Among her many comments she says, “…most visual media are real-time media that do not allow time for reflection, analysis or imagination — those do not get developed by real-time media such as television or video games. Technology is not a panacea in education, because of the skills that are being lost”.

“Studies show that reading develops imagination, induction, reflection and critical thinking, as well as vocabulary,” Greenfield said. “Reading for pleasure is the key to developing these skills. Students today have more visual literacy and less print literacy. Many students do not read for pleasure and have not for decades.”

Parents should encourage their children to read and should read to their young children, she said.

I couldn’t agree more.

You can read a summary of her research here

For those who don’t know, Mulu now contains the largest natural underground chamber in the world , Sarawak Chamber,  (which is big enough to accommodate 42 jumbo-jets without overlapping their wings) and also the 6th largest Chamber; it has the largest single cave passage in the world, Deer Cave, and the longest cave in S.E.Asia, Clearwater. The Clearwater System, which has been the focus of much of our work in recent years, is now 177.6km in length, which makes it the 8th longest cave in the world. You can find out more on the Mulu Caves Project website.

That original expedition fielded a huge, multi-disciplinary team of scientists who, for 15months, studied Mulu’s beautiful rainforests. The expedition was a stunning success.

In another email, I found that my co-Director had won a contract for me to write a business plan for an educational initiative in the south west. This project aims to bring together small groups of highly-skilled graduates from around the world to work in multi-disciplinary teams undertaking commercial projects. The benefits to the students will be to gain production experience in a high-pressure commercial environment, to learn from each other and to spin out novel ideas to meet the needs of their clients and to generate new innovations. The benefit to their clients will be to have access to that concentration of expertise and creativity, an innovation-tank to solve their challenges.

It’s that last point that’s important. By bringing together people from different disciplines and varied backgrounds, you have the opportunity to apply different perspectives, different ideas and novel thinking; team members spark ideas off each other and innovation is the outcome.

With the challenges facing society – economic meltdown, climate change, mass population migrations, water conflict, peak oil, food shortages (need I go on) we need more opportunities for multi-disciplinary approaches, more chances to bring together creative thinkers, more hope that we can overcome some of the challenges facing us or, more particularly, facing our children.

Anyway, back to Robin’s email… it was a request for me to support the Beagle Campaign. I did so with great enthusiasm and I suggest that you do, too.

The other good thing (things) was some information about the Natural History Museum’s Darwin 200 initiative (for which I must thank Lynne at iEARN UK).

Darwin200 is a programme of mainly UK-based activities celebrating Charles Darwin’s life, his ideas and their impact around his two hundredth anniversary. The collaboration brings together more than 70 UK organisations planning to celebrate the bicentenary to share ideas, and to collectively endorse and promote events. Many Darwin200 partners are developing dedicated teaching resources for the bicentenary such as science shows, resource packs, workshops, lectures and teachers’ courses. Check their website for more details.

As part of this special year, The Society for Popular Astronomy (SPA) has up to 1000 telescopes to award to secondary schools, to be used by pupils aged between 11 and 14. The free telescope is a high quality 70mm refractor, and comes with a DVD (funded by the Royal Astronomical Society) showing how to use the telescope, what to look at, and much more. Secondary schools in the UK are eligible to apply for a telescope, simply fill in the form and describe to the SPA (in less than 500 words) what the class will do with the telescope. Applications close on 31 January 2009 so be quick if you are interested.

The have a facebook group too – look for UK Science and Society Consultation – join it and tell them what you think.

Maybe you could put in a plug for the Rocard Report, which advocated enquiry based learning as the only hope for European science; I’m not sure anyone in DIUS has read it.

( I have a feeling that I would like a simpler name for the Department. How about ‘DoQ’ – The Department of  Qualifications. I’m not sure that their priority is understanding science, rather it’s more about getting as many people as possible to get as many qualifications as possible )

There are some fascinating videos here -  exploding  methane bubbles,  recombinant  DNA,  dandelions opening/closing in response to sunlight: wonderful. I wish I had thought of it first. Surely there’s an opportunity here for a major technology company to sponsor a set of videos explaining some core technological concepts, maybe around computing, for example. This would provide them with marketing profile whilst doing something useful to contribute to improving the lamentable state of UK science education.

At the other event I was exposed to GoScience, a local (to me) company that’s developed an underwater sensing robot based on a ring-wing design; take a look at their videos and watch this device in action.

