Teaching us how to vote

For those who don't live in the UK, you may be unaware that we go to the polls on 6 May.

I'm very conscious of the fact that mine is the only vote our family gets. It's somewhat ironic that I need a permit to live in this country, but I get to vote in the national elections. On the other hand, my husband and sons are EU citizens and need no such permit to live here, but they can only vote in local and EU elections.

Be that as it may, it's been quite interesting to see the methods being used to try to help me decide how to cast my vote.

For the first time ever, there have been presidential type TV debates featuring the leaders of the three main parties. Since we're not voting in a leader but a party, this is fairly odd, because it panders to the personality brigade. I tend not to watch the debates themselves, but to read up on the summaries afterwards.

There are also several quizzes online, where I can identify my stance on a series of issues, and discover which party's policies most closely match my own.

Then the Christian Institute has provided listings of how each MP has voted on a series of moral issues, so that I can decide whether I'm happy that my views are being represented in Parliament (whether or not you agree with the CI's estimation of what constitutes morally right and wrong decisions, it still helps to provide a sense of where your MP stands on sensitive issues).

Yet in spite of all this, apparently only one in three first time voters will go to the polls. Apathy is a real issue, here. Fewer than two in three voters overall are likely to cast their vote. So, chances are that the party that gets in will in fact represent about 20% of the country's eligible voters. That's hardly a strong platform on which to lead a recession-ridden country into an uncertain future.

Cherry tree census

The Natural History Museum is currently running a census of cherry trees in Britain. The idea is for people to go on walks and spot cherry trees and then record them on a map.

Guidance is provided on how to identify cherry trees and how to distinguish between the various types.

I really like these attempts to engage the wider public, and to publish this user generated content. My parents regularly participate in similar exercises in respect of birds and plants in South Africa, setting off at ridiculous hours of morning to count parrots or heading off on some jaunt to record clivia numbers (they're very keen on clivia, my folks!)

At the moment, my town shows only four cherry trees, two of which I recorded. I know for a fact that there are hundreds more. Let's hope that we see more being added.

If you're based in Britain, or even if you're just here for a conference or business trip, why not add to the census?

Most influential women in tech?

The Fast Company has posted their 2010 list of the most influential women in technology. Of course, there will be those who are surprised to have been included, and those who are furious not to have been listed. But the list makes for interesting reading.

Reward

The whole theme of reward or cause-and-effect is exercising my mind lately. Mostly it just goes in circles.

I'm not about to disinter Pavlov, but I can't help feeling that we should be looking to reward desired behaviours in education, in the workplace and even in society in general.

Obviously, the nature of the reward would have to be made appropriate to the context. I can't see us giving a newly appointed manager a star for sharing his crayons with the person at the next desk.

Recently, my elder son asked me to intervene in a situation for him. He had lent a sum of money to his younger brother. It seems my younger son was going to repay this debt at £5/month, interest free. But that would take several months, by which time my elder son will have finished school and started his gap year in Australia. So he asked if I would give him the money, and let my younger son repay me at this rate.

I agreed, but I shouldn't have. The thing is, my elder son lent the money to his brother without establishing the terms of repayment first. This is not a very wise thing to do, and in taking over the debt, I have rewarded his poor choice. It isn't a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, so this would have been an ideal opportunity for a bit of tough love. A lesson to be learnt at no great cost.

I'm too much of a softie!

As I see it, the exam system also rewards the wrong behaviours. I know some kids who seem pretty dense, to be honest. They seem to know nothing about anything, and are utterly unable to hold a meaningful conversation about anything of substance. And yet they are in the top set for all their subjects at school, raking in the A grades. If education is preparation for life, the behaviours that should be rewarded are surely things like the ability to find information on a given subject, establish whether information is valid/reliable, apply information to a situation that does not exactly mirror a case study, work as a team, delegate responsibility, meet a deadline, be innovative with limited resources, overcome obstacles. You know... real life stuff.

We're a long way from that, I reckon. Probably mainly because we're a long way from knowing how to assess those skills!

I used to share a house with a few long distance truck drivers when I was a student. These guys were paid a certain fee to haul a load from point A to point B. They would get a bonus for doing it extra quickly. Not only that, but if they managed to shave a day off the delivery time, that gave them an extra day to start earning on the next project. So any time saved gained double rewards, financially speaking. So these guys would drive for 24 hours at a stretch, overdosing on caffeine in attempt to stay awake. There is no doubt that they constituted a hazard to other road users and themselves. In fact, I heard a couple of years back that one of them had been killed in an accident.

But the system was such that they were rewarded for this behaviour.

I have heard many tales of teenage girls in the UK, fed up with their parents restrictive rules, deliberately becoming pregnant in order to qualify for additional benefit payments and perhaps get a council flat. I'm not pretending to know a better way to respond in this situation, but it strikes me that this is another example of rewarding the wrong behaviour.

Like I said, my mind has been going in circles on this subject. I'm not sure I have any constructive answers, but I guess a change to the education system wouldn't hurt!

Blog Interviewer

I was recently interviewed by Blog Interviewer in respect of this blog. You can see the results here.

Top 50 education innovator award

I don't know if you noticed my shiny new badge on the top left of this blog. I have no idea who nominated me for it, but I presume it must be someone who reads this blog regularly, so no doubt you will read this post. Whoever you are, thank you. I'm flattered.

See here to learn about the other 49 recipients.

Stepping out of the boat

I am somewhat behind on my reading, which may explain why I have not previously seen this article from Megan McArdle in Time (thanks to my husband for the pointer).

McArdle talks about the importance of safe failure to the economy. In fact she says, "failure is one of the most economically important tools we have". She bemoans the fact that, "instead of celebrating all our successes in building systems that fail well, we've become wedded to the fantasy of a system that doesn't fail at all."

Isn't it interesting how the very things we have been saying in respect of learning and education are being said here about the American economy? And it's hardly surprising, really. If we create an education system that stigmatises failure, we can only expect that that stigma will carry over into all other arenas of life... including the economy. It's all linked. It's all part of the one thing, the big picture.

I'm with McArdle when she says, "rather than launch a quixotic war on failure, we should be using what we've learned to build a system that fails better". We should be adopting this approach to education, too. The only people who never fail are the people who never do anything. We should be stigmatising never doing anything.

This puts me in mind of the story of Peter walking on the water (Matthew 14). Preachers often use this story to illustrate weakness, lack of faith, etc. I tend to think, hang about a bit... what about the eleven losers in the boat who didn't even try? Peter tried. Sure, he failed after a few steps, but he had an experience none of the others could claim... because he gave it a shot. We need a few more Peters, I reckon!

Let's be about encouraging people to step out of the boat, and about catching them when they start to sink.

The fun theory

I love this! I found it via a post by Ewan McIntosh about analogue creativity.

Geeks like me have been saying this for years: make it fun and people will do it. Treat them like sheeple and they will behave like sheeple.

Proposed ban on smoking in cars

There is currently a move in the UK to have it made illegal to smoke in cars and parks because of the risks posed to children by the secondhand smoke.

I don't smoke (any more - I quit 22 years ago). I don't approve of smoking. I don't approve of people subjecting their children to their secondhand smoke. I didn't let anyone smoke near my children when they were little. But:

• There are many other things I don't approve of in respect of the way people choose to raise their children. Tough. Unless I think violence is being done, it's none of my business.
  
• Children are exposed to secondhand smoke in homes where parents and family members smoke - I can't see the government banning that!
• Who will police this thing? Will cops on the beat now have to add this offence to the many others they're supposed to prevent? The use of mobile phones while driving has been banned, but goes entirely unpoliced... and that, at least, is a traffic violation. Who will police a health and safety violation on the roads?
  

I can think of many things which place children at greater risk than people smoking in cars, some of which it would be very politically incorrect to even mention. Are we going to start placing a ban on those next?

I believe we can educate and warn people, but we cannot take away their right to make stupid decisions.

My 2p worth.

Earth hour 2010

I have often been asked how much of a difference I think I can make with regard to the whole 'green' thing, because, they tell me, I am only one person.

This is true. I am only one person. I am very glad of that. It would be quite tricky to keep track of myself if I were several people! The thing is you're only one person, too. Everyone is only one person! But together we are two people, and three people, and 10 people and more than 6.6 billion people.

And we are each accountable for our own actions.

Tomorrow I will mark Earth Hour. I am only one person, and this is something I can do. I will probably light a lantern and read a book by its light.

How about you?

User empowerment... from my new watch!

Last night my husband arrived home with a gift for me, to congratulate me on finally completing my Masters' degree.

