Brainstorming an ARG

Last week I held a brainstorm at the Shuttleworth Foundation to generate ideas for an educational alternate reality game (ARG) for youth in South Africa (SA).

In the world of learning games, as ARG is a good fit for SA because players don’t need sophisticated equipment, e.g. XBox or PlayStation, to play. Reading the newspaper or being able to receive and send an SMS can be enough to get involved.

As far as I know this will be the first educational ARG in Africa. Attendees included Vincent Maher (who heads up social media at Vodacom), Alixe Lowenherz (education, curriculum and e-learning expert), Danny Day and Marc Luck (game developers), Barry and Patrick Kayton (of Bright Sparks) and Graeme Comrie (advisor to Hip2b2).

While the ARG idea is top secret right now (:-) I can tell you that it’ll involve mobile phones (which cross-media experience in SA wouldn’t). Watch this space in the coming months!

The networked book

I’m exploring the expanded definition of literacy, which includes not only being able to read and write in print, but also read and write across different media. Living in a networked public — like many of us do — also affects how we think about literacy. This quote from the mission statement of the Institute for the Future of the Book is very interesting:

One major consequence of the shift to digital is the addition of graphical, audio, and video elements to the written word. More profound, however, is the book’s reinvention in a networked environment. Unlike the printed book, the networked book is not bound by time or space. It is an evolving entity within an ecology of readers, authors and texts. Unlike the printed book, the networked book is never finished: it is always a work in progress.

A great read about techno-geek rebellion

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

My best read of 2008 was Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, sci-fi writer, co-editor of Boing Boing and general good guy.

San Francisco is hit by a major terrorist attack and the US Department of Homeland Security go bezerk. In the war on terror all basic human rights are hung out to dry and no-one is safe (sound familiar?). The story’s protagonist, seventeen year old Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is not going to take it lying down and unwittingly leads a techno-geek rebellion against this injustice. The novel is action-packed with teenage passion and righteous nerdism and, as Jane McGonical points out, holds “a bold argument: hackers and gamers might just be our country’s best hope for the future.” Alternate reality gaming — which is my “hot thing” for 2009 — is also covered, albeit obliquely, in the book.

The New York Times listed Little Brother as one of the eight notable children’s books of 2008, but don’t be fooled, it’s totally cool for adults too.

(Thank you Mark Surman for leaving a copy in the office, and Steve Song for recommending I read it 🙂

The educational value of fiction

In a recent paper, a research team from Manchester University and the London School of Economics (LSE) makes a bold and very interesting hypothesis: that fiction, such as the novels The Kite Runner and The White Tiger, is a legitimate way for people to understand global issues like poverty and migration. It is usually the domain of academic reports and policies to cover developmental concerns.

In a Telegraph article, Dr Dennis Rodgers from Manchester University’s Brooks World Poverty Institute explains that fiction “does not compromise on complexity, politics or readability in the way that academic literature sometimes does.” He continues: “And fiction often reaches a much larger and diverse audience than academic work and may therefore be more influential in shaping public knowledge and understanding of development issues.”

The paper argues that Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner has “done more to educate Western readers about the realities of daily life in Afghanistan (under the Taliban and thereafter) than any government media campaign, advocacy organisation report, or social science research.”

The paper offers the obvious caveat: that fictional works should be read alongside (not instead of) formal research “as valid contributions to our understandings of development. In this way, literary accounts can be seen – alongside other forms – as an important, accessible and useful way of understanding values and ideas in society.”

Why is this particularly interesting? For educational purposes, the value of fictional representations is legitimised. I’m not thinking of books though, but rather digital and cross-media representations, such as video games or alternate reality games (ARG). We are constantly trying to engage young people in current affairs that affect their world — this is one way to do that.

For some time ARG designers have been trying to understand the educational value of the games (we already know they are highly engaging for some players, but what are they learning?) This paper gives credence to the belief that the game play, when embedded in real world situations and stories (at which ARGs excel), is a legitimate context for learning. I think that when the game play is then tied back to reflective discussions in formal contexts (such as in the classroom), the learning is even more powerful.

