Just before Christmas Google announced the YouTube for Schools platform, which runs through a schools Google Apps for Edu account, allowing students to access selected content. In a week where the focus is on the changes of ICT curriculum I am concerned that the wider debate around open web access in schools will be once again lost.

This post is in part an effort to scrutinise Google’s YouTube for Schools more closely and to maintain and continue the important discussion on school web access, by bringing together some thoughts from around the web.

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Optophobia by Hani Amir
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Many schools will sign up to this flavour of YouTube because it quickly plasters over the crack of an unfiltered open web and means they don’t have to think about that.

An open YouTube allows teachers to use their own professional judgement about the type of content that a class will focus on and the ability to have the discussion about appropriate content, online behaviours and freely use whatever resources are appropriate to that class.

This “new” service, although it may well be more easily digested by school admins, means Google has become a further conduit of knowledge. A version of the web chosen for us – or in fact a team from YouTube Edu. This is literally a Filter Bubble in plain view! Eli Pariser explains in his book and TED Talk that due to an algorithmic filtering of the web we are seeing a version of the internet that is built from our preferences and previous interactions – the one the internet “thinks” you should see.

Schools using this will present a set of educational content on this platform decided by someone else and in my opinion are sidestepping the bigger issues we need to tackle. But this is a flawed model anyway, because at 3.30pm children will have access on the way home to an open web! We are sticking a plaster over the major issue of open content and how we must educate children and trust the professional teaching community on this issue. Summed up well by Liz Christensen a teacher from Nevada in the US who responded:

@tombarrett I think that since I am a professional, I should be treated as such. Let me make the judgements on youtube.

December 23, 2011 5:33 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@grouchyteacher

Liz Christensen

Theo Kuchel, an expert in the use of video in teaching and learning, wrote the first piece I read in response to the YouTube announcement

Teachers should be encouraged to address the issues raised by comments and how related videos algorithms work and evaluate their effectiveness. This is all part of developing digital and media literacies. Offering a solution based on ‘removing’ comments and related videos is pedagogically unsound.

Dan Stucke an Assistant Headteacher from Manchester in the UK reacted to Theo’s post:

I’ve often found it useful as a spontaneous relationship builder too, many times a conversation in class leads to a story from my childhood or similar, and many times Youtube brings some video context to the story.

David Rogers the Curriculum Leader for Geography at Priory School in Portsmouth further underlines the importance of this, video material that doesn’t neatly fall into the “educational” category but requires a context to be built around it to make it meaningful, inspiring and useful at the point of learning. In many case the context is a very personal, subjective thing – if teachers the world over decided only to use media, resources and learning materials labelled “educational” just imagine the opportunities that would have been missed. Eli Pariser explains that:

…the search for perfect relevance and the kind of serendipity that promotes creativity push in opposite directions…By definition ingenuity comes from the juxtaposition of ideas that are far apart…

David goes on to explain:

While I admire Google for trying, the only real people that should be making decisions on what is useful educational content is teachers. Teachers who understand their own educational context, the learning styles of young people and their classroom. I think that it’s the wrong argument to have, but admit that it is a start.

I agree with everything David has said in his post, right up to the last 7 words in the quote above. I can’t bring myself to think that this can be a start – because many schools will see this as the only way, it is not a good starting point for schools because they are, all too easily, sidestepping the broader discussion about filtered and open web access.

I would like to think that using this version of YouTube in schools will make teaching colleagues question why it is in place and broaden their understanding and appreciation for the filters we put in place, but I worry it will simply be swallowed as is. In my opinion Google have given them an easy way out. (In addition both Theo and David ably deal with the roundabout language Google use in their announcement too about the “new” service.) Alastair Creelman from Linnaeus University in Sweden closes his blog postabout it with a telling statement:

…somewhere along the line we still need to discuss issues like attention, distraction, source criticism and information retrieval so that they (stuents) can find the good resources for themselves despite the distractions. We need to be careful of the line between benevolent protection and censorship.

Not enough discussion or debate has taken place, both online and within schools, Ryan Bretag has recognised this too:

And I have to wonder, are these Marlin-like administrators at all concerned about their choice between YouTube, YouTube for Schools, or <gasp> neither? Are they engaging their leadership teams, their faculty, and their students in a broader dialogue about this?

