Changes to the curriculum are increasingly informed by the emergence of new technologies and the endless potential that these technologies represent. Information on just about every known subject is now available to anyone who has access to the Internet. With ever-increasing opportunities for users to interact with, and indeed add to this knowledge base, there emerges new potential for students to engage in different forms of critical thinking and interactive learning. But how can technology aid the kinds of formal learning that takes place in the classroom? How, for example, might a learning application help a teacher deliver a lesson on the Suffragettes movement? The SILVER consortium is developing innovative software that facilitates interactive learning activities, employing images to engage students in critical interpretation and thinking.
The SILVER project comprises a consortium of 3 organisations: Bridgeman Education; Lexara (technology partner); and the Knowledge Media Institute, which is part of the Open University. The consortium is investigating how digital technologies might best be used within the classroom for the delivery of learning activities for a broad array of diverse learning, from primary to university level and from advanced learners to those with special needs. Favouring an iterative design process, the SILVER team is carrying out a series of focus group and classroom testing sessions, including the end user at every stage of SILVER software development.
For the first SILVER prototype the SILVER team focused on the subject of the Suffragettes Movement, part of the Citizenship curriculum for KS3. This particular module is available as a free trial from our website: www.silvereducation.org.
The SILVER consortium is beginning to form some interesting conclusions based on feedback from teachers and students, not only as a result of the focus group and classroom testing sessions, but also through the SILVER blog, accessible from the SILVER website. It is clear that teachers require software that is both flexible and easy to use. It is also clear that teachers find it easier to hold their students' attention whilst delivering lessons through a digital medium as opposed to traditional forms of print media.
"I got responses from the kids that I wouldn't get in a different context, I wouldn't have got those responses from an image on paper" Sarah Bamford, School Teacher, Peacehaven School
The ubiquitous nature of digital technologies, coupled with society's growing fascination with images, makes this an ideal time to develop a visual learning application. