency J Walter Thompson, is priceless and was the watercooler moment of its time - making "you got an ology" a veritable catch phrase.

The ad also has a wonderful outro:

"It's the teachers who are wrong. You know, they can't mark. A lot of them can't see..."

Save the Internet

Important (and informative) movie. Click through and watch...



See also: Save the Internet

Education, Education, Education

The older I get, the more I'm convinced that Tony Blair got just one thing right and then utterly failed to stay focused - to whit Education, Education, Education.

It applies to Foreign Policy just as much as to Drugs, Unemployment, Social Disorder and Third World aid. The Fukuyama thesis wasn't just about Western Democracies - it was about delivering sufficient Education to get people as far as those Democratic assumptions.

Part of the framework of Europe's enduring peace has been the rise and rise of effective education.

Discuss.

Not just football. Now we're dropping out of Science as well...

This is an extraordinary story about the decline of British Education. But let me start on the subject of football. Because there are some interesting parallels.

Last week the various UK soccer sides all fell out of Euro 2008. Only 14 teams were able to qualify - and not one of our national sides made the cut. England promptly fired their national coach. Newspapers agonized over the decline and fall. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. This was, by all accounts, a national disaster.

This week the OECD published its Pisa survey. This is a comparative study of academic performance around the world. It publishes every three years and considers reading, maths and science skills. It too points to a national disaster.

The UK did VERY badly. Among 15-year-olds in 57 countries the UK ranked "between 12th and 18th place".

The organisers give a country's position as being ranked between certain positions because it says with a sample of students it is not always possible to state a comparative ranking with 100% accuracy. Instead, OECD calculates, with 95% confidence, a range of ranks that the country falls within.

So we can be 95% certain that UK school science is bad enough to see the national coach sacked.

Only that isn't quite how the BBC reported the story. Read on and be amazed:

UK among school science leaders

The UK is among the better performers in an international league table on school science

This is unbelievable reporting - not just rose-tinted spectacles but a full-blown case of myopia. Nor is this the first time that the BBC have reported an educational disaster as some curious form of triumph.

It obviously occurred to the BBC that people might - just might - check some of the facts. So the report continues with this extraordinary excuse:

In 2000, the UK was 4th, but the organisers say comparing results is not strictly valid because the tests have changed.

Note: not strictly valid. Hmm. I can't help thinking that a fall from 4th to 14th is sufficiently dramatic to be worthy of comparison despite some minor caveat.

The BBC then throws in this curious observation:

The UK as a whole was not included in the last Pisa study.

Well, yes, that's true - but a quick search of the BBC's own pages would reveal that in the last survey of 2003 the UK failed to provide enough data for the analysis of Maths and Science to be statistically valid (there's some deep irony in there somewhere).

So the last time the UK was properly assessed was back in 2000. And everything has been in decline ever since. The BBC reported that millennium survey in euphoric terms - and even managed to employ a footballing metaphor. Sadly the report is now most notable for the unfulfilled optimism of its closing paragraph.

Of course, it isn't only Science and Soccer that are in decline. Only last week it was announced that England had dropped from third place to 19th in the world in an assessment of reading.

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FactFile

The Pisa survey is based on tests carried out in 2006 in 57 countries which together account for 90% of the world's economy. It tested students on how much they knew about science and their ability to use scientific knowledge to address questions in daily life.

Finland come out on top, followed by Hong Kong (China), Canada, Chinese Taipei, Estonia and Japan. Countries that have moved 'sharply upward' include Canada, Germany, Austria and Denmark.

Note that Estonia were part of the Soviet Union until 1991. Next thing you know, we'll be losing football games to Croatia...

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Update

The BBC have now changed their article to better reflect the reality of the original Pisa Report. It now reads:

UK schools slip down in science

The UK is above average in a major international league table on school science - but it has slipped compared to its previous top-four ranking.

The whole article remains depressingly apologetic in tone - but it is at least a fairer reflection of the facts.

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ICT: Costs a Lot, Delivers Little. Discuss.

You have to admire the way that everyone is happy to distort the truth if there's a "feel good" story in Education.

This story from the BBC is a nice example. It's headed Computers 'can raise attainment' and it continues:

High levels of computer technology in schools can improve attainment to an extent, a four-year study has found.

The £34m ICT Test Bed project by Becta in three deprived areas of England showed gains in some GCSE and primary school test scores.

The study involved 23 primary schools, five secondaries and three further education colleges.

These were in Barking and Dagenham, Sandwell and Durham - all areas of relative though different social and economic disadvantage.

Which sounds great until you read on:

[The schools] drew up their own plans and were given money - totalling £34m - to spend on "high levels" of hardware, software and training.