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Back in 2009 Ewan posted findings by research consultant Kim Farris-Berg from a US, South American and Australia study:

In 2007, [filtering] was high school students’ number one obstacle to using technology at their schools (53 percent). For middle school students, two obstacles tied for the greatest barrier (39 percent each): “there are rules against using technology at school” and “teachers limit technology use”. It’s likely that when students face obstacles to using technology at school, they also face obstacles to inquiry-based learning opportunities which can include online research, visualizations, and games.

 

If we compare that with the information from the 2010 Speak Up campaign in the US it is sobering to realise that students frustrations with filtering in schools not only remain the top problem in their mind but also that it is growing even more acute. As Audrey Watters points out:

When a similar survey was undertaken five years ago, students’ number one complaint was the speed of Internet access at school. Now, they point instead to school filters and firewalls. 71% of high school students and 62% of middle school students say that the most important thing their school could do to make it easier for them to use technology would be to allow them greater access to the websites they need.

An increase from 53 percent to 71 percent of frustrated high schools students does not indicate we are making progress with open access in schools. We certainly don’t seem to be listening to the students themselves.

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I wanted to hear from teachers on this subject as although the posts above prove a useful starting point there simply is not enough debate about the open web and open access to resources like YouTube. There were some really interesting replies on Twitter that back up many of the points made above, so I thought I would share a selection of them below:

@tombarrett open sensible access. Safest swimmers are those that can swim. Safest road users those who have passed. Safest Internet users..

December 23, 2011 8:26 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@1jh1

john

@tombarrett some of our schools (over 80 I worked with in school district) never had YouTube blocked! Should be acknowledged.

December 23, 2011 8:36 pm via ついっぷる Pro for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@heyjudeonline

Judy O’Connell

@tombarrett We’re more adult based but our Institute has open FB, YouTube & Vimeo. It’s all about rights & responsibilities.

December 23, 2011 7:31 pm via TwitterrificReplyRetweetFavorite

@gsyoung

Geoff Young

@tombarrett asked many schools this year “why is YouTube blocked?” And got the same answer “because we always have”

December 23, 2011 7:12 pm via Twitter for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@PPotter

Pete Potter

@tombarrett We don’t use the LEA servers as they block sites such as youtube. The ethos of the school is of education rather than prevention

December 23, 2011 6:56 pm via Twitter for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@andyhudson77

Andy Hudson

@tombarrett We’d have YouTube open to students in school during the day were it not for the bandwidth issues that arise each time we do so

December 23, 2011 6:53 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@digitalmaverick

Digital Maverick

@tombarrett yes, our school does. We teach the kids discernment and how to check for approp content. Better that way than banning!

December 23, 2011 6:48 pm via RockMeltReplyRetweetFavorite

@krivett1

Kimberley Rivett

@tombarrett The “story” is simple: we teach digital citizenship. And we rely on student responsibility as well.

December 23, 2011 6:08 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@surreallyno

Cristina Milos

@tombarrett we don’t block YouTube. No story. We just don’t.

December 23, 2011 6:21 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@Dowbiggin

Diane Main

@tombarrett Work at a K12 school in Norway, we have 100% open Internet, incl FB, Youtube etc. Zombies roaming the hallways, of course.

December 23, 2011 6:06 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@bjornhg

Bjørn Helge Græsli

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What encourages me most about the tweets I have shared above is the number of schools and teachers working with open access to the web in their schools. Primary, secondary and higher ed institutes just getting on with things, helping their students tread thoughtfully and carefully through their experiences online.

What is missing though is the fanfare and celebration of what these schools, teachers, parents and pupils have accomplished together – we conveniently do not hear enough of their stories, we don’t share enough of their expertise. I hope that can change.

The teachers at these schools are doing their job and it is an opporunity we should all have.

I was writing about this topic 2 years ago and much like the statistics above, sadly not much has changed:

At the end of school children will go home and use the website, open to the inappropriate content we block in school. Not only is YouTube exempt from my teaching, I am exempt from helping children better understand, process and find value amidst a mass of video content. I am exempt from demonstrating and educating the children in my class to appreciate the power of such an information source. Apparently that is a good thing.

In my opinion it comes down to some hard decisions. The longer, more protracted path of educating young primary school children in dealing with open content on the web (including YouTube) is too hard a path for some to consider. The easy route is to block it. 

Or in fact use an impoverished, diluted version.

