Personal & Social Learning Online

If we are going to help develop Personalized Learning for children we need to establish what it is and how it works.

First I have to say Personalized Learning is a misleading and distracting term. I prefer Personal Learning. That’s how you and I and all of our children naturally learn. There is, of course no such thing as learning that isn’t personal – but there is teaching or content that isn’t personalized.

You and I learn informally by being in life, talking with people, trying out new ideas. I learn formally only when I really need to – like when I try to follow the Ikea flat-pack instructions.

We don’t naturally learn in subjects or follow timetables, we follow our own interests and needs – and learn when and where and how we want.
I want to know what that thin leggy white bird is and what it’s fishing for in the river shallows. Now, what subject is that – science, biology, zoology, nature study, ecology or environmental studies? When are we doing zoology? Wednesday afternoon? I want to know now!

Nor do we only learn on our own. We learn socially — if we want to know something we’ll ask a friend and if he doesn’t know, he’ll often recommend we talk to someone else. If after an hour’s struggle with the instructions find I can’t build the Ikea shelves alone (and I usually can’t!) I’ll ask my wife to help and we’ll have a go at it together.

In the early 1980’s it was my privilege to open a brand new primary school in Hertfordshire. I had free riegn to run the school of my dreams - and I did. One of our aims was that every child would have his or her own curriculum, following her own interests, meeting her unique needs, with her work assessed to her own standards. Each teacher met with each child, and usually her parents, every half term, and negotiated the focus of the child’s learning for the next 6 weeks and then reviewed and refined her programme daily. For example we knew all the children needed to learn to read but with our help, they could do it by reading whatever motivated them — West Ham football programmes, Bunty Annual, model aeroplane construction kit instructions etc.

That’s how we worked — children following their own interests, criss-crossing nimbly above the hidden structure of the formal curriculum. It was a challenge but we achieved it. Teachers had to manage 30 individual courses of study, giving each child the appropriate stimulus and support and recording how she was doing – a tough plate-spinning assignment. It required remarkably energetic and talented teachers with unusual mental agility, an ability to live with uncertainty and an unwavering trust in the children.

But now we have computers and the Internet and it’s much easier to give children real choice over what, when, where and how they learn. Let’s look at an online learning environment where personal and social learning is hard-wired into its design, fabric and function.

Learning what I want
In Intuitive Media’s Protected Online Learning communities, SuperClubsPLUS (primary) and GoldStarCafe (secondary), children can choose, under the guidance of their teachers or parents, to take part in a huge range of learning activities.

They can build and publish their own community websites, email their community friends, take part in forums on almost everything under the sun, join hotseats to talk to their favourite authors or people from other countries. They can contribute to online magazines about sport, the media, the planet, or global issues. They can even set up Web Rings — their own communities of children who share their interests.

Children have free choice of what content (in words, pictures, sounds, animations, instant polls, quizzes etc.) they publish. You’ll find reviews of their favourite books and TV shows, films and music, celebrations of their football teams; pages dedicated to star signs, racing cars, horses, puppies, how to speak Spanish, chocolate, Jacqueline Wilson, netball, Daleks and Pokemon. You’ll find children writing school project pages about the Victorians, Charles Dickens, Rainforests, John F Kennedy, Robert Burns, the Solar System, Healthy Eating, Pandas, Birds of Prey, Bullying and the Lost City of Atlantis.

So long as it’s decent and legal, they can write what they want and the natural assessment of the value of their work is expressed in the reaction of the 100,000+ other community members. Children can see how many members visit their sites, how many take part in the polls they publish. Other children can sign their Visitor’s Books and email them with comments and suggestions about their sites and perhaps even vote them Site of the Week.

Viral Learning
Children visit other kids’ sites and see features they’d like on their own pages. Perhaps Sarah finds a site by Alice that greets the visitor by her own name: “Hi Sarah, thanks for coming by!” Sarah will email Alice and ask, “How did you know it was me visiting?” Alice will email back: “It’s easy, put this on your site — Hi [user], thanks for coming by! — And it will say the visitor’s name.” So Sarah learns what she wants, when she wants it and from another child.

