Paces

A new year. A new decade. Uncertain times.

A new year. A new decade. Uncertain times, indeed.

One certainty, however, is that when the new decade ends, in 2020, there will be a new Chief Executive of Paces. In fact, it is a racing certainty that before the decade even reaches its half way point, I shall no longer be in that post. Forgive me,then, if I suggest that this might, for someone, be the very best job in conductive education in the UK. 

In the time remaining to me, what are some of the priorities for conductive education and Paces? Where ought I direct my energies as Paces CEO?  If the times are uncertain, they are also replete with opportunities, if we are brave enough to seize them. What might be possible?

Collaboration: As a project, Paces is almost exactly co-terminous with the New Labour project. Yet whilst the Paces' project has gradually flourished, we in the UK conductive education movement (unlike advocates in autism, for instance) have nationally failed to have any impact on the Government. Indeed, the use of the word "movement" in either of its senses, merely underlines the failure. A few months from now, the country could have a new Government. New MPs; new Ministers; new education policies - new opportunities for conductive education? Shall we speak up together?

Environment: 2009 saw the granting of a long lease to High Green Development Trust, the cooperative of resident groups that since 2003 has managed Paces Campus. Come what may, the capital redevelopment of the Campus will rightly loom large. It is an excellent site and the Development Trust has exciting plans. The co-location of conductive education activities with local community activities and of third sector services alongside public and private sector services is an innovative model that offers a flexible environment for future growth of conductive education.

Communication: I happen to be one of those who is convinced that online social networking (blogs; facebook; twitter et al) not only makes different kinds of conversation possible, but is also changing the relationships of power between participants.  We have seen little of this in conductive education yet. It will come. Think of the challenge that Mumsnet (not to be confused with the larger NetMums) recently presented to both Gordon Brown and to David Cameron, in coming to grips with those particular conversations.

Governance & Management: If Paces is to transform itself during the coming half-decade, major changes and improvements in governance and management structure will be required, starting with enhancing the Trustee body and dealing with succession issues - which brings this posting back to round to where it began: managing uncertainty and certainty.

I have not mentioned growing our services, or the need for training and research. Notably, I have not mentioned money, which might surprise some in these financially straightened times - but money, after all, is merely one resource, one means of securing our ends.

So, having been out this first bright and sharply cold afternoon of 2010, down to Bakewell, in Derbyshire, with Sarah and my wife Dru, to feed the ducks on the river, I start the decade with these three formidable challenges near the forefront of my mind as Paces CEO.

Parents, Schools and ICT

Essa Academy in Bolton is to issue an iPod to all its pupils, making them "the most technologically advanced in Britain", according to a large 2-page spread in today's Times.

What's more, the article adds: "A bespoke wi-fi system, with 130 access points around the school, means that children never lose connectivity. If teachers are pleased with a piece of work, they can ask a child to e-mail it to them and, using laptops and a projector, display it on a wall or screen to show the class. They can also annotate it with a handwriting function. But more is to come. Next spring work will begin to upgrade the school. It will have a 3-D audio visual theatre, writeable glass walls instead of whiteboards...."

I applaud the initiative and innovation.

However, within the same 2-page spread is a word of caution, easily overlooked in a short analysis piece "Gadgets provide a lesson to for us all". Greg Hurst (who is, as far as I can tell, a Political Correspondent) writes: "Yet evidence linking technology to higher attainment in schools is elusive. Academics cite how ministers become bewitched with interactive whiteboards; after vast investment, many teachers used them as they had blackboards."  In other words, the possibility is that the "lesson" is that far from the new technology promoting new ways of working, organising and engaging, of teaching and learning, new technologies are merely used for old purposes.

This thought brought to mind another document that came this way, thanks to a link provided by a Facebook 'Friend', John Popham to a newly published BECTA report (free to download) "Schools and Parents - A new partnership: technology supporting a new relationship with schools".  On Facebook, John asks "Will tech help parents be more involved? Or is it cultural/economic?"

For anyone with an interest in information and communcations technologies and schools, I recommend spending time exploring the BECTA website and its related Next Generation Learning website. There is much to stimulate and interest.

Yet having read the new publication, I am left disappointed. The whole assumption behind the report is that parents only and sole interest is their own child and their own child's progress. Indeed, the Introduction to the report is explicit on this:

"Good parental engagement is fundamental to children's learning and closely linked to increased attainment. One of the more effect ways for parents to engage in their child's learning is o maintain good communications with a school, learning more about their child's progress whilst also helping to identify any development or performance issues early on".

