Are toddlers too young for technology?

This post was on our original blog which we replaced. I came across an article lately which discussed this topic again and thought it was worth re-sharing...it has been slightly re-worded as the TV programme discussed was aired that week, and it was around two years ago!

It has been a debate for some time now but ITV’s Tonight’s focus was on the question, “Are toddlers too young for technology?” It was a very interesting watch, both from a personal perspective (I have a nephew of primary school age) and a professional perspective (working for Reflective Thinking – thought leaders on technology in education). The programme was definitely worth a watch but unfortunately it's no longer available on ITV Player (it may be available on YouTube but I can't guarantee quality). As a summary though, throughout the documentary, many questions were asked and explored by the presenter and they incorporated views both for and against. The perspectives included teachers, headteachers, parents, psychologists, learning experts, technology experts and very importantly, the children themselves.

A screenshot of the show

A key section of the show was a small experiment: seven children went into a room and were observed by a psychologist, and their parents. This group went into one of the rooms at a time, as different content was included in each:

1. More ‘traditional’ toys
2. Technology like smartphones and tablets
3. Both traditional toys and technology

Interestingly, in all three situations, the children found something to occupy them (except one child asked for her iPad after a while in session one). It was quite striking seeing the difference between collaboration and playing together from 1, to 2 and 3. The more traditional toys were primarily shared and used together, they talked amongst themselves and worked a high level of interaction was present. In both 2 and 3, for almost the full duration, all children sat individually, 1 on 1 with their seperate screens.

What came to mind for me here was that essentially, it is very important to consider what the children are doing on the tablet, rather than seeing a tablet or smartphone as ‘one thing’ with ‘one sole purpose’. The choice of applications and games available now is vast – some for individual play and some for group play. This could play a part in how they are used and whether they are interacting with other children while using, or are completely one-on-one with their tablet. In these experiments, although not specifically confirmed, the apps being used were most likely educational: they may be in the form of a game, but they are offering educational benefits at the same time.

One point to think about is; was the reason the traditional toys were used in groups of 2-3 because they were designed that way? In light of the learning expert on the show saying that “face to face contact is vital for communication” and tablets may  “actually be preventing children from interacting with other children and learning how to behave through practise”, do we need to focus on creating more apps and games that are designed specifically for use of 2-3, if we want children to interact more, and build those collaboration skills? Another point is how the technology is used too – is it a replacement for interaction, or actually an addition, to help interaction and learning?

Working together, collaborating

Our area of expertise is slightly older children (from 7+), but some elements of Reflective Thinking’s research could be applied to younger children too. Digital Mysteries are specifically designed for working in pairs or small groups. The whole concept is based around it being an additional tool for learning and developing useful skills (like higher level thinking, problem-solving), one that complements the teacher, rather than replacing the teacher (or parent/guardian/leader).

Maybe this idea could be applied to apps aimed at younger children too, with an aim to make apps or games something to be shared with each other, or with their parent/teacher rather than an individual experience. This way, one of the key problems brought up in the documentary – that devices can prohibit children interacting and developing social skills for life - could be combatted, yet the children will still benefit from the advantages the devices bring; like preparing them for their future where technology will be a major part of their lives. One of the major arguments to come from the programme – which takes into account case studies at nurseries like Cogan Nursery in Penarth – is that the use of such devices must be in balance with non-screen time.

Especially with young toddlers, it seems that a “bit of both” is seen as the best situation – what do you think? If you have any opinions on this, please write a comment - I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Natalie

International Day of Friendship

On 30th July each year, the International Day of Friendship is marked. Proclaimed only four years ago in 2011 by the UN General Assembly, the idea is that by developing friendships with each other, different communities, countries and even continents, bridges can be built and peace can come as a result.

"On this International Day of Friendship, let us cultivate warm ties that strengthen our common humanity and promote the well-being of the human family."