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The ICT Curriculum is set to change in England and I just hope that we don’t lose sight of the role a more open approach to web access can have on learning in our schools. After all the students are telling us straight:

We are taught how to save documents and search for simple information, but we are on the internet at home and do most of our homework on the computer so we know how to do that. So IT lessons are kind of boring and we all really want to say to the teachers that we already know what we’re being taught. I wish we could learn how to do graphics, how to make a game or how to use Facebook safely – then we’d feel like we were actually learning something useful. I want to be a dancer or an actress when I’m older, so I’d like to learn how to look up videos to help me with my acting.

Ellie Magee, 12, Rivington and Blackrod high school, Bolton, Lancashire

I discovered the Google Ngram Viewer from this TED Talk by Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel who are both fellows at Harvard University and Visiting Faculty at Google. They created the tool to analyse the millions of books being digitised by Google to allow them to search for cultural trends.

Using the Ngram Viewer would certainly be an interesting data handling lesson for children!

By analysing over 500 billion words the Google Books Ngram Viewer allows you to compare the history of terminology and language from approximately 5 million digitised books.

The graph above shows my search for the terms “teaching” and “learning” in publications between the years 1500 and 2010.

What fascinates me is how the popularity or usage of the different terms climbed and fell throughout this period. The term “Teaching” has been used more frequently since the turn of the 18th century, somewhat settling into a plateau in the last 60 years. In comparison the term “learning” seems to have more of a rollercoaster frequency in the last 500 years.

References to “learning” from 1800 fell notably in the following 100 years, to a point where “teaching” was referenced more. And then began a 75 year period where “teaching” was clearly more frequently used or referred to in published literature. Why would there have been such a decline or change in frequencies?

If you look at the references to “learning’ there seems to be some peak and trough pattern amidst an upward trend. I wonder why this was the case? Similarly why did references to “learning” fall away at the turn of the 19th century only to climb steadily again in the last 100 years? What perceptions of “learning” or cultural differences were there between the 1700s (“learning” references increase) and the 1800s (“learning” references decrease.)?

I am no historian and I am sure many of you reading this will be able to explain the information better than me – needless to say it would be interesting to explore any broad reasons or background that might effect such results.

Over the last year I have begun two presentations that share practical tips in the use of Google Earth and the Interactive Whiteboard in the classroom. I have set the presentations up so that anyone with a practical tip can become a collaborator by sharing editing rights with them. In this way the presentation expands with the advice and tips from real users and from a much wider audience of educators.

All you need to do is send me your email and I will be able to add you as a collaborator to the presentation, so you can add just 1 or even 10 tips for the use of Google Docs in the classroom. (See details at the end of the presentation)

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The Interesting Ways resources have come a long way since 2008 – and this one is up to 34 ideas! I hope that you have enjoyed the short series of posts about using Google Docs and managed to take something that you can apply in the clasroom when you are working with collaborative online tools.

This is the second in a series of 3 posts I wrote for the Official Google Docs Blog – in this one I share some common challenges teachers face when students begin working together on collaborative projects.

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Communication is important, not the tool

The success of our own class projects was not influenced by how well the children could use Google Docs. After all, it is not really about the tool — it’s about the group’s ability to work together as a team. My class found this difficult throughout the year. I did not expect that just because we were using technology that the outcome would be any different. In fact even though each child was engaged with a role within the group and a task to complete, the technology exacerbated the lack of communication. The groups were plodding on with their own tasks and when it buffeted with someone else’s they would get upset. They may be working in the same online space, but that does not automatically indicate they are collaborating well.

With this in mind we raised the profile of the sense of communication within the groups and discussed with the children their teething problems and how we can best resolve them. With every resolution I drew it back to the idea of better communication. The class had a fuller understanding from these discussions of what they were doing when working together in Google Docs and some of the ways that their own communication was causing problems. To reinforce this in future sessions I would regularly stop the class to talk about an excellent example I had overheard from an individual or a group. One such example was when the children in one group lowered their laptop screens so that they could discuss the progress of their work so far. I raised it with the wider group ,we briefly discussed why it was such a good move, and through this we then saw the majority of the groups adopting this strategy.

How student personalities and familiarity with technology affect group work

You know what it is like: you try and balance a team and consider the characters that you put together in a group, but within moments they are falling out! I suppose using Google Docs does not make the task any easier. Out of the 5 groups in my class, 2 worked very well together, 1 was OK and the other 2 had lots of problems and struggled. On reflection, the groups that worked least well together were made up of perhaps 2 or 3 strong personalities that would naturally like to take a lead and this caused conflicts and problems as it has in other activities. When the children have their own laptops and a clear contribution to make within a document, that is appropriately structured, in my experience it can help a group work together.