The other, Tidal Generation, also a local start-up company, is a bunch of folk who worked for one of the established tidal energy companies. Despite their commitment to the technology and its potential contribution to helping reduce climate change, they left the business in near despair. Their problem was that conventional device designs required specialist vessels to position the tidal generators. There aren’t many such ships and, as a result, you have to book them years in advance, creating a major bottle-neck in deploying this much-needed technology.

Faced with this problem, they took a radically different approach and designed a device that could be deployed by a  simpler vessel at the rate of one a day (in the right weather conditions, of course). They also overcame the problem of maintaining generators running at 40m depth in tidal races of 4m/second by simply recognising that if they were made to float, they could be easily brought to the surface and then towed inshore for any necessary work. This is in contrast, once again, to the need for a specialist vessel with heavy lifting equipment.

Two great examples of using science and engineering principles to solve real, multi-disciplinary problems through teamwork and good project management.

It seems to me that missing from this definition is the word ‘education’. Surely ITS embraces a range of exciting educational opportunities too?

Mind you, I’m hoping that I’m not one of the ‘things’ that will be open to discovery. I’ve just spent a week in S.Devon staying in a cottage with no mobile phone coverage – it’s reminded me what life used to be like. The weather was so good, the sea so inviting, my canoe so wanting to be paddled and the kids so wanting to fish, climb and jump off rocks that I just didn’t have the heart to make my way up the hill to the 500sq m in which I could get a signal. It was sheer bliss.

Now, where do I sign up for the ITS Preferencing Service to register the fact that I want to be left alone..?

(but check this website if you really want to know about ITS)

A Vision of Students Today 

This year had more of a spark to it… Not that the pressures of the commercial world were absent, the stands were bigger and better, the cacophony of noise more intense – background chatter, the competing buzz of multiple presentations – and the flicker of big screens and whiteboards was everywhere in the main halls.

But something this year sparked my attention. Maybe it was having the chance to meet my old friend Max Buczynsky from King Edward VII School in Melton Mowbray, looking wasted after two days of presentations about Learner Voice, on Stephen Heppell’s stand, or meeting Jean Johnson, one of the very best of an inspiring group of European teachers who were involved in the Web for Schools project in the late ’90’s. Jean is now Chief Executive of the Inclusion Trust and, with her colleagues, is responsible for one of the very best facilities to appear out of the Web – notschool.

Notschool grew out of the work of Stephen Heppell and his colleagues at Ultralab at Anglia Ruskin University. It is a national, Internet-based ‘Virtual Online Community’ offering an alternative to traditional education for young people who, for a variety of reasons, can no longer cope with school or with complementary provisions such as home tutoring or specialist units. It’s hugely successful and now firmly in the mainstream. So if you deal with (or have) kids who fit that description then you’re being professionally negligent if you are not aware of it!

Another spark was the opportunity to have a play with the RM Asus, the little Linux based machine that runs Open Office: it’s lovely. The feature it’s lacking, to my mind, is the ability to create a wireless mesh network – this would be a real enhancement for primary school applications where the kids tend to live in the same locality and piggy-backing across the mesh could provide internet access for those without it at home. Surprisingly, no-one on the stand was aware of this possibility, so I made the suggestion to a couple of them and to Nick Stacey, RM’s Marketing Director. I wonder…

On a related point, there were a number of suppliers offering thin-client technologies. Personally I think that this is where the future is heading – with software increasingly delivered as a service. That’s why the OLPC and Asus machines are so interesting to me – rather than pay lots for high-tech kit, children could have their own machine, offering wireless internet access to a wide range of applications delivered via the browser.

A couple of thin-client companies caught my eye (there will be more but I was too busy talking!): Netvoyager with its desktop box and ThinTables with their workstations and remotely hosted applications service. More time would have been useful; I’ll be prepared to bet that there will be more such services on offer next year.

I was very impressed by SuperClubsPlus - a secure social networking service for primary (6-12) and secondary (11-14) pupils and also by ParentMail - I’m thinking of trying to pursuade the two schools with which I am locally involved to adopt this; currently parent-school-parent email communications are a management nightmare. But then, most of the time, the technology isn’t the problem, it’s the kneejerk response of, ‘we can’t share addresses with the PTA because of the data-protection act’.

Another interesting technology application was IMJack, from Amteus, which provides secure communication across the school network, from a local, dedicated server. This can include external links such as partner schools, students at home and parents. All instant messaging communications are logged, students presence can be detected, VOIP calls can be made from the classroom. Well worth a look. It can even integrate with blackberry devices, though I personally hate the things