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

All across the world, this has been celebrated. Individuals, communities and small to big organisations have spread the word. Just a quick search on Twitter shows there’s a lot going on. While many children develop friendships from a very early age, keep some, and make more, others do struggle. This may just be from time to time – facing temporary difficulties which ‘sort themselves out’, for example – but for some, they may go through year after year of finding it hard to make friends. There are many reasons for why this could be, but for this very reason, it’s essential to talk about it. This could be with someone they trust in particular, for example a parent or teacher, but as well as this, how about with their peers?

In many countries, the curriculum provides some guidance/stipulation that teachers must cover bullying for example, but not all. Plus, the way this has to be done is not usually enforced. If there was a simple way to trigger discussions in this area, with the help of some easy-to-use technology, would you try it? Even as just a starting point, then things go from there. This is why, to celebrate the International Day of Friendship, we have made our English/Citizenship/PSHE app/mystery story free for two weeks (until 7th August). While it can be used with any students you think suitable, the target age range is around 6-7 years old.

In pairs, or threes, students sit around one iPad and read 15 slips of information (interactively, on the iPad). They must start making sense of these together, helping each other to group them and work out why a young girl called Amy didn’t go to school this particular day.

It helps students:

• to recognise how their behaviour affects other people, to care about other people’s feelings and to try to see things from their points of view
• to listen to other people, and play and work cooperatively
• to understand that there are different types of teasing and bullying, that bullying is wrong, and how to get help to deal with bullying

If you want to try it, visit the App Store here now, search 'Digital Mysteries Amy' on the App Store or read a bit more about it on our website.

More information on the day from the UN’s website

“The International Day of Friendship was proclaimed in 2011 by the UN General Assembly with the idea that friendship between peoples, countries, cultures and individuals can inspire peace efforts and build bridges between communities. The resolution (A/RES/65/275) places particular emphasis on involving young people, as future leaders, in community activities that include different cultures and promote international understanding and respect for diversity.

The Day is also intended to support the goals and objectives of the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace and the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World (2001-2010).

To mark the International Day of Friendship the UN encourages governments, international organizations and civil society groups to hold events, activities and initiatives that contribute to the efforts of the international community towards promoting a dialogue among civilizations, solidarity, mutual understanding and reconciliation.”

Exploring the explorers

Although many around the world have already started the summer holidays and some will soon be going back after their winter break, for most schools in England, this week is the final week of term!

To celebrate this, we've made a lot of our iPad apps either half-price or completely free, temporarily.

An example of one of our apps is an exciting history mystery about a Spanish explorer who set off to the New World. It is now £0.79 in the UK, $0.99 in the US and $1.29 in Australia. It's aimed at 11-14 year olds.

In pairs (small groups or alone are options too), students work through this topic together to discuss the motivations behind Pablo's venture.

They are given lots of illustrated slips/cards of information and asked to sort through them. To do this, they go through different stages (a structure based on Moseley et al.'s (2005) integrated model for understanding thinking and learning. Firstly, they gather information and read the slips, then they move towards building understanding by classifying the informaion and identifying relations. In the sequencing stage, they then focus on reasoning and understanding.

To download 'Digital Mysteries: Spanish Exploration and Conquest', half-price until 21st July, click here.

If you would like more information on Digital Mysteries, please go to www.reflectivethinking.com/digitalmysteries-ipad.

A screenshot of the grouping stage

SOLE with a twist

After planning it before Christmas, we were very much looking forward to visiting Greenfield Arts’ SOLE Room 13, again. They do amazing work with students of different ages, and are one of the schools chosen to host a SOLE (Self Organised Learning Environment) area. When last there, we observed a ‘SOLE Grannies’ session (more info on these here), but today was going to be a little different. We were running a session of Digital Mysteries within the SOLE room – with some features of SOLE, but not quite the same.

Mrs Pattison, two colleagues and her year five class walked along the road from Byerley Park Primary School. They often make visits to Greenfields for SOLE sessions, and do really well. If you don't know SOLEs very well, these are “created when educators and/or parents encourage kids to work in groups that they form, and are free to change, to answer big, open questions by using the internet” (SOLE toolkit). The origins lie in Professor Sugata Mitra’s Ted-Prize winning talk here. To find out more, go to School in the Cloud.

