Into the Machinarium

Teaching is an art, and often practised in a vacuum. Practitioners spend much of their day with students, and the opportunities to share technique can be few and far between. This is a gross generalisation I know, some schools are much better at ensuring that there is some cross pollination of experience than others. That isolation however can be a good thing too, teachers often have the freedom to experiment and explore new ways of engaging their students, as it should be.
Online there's a lot of hum drum instructional practice, but many working in education are leveraging new technologies and new approaches to engagement online to better enhance best practice. It's a bit of a mixed bag at present, and I think we are currently at a crossroads of sorts. As those of us that are keenly interested in online learning strive to explore new ways of teaching and learning online, as new technologies develop to feed an insatiable appetite, we will continue to make advances.
But lets shift focus for a moment, and reflect on gaming. It's relevant, I promise you!  Not so many years ago, Amanita developed their third title in a series of unique games, Machinarium. Haunting, beautiful music accompanies an engaging narrative that drives a point and click game for PC and Mac like no other.
As video game titles have risen to outstrip the biggest of block buster movies in returns, their production quality and content have been equally pushed to the limit over the last few years. Each new game that appears on the shelves pushes new boundaries in design, scope and involvement. Narrative has taken an equally large leap, with gaming taking story and engagement online to new heights ... and yet there is increasingly a certain sameness about so much of what is developed.
Unique approaches to world building are out there, certainly and Amanita is one company that have achieved something special in this field. Their games are pieces of living art, and though the stories are not complex, their characters draw us to them. Having played Machinarium recently with the kids,  I have once again been quietly impressed by the wonderful imaginations of these developers. Machinarium shows you don't have to push the boundaries in graphics displays, you just have to create something beautiful and engaging with a story that sustains you and characters you care about.
Anamita's products have caused me to rethink approaches to online learning lately too. We're currently making great advances, trying new things. Increasingly however, large swathes of schools are adopting very functional LMS systems of one kind or another, and it makes me wonder whether in the not so distant future, many teachers will be lumped with a one size fits all solution for online learning. Why can't teaching online have the same beauty, influence and daring as Amanita's products? Online learning experiences don't just have to be purely functional, they can be beautiful and moving experiences as well.
As long as there are teachers, online or offline, there will be unique and dynamic approaches to learning. My concern, is that when equal parts of teaching are guided by LMS systems that are functional in design and purpose, some of that teaching craft bleeds away. We are all guided by design, particularly online. Our actions and behaviours are  significantly shaped by the tools we use, and we need to be more aware of the influence of design in our teaching and learning.
At the moment, we're at a crossroads I feel, and before we find too many schools and teachers burdened by an obligation to fit within the limited scope of so many LMS systems, we need to show teachers and students that there are alternatives.

Telling your story, public and private

Our notions of privacy online are often confused and convoluted. We assume that to gain privacy we must ‘lock down’ our data, and yet often by default, what we share is public. As Danah Boyd puts it, our interactions online are ‘public by default, private through effort.’

For many teens, the way around this is to simply fabricate information in their profiles and to hide personal information in plain sight. They rely on in jokes and inside knowledge to disceminate personal responses to their peer groups.

This creative approach is not uncommon, and entirely in keeping with a young adults search for identity. The teenage years are a time of discovery and rediscovery, of trying on new notions of self to see how they fit. Notions of personal identity online are important to young adults, it’s just that they are more elastic, more prone to change.
The stories we tell about ourselves help us to define who we are, we look to our audience for approval, for acknoledgement and acceptance. The problem is that in the past, these stories changed as we grew older and the older notions of self slipped away.
Today, remnants of who we were may remain online our entire lives. The digital flotsam that drifts with us continues to influence perceptions of who we are online to greater and lesser degrees. Increasinly the problem of context, how this old information is perceived, is becoming apparent. For adults, the ability to see this in context, to be confident in who we have become, makes this notion less problematic.
For a young adult, perhaps still struggling with identity and notions of self, this historical data can be a concern. Will they continue to be judged by that photo from that party taken last year? Will their competance continue to be judged by the comments made in a blog post last week.
Young adults are aware of privacy, it’s just very difficult to negotiate. When the default setting is often public, and the privacy settings are complex, it’s easy to share things we regret.
It’s therefore crucial that we reassure young adults about their futures, that they appreciate that their lives online will be viewed holistically as they grow older. The alternative is to deny them notions of freedom in yet another arena of their lives.

Time Flies

I've just finished reading Schooling for the knowledge era  by David Warner ... published in 2006. His perspective on challenges the education sector is struggling with are grounded in the practicalities of implementing this change in the classrooms of his school. Despite being only five years old the book is already a little dated in places, but I found this easy to overlook as he doesn't pretend to be offering a silver bullet. What he does offer, is the solid delivery of practical advice for the changes some schools are embracing, and many are struggling with.

I took a tour of his school a year ago, and in particular I remember being impressed by the degree to which students and teachers had readily adopted a PBL approach. Now that I've read the book, I'd be intrigued to see the school again with a better appreciation for his roadmap, and the philosophy behind it.