In other words, the report is about how new technologies are being used for old purposes. Despite the assertion of its title that the report is about 'supporting a new relationship with schools', the report is actually not about new ways of working, organising or engaging but simply about using new tools to enhance existing purposes.

I hesitate not to be seen as criticising an interesting document for what it did not set out to do. Nevertheless, given the power of the new tools of Web2.0 social media to create new forms of relationships and purposes, the report feels like an opportunity missed. I am reminded whilst reading it of the interactive whiteboards being used as blackboards, noted above in the Times article by Greg Hurst.  I am tempted to offer a response to John Popham's question quoted above that new technology alone will not bring about new purposes and relationships (including so-called "partnership" relationships) without cultural changes within institutions - whether promoted from within or demanded from without.

The assumption of the report is that in a partnership between schools and parents, parents are only interested in their own child. Therefore the communication should be between school and parents. The importance of the communication between parents is not even considered.

The same is still most often true in discussions of the "partnership" between local authorities and parents: the importance of communication between parents, separate from all other parties, is still rarely considered. 

The new social tools of the internet make possible new relationships and new strategic engagements of parents as a body first with each other and then with schools and local authorities. 

Meanwhile all parents of all children with cerebral palsy might usefully ask how there schools are using ICTs and social media effectively to communicate with them. 

CE2.0 a personal journey on a public road

Elliot Clifton has contributed a long and challenging reflection on the relationship between conductive education and the internet (in a Comment to an earlier posting of mine). At one point Elliot writes: “As a community CE hasn't really grasped the possibilities of Web 1.0 (static web pages), never mind the community-building social possibilities offered by 2.0.” Without fundamentally disagreeing with all that Elliot writes, I find myself perhaps a little more optimistic.

For over 30 years I have been a family historian. My earliest records are on file cards, carefully copied from my handwritten transcripts of census records and from parish registers held in libraries and record offices. A day or so ago, I recorded on my Facebook page that I was “contemplating a photograph taken in 1914, in Pudsey, Yorkshire of a woman born in 1824, at Rousham in Oxfordshire, who died shortly after it was taken: how different the reference points of her world and ours.”

That woman was the elder sister of my Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandmother. The digital photograph came to me by email, from an American woman I had never before met or knew, who had seen the family history website set up by my son and realized that we were related.  It turns out we are in fact fourth cousins.  She writes: “I am still in awe of this technology that I can take a scan of a photograph almost 100 years old and it's in your hands within seconds.”

A couple of years ago, I was fortunate enough to be awarded a Travel Fellowship by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. Needing to complete my itinerary, I did a search on Google. I found and emailed Glenda Watson-Hyatt in Vancouver. My later meeting with her and her husband Darrell inspires me even now. I visit her website and have her as a friend on Facebook. She recently attended BlogWorld New Media Expo2009 in Las Vegas, where she was a speaker at WordCamp. When I say ‘speaks’ you need to know that Glenda speaks what she calls ‘Glenda-ish’; she’s a person with cerebral palsy who uses an electric wheelchair (as does Darrell); who describes herself as ‘the left-thumb blogger’. In fact, it would just be easier if you’d take a moment to visit her blog – her report “Fresh from WordCamp Las Vegas” would be a good place to start. Oh and Glenda uses hashtags too (#bwe09 for Blog World Expo 2009 on Twitter).  As if all that is not enough, an expert in web accessibility, she has just produced an eBook of her presentation at Wordcamp “How POUR is Your Blog? Tips for Increasing Your Blog Accessibility”.

 For the Travel Fellowship, I booked all my flights and hotel reservations online.  I now use online banking; paid a bill online just today in fact. The book I’m reading at the moment cost me £15 all-in from Amazon.com instead of £25 from Waterstones in Sheffield. Last July my Dad was taking a break on his own at his house in Pembrokeshire; injured himself, stayed longer than he intended, couldn’t get about to get food in, didn’t eat well and made himself ill.  Next time he takes a holiday there, I’m going to order some groceries online for him and get them delivered. Haven’t done that before.