Students were provided with mini iPads, enough for half of the class. It is deliberate that they only have one between two, as mysteries are designed to be worked on together and they can both interact with the screen at the same time. The whole process is designed to encourage discussion throughout – so they’re always engaging with each other.

Pip the Dog – 5 minute intro

Since students have not used our app before, we started with a little introduction with Digital Mysteries: Pip the Dog, a fairly simple PSHE/Citizenship app. It didn’t need much explaining but we went through; how to resize a slip, how to progress from one stage to the next and what each stage asks from you.

After about 5 minutes we asked if everyone was ready to begin the full session, and there was lots of shouts of ‘Yes!’, it was time to move on.

Theo in Ancient Greece

Since the students had covered Ancient Greece in another term, we chose Digital Mysteries: Theo in Ancient Greece as the task for this session. This was good to re-jog their memories at the same time as collaborating, thinking, learning new things and reflecting.

The main question in this app is ‘What is Theo most proud of about Ancient Greece?’

Set up

• Mostly pairs, one three, then as the time went on, a few working on their own.
• Medium difficulty (each app has Easy, Medium and Hard settings – this usually determines how many slips and hints the group are given). In this case, Hard would have brought in an extra topic to consider – democracy.
• Two stages – reading, then grouping the slips, followed by typing in their answer and then the Reflection Stage. By default, there would usually be a Sequencing Stage in between grouping and answering, but we eased them in for today, especially because we wanted more time than usual to reflect at the end.

Activity

While it wasn’t a traditional SOLE session as such, we were in SOLE Room 13. It’s a flexible working space, with brilliant decor and different places to sit. In traditional SOLEs, the students are free to sit wherever, move around and have full control over their learning. One of the walls is clear glass – so it is a small way of observing what is going on.

What we did, was integrate some elements of a SOLE session. We stayed within the room for a little while until we knew the students were settled into the task (as well as for taking some pictures).

Reading Stage

• Students got to grips with this straight away: there are a few different ways of making the icon sized slips bigger so you can read everything on them. Many tended to double tap and a few used the ‘pinch and zoom’ gesture.
• The majority of students read the slips in numerical order – this helps them be organised as they know which they have read. The information on the slips is deliberately not in correlation chronologically with the numbers of them, so this works fine.
• Some read the slips together and some pairs had a pattern of having one student re-size the slip then the other reading it while the other listened.

Grouping Stage

Students are asked to create at least three named groups to sort the slips into. There was a good mixture when having a look at the end. One pair did only have two (relevant, not relevant), but even this helped see how the students thought (that's why we call it Brains on the Tablet).

Reflection Stage

As mentioned, there would usually be a Sequencing Stage, but due to the nature of the session and the time restrictions, the students then went straight to typing in their answer. The Reflection Stage then followed. For the groups that got to this point, it was so good to see the enthusiasm and pride on many of their faces.

The two in the video finished before everyone else, and the benefit of this set up in Room 13 was how freely they could move around and show other pairs bits of their process. This was excellent to see. One group, when asked how many groups they had made and what they were called, started talking about theirs, and used the Reflection Stage to emphasise their point. This ‘Stimulated Recall’ was interesting.

Back to us…

Katy Milne (Director of Arts and Creativity) and Mrs Pattison very kindly asked the students lots of questions at the end. These involved thinking about the setup, the content of the app, the usage of the app, what they’d learned and whether they’d do it again.

Some questions asked:

How many groups did you create?

One pair created six different groups/categories, which was interesting, and several others: four or five. As mentioned, there was one pair who created two groups.

What did you learn in this session that you didn’t know before?

A few students talked about the main character Theo. An answer included ‘We learned that Theo has a statue of him’. We then made it clear that Theo was a fictional character who was created in that time frame to help them learn about what it would be like to be someone at this time.

