Games in Schools conference and research results

Last week, my colleagues Paul, Benedicte and I liveblogged the Games in Schools conference that we organised at the Council of Europe. The conference was to present and debate the results of an eighteen month study on the use of (mostly) commercial computer games in educational environments.

The blog turned out pretty well, so go and check out the presentations and reports.

You can also find out more about the research results, and download the full reports.

Nanotechnology in the classroom

Students in Europe often complain that they are learning about the science and technology of yesterday, rather than cutting edge issues, which they find more exciting.
I’m working on a new, major EU project, Nanoyou, which aims to help teachers get support in bringing the latest nanotechnology R&D in energy, environment and medicine as well the surrounding ethical and social issues to their students. It’s a huge project involving Spanish, French, Belgian, Austrian and British partners, led by ORT Israel.

Nanoyou kicked off on Monday 27 April in Tel Aviv, Israel, and over the next 27 months, the project will create and test new toolkits for teachers at lower and upper secondary level, an online game on the topic, exhibitions in science centres and much more.
Teachers who are interested to get involved, should contact me at European Schoolnet at alexa.joyce@eun.org.

Image credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

Open education: the US got there first!

Publicly-funded institutions "that expend more than $10,000,000 in a fiscal year on scientific education and outreach shall use at least 2 percent of such funds for the collaboration on the development and implementation of open source materials as an educational outreach effort" reports David Wiley (via Stephen Downes).

This is really fantastic news: in fact, it was one of the recommendations resulting from the run of the UNESCO/OECD Open Educational Resources discussion that I moderated some time ago.

So why doesn't the EU do the same? It would be so easy to make that part of the 7th Framework Programme research funding or the Lifelong Learning Programme, by including it in the contractual requirements, or at the very least in the award criteria for selecting projects for funding. It's unfortunate that the EU research programme - although funding research in this area - doesn't grab the issue by the horns.

On the other hand, they have recognised that the web is an equivalent 'right' to schooling, which is quite a victory.

Image credit: mag3737

Censorship begets creativity: Aqua teen hunger force and communist China

Does censorship stimulate creativity? A few recent examples suggest a strong link. Whether in China or in the classroom, web filters are stimulating some entertaining, yet thought-provoking trends to occur.

1) In China, a very funny video has been circulating (thanks to my friend Zhuohua for sending me the link), and even remade in an animated hiphop version. On one hand, it's a protest against censorship (the grass mud horses are fighting against the repressive river crabs), it's also a funny demonstration of how futile censorship for 'moral behaviour' can be. Grass mud horse, translated into Chinese, sounds almost exactly like obscene words which are vilified by the censors. More on the phenomenon via the NY times. It's spawned lots of spin offs including stuffed animals and T-shirts.

2) School kids are also finding funny ways to swear. Many filters ban specific swear words, resulting in massive growth of the phrase 'Sofa King' (say it fast, out loud..), originally used in Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Coincidentally, it has also made the leap into hiphop... Perhaps less politically engaged than the Grass-Mud Horse, it just illustrates how we cannot stop kids from using language in ways they want, and that they'll just find creative ways to bend the rules.

It reminds me of the days of the Criminal Justice Bill in the UK, which banned the public playing of "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats," to prevent the organisation of raves. Warp records' Autechre then released the "Anti EP" including a track called 'Flutter',"programmed in such a way that no bars contain identical beats and can therefore be played under the proposed new law." Ironically, it was arguably one of the most creative times for UK electronic music, stimulated by the sense of rebellion.

While writing this post, I also came across an old, but interesting post comparing access to the web in China vs. a school in Oklahoma, US by Wesley Fryer, which is really revealing!

Is China really more repressed than Western counterparts? And are we inadvertently stimulating the development of more creativity by censorship?

Join the Games in Schools community of practice

I'm working on the Games in Schools research project looking at how games are used in schools in the EU. We just launched a community of practice, being led by Derek Robertson from Learning and Teaching Scotland. Here's the invitation to join us:

"As a follow-up to the online teachers' survey that some of you may have participated in, on the use of electronic games in school across Europe, we are delighted to announce the launch of our online community of practice which we warmly invite you to take part in. This community of practice will provide you with a unique opportunity to voice your concerns, ask questions, share positive experiences and generally become more knowledgeable and confident about the next steps you should take to successfully integrate the use of games in your classroom. The community is available at http://gamesinschools.ning.com/."