Results of the Test Bed schools were compared with similar institutions elsewhere and with national averages, in a study evaluated by Manchester Metropolitan and Nottingham Trent universities:

• at Key Stage 1 (aged seven): "no significant differences"
  
• in Key Stage 2 tests (aged 11), the rate of improvement was higher for Test Bed schools and some even passed the national average for English
  
• at Key Stage 3 (14-year-olds): no significant differences
  
• at GCSE (aged 16): no difference in overall pass rate, but Test Bed pupils did better than those in comparator schools in getting five good grades including English and maths
  
• post-16: little change - Test Bed students scored same points per exam but took fewer A-levels than comparators.

So let's get this clear.

A government agency spent over £1 million per school, across 30 something schools, and the best they can report after four years is that there was some unquantified improvement for the 11 year-olds in the study.

And that no-one else showed any obvious benefit whatsoever.

Sheesh...

I can't quite get over that the BBC ran this with such a positive headline.

Read on and you find:

Schools struggled to improve links with pupils' homes and to cater for those without computers or the internet.

Schools had found it "hugely time-consuming", prohibitively costly in software and "fraught with problems".

And how much has all this cost us?

Over the past decade the government has spent almost a quarter of a million pounds per school on ICT - more than £5bn in all.

And has, it appears, very little to show for it...

Of course there is an opportunity cost. In fact £5bn would have paid for some 20,000 teachers across that same timeframe.

According to my calculations that's roughly five teachers for every state secondary school in the UK. [data]

Becta were presumably pretty disappointed with their findings and their press release was just desperate to find some positive spin.

They tried this:

"There has been a shift in the views of teachers, in particular, with initial scepticism and apprehension being gradually replaced by optimism and confidence."

Well, yes. But that optimism and confidence isn't particularly justified. Certainly not in any meaningful sense.

Or, as Becta put it:

"At present the evidence on attainment is somewhat inconsistent, although it does appear that, in some contexts, with some pupils, in some disciplines, attainment has been enhanced."

Should you happen - like me - to be a UK tax payer, then I have very bad news. Because this is how Schools' Minister Jim Knight sees the matter:

"The Test Bed project demonstrates just how ICT has the power to transform young people's learning - both at school and beyond the school gate."

He added: "We will be looking to capitalise on this project and replicate it across the country."

Oh help...

Bringing Learning into Facebook via Wikipedia

I'm pushing Facebook as a tool for our students. It provides them with pretty much everything they want: connectivity, e-mail, blogging, photos and media linking.

The real challenge is to then bring learning and creative endeavour into Facebook.

So I read with interest this suggestion from Nicholas Carr:

Facebook should capitalize on Wikipedia's open license and create an in-network edition of the encyclopedia.

It would be a cinch: Suck in Wikipedia's contents, incorporate a Wikipedia search engine into Facebook (Wikipedia's own search engine stinks, so it should be easy to build a better one), serve up Wikipedia's pages in a new, better-designed Facebook format, and, yes, incorporate some advertising.

There may also be some social-networking tools that could be added for blending Wikipedia content with Facebook content.

Watch that space...

Hard Science

Mother Nature is extraordinary.

She used 3 Billion years of evolution to endow Homo Sapiens with the smartest mind in the known universe, and then added a streak of idleness which means that we would prefer not to think unless it is absolutely necessary.

Thus it is that people run their lives on "hunches", "suspicions" and "gut feelings". Herein lies the success of slimming pills and conspiracy theorists. Even when the Truth is Out There the vast majority of people would rather sit in by the fire and read a good novel. They might even write a brief review of the book - an opinion - a critique, if you will. Something for the Arts programme.

Now there are those who will tell you that the Arts are simply Sciences waiting to happen. That all subjects move from the Arts to the Science if only you are prepared to hang around long enough. Indeed a significant number of subjects have travelled this road already: Biology has moved from Nature drawing to metabolic pathways; Geography has moved from coloured maps to Geomorphology; even something as unlikely as Cooking has transformed itself first into Food Science and, more recently, into Molecular Gastronomy - which isn't quite full-blown Chemistry, but does at least allow you to use a bunsen burner when making Creme Brulee.

In practice, almost any area of academic endeavour can subject itself to the Scientific Method if its protagonists are prepared to work hard enough; an art is just a science with too many unknowns. Thus it is that one of the most successful History books of recent times - Guns, Germs and Steel - was written by Jared Diamond, whose Cambridge-based PhD is rooted in membrane biophysics.

But most people don't enjoying juggling such a plethora of variables. Because Science is hard. Particularly if you are stupid. Anyone can hold a view on Shakespeare, however ill-judged or ill-informed. But it's rather harder to calculate the residual stress in polymer-bonded carbon fibre, because it isn't obvious how to construct the question - let alone answer it.