A risk capital approach to education investment

In 2007/08, the South African government spent R105bn on education, while corporate social investment (CSI) in education amounted to R1.3bn. While a significant amount of money, the CSI contribution is a relatively small (about 1%).

SA spends a higher percentage of it’s GDP on education than most other countries (that achieve better results in international education tests). This tells us that there isn’t a shortage of money; our problem is that we don’t get value for money. In such a system, how can non-government stakeholders who care about education play their part? How can they help to achieve value for money? How can they support overall education goals, while not doing the work of government (something that is all to easy to do)?

Corporates, like government, are investing large sums of money but are seeing very little impact. At a recent workshop attended by corporates that invest in education, Ann Bernstein, executive director for the Centre for Development and Enterprise, described how the current approach of uninformed ad hoc interventions are helpful, but not enough to fundamentally improve the education system. There is simply not enough sharing of resources and efforts between players in this space. The randomness, lack of coordination and lack of serious engagement with the systemic issues all undermine the impact of the interventions.

More importantly, though, she suggests that CSI should be thought of as “risk capital” to test innovative ideas that can go to scale. One percent of the total spend is a nice amount to try out innovative ideas, alternative approaches to teaching and learning, etc. We should think of it as R&D money.

Nick Rockey, MD of Trialogue, re-iterated these points at the CSR in Education conference. There is a need for CSI money to be spent in a co-ordinated and rigorous way. What does this mean? Corporates should think about whether they are addressing systemic issues, or whether the success of their intervention is dependent on systemic support. They should invest in demonstration projects that have monitoring and evaluation components built-in. Lessons and best practices should documented and shared. Replication of projects must be kept in mind. In this way it will be possible to influence and support government, thus achieving big impact with relatively low budgets.

I’m pleased to say that the Shuttleworth Foundation has embraced this informed, rigorous and open “risk capital” approach. After a number of years of ad hoc interventions that were valuable in their own right, but did not collectively “move the needle”, we now look at interventions (projects, research, advocacy, etc.) whose outcomes can influence, support or shake-up the whole system. That is the best way for us to get value for money.

A literacy success story

A success story of improving the reading and writing skills of learners is the Zimasa Community School in Langa, Western Cape. Having spent the weekend in Langa for the CSR in Education conference, I realised just how under-resourced most of the schools there are. The attendant ills of poverty are evident in Langa: overcrowding, litter, crime and lack of infrastructure. These factors make it difficult for teachers to deliver a sound education. Similarly, learners struggle to find the space and quiet to do their homework. Imaging trying to study for a test while living in a hostel originally designed for 16 men and now housing 16 families?

Hostels in Langa (Image by mtlp, CC-by-nc-nd)

Despite these difficulties, the principal and teachers of Zimasa Community School have managed improve the percentage of learners who achieved 50% or more in a literacy assessment from 8% (2005) to 40% (2008). That’s an increase of 32%! Or an increase of 400% on the baseline results.

Some of the contributing factors for the achievement include institutionalising reading and writing time in class, the school’s dedicated teachers, engaging parents around the learning needs of their children, and allowing learners to read, write and take the literacy test in their mother-tongue (mostly isiXhosa). (It’s not possible to tell if any of these is the dominant variable for the success.)

For the most part, education performance in SA (in fact, globally) is tied to socio-economic status. But it is success stories such as this that demonstrate that it is possible to significantly improve education performance despite difficulties.

Read more about this success story in The Teacher.

Conference notes are up

October was a busy month: I attended three conferences. I took a fair amount of notes, which aren’t polished enough for blog posts, but definitely worth sharing. Read ’em at:

For fun here is a word cloud from the notes (thanks to Wordle).

Schools ICT conference 2008: Notes

The Schools ICT conference was held from 1-3 October 2008 in Cape Town. In addition to my blog post about the conference, notes about other interesting presentations are below.