Ada Lovelace Day: Female IT engineer

On the occasion of Ada Lovelace Day, we've published an interview with Sally Buberman, a 26 year-old female IT engineer and entrepreneur from Argentina, on the European eSkills portal. It will also be covered in European Schoolnet's March newsletter.

Ada Lovelace day on Twitter and Facebook.

It's also a good occasion to tell you that there's a new organisation in Europe active in this area: the European Centre for Women in Technology.

Getting girls interested in IT

I’m at the Microsoft Executive Briefing Center for an event on how technology can support innovation in education in Europe. We’ve had a morning of speeches, presentations and videos including meeting a team of Digigirlz from the European School in Brussels.

During the event I gave a short presentation (scroll down) but it inspired me to summarise and pick out the main issues:

• Make technology accessible / access personal technology: help girls to get preferential access to PCs and equipment e.g. through girls IT clubs. Another idea is to look at their personal gadgets (e.g. mobile phones, iPods) and explore with them how they can use them in a more sophisticated way.

• Increase their confidence: a lot of girls have good grades in maths and science subjects, so are well prepared for IT and programming subjects. But female teenagers in particular lack confidence, and even with good grades will think they are not up to scratch. Help them understand you don’t have to be perfect!

• Show how leisure IT use can be helpful for education / careers – encourage students who have their own blog, or are digital photo enthusiasts, to understand that this is can be adapted for education and career purposes. Help them to know that this is a skill that others may not share.

• Help them meet realistic role models: IT is notoriously stereotyped in the media, so it’s a good idea to help them meet people who can inspire them in career choice. Why not take them to a local IT company to have an afternoon Q&A with a young, female IT professional? If you can’t physically go, try doing an online chat!

Microsoft2march

View more presentations from europeanschoolnet.

Playschool: games as learning environments

I recently read (on Constance Steinkuehler's blog about a new school programme being launched in the US, Quest 2 Learn.

"Quest supports a dynamic curriculum that uses the underlying design principles of games to create highly immersive, game-like learning experiences for students. Games and other forms of digital media also model the complexity and promise of “systems.” Understanding and accounting for this complexity is a fundamental literacy of the 21st century."

It's being setup by the Institute of Play, an organisation to "promote gaming literacy: the play, analysis, and creation of games, as a foundation for learning, innovation, and and change in the 21st century."

I think we need an EU equivalent!

Creativity and innovation at the eTwinning conference

The eTwinning conference took place over 13-15 February in Prague, Czech Republic. Here are a few video messages from teachers and students taking part in eTwinning. You can also take a look at the team blog that we put together with volunteer teachers.

Celebrate Ada Lovelace day by blogging

"Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women's contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised."

I'll be posting myself on the day - 24 March 2009 - and hope you will too!

In case you've never heard of Ada Lovelace, here's a quick bio from Wikipedia:
"She is mainly known for having written a description of Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She is today appreciated as the "first programmer" since she was writing programs — that is, manipulating symbols according to rules — for a machine that Babbage had not yet built."
She was also the daughter of Lord Byron, a very well-known English romantic poet.

Find out more and make your own pledge.

Via Brussels Geek Girl Dinners

The Right to Education

In Western Europe, we have the luxury of having an almost universal right to education. In the rest of the world, it's not necessarily the same. Peter Hyll Larsen has just launched a new website for the Right to Education Project.

As the website says, "the Right to Education Project aims to promote social mobilisation and legal accountability, looking to focus on the legal challenges to the right to education."

Take a look...

AEC-NET conference presentation and paper

I'm presenting today at the Asia-Europe Classroom conference. It's going to be a really interesting and fun event! The projects up for awards look very promising too. Download my conference background paper and the Powerpoint (2.3 MB zip archive, includes videos).

