2009, Jan 20: Presentation by FutureLab, Bristol

FutureLab works with schools and government agencies in UK to develop innovative ICT resources and practices that support learning. It conducts research and development activities.


Several projects shared...

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1. Beyond Current Horizons: This project looks at building a challenging and long-term vision for education in the context of social and technological change. There are 3 strands:

  • Building the evidence - to build a set of 6 scenarios to represent how schools and communities look like in future (something to look out for - Useful when we carry out the SWOT analysis - charting our plans, short & long-term goals)
  • Engaging Public & Stakeholders
  • Translating research into actions - producing tools and resources to enable educators to think systematically about potential futures for education and technology to improve current planning.

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2. Greater Expectations: The project explores young learner's expectations and aspirations for their lives and learning. It's aligned to the emphasis of the national curriculum - personalised education and learner's voice.

Providing space for learners to "create" and "exist" as an avatar/character in an explorable landscape whereby they could make virtual connection from real life opportunities - to be "The Me I want to Be".

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3. Enquiring Minds: An approach to teaching & learning that takes students' dieas, interest s and experiences as its starting point, and provides them with more responsibility for direction and content of their learning.

4 stages of Enquiring Minds:

  1. Initiating and Eliciting
  2. Defining and Responding
  3. Doing and Making
  4. Communicating, presenting and evaluating

Students' experiences of enquiring minds:

  • Choice: Freedom to think for themselves, a fair chance and opening their mind
  • Change in relationship with teacher: More frequent 1-to-1 conversations; changing role of teacher
  • Skills for completing the tasks

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Some thoughts: See some similarity between this approach and some others like inquiry-based approach. Ultimately, it's students to own what they want to learn. Of course, each approach has its own emphasis. For instance, under IBL, the questioning and investigative components are key to the process.

Nevertheless, for such learner-centred approach, traditional practitioners always have the concern at the back of their mind - how to manage the scope - students' imagination and questions can go wild and beyond... This is really a challenge to the traditional practitioners as they are going to have lesser and lesser control over the way pupils learn...

One way to manage is to "scope". What to scope and how to scope? It is necessary to provide parameters to define the scope. For instance, students are tasked to study the impact of pollution on water life and plants in a defined area. This would help to keep the questions they ask or areas they want to investigate within what's defined in the curriculum, while students can decide to investigate the different aspects of water, plant and even soil (e.g. pH value, oxygen level).

On the other hand, students do not necessarily come with skills that enable them to carry out the activity. For instance, if students are expected to ask questions - they need to be taught of the 'how'? what are the triggers to their thoughts? Even we ourselves may not competent in that. Scaffolds are necessary, especially at the initial exposure to the approach. We have to recognise that time and practice are needed for one to slowly acquire, and eventually master the skills. It's a continuum - for teacher guided to student owned(?)... yes, we have to manage this changing learning experience that students undergo, too...

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