Another answer was ‘that builders used columns called Doric, Ionic and Corinthian to hold up roofs’ and that ‘the British Museum in London is built in a classical Greek style’ (interesting that this student used the iPad (on the app’s Reflection Stage) to point to this fact.

What was Theo most proud of about Ancient Greece? (The main question)

There was many answers but the majority said that it's Theo and his father being in the Olympics. An addition was that one of his favourite foods is olives and ‘because he won the Olympics, he got a prize of an olive crown, so he would have been proud of that’ – the connecting of two separate pieces of information was good to see. A different answer was that Theo would have been most proud of his uncle’s building work. On the Hard level of this mystery, additional slips about democracy would have been added – this could have brought in a different slant.

What did you think of how you were grouped together? Do you prefer how you usually work in a SOLE session, in bigger groups, or were you pleased with working in pairs?

Following on from the success we’ve seen in the bigger groups before, it was surprising to note that the students who spoke up, really found benefit in working in pairs:

“When you’re in pairs, you just listen.”

“I like it in little groups more, because you concentrate better.”

When Katy then asked if they felt free to move around (a big benefit of SOLE), one students said they did when they were finished: ‘Well they didn’t really get it, so me and Ryan sat and helped them’.

If you could think of a way to improve the app/mystery, what would you suggest?

It can of course be difficult for students to put their hand up and say something they feel may upset someone, but we tried to encourage them as much as possible, because feedback can only help us improve. One student did say it would be good if there was some way you could get rid of any notes and sticky tapes that you didn’t need any more/you’d done by accident – there is in actual fact, a ‘Trash’ group where you drag and drop stuff you don’t need. So although you can’t get rid of it entirely (the idea is that all thoughts/notes/actions are there if needed), you can remove it from main view and concentrate on the bigger picture.

Would you use Digital Mysteries apps again?

This was met with many enthusiastic exclaims of ‘yes’ and ‘definitely’, and when asked if they thought they could do a fresh mystery without any ‘instructions’ next time, they were very confident. A few highlights:

‘I thought that it was a bit different to any other game. In a good way.’
‘It was new.’
‘I liked it because I never knew you could do, like, this type of stuff on it.’
‘It was easy to use.’

Recap

It was a brilliant afternoon. We want to say a big thank you to Katy who organised the session, as well as James Brady for ensuring that all of the tech was running smoothly for the students.

Also a big thank you to Mrs Pattison and her colleagues for bringing the students in, asking questions and being supportive of the task. Of course, another thank you to the Byerley Park year five class who came in. They were a pleasure to work with, came up with some great ideas and were very polite at the end, coming up to us to say thank you.

At some point in the future, it will be great to do it again!

To read Greenfield Arts' blog post on this session, click here.
To try Digital Mysteries, go to our Developer's Page on the App Store.

Can technology help encourage more young people to get involved in politics?

In our previous blog post, we shared with you that we created a dedicated task for 11-14 year olds to discuss the UK 2015 general election.

Over the past few weeks, it has been brilliant to hear of teachers using the app/task across the country.

On the morning of the election day itself, the team went to the largest school in Newcastle, Kenton, to work with year 8 students and see whether the task had made any difference. It was incredible to see the transformation from before to after - one student said they had 'no interest in politics', but afterwards was asking lots of great questions about the different parties. They wanted to find out more.

In a couple of minutes, this video explores the session and has an interview with some of the students who took part:

Some quotes from the students:

• "If I did have the opportunity to vote, I think I would have a better idea of who I would vote for."
• "I also think I've got a better idea, because when it's on the news, it's often just clustered together, what people said. It doesn't give you the full insight of what the different parties want to do."
• "You want to know which (parties) are good for you, so with your friends, you know you can have a conversation with them to know which one is better."
• "I think it (the Digital Mystery) gives you a better understanding of stuff and you can know what's good and what's bad and I think it would be good to introduce it at other elections."

One of our brilliant pieces of feedback from Twitter:

@Refthinking Yes, of course! Brilliant, inspiring and extremely useful.

— Dominic Newbould (@DominicNewbould) May 5, 2015

Thanks to everyone for supporting this task/iPad app, including everyone following our social media updates, those at BBC Radio, the Northern Echo, Bdaily, Schools North East and North Tyneside Learning Trust.

If you've got something to share about 'Digital Mysteries: UK Election 2015', let us know!

How can you double the availability of your iPads?

More and more schools are taking up iPads, with teachers excited about the various ways they can be used. With the expense of the devices though, the plan is often to start off with a small amount at first. While cost-efficient, this does mean that some miss out as another class has already booked them.

However, did you know that the iPad can actually be the perfect device for working in pairs? Picture the scene: 15 iPads, one whole class fully absorbed in the task, or 30 iPads, two whole classes fully absorbed.

The iPad actually allows multiple touches meaning two students could be around one iPad and interacting with it, and each other, at the same time. For this to really be utilised, it does need to be with the right app, as not all make the most of this feature.

I’d like to introduce you to our free iPad app Digital Mysteries Lite: KS2. This is a result of years of academic research in Newcastle on collaborative learning and education in general. Because it has been specifically developed for true collaboration between pairs, it is ideal for schools who would like to spread their iPads out.

Whether this interests you probably depends on what the app entails. The good news is it’s a cross-curricula app which involves solving a ‘mystery’. Each mystery aligns to the National Curriculum for England, and our first version has tasks on English/PSHE, Maths and History.

Users are given illustrated slips of information which they read, organise into groups and move around the screen to show how they’ve came to their answer. This is in response to the open-ended question for each particular task.

An example is a pair working out ‘Who killed King Ted?’ by making calculations on the suspects’ whereabouts, medicine measurements and motorbike speeds.

If you’d like to try it, please click here or search Digital Mysteries on the App Store.

How can ‘just another cool technology’ be made into a powerful learning tool?

New and exciting collaboration tools such as multi-touch technologies or programs allowing multi-mouse have big potential to significantly improve students’ group work and problem solving skills.

However, they can often be seen by students (and sometimes teachers) as alien to the standard classroom. This view, more often than not, prevents them from extending the benefits of the use of such tools beyond the lesson in which it was used.

The key thing to overcome this problem is to ensure that the technology itself isn’t at the forefront of the lesson. It needs to be treated no differently than any other tool which has the main purpose of helping achieve lesson goals.

I’ve done a lot of research in schools on the use of interactive tabletops, which most students see for the first time ever during the lesson. Without careful integration of such activities into the curriculum, we did not observe the positive effects expected. This was caused by the novelty of such technology; students completed the task and enjoyed it, but did not think of it as part of their learning, thus failed to truly benefit from it. Even when doing more than one session with digital tables students always thought of such sessions as fun lessons isolated from their normal learning.

With this experience behind me, in later sessions we ensured that what needs to be done on the tables is a sub-task of a bigger project. When we used the tables as tools to help with collaborative writing, the task was based on topics discussed in previous sessions. The tabletop session was to work together on an essay plan which they would each individually use to write their essays later on. When we used them with students who have additional needs, we used pictures of masks they’d made in previous sessions. This meant the tabletop task was being (among other goals) used as a catalyst for group discussions in preparation for a later class presentation. In both these scenarios, the technology, which was also new to the students, was seen simply as a tool to achieve a learning goal, and beyond.

This doesn’t apply only to novel technologies such as tabletops or multi-mouse software; it applies to the use of any new application or technology such as tablets. 

Studies on technology enhanced learning use different terms to make the same point: integration of learning, workflow continuity, and distribution across time. They all carry the same message; to ensure effective use of technology, there must be a continuous workflow involving a preparation stage before the use of technology to ensure impact beyond the lesson it’s used in. One way of doing this is to have presentations or data structures that are used and adjusted throughout the process to link everything together. What the school above did with students making masks and then using their images within the platform is a great example of how this can be done.

Cultivating collaborative learning

This time last year, SMART Technologies commissioned a white paper on this very topic.

As well as quoting our Director Dr. Ahmed Kharrufa's study with Newcastle University, they also interviewed him to get a more in-depth summary of their research.

Click here to read more

Collaboration – The magic ingredient for learning, creativity, and human achievements

We are pleased to say that we have collaborated with senior leader in education Jon Tait to write a guest post on his blog.

To read this post, please click here.

Making students’ collaboration strengths and weaknesses visible

I had an interesting discussion with a teacher recently about her students’ teamwork skills during a study that I was involved in with Newcastle University. The study was with a primary school class of year 5 students. They were divided into 7 groups of 4 using a collaborative problem-solving application. The application uses multi-mouse technology which involved plugging 4 USB mice into each PC so that each student in the group had access to a mouse which controlled a different coloured hand/cursor on the screen. This allowed all students to work together on the task at the same time, rather than one student taking charge by controlling a single mouse.

The teacher noted that some of the groups in her class did not manage to work as well as a group as she expected them to. She was especially surprised because her students usually do a lot of group work in her class. After discussing the typical group work they usually carry out in class, and how it compares to the multi-mouse activity at hand, the conclusion was that the usual tasks were normally too short (only a few minutes in duration) and in most cases were not truly collaborative but rather involved a clear division of roles in the task. Each student did part of a task and then the students put their work together and presented it as a group. This was similar to what I have observed in other group activities at other schools, whether the task involved technology or not.

The reason that this multi-mouse collaborative task brought the group work problems to the surface is because the task design required students to work together in true collaboration and for a significant period of time (30-45 minutes). Each student in the group had a mouse and they were required to all work together at the same part of the task at the same time. This is in contrast to normal group work around a computer where one of the students controls the mouse, or in scenarios that do not involve technology, where normally each student in the group is given access to different resources to complete the task. 

An effective collaborative task provides opportunities for students to coordinate and regulate their participation, do certain subtasks together and take turns for others, explain ideas, learn from each other, take joint decisions and resolve conflicts. The latter is particularly important; the design of a collaborative task needs to allow for conflicts to take place to increase chances of useful discussions and to teach students to negotiate, compromise, and resolve conflicts. Such opportunities do not arise from short group activities or in group tasks where students are working in parallel on different subtasks. Accordingly while such tasks are thought of as a group activities, they are not resulting in the type of benefits expected from a carefully-designed collaborative activity.

Moreover, among the main characteristics of effective collaboration is accountability. What I mean by this is basically knowing who did what and taking responsibility for actions, which is useful for the members of the group as well as the teacher. While this is not possible in normal group activities or when using a single mouse, it is possible in a multi-mouse setting. This is because it can track the person (well, technically the mouse) responsible for each action, and it is possible to record the level of interaction for each person. This feature was utilized in the activity used and the levels of participation were displayed to the students as a pie chart. This pie chart live updated and doubled in size when the level of participation of one student fell below 10% or went above 50% to attract everybody’s attention to the unequal participation.

Back to our study

While some students performed brilliantly as a group, others struggled. While some groups got involved in active discussions, took turns when needed, negotiated, resolved conflicts and took joint decisions; others either worked in isolation, remained quiet, or got frustrated because they did not know how to resolve their conflicts. The activity brought to the surface shortcomings in students’ collaboration skills that previous group work activities had not. The teacher appreciated that highlighting students difficulties in working as a team is an opportunity rather than a limitation. She was especially keen on the participation pie chart. This chart, for some groups, succeeded in making students aware of their levels of participation and in many cases helped them regulate it so that no one student dominated or became just an observer.

Collaboration is among the main elements of the 21^st century learning skills. However, not all of the usual group tasks given to students require true collaboration to be completed. Careful consideration needs to be taken with regards the choice of the group activity given to students and the type of skills needed to accomplish such an activity.

This is the first of a series of blog posts that will elaborate in more detail on the characteristics and benefits of collaborative learning in general and computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) in specific.