Enlarging AEC-NET’s scope:partnership and school networks in Europe

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: education ict)

I showed these two videos as part of the presentation:

EMINENT conference on ICT in education

EMINENT, European Schoolnet's annual conference for ICT in education policy makers just ended successfully last week. The two-day event brought together around 200 experts from European member states and beyond.

Particular highlights for me were:

• Mike Trucano from World Bank giving a great keynote speech


• Turkish teacher, Elif Kara, winning an eLearning award in only her second year on the job.

It's especially good news for Turkey, as they only became a member of European Schoolnet this year and are already winning prizes!

For more about EMINENT, check out the blog and the podcast.

Glance at a country: Malaysia

I'm about to leave for Kota Kinabulu in Malaysia for the Asia-Europe Classroom Connect conference, so I thought I'd take this chance to make another country focus, this time looking at Malaysia.

First of all, an example of classroom practice in a Malaysian school, as part of the Asia-Europe Classroom project. The project links schools in Asia to their counterparts in Europe using ICT.

Schools using ICT in Malaysia are part of the Smart Schools programme. Take a look to learn more about the status in 2007 and plans for 2008. Also, this article from Digital Learning India gives a great overview of ICT in education in the country.

I also came across this Smart Schools promotional video - including possibly the world's first song about ICT in education!


Other developments are ongoing in Malaysia, and the
Asia Open Source Software project just held it's latest workshop in Kuala Lumpur. THe AsiaOSS project also provides the Asia OSS wiki including all kinds information about the project, including learning materials and details on the working groups.

Finally, take a look at One School, a portal of learning resources, including flash cards, revision notes, homework help and free reference books tailored for the Malaysian school system. It's all available in English.

The Great Plant Hunt

Another really cool science project from the BBC!

"The Great Plant Hunt invites school children aged 5-11 to explore the natural world around them in a series of activities, all clearly linked to the primary science curriculum." It encourages students and teachers to get out of the classroom, and take a walk around local green spaces to learn more about the plants that grow there. Learning activities are provided for all ages of primary school children.

Stimulating interest in IT among young people in Europe

Many young people in Europe think that IT careers are dull and boring - but at the same time they are avid users of IT tools, whether on the web (like Facebook, Flickr, etc.) or via games consoles (e.g. Playstation 3, Nintendo DS Lite). I presented about this topic in Thessaloniki, Greece at the e-Skills conference.

Stimulating interest in IT among young people in Europe

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: e-skills technology)

Inspiring girls to join the IT industry

The IT industry suffers from a gender imbalance, with a lot of women shunning the sector. It's frustrating to see so many talented girls avoid this sector due to prejudice and lack of knowledge of the reality of IT.

I recently met Sally Buberman at the Microsoft Women in IT day, and at SciTech Girls day organised by the Women's Forum. She is taking the time to talk to girls, explain her job and inspire them to follow in her footsteps. She's set up her own company, Wormhole IT.



She also posts about her experiences on her blog, Sally into the Wormhole.

Directory of ICT Resources for Teaching and Learning of Science, Mathematics and Language

The UNESCO Schoolnet project produced a directory of resources for science, maths and language teaching, accompanied by a CD-ROM. The publication was extremely popular and so a second edition has been produced.

Download the directory from the UNESCO Bangkok ICT in education e-Library

Data protection day: event and competition

Young Europeans between the ages of 15 and 19 years are invited to take part in the“Surf the internet – think Privacy” competition which was launched this week at www.dataprotectionday.eu. The challenge is to create a 30 to 90 second video to illustrate the theme of data privacy and data protection. As entries start coming in, you can visit the online competition gallery to rate the uploaded entries. The most popular videos will then be judged by a panel of experts.

Podcast on the eLearning Awards

A new podcast has been launched for the eLearning Awards 2008. So far two episodes have been made available. The first one focuses on the awards themselves, and includes interviews with the team behind the scenes.
The second episode looks at issues around internet safety by interviewing Janice Richardson, leader of the Insafe project, and interactive white boards, with Laurent Odic from Interwrite Learning.

For more info, visit the eLearning Awards website