Forking #blimage and sharing a bit of #vidage that has influenced my thoughts around education (#blideo)

Missed a trick and as Alex Bellars points out should have called it #blideo


David Hopkins recently challenged me to a #blimage and as David explains:

if this is the first time youā€™ve come across #blimage, hereā€™s a brief summary of what it is. In short, Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth), in conversations Amy Burvall (@amyburvall) and Simon Ensor (@sensor63), started the #blimage challenge, which is:
ā€œa confection of Blog-Image. (Yes, we are now in the age of blim!) You send an image or photograph to a colleague with the challenge that they have to write a learning related blog post based on it. Just make sure the images arenā€™t too rude. The permutations are blimminā€™ endless.

[flickr]15167600626[/flickr] David provided a picture of a Lego stormtropper at sunset to #blimage me with. You canā€™t beat a bit of Lego. My first thoughts werenā€™t the image or what the image could be interpreted as, but the image as a digital artefact. As a digital image it can be endlessly replicated, distributed, remixed and more. As someone who until the late 90s predominately learned from books, the paper kind, itā€™s interesting to reflect on how ā€˜digitalā€™ has changed the way IĀ learnĀ and, in particular, the digital moving image. So in true academic style Iā€™m not going to answer the question set, but answer my own question instead:

what #vidage has influenced my thoughts around education?

Sir Ken Robinson ā€“ RSA Animate: Changing Paradigms

With over 13 million views Iā€™m guessing youā€™ve already seen this but given the tail on these things those new to the sector may have missed. Back in 2010 when I first saw this combination of Sir Kenā€™s clear passion and the ā€˜liveā€™ sketchnotes was a powerful combination, planting the seed that education should be better.

Bret Victor ā€“ The future of programming

So if you think my first #vidage was clichĆ©d this is hopefully where I win you back. So what does the ā€˜future of programmingā€™ have to do with education. For this Victor presented the world view of programming Ć  la 1973, highlighting projects from early computer science like Sketchpad, massively parallel processor array and Doug Englebartā€™s ā€˜mother of all demosā€™.Ā  Looking at was achieved in this era you cannot but admire the great creativity and innovation. But how was so much achieved with relatively little? The answer ā€¦ they were making it up as they went along. There was no defined architecture or notion of the best way to do things. Victor warns the issue now is there is becoming a fixed mindset, a dogmatic approach to computer science that is stifling development. This is where I see parallels to education echoed by Sir Kenā€™s Changing Paradigms. Iā€™ve embedded the punchline below but encourage you to watch the entire talk.

Alan Kay – The Future Doesn’t Have to Be Incremental

Sticking with the computer science theme the last #vidage comes from someone who was part of the 60s vanguard, Alan Kay. Kay has and continues to have a big impact on personal computing and computing science. In Kayā€™s talk the focus is less on these achievements but on the processes and mindset to achieve this, in particular, dreaming about a future reality, drawing on the past but ignoring the present:

the tyranny of the present is, it makes it very difficult to think of any change that’s not incremental to it

This is quite a step change for education but the future reality is worth dreaming about. You can watch Kayā€™s talk below:

So thatā€™s some of my inspirational #vidage. Whatā€™s yours?

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