On the way, I set up this blog, used Netvibes to set up Conductive Web, joined Facebook and this past month I’ve been getting into Twitter (PacesCEO) - mostly just to see how they worked. I've never yet uploaded video to YouTube, but its only a matter of time - when I can afford an iPhone maybe! (I have used videos from YouTube though: there's one coming up in the next link here). I now use wikis on wikispaces for all sorts of writing, mostly for putting grant-funding applications together and writing job descriptions, strategic plans and such with colleagues for Paces. It works well and saves effort all round. We are slowly becoming quite proficient. Gabor Fellner, Headteacher of Paces School, has set up an online messaging system that generates text messages and emails for communicating with parents using ParentMail. It works well. (He’s just now trying to persuade our new Board of Governors to adopt it for communicating among themselves.)  I have explored using NING to set up a private social network for Sheffield parents of children with disabilities and special needs and another for Paces' staff. The latter didn’t work so well – some things just don’t.

Yesterday, from a community learning centre in Royston, Barnsley, just up the road from us at Paces, Martha Lane Fox, Government Digital Inclusion Champion, launched National Get Online Day (note sound is low). The CEO of ‘the Digital Region’ earlier in the week announced that broadband will be brought to the front door of every home and business in South Yorkshire within 3 years.

All of which is to say that loads of ordinary people are using the internet in loads of ways, to do things in their ordinary lives as people.

In other words, it’s not because I’m Paces CEO or because I’m passionate about conductive education that I use the internet. It’s the opposite way round. Because I’ve slowly found all sorts of ways in my life to use the internet, I now ask how I can use it to benefit conductive education. So it happens, over the past few weeks, I’ve been wondering how the 7^th World Congress could be enriched if the organisers adopted social networking tools. I don’t say they should. I offer only that it would be interesting if they experimented. It’s all a journey. We are all explorers.

Here are two new experimentings, on the journey: (1) Andrew Sutton has asked whether a facebook group might be set up to discuss conductive education and social networking. We have just done that. (2) In response to Andrew’s request for help writing an article about CE, I have set up a wiki for anyone to respond. Will either be used? Will either be useful? Who knows? If people find them useful, I suppose. The important thing is, we have tried. Somewhere down the road, I've no doubt, people will find this all very ordinary. My grandchildren have no awe at all that a photograph taken in 1914 of their 6x-Great-Aunt should have been sent from America and printed from Grandad's computer.

One of the memorable moments in my life was attending the Peto Institute with Sarah, our daughter, for her very first assessment.  We were asked by the senior conductor assessing her (I wish I could remember her name. We’ve so much to thank her for.) if Sarah could do various tasks: roll, get to her feet using a ladderback chair, tie her shoe laces and so on. To most questions we answered, “Not yet, but she does try”.  Asked to demonstrate, Sarah did so - with wonderful theatricality, I should add. Thus was cemented in my brain my very first association with conductors and conductive education: they liked children who tried; conductive education was not about playing it safe, it was about risk and effort, about being motivated to try.

Slowly, like everyone else, conductors and all others working in and for conductive education, will eventually find reasons to use the internet in their own personal lives – and sometimes for conductive education purposes, too. I find that a cause for optimism.

Conductive education, Twitter & Hashtags

Ok, so here's another practical suggestion to explore, around conductive education, the world congress and social networking (Web2.0). 

Increasingly you will find Twitter being used for instant live feeds from conferences and other events. When several different people do that, it can be difficult to track them all down on Twitter. However, that problem is solved by using 'hashtags'. These are simply words or sequences of characters with a # symbol in front.  Then everyone else adding this hashtag makes searches easier. 

In the title of my last post were character sequences CE2.0 and 7WC10. Had I put a # in front of each when posting on Twitter, these would have been examples of Hashtags. In fact, I did imagine them as hashtags. When I get a moment, I will indeed set up #CE2.0 as a hashtag. (I've also added CE2.0 as a new tag on this blog).  It would - I think - be wrong for me to set up 7WC10 as a hashtag. It is for the organisers of the 7th World Congress to do so if they wish. Indeed, best advice to event organisers is "Live tweeting an event? Set your hashtag up front". There's more useful reading there and at Wild Apricot's non-profit technology blog, at contentious.com and at hashtags.org. 

BTW just one more thing on the subject of Twitter: my own journey of exploration into CE2.0 (ie conductive education and Web2.0 social networking) has brought me to Tweet Deck, an application for managing activity on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook a bit more easily. If you are still with me here at the end of this post, you might take a look to see if it can help you too.