The gift was a beautiful Fossil watch in a case that was almost as gorgeous as the watch! Because I have ludicrously puny wrists, I took one look at the watch strap and said, "I'm going to have to take it in to have it made smaller."

My husband grinned triumphantly. "No you don't. You can do it yourself. It's designed like that."

And blow me down, it is. There are three fixed links on either side, then after that, each link connects with a clasp. I kid you not: a clasp! No fiddly pins for which you need magnifying glass and watchmakers screwdrivers. Such an elegantly simple solution.


So not only could I remove enough links to make the watch fit me now, I can remove more if I lose more weight, or add them back in if I (heaven forefend) gain it, or have a bout of water retention.

How cool is that? JIT watch adjustment. I feel so empowered!

Goodbye butts in chairs...

How did I ever miss this? Thanks to Harold Jarche for the pointer (on Facebook).

Please pardon my crowing....

... but I just heard that I passed my final paper. I have a Masters' degree. It has taken far longer than anticipated, because I had a bit of a breakdown in the middle, but I did. I actually did it!

Next up, sign language course.

What? Why are you looking at me like that? It's called lifelong learning, and I've wanted to learn sign since my niece's deafness was diagnosed in 1988!

Can I say it again? Loud enough to be heard by the lost little girl who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. You did it, kiddo!

Ada Lovelace day

Today is Ada Lovelace day when we celebrate women in technology. I'm not usually much of a one for girls-only recognition, but perhaps we are still a long way from the point where technological jobs are seen as being as open to women as they are to men.

I have to say that I think the exception is the field of ICT and related matters. Because of the relative newness of the field and the speed at which it has developed, there was no time for sexism. So, instead of writing about a particular woman in information/comms technology, and instead of extolling the many virtues of the women in my network, I am going to take a slightly different approach.

I would like to give a shout out to all the anonymous female motor mechanics, electricians, engineers of all kinds, fighter pilots, microsurgeons and so on. All the girls who hold their own in fields still largely seen as the male province.

When I was coming to the end of high school, I really wanted to be a mechanical engineer. I wanted to design machines. I like the way machines work and they make sense to me. Since we had no money to speak of, I was going to need a bank loan, so we set about applying for one. Every bank manager we saw told me the same story: they were not going to lend money to a girl who wanted to study mechanical engineering, because the attrition rate was too high, the risks too great and the return on the investment doubtful. I was encouraged to consider chemical or light current electrical engineering instead. Since I was hopeless with both those areas of the science curriculum at school, I had no interest in going that route.

I admire those women who haven't taken no for an answer. Who have activated their 'I'll show you' button and who earn their keep doing jobs that their grandmothers never heard of and that their mothers thought only suitable for boys.

One such anonymous woman was my husband's late aunt Gunnel Bjureblad, who was an engineer. She died four years back, aged 70-something, and I imagine the opposition she faced in her day was even tougher than my own, especially since her Dad thought that education beyond the age of 14 was wasted on a girl.

Call it a cop out if you like, but I salute the Gunnel Bjureblads of the world today. All of them.

An unexpected hero

If you live outside of the UK, you may not have heard of Eddie Izzard. Okay, you might have done - he appeared in My Super Ex-girlfriend as the misunderstood baddie who was in love with the super ex of the title.

In the UK, he is better known as a comedian (severe language warning on linked video) and a transvestite who frequently appears at gigs in towering heels and a full face of make-up.

He's intelligent and articulate, but he is not an athlete... or so you would think.

But with relatively little fanfare, last year he ran 43 marathons in 51 days in aid of the charity, Sport Relief... and raised £1.6 million!

He prepared for only 5 weeks and at the start, was carrying a fair old spare tyre. But he argued, this is what we were designed to do. And I guess he's right. Before the wheel came along, we had to walk or run everywhere, and the stone age didn't boast a Tesco or a Walmart, so it was run - a lot - or go hungry.

He ran mostly alone and largely unremarked, as this article in The Guardian explains. Catching snippets of the BBC series about his efforts, I have to say that my heart swelled and I developed a new found respect for this rather unusual man.

Well done, Eddie. I salute you. You put us all to shame.

Harold Jarche on PKM

Harold has written a nice post about personal knowledge management today. Check it out.

Those wretched hoops!