Thumb tribe tackles mathematics
Laura Butgereit, Meraka Institute. Download presentation (5.6Mb).

The thumb tribe is everywhere. You recognise them by their poor posture and absent mindedness.
MXit: 45% of subscribers are 12-18 years old.
Would the thumb tribe compete at maths skills competitions on MXit?
Dr Math began in January 2007. Now have 3,700 kids using the it. 1 tutor can handle about 100 kids an hour.
Over Christmas holidays 2007-08 they added a simple addition competition.
The thumb tribe found it within a day and started competing — over the holidays!
When someone else beats your best score, you get a message telling you this.
Kids were playing at 11:30pm on a Sunday night doing grade 8 geometry.

Competition:

New participant is sent the current TopScore name and score
Participant receives a problem
Participant replies
After 10 replies, the participant has the opportunity to become the TopScore
The “old” TopScore is invited back to reclaim his/her title

Types of competition: + – / *, prime factors, root of a straight line, real factors of a quadratic, real roots of a quadratic, etc. The kids choose which competition they want to enter.

Success in maths benefits social behaviour: as a player climbed from the bottom to the top of the score board, she changed her name from PIMP(*)STAR to QunOfMaths to smartyCAT

Ethics challenges and measures of Dr Math:

Approval from the Tshwane University of Technology Ethics Committee
Collect no personal info
MXit provides the cell no. Dr Math protects them all
All humans who come into contact with our system must sign an agreement/code of conduct about handling cell phone numbers
Participants are told NOT to give their personal details
All conversations are recorded (for research, to protect the kids and the tutors)
Good tutor handling of situations are emailed to all the tutors

With a Gmail account, any teacher can talk to MXit subscribers (through Google Talk when logged into gmail) for after hour tutoring.

Forget about websites, schools need wapsites
Rodney Johnson, Rocklands High School, Mitchells Plain, spoke about how they’d used Kwikwap so set up a WAP site for their school. The site can be managed from the web or cellphone, and can be accessed via both.

Handheld Learning 2008: Notes

Handheld Learning was held from 13-15 October 2008 in London, UK. In addition to my blog posts about the conference, notes about interesting presentations, papers and projects are below.

Putting Philosophy into Practice
At the Handheld Learning 2008 conference: Laurie O’Donnell, Director of Learning and Technology, Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS), on Putting Philosophy into Practice.

	Philosophy A	Philosophy B
Education	Broken but can be fixed (quickly)	Long term investment in the future
Technology	Drives change	Enables, supports and accelerates change
Teachers	Another problem that needs to be fixed	Supported professionals
Learners	The future workforce (so need to skill them up for that)	More than just the future workforce
Innovation	Let a thousand projects flourish	Got to be scalable and sustainable
Success	Input targets and attainment	Wider long-term benefits
Curriculum	Don’t trust the teachers	Guidance and support for teachers

The problems that are constantly highlighted:

Teachers are insecure when considering bringing technology into the classroom. They mostly just prevent it from happening.
Learners know more about technology than their teachers.
Is today’s education really preparing learners for the future?
How to assess web 2.0 creations?

Keri Facer
There is general consensus on what 21st century learning skills are. To carry on thinking of what the list of skills might entail is becoming less and less productive. The big challenge is how to bring the development of those skills into the schools.

She believes that we need to stop designing curricula for young people and start designing with them.

David Whyley
Headteacher and consultant for learning technologies presented the Learning2Go project (blog):

2001: 14 devices BECTA trial
2007: Over 3,000 devices — all with wireless and imaging — in the hands of learners in Wolverhampton. Parents contribute to cost of devices. Learners generally look after the devices.

Truancy down
Maths and Science grades improved
Boys catching up on girls in English grades
Learners more motivated

My Mobiliser

Some learners, especially boys, will only read on screen: ebooks.