CE2.0, 7WC10 & Social Reporting*

* Conductive education, Web2.0 or social networking, the 7th World Congress in 2010 and social reporting.

Having expanded the title of this post, I would like to introduce you to David Wilcox who blogs under the name 'SocialReporter'. In February this year he posted "How social reporters can help turn old-style conferences into the new convening spaces". The title just about says it all, though with a series of links to the work of Bev Trayner, Clare White, Dave Briggs and Clay Shirky the posting is actually a mine of useful and practical information.

There's no such thing as a perfect example, but for a taste of one way in which a conference can be opened up, both in real time and afterwards, enriching the experience of those who were there as well as sharing it with those unable to attend, take a look on YouTube.

If you there do a search for "TAL09", you will be offered all manner of responses to the "Talk About Local" event in Stoke-on-Trent a couple of weekends ago.  Or you could begin with Will Perrin's (no relation) introduction:

If you have looked at this clip on YouTube, you should have seen to the right of the frame a link: "More from Social Reporter". Click on that and you will see more of David Wilcox social reporting from conferences.

At the 6th World Congress in Goteburg, Sweden, there was a film-maker recording the event. His name was Lars Mullback. I remember I was asked to do an interview. I do not know what happened to the finished film. I never had the chance to see it. If Lars had used a now ordinary digital camera or mobile phone, he could have recorded a clip and posted it on YouTube for all of us to see and comment on.

Annoyingly, I lost his business card and was never able to contact him again. In fact, I lost all the business cards I was given at the 6th Congress.  As an aside to this posting, had CrowdVine been hosting a social network for the event, I could easily have recovered profiles and contact details of all the wonderful CE people I met there.

Before I leave you to your own journey of exploration in CE2.0, here's one more David Wilcox blog posting: "Social reporting made simple".

Andrew Sutton asked for practical ideas (see his last paragraph. How about social reporting from the 7th World Congress?

CE2.0 ("Conductive education & Web2.0)

May I draw your attention to ....

My recent posting ".... a video too choked with its own portent ... " has attracted comments from Andrew Sutton and Ben Foulger on conductive education and social media (or "CE2.0" as I've called it in the title of this posting).

We are all explorers, all journeying.

7th World Congress: "meet smarter" online first?

At the end of a posting a couple of days ago, I wrote:

In December 2010, the 7th World Congress of Conductive Education takes place in Hong Kong. I am greatly looking forward to the adventure of being there. I am also wondering how the social web can be deployed to (a) enhance the experience of all of us who aspire to be there and (b) engage everyone who cannot in the experience - before, during and after the Congress. What would we need to do?  Could 2010 be the firstinternet World Congress? How?

Andrew Sutton picked up on this and, at the end of a posting on his blog, wrote:

I do hope that Norman and other people in the know might come up with some practical suggestions (my measure of whether things are ‘practical’ being that even I can work them).

Whilst I cannot claim to be "in the know", I have been thinking about "practical suggestions".

Let's go to a conference. You know, you get there and everyone knows everyone else, everyone except you that is. Have you been to that conference? I went to one a couple of weeks ago. Knew nobody. By the time I'd worked out who I should be talking to in the 'networking' sessions, I was on the M1 heading back home to Paces.

Wouldn't it be good if people could meet up beforehand? Maybe plan the journey to Hong Kong together. Meet up and share a meal? Or a taxi from the airport. Or find out if old friends from other countries we met in Sweden or Budapest or London or Urakawa might be there.  Wouldn't it be interesting if we could maybe talk about some of the presentations that interested us - and the questions we hoped the speakers might answer? Put names to faces.

With CrowdVine all of this is possible. Someone on Twitter alerted me to it. From there, I emailed Tony Stubblebine to find out more about how CrowdVine can enhance the conference experience. He sent me links to a couple of examples and I found another myself. Conferences are generally for attendees only, so a CrowdVine conference site is usually 'closed'. However, these examples are 'open' to all to share. Take a look:

Tony says: "Here are three UK networks that are publicly browsable: 

Future Choices 
JISC, an educational support conference 
ALT-C, an educational technology conference

and I found

Medicine2.0  "How social networking changes health, health care and biomedical research". Toronto.