I had children in my class that were very capable at using technology and were motivated and enthused at its use in our lessons but who often struggled with their literacy or maths, they were more confident when collaborating with Google Docs because of their own personal comfort with technology in the classroom. They pushed themselves forward to take a lead and be more involved when in a more traditional paper-based activity they may not have done. Similarly, the flip side of this is children who are very confident and capable in literacy who perhaps have less confidence when using technology. Even though composing groups within your class to collaborate is similar for any activity, it is important to consider the type of characters who grows in confidence when embedding technology in their learning.

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Next: Interesting Ways to Use Docs in the Classroom

In 2008 I was invited to write a series of blog posts for the Official Google Docs blog. I have decided to repost them here to highlight some of the challenges I faced at the time and in an effort to help you, not only with the use of Google Docs but also other online collaborative tools.

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Modelling expected behaviour and good practice first

As our first Google Docs project began to gather pace last school year, I realised that the children were finding it difficult to work together. With hindsight it is easier to recognise that the children were not only being introduced to a new piece of technology (the Docs tool) but also their traditional way of working was to be challenged by the new concept of working collaboratively in an online document.

It was clear that the children were unsure about the way they should be working together. They were each working on their own laptop and it was not the technical side of things that they struggled with, it was the fact they were expected to interact with others in their group as well as use a screen. I found it very useful to model the process. Just as I would if I were showing the children a style of writing in Literacy or a type of stretch in PE. I worked with a colleague on an example document and gave the class a running commentary as to what we were doing. As we worked we talked to each other and I underlined some of the key features of what made that short demo collaboration successful for us.

I think that every class of children will respond differently to the challenge of working together in an online doc, but it proved incredibly valuable to our classes to model what is expected of them. In September, I’ll have a new class and I will be keeping in mind this idea from the outset. Another idea would be to encourage the students to demonstrate the concept to the class – this is much harder to show but valuable nonetheless. I will be planning in time to model the technical and communications side of working together and also reflective time with the groups throughout the project to discuss and review the process of collaborating.

Introducing group collaboration: entire class, working in pairs, and groups of four

With the 9 and 10 year-olds in my classes, I found it valuable to take small steps towards an open collaborative project with 4 or 5 group members. As I introduced Google Docs to the class, we began to work together on documents that everyone could contribute to, revealing the ways that it worked and how it updates. In many respects this could be labelled as modelling the process that the children will in turn use later on. It proved valuable to be able to prove the concept to the children in a simple “step in, step out” controlled type contribution, nothing protracted. We added ideas to a large grid within a spreadsheet, with the children being told to choose any cell to write in – you could also invite them to fill in some information about themselves next to their name in a class list document. This single contribution to a whole class document was our first step.

It was followed by children working together in pairs on one document – a laptop each, sitting next to each other and sharing the document between them both. Finally the children worked in a larger group of 4 in a more lengthy collaboration as part of a Geography project. I believe it is important to progressively build up to bigger group collaboration and for this coming academic year I will be taking the same approach in developing the children’s collaboration experience over the first 6 weeks of term.

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Next: It’s About the Communication Not The Tool

Many early users of the latest platform for social networking have begun sharing their ideas about the potential for supporting learning. There is much to be anticipated – I always believed that the community element was missing from the use of Google Apps for Education.

Perhaps Google+ could provide the platform for schools to help positively teach social networking and tie in the use of the different apps more seamlessly together.

Take a look at what educators think so far and feel free to share your own ideas with the Google doc, or leave them in the comments here.

Since leaving the classroom I have had the opportunity to read more widely then I have done at any point over the last 10 years. The work I am doing now takes me down paths including design thinking, business, social media and of course education. It is the variety of new domains of information and perspectives that I have found so engaging.

Not only have I been able to work with and immerse myself in ideas from outside of education but I have begun to see ways learning can benefit from them.

I have seen Twitter grow and grow into a huge global tool for educators. However those of us using it are still, for the most part, in the minority. However difficult it is to admit it, teachers using any digital tool to connect with fellow teachers are still in the minority. The prospect of a new social tool, such as Google+, was hugely exciting to see. It was great to start in a fresh space with the customary intuitive interface we have come to expect from Google products. So all rosy? Well not quite.

My main concern is a key difference between Twitter and Google+. When Twitter users connect with each other they basically ask themselves is this person interesting or in my line of work? Yes = follow. We all have our different methods but I suspect that covers most people. When I look at those people who have followed me on Twitter recently I can see very quickly (on a single page which I can just scroll up and down) what they do from their profile and just click follow if a) they interest me or b) they are in education. That’s it.

Importantly with Twitter there are no ways to target your messages to groups within those who follow you, it is an “all in” sort of method. My updates go to designers, teachers, classes, professors, executives, artists, whoever makes up your network. Do I think this adds value to the replies and perspectives you gain? Absolutely.

With Google+ Circles are we creating silos of information? By saying to users, “do you only want to share with those that find it 100% relevant?”, are we in fact encouraging a narrowing of perspectives? What about those that might find it 60% relevant? Or whose current project makes it highly relevant to them, but perhaps not at other times. Of course we have the choice to make things public in Google+ and the choice to have different circles, but Twitter’s default broadcast state is always set to public. An open style of sharing is not a choice.

Perhaps targeted sharing, in the style of a Google+ post, will just give me what I always get. The isolation of ideas, fuzzy-warm acceptance but nothing to challenge them. Alternate expertise has no way of peaking in or seeping into the reaction.

Of course this idea of cross-fertilising ideas from different domains has a strong history with, for example, Innovation Time Off or 20% time from Google or bootlegging product development at 3M that led to the early concept of the Post-It note.

I think I will probably not use the Circles feature of Google+ because I think that I will be limiting the reactions I get and actively avoiding the opportunity to connect with other professionals who could add a valuable perspective beyond education. I still prefer a model that is more open by default and puts the responsibility of information filtering on the consumer, not the producer of the information.

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Pic Back of Beyond by violscraper

Having spent a little bit of time using the Google+ Project I thought I would share some initial thoughts and reactions.

From the very beginning it is all about people, as always with these new network tools it is about adding people into your space to enjoy and share it with. I was immediately impressed with the Circles feature which helps you organise people into different groups. The user interface is really nice and it was easy to grab people and drop them into the right Circle for them.

You can create lots of different circles and name them whatever you like. Once you are using and sharing if there is someone who either adds you to their Circle or you see their name mentioned, all you have to do is roll over their name, then the Circles icon and then tick which they belong to in the pop up window – really easy.

Within Google Apps for Edu I can see each class having a specific Circle with which you can share content.

As many people have said, this level of organisation is much more like real life as we have distinct and sometimes overlapping connections with people. What is currently missing seems to be (amongst other things):

• to share a whole Circle with others
• to add inner circles to a group – say for groups within a class
• build on other social media groups, LinkedIn or Twitter lists

This compartmentalised approach to our social networking behaviour is very much at the core of what the Google+ Project seem to be developing. When you look to share any type of content you can be very refined about who you share it with. As Vincent Mo from Google explains:

On Google+, anyone can add me to their circles, and they never see more than what I share with them. It’s as easy as not adding them to a circle. That means people can add me all they want. If I post something private, I’ll only post it to a circle, and they won’t see it. Go ahead. Add me. I don’t care.

So the focus is on the creation of Circles of connections which then allows you to dictate who you share content with. Vincent Mo says that Google+ is “built around targeted sharing”. Seems obvious – and Google have executed these crucial elements really well.

Even if you have not had the chance to use Google+ I would be interested to hear your thoughts regarding the Circles style of organisation and how it differs to what we are used to.

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Pic: Flickr’ng lights by josef.stuefer

Since March I have been running this little survey that is a limited comparison between the current preferences between Apple iPads in the classroom or Android Tablets. It obviously doesn’t take into account the other platforms that are on offer such as Windows machines.

There has been a fantastic response with over 1000 responses submitted and counting!

From conversation with colleagues on Twitter it seems that many people are heading towards Apple products due to the maturity of the App store and the sheer range of Apps that is available.

It would seem from these results that most educators are opting for the iPads over tablets running Android operating systems.

If you took a moment to vote I am really grateful – it would also beneficial to all who are interested in investing in iPads for you to leave a comment explaining your current thinking about the two types of devices. Explaining the thinking behind your decision process could really help others in the same situation.