Our younger son is closing in on his final GCSE (general certificate of secondary education) exams, and recently brought home his 'long report' which provides parents with the following information for each subject:

• How your child is performing in terms of his/her attitude/behaviour in class, effort and homework completion - these are subjective scores allocated by the teacher on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being poor and 5 being stellar
• Your child's target grade and how he/she is currently performing against that
  
• A paragraph of reflection by the teacher: areas for improvement and so on

The last few weeks have been frantic, as the unfinished parts of the syllabus in several subjects are crammed in. The entire form recently had to stay on for an extra two hours every day for a week, in order to complete the work in subject X. Some of them are still doing this. My son has had no lunch breaks for weeks on end as he tries to complete the units of the syllabus in subject Y that the rest of the form did the year before he joined the school.

I don't understand why this all has to be done now. Surely it was known from day one when he joined the school two years ago that he was going to need to make up the extra year in subject Y? Surely that work could have been spread across two years rather than being crammed into these last few weeks? Surely it was evident months ago that the entire form was falling behind on subject X? Why does it all have to be done now? Especially since they are also frantically trying to raise several thousand Pounds for a school trip to Ecuador (anyone got a small fortune going spare?) in the summer.

My son's tutor remarked that he appeared to be showing signs of the strain of the additional workload and needed to find ways to break it down into manageable chunks. I commend her for her insight into his character, but I'm not sure what the poor kid can do.

In the context of all of this, one particular piece of feedback had me reaching for my poison pen. In subject X, my son's predicted grade is a B. His scores for attitude, homework completion and effort are all 5s. His recently submitted coursework received an A grade. The short paragraph from the teacher started "Your coursework was disappointing..." Excuse me? This is a model student who is outperforming his predicted grade and you are disappointed?

My son is talking about taking the work back and tweaking it so that he can get a better A or an A*. My advice to him is to let it be. He has enough else on his plate right now, and that A is in the bank. But the school is encouraging him to try to up that grade.

I know of another school where several kids are being pressured to resit a maths exam in attempt to up their grades from A to A*.

I'm casting about for a word to describe this and I'm tempted to go with iniquitous. What are we doing to these kids?

Taking YouTube videos offline

I was certain I had posted about this before, but I can't seem to find the post. Apologies if I'm repeating myself!

A lot of people in this space are frustrated by the fact that access to YouTube is blocked within their organisations. I think we've satisfactorily established that, while there is an inevitable amount of dross on YouTube, there is also a wealth of material that is useful. When reputable organisations like WWF, MIT, and the OU have their own channels on YouTube, surely it is time for a paradigm shift?

But if you are still bumping your head against the firewall, there is a chink of light. If you have identified some YouTube videos relevant to the learning needs within your organisation, you can take them offline. Appropriately enough, there is a YouTube video to tell you how to do this:



Of course, this is a long way from having all of YouTube at your disposal, but it's a start. If nothing else, it will demonstrate to your learners the value of YouTube as a learning tool.

The message seems finally to have gotten through in my own home. My younger son has recently decided to take up rugby. In a rugby mad family, he was always the one person who has been uninterested in the sport. But recently, he has been playing at school and has discovered an innate talent a passion for the game. Of course, he now has a lot of catching up to do, since most of the other kids have been playing for years.

To my delight, and entirely of his own volition, he went the YouTube route. Having discussed with us the role of each positional player within the team, he decided that he was most likely to play on the flank (numbers 6 and 7, sometimes known by the older name 'wing forward'). Over the past couple of weeks, he has completely immersed himself in videos about the rules of the game in general and the role of the flank in particular. He has also taken every opportunity to watch live rugby with us, questioning us endlessly about the reasons for stoppages. Then he has had a go at explaining to us what the deal is, to see whether he is getting the right end of the stick.

The learning anorak has spawned a self-driven learner, ladies and gents. My cup runneth over.

Peter Casebow and Jay Cross in conversation

Peter Casebow has recorded a skype conversation between himself and Jay Cross about learning and performance.

Don't expect slick production and such like - expect a conversation. That's what it is.

Increasingly, I would say we need to learn to regard resources like this as valid constituents of our learning experience. There isn't always time or money to repurpose material and make it shiny.

So you think social media are for socialising, huh?

Jane Hart, who can be relied upon to have her finger on the pulse, is building up a series of case studies of the use of social media "INTERNALLY for social and collaborative learning and/or performance and productivity improvement".

The examples (at the time of writing) include British Telecom; Pearson; BUPA; WWF; Nationwide and NASA. And the list os growing. If you'd like to add to it, please get in touch with Jane via the link on her site.