These are conferences for people with particular shared interests. How much sense would they make of our World Congress? So don't be put off by the content - or the specialised language - try to focus on the simple stuff and what everyone can get out of it.

I do not know if anyone at SAHK reads this blog. I'd be flattered to think so. I'm greatly looking forward to meeting you next year - or maybe sooner, at http://7thWorldCongress.crowdvine.com/*

* Don't try to link to it - it exists only in my imagination!

There you are Andrew, there's one idea. I'll see what else I can come up with.  Didn't you post something on Twitter in the middle of a conference in America a while ago?

BTW "meet smarter" is CrowdVine's strapline, if that's the right term.

".... a video too choked with its own portent ...."

Tom Heath is very clever fellow. He works (it says here) "in the field of recommender systems and collective intelligence in a Linked Data/Semantic Web context". Earlier this year he had a credit along with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, for an article in the International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems. Tom works for Talis Platform and occasionally sends me their magazine "Nodalities: the magazine of the semantic web". 

Clever fellow, as I said. But then, I've probably lost you all by now - but if not, please bear with me a moment more. Actually, much the same goes for me - I understand hardly a professional word Tom writes!

Andrew Sutton, I get the impression, was somewhat underwhelmed by the video I posted a couple of days ago: The Future Internet: "a piece of text so jargon-bound as to be unintelligible, and a video too choked with its own portent to make the slightest sense", says Andrew. Brightened my day, that did!

Critics of Twitter assert that it is trivial babble. Much of what passes every day between friends probably is. As an English teacher, I used to set a fun drama-writing exercise as if of threaded conversations over-heard on the top deck of bus. The imaginary captured conversations, apparently so inconsequential written down, were largely meaningless to the imagined theatre audience - but could deal with life-and-death matters to the imagined characters.  And the resulting text was great fun to read in class. So, Twitter. It's all to do with who is supposed to be listening. If it's not you, it's pretty meaningless. 

Tom - who is my nephew as it happens - is writing for an audience of his professional peers, of whom I am, with my very limited amateur enthusiasm for the internet, decidedly not one.  However, I come across all sorts of things (Has the hyper-local movement anything to offer CE, for instance? Perhaps I should blog about that one day?) and wonder if it can help us parents or practitioners of CE.  

I'm still trying to make sense of Web3.0 or what Tom calls "The Semantic Web".  I'm still trying to make sense of that video, Andrew, if truth be known. But don't you just love the idea of a milk carton having its own URL? (See the end of the video.) Made me smile. I shall watch it again, if I get a moment.

In December 2010, the 7th World Congress of Conductive Education takes place in Hong Kong. I am greatly looking forward to the adventure of being there. I am also wondering how the social web can be deployed to (a) enhance the experience of all of us who aspire to be there and (b) engage everyone who cannot in the experience - before, during and after the Congress. What would we need to do?  Could 2010 be the first internet World Congress? How?

(Just so there's no doubt: neither Tom Heath nor Talis had anything to do with the Future Internet video.)

 

"The Twittersphere had gone into meltdown"

It took one tweet on Monday evening as I left the office to light the virtual touchpaper. At five past nine I tapped: "Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain?" Twitter's detractors are used to sneering that nothing of value can be said in 140 characters. My 104 characters did just fine.

By the time I got home, after stopping off for a meal with friends, the Twittersphere had gone into meltdown. Alan Rusbridger:  Trafigura fiasco tears up the textbook The Guardian 15 October 2009

For those interested in such things, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes live-action account of what promoted my blog posting yesterday Mobilising CE networks through social media.

Mobilising CE networks through social media

The blogosphere yesterday protected Parliament and Free Speech and the right to know, in the UK - and maybe showed the way to how we can use social media to support individuals and groups battling 'authorities' on behalf of conductive education. 

You must read the detail yourself - but on Twitter and blogs, people blew away a 'gagging order' on The Guardian newspaper so powerful it prevented even mention of its own existence.

I have previously advocated the potential of the internet and social media to support CE campaigns: Blogging for Conductive Education in July 2008 and Here Comes Everybody in Feb 2009 are two examples of such postings.

It comes down to this, wherever any individual or organisation is trying to persuade authorities of the value of conductive education, they could draw on the world-wide online community of conductive education practice and practitioners, through social media such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and so on. 

There is no cause - neither so small nor even so large as the defense of freedom of speech - that cannot be supported by others putting their online shoulders to the wheel.