They can be annotated (notes, drawings).
Easily shared (with annotations and questions overlaid).
Dictionary lookup.
Are sometimes free, e.g. Shakespeare.
Can be added to with scanned images or text from the learners.

Because devices are wifi enabled:

The teacher can easily distribute files to everyone in a class.
The teacher can easily receive files (assignments) from the learners.

Challenges:

Sustainability
Giving teachers the space, time and permission to innovate
Defining what is “acceptable” digital work
Teacher PD
Blending personalised 24/7 access to the present school structures
Assessment needs to recognise different media submissions
Volatility of a “consumerised” hardware market
Connectivity costs (school wifi, 3G, GPRS, etc.)
Teachers reluctance to change
No models of effective integration of mlearning
No single solution for total mlearning integration

Have now added social networking: Gold Star Cafe (for 7-11 year olds, safe and secure space)

To use the mobile in the classroom, need:

Office suite
Way to collect assignments from learners

Focus on Scotland
One classroom uses Wii’s Endless Ocean, a game where the player is a scuba diver who explores the ocean. There is only one Wii console in the classroom. To workaround this constraint the teacher has created a number of activities that compliment actual Wiii game play, e.g.

Learners have to write a persuasive letter/essay on why they should be one of the key divers in the game.
Creative writing: learners have to keep a paper-based diver’s log. They create a diver and write an autobiography for him/her. Pieces also include drawings (art outcomes).

Thus, the writing meets the following curriculum outcomes:

Persuasive writing
Writing for information
Imaginative writing

General:

Coherence of learning — NB to tie the game-based learning to offline activities, e.g. posters, discussions, etc.
Learners were asked to design their own Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training game. The design was in the form of a narrative, written on paper.
The game play can be done on one console by the whole class, but the curriculum learning outcomes are enabled around that. The game narrative sets the context for these learning activities. So, games enhance the learning experiences that the teachers have planned.

Matt Lock, Channel 4
When designing educational experiences, he is not interested in the technology but rather in the “spaces”. Each of these spaces have their own qualities and user expectations:

Secret spaces: Mobile, SMS, IM (transactional activities: stroking behaviour)
Group spaces: Bebo, Facebook, Tagged, etc.
Publishing spaces: LiveJournal, Blogger, Flickr, Photobucket, etc.
Performing spaces: Second Life, WoW, Home, etc.
Participation spaces: marches, meetings, markets, events, etc.
Watching spaces: TV, gigs, theatre, etc.

Example project: Battlefront (description of project)

20 young people between 16-21 years old that are being tracked over 9 months about a change they want to make in their lives, e.g. campaign against Size Zero models.
Each person has their own Bebo profile and Flip video cameras.
The Battle Front project also has a profile on Bebo that aggregates the others’ content.
The participants were chosen through a competition.
Mentors who have experience with campaigning and social innovation help the participants.
Various media track the participants, e.g. TV.

How to get young peoples’ attention:

Distribute everywhere
Start at least 6 weeks before launch
Go to where your audience is
Competitions/virals can work, but need to be relevant
Make games!

Keeping attention:

Make it easy to find content
Repackage content as catch-ups
Make it easy to subscribe/sign-up
Tweak and redesign throughout the project
Bring the most popular stories to the top
Make games!

Turning attention into action:

Make it easy (not that many people actually make videos), e.g. get them to text in
Reward people constantly
Include audience activity in the story
Make games!

mLearn 2008: Notes

mLearn was held from 8-10 October 2008 in Telford, UK. In addition to my blog posts about the conference, notes about interesting presentations, papers and projects are below.

Towards a pedagogy-driven account of mobile learning
This morning’s mLearn 2008 keynote was titled Towards a pedagogy-driven account of mobile learning by Diana Laurillard, Institute of Education, London Knowledge Lab.

Twentieth century learning theories, e.g. social constructivism, constructionism, etc., generally propose the same thing: that the “engine” driving learning is a process of iterative development of an idea by a learner, which he/she refines through proposing it, defending it, questioning it, etc., and ultimately can apply as a concept to other contexts.