And we know that Science is hard because some kind academics at Durham University have proved as much. They've shown that the average candidate will clock lower grades at Physics or Chemistry than at any other A Level subject of their choosing.

Note carefully, I said "the average candidate"; because it turns out that the "smart candidate" will almost certainly do better at these subjects, for the very reason that they do understand the questions and they can do the maths and, well, it isn't very hard really and, honestly, you can scream through prep in 20 mins flat and then play football. Smart people do Science precisely because it isn't that hard to them. Indeed, smart scientists are often extraordinarily lazy: Einstein is a good example; Tim Berners-Lee (who invented the World Wide Web) is another; I could go on (but I'm not sure I can be bothered).

OK. So let me summarise our findings so far: most people find science hard.

There, that wasn't too painful.

So, for the many, many people out there who think that weight and mass are pretty much the same thing and that Ohm's law is really, really hard - well, Global Warming is going to be a tough one.

Because Global Warming has LOTS of variables. Just tonnes of them. Honestly.

And so given the choice of either: reading a hefty academic tome, signed off by some 2000 leading scientists, and endorsed by the UN - or: watching a Channel 4 expose and then chatting to a mate at the pub; you can be pretty damn certain that the average citizen will plump for option 2, and then head home in a gas-guzzling SUV whilst muttering about the curious nature of hosepipe bans.

Which would be fine by me were it not for the curious nature of democracy. "Curious" because no-one seriously thinks that we should take popular opinion into account when it comes to doing sums; no-one punches numbers into their calculator and then argues about the result. But those same people who shrink at the thought of data analysis will happily offer their view on Global Warming - and expect me to care about their opinion.

Amazing. Quite amazing.

And don't even get me started on organic foods.

Learn Mandarin

Historically the British have always mastered communication with johnny foreigner by simply using English - but speaking a little slower and a little louder.

I'm not sure that will work with the new Chinese who now outnumber us by approximately 25 to one.

In just five years, the number of non-Chinese people learning Mandarin Chinese has soared to 30 million. What is fuelling this expansion, and will it change the status of English as a global language?

Shanghai-born lawyer Kailan Shu Lucas of Chinese Learning Centre organises lessons in Mandarin, the main Chinese language, for pupils in London - and she is very busy.

She now co-ordinates lessons for 12 London schools. She believes that in most cases, having their children study the language is a career calculation made by the parents.

"Parents nowadays think that in 10-20 years' time, when their children are in adulthood, China will be even bigger - and so learning Chinese will be a very helpful tool," she told BBC World Service's Analysis programme. "This will be a very useful, important language to learn."

[Most of those] parents are from the finance industry where China is "a big thing." "That influences the parents' thoughts," Kailan added. "They want their children to learn Chinese and be more versatile in terms of job prospects in the future."

The hope, presumably, is that if you can't beat them - you can at least join them.

You can make a start to learning Chinese here, with the BBC.

Link: BBC World.

Sentient Developments: Must know terms for today's intelligentsia

I fell upon this quote from Carl Sagan whilst browsing Sentient Developments:

"The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps."

Which particularly struck me as I had only just finished listening to the latest podcast from the UK thinktank Demos.

Over at Demos (who are also in MySpace now), Hannah Green and Celia Hannon have been working on a project funded by the National College for School Leadership called Their Space: Education for a Digital Generation.

Paul Miller has been involved:

I helped out a bit with the research for the project and it’s been fascinating to work on. Hannah and Celia have done a brilliant job at bringing it all together and writing what I think is one of the best Demos reports for quite a while.

The piece basically takes apart the myth of ‘digital danger’ for teens. It suggests that schools in particular should have a lot more faith in kids ability to navigate the online world and should rearrange the way that IT is taught to put the kids in charge. The findings (which are all about kids in the UK) mesh neatly with things we’d learned about the US from danah boyd’s work.

The report caught my eye because the findings almost exactly mirror the talk I've been giving to Independent school audiences up and down the country for the last two years.

As ever, so much of the issue is encapsulated by Douglas Adams:

Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Meanwhile - over at Sentient Developments

At the dawn of European humanism, Florentines believed that reading Dante while ignoring science was ridiculous. Similarly, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo both recognized the great importance of understanding science, technology and engineering.

Despite these trail-blazers, not much has changed since then; a startling number of so-called 'intellectuals' remain grossly ignorant of pending technologies and the revealing sciences

They go on to offer a list of "must-know-terms" that includes the following:

• accelerating change
  
• augmented reality
  
• human enhancement
  
• molecular assembler
  
• neural interface device
  
• open source
  
• participatory panopticon
  
• political globalization
  
• quantum computation
  
• radical Luddism
  
• remedial ecology
  
• Simulation Argument
  
• Singularity
  
• ubiquitous surveillance
  
• virtual reality

Great stuff. Go and read the full list. I'll test you later...