With 100,000 other kids out there, there’s lots to learn from each other and in our experience kids are very willing and proud to share their competences with others. This kind of social learning spreads through the communities like wildfire. For example we gave children a new home page code [status], which, when embedded on their home page, told visitors if the author was at that moment online of offline. We gave the children no instructions on what it did or how it worked, but within 24 hours 750 children had used it successfully on their sites. Within a month over 5,000 children had used it. We didn’t have to teach a thing — this was Social Learning working at viral speed.

Learning when and where I want
The communities are open from breakfast to bedtime and available from school and home, so children can get on anytime during their waking hours — including at weekends and during vacations. They can (and often do) access their community friends from the Internet Cafes when on holiday in Torbay or Torremolinos. And if they have a Nintendo DS, a Sony PSP or a web-enabled PDA, they can (and they often do) get into SuperClubsPLUS or GoldStarCafe, email their friends and post to the forums from wherever there is wireless access.

Learning how I want
The children can learn what, when and how they want, but that doesn’t mean their learning is intangible or untrackable. Children can take part in informal “courses” in the guise of Star Awards. These are sets of challenges on Web Safety, Communications, Multimedia, Use of Coding etc., which children can choose to follow at their own pace, in their own order — whenever and however they wish. The system logs their online activity and records, for example, the first time they make an attachment to an email, or add a friend to their email address book or make a contribution to a forum, and it credits that competency to the child. As these competencies accumulate, children can earn their highly prized Star Awards, which appear on top of their home pages.

The current members of SuperClubsPLUS have voluntarily taken these challenges and earned 158,935 Stars! Teachers have earned 4,924 Stars - usually with the children’s help. They find it’s the best way to keep up!

The Teacher’s role
So where is Teacher in all this personal and social activity?
Well first, the 12,000 teachers in the communities are busy people and we find they are happy for their children to explore SuperClubsPLUS or GoldStarCafe on their own — knowing that they are protected from harm. Members join through school and teachers and children are rigorously validated before they can take part, so teachers can be confident their pupils will only meet real children online. Every word of every communication is filtered to remove inappropriate (e.g. obscene, racist, sectarian) language and to flag up to IM’s mediators (all professional educators, carefully selected and highly trained) any language that might indicate potential bullying or abuse of any kind that might require their attention. The system works. After more than 600,000 child years of usage, no child has been harmed.

The mediators are always online to protect the children, and also to encourage them to take part in learning activities with their online friends. It’s only when children feel safe from harm in an ethos of mutual respect and care, that they can relax, experiment, share ideas and help each other learn — knowing they won’t be teased or criticized, but that they will be appreciated.
But teachers can (and usually do) get involved. They can build their own School Pages (to which they and their pupils can contribute articles) and their personal Teacher Pages where they can set stimulating activities and challenges for their own classes. They can even set homework on the school pages, for children to respond to by publishing their work on their Project Pages. They can run dedicated School Forums on any subject, exclusive to their own pupils and LinkUp forums to which they can invite other schools from around the corner or from the other side of the world.

They have Teacher tools to observe their pupils’ activity, record and assess it. They can see children’s home pages, and give their own pupils special Teacher Award badges to celebrate good work of any kind. They can email their own pupils to encourage them and guide their work. They can even take their own Star Awards to keep up with the kids. There’s a huge Staff Room site for teachers with lots of guidance, National Curricula links (covering the UK). Plus there’s an online CPD programme, The Knowledge, to help teachers get the best from the community for their children, which can lead on to professional mediator training.

Children’s Home Page Awards. Right to left: 1000 Site Hits, Yellow Coding Star, Blue Multimedia Star, Green Communications Star, Red Get Started Star, White Web Safety Star. Jam badge for testing BBC software, Survey badge for taking part in research. On the far left a gold Teacher’s Crown “For excellent help to others”

Personal and Social Learning Online
So now we can offer every child Personal and Social Learning. Every child can follow his or her curiosity and interests, learn what she wants, when and where she wants and how she wants — from other children and her teachers, in a protected online environment that takes care of the children and allows teachers to guide and observe their children’s progress.

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www.intuitivemedia.com
www.superclubsplus.com
www.goldstarcafe.net