Laurillard proposed a conversational framework that represents different learning approaches as a way to hold up digital technologies against.Teachers need to challenge what the technologies — which are first and foremost designed for business and leisure — really afford for education and how they support pedagogical requirements. To reverse the direction of purpose: from business- and leisure-driven to pedagogically-driven.

Learners’ needs go way beyond the learning offered by Facebook. The educational voice needs to be more powerful to articulate how technology should serve learners’ needs, instead of always thinking how we can use the technologies available for learning (typically with a question such as this: “Facebook is very engaging for learners, how can we use it for education?”)

Obstacles to mobile uptake in SA
The paper presentation of Obstacles and Challenges Encountered in South African Secondary School Mobile Learning Environments by Sumi Eicker and Machdel Matthee provided these valuable insights:

SA’s teenagers are ready for mlearning but need
edu systems that can cater for it
educators that can implement it
parents that are open to the idea

How to reach learners that don’t have teachers?

MiLK project
The Mobile Learning Kit (MiLK) enables games that connect students, curriculum and everyday environments using simple web and mobile technologies. A scaffolding to build narratives. Debra Polson, interaction designer and researcher, Queensland University of Technology, presented interesting MiLK projects that involve learners designing and playing games. The process for this is as follows:

Explore
Research
Design (Peer assessment — because peers play the games that learners create — is a strong motivator to apply one’s self during the game design.)
Publish
Play
Reflect

We are considering running a MiLK project at next year’s SciFest Africa in Grahamstown.

Also see Cipher Cities and Scoot, a treasure hunt using lo-fi tech. Parents and kids play together.

Podcasting in higher educational institutes

In a pilot project, podcasts were found to help “connect” — emotionally — distance education students with a university. The real person voice helped to create a human connection between tutors and students, which reduced both student and tutor anxiety.

Engaging the learner through game-based mobile learning environments
Lisa Gjedde, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. Background: mobile learning may offer contextual learning potentials. Games can create user engagement and motivation.

In this project, three mobile platforms were developed to help answer the research question: To which extent can MLEs support and enhance collaborative learning?

The mobile games include multi-modal learning tasks: auditive, visual, tactile, kinestetic. Player feedback: “You were the one doing it all the time, and not the cellphone … you walked around and did it.” Engagement through: fun, context, collaboration, movement, challenge-level. Learners said that the group work (4 member teams) made them feel positive about collaboration in the future. Gave real-world context to maths. Conclusion: need for further research.

Language learning “on the go”
LondonMet e-packs (online language learning materials repurposed for use on mobile phones) were developed for adult language learners at London Metropolitan University to support learners after-hours.

Pedagogical choices for mobile learning objects (MLOs):

Reusable, granular and decoupled
Presentation of language in context
Layering of activities to develop skills
Varied and appropriate feedback features, e.g. not just “you got the question right” but “read this text to find out if you got it right or not”

Challenges in designing MLOs:

Need to break lessons into smaller units

Designing for cellphones:

What phone? Software?

What did the students think of the e-packs? Liked them. One said they offered “freedom from the computer.”

mLearning offers small, bite-size learning opportunities. Language learning is comprised of many skills that need to be acquired: reading, writing, listening, comprehension, vocabulary, pronounciation, etc. Bite-size learning activities, which constitute a larger lesson, definitely have their place, especially when done in context.

Researching mobile learning
Giasemi Vavoula (gv18@le.ac.uk) presented on the challenges associated with researching mobile learning.

Challenge 1: Capturing learning contexts

Social assessment methods: Diaries, questionnaires, post-interviews, attitude surveys
Need to triangulate mixed methods of assessment (technology-based and social-based)

Challenge 2: Capturing learning outcomes

Fixed space, e.g. classroom, has proven set of ways to assess cognitive learning, e.g. exams. Not so with mobile.
Alternatives to measuring outcomes are needed, e.g. learner perceptions (attitudes), assessing learner-created artefacts. But still no consensus on assessment.

Challenge 3: Challenging ethics

Mobile technology translates (most often) to personal technology. Can participants really consent to unknown scenarios?

Challenge 4: Formal vs informal?

“Seeing informal and formal learning as fundamentally separate results in stereotyping and a tendency for the advocates of one to see only the weaknesses of the other. It is more sensible to see attributes of informality and formality as present in all learning situations….The challenge is to identify such attributes, and understand the implications of the interrelationships between them.” Colley, H., Hodkinson, P. & Malcom, J. (2003) Informality and formality in learning: a report for theLearning and Skills Research Centre, p. 8.

Mobile learning foresight: the future of learning is already here
Mark Kramer, University of Salzburg

What’s already here:

Mobile content, e.g. iTunes U
Multimodal inputs, e.g. Jott
Aggregated inputs, e.g. Twemes
Visual comms (as opposed to text-based), e.g. Qik, Seesmic

Future predictions:

Self-organised learning: learners grouping and directing themselves
More collaborative through ubiquitous social networks
Location based
Context aware
Conversational

But with increased velocity in our exposure to information and communication, there is a technological burden.

Tech-enabled language learning: Making the link between noticing and learning
It is important that anyone learning a language notices when they are saying something incorrectly. Suggested process: Notice, record in a diary (consolidate), reflect in a group (hopefully). There is usually not much feedback to teachers about what language learners need “in the world.” This project shows teachers the gaps and how learners are progressing. After showing learners the benefits of noticing (through video examples), they are asked to use (mobile) diaries to capture what they notice when not in class. These diary entries are then discussed in class — physical or virtual.

Communications: anywhere, anytime

This morning’s mLearn 2008 keynote was titled Communications – anywhere anytime by Dr Mike Short, VP R&D, Telefonica Europe. 95% of 15-24 year olds in European countries have a mobile phone. More stats at GSM World — latest report. Mobile is not going to go away.

His thoughts on the future of the web:

Web 1.0: Users surf, consult
Web 2.0: Users create, collaborate, share
Web 3.0: All of the above, but in a supported, integrated way. Now the web suggests, services discover. Life happens on the web, which provides storage and processing power.

Assessing the value of mobile learning: the evidence challenge

This afternoon’s mLearn 2008 keynote was titled Assessing the value of mobile learning: the evidence challenge by Vanessa Pittard, Director: e-Strategy, Becta.

Mobile ICT use in Britain not all rosy. 84% of teachers said that they rarely/never use mobile ICTs to allow learners to work together for school activities. Only 6% of schools have campus-wide wifi.

The cost/benefit analysis and the evidence challenge

Moving from nice-to-have to must-have: developing the business case for mlearning:

Concept — not technology: practice; customer/user benefit
Buy-in — addressing key decision maker agendas
Readiness and planning — “should I invest now?”
Decision — options and practical choices
Management — risks and solutions; addressing barriers
Justification — cost/benefit analysis

Quantified benefits are the hardest part (examples):

Learner satisfaction and engagement (because of ICTs) measures
Learner time on task (through ICTs)
How much time to prepare for the lessons?
How long would it have taken to achieve the same lesson without ICTs?
Quality of outputs?
Impact on learner capabilities and learning behaviours?
Formal outcomes and progression?

Themes:

Engagement/inclusion in learning
Learner autonomy
Collaborative/distributed learning
Experiential/situated learning
Bridging formal and informal learning

There’s a lot to say to stakeholders, but important to focus on learner and learning outcomes. Also, could the same learning have been achieved without the ICTs?

Miscellaneous bits and pieces

Myst2008 — location-based game, played at SciFest in Joensuu. Perhaps play at SciFest in Grahamstown?
The MOBO City: A mobile game package for technical language learning — Focus was on teaching technical English vocabulary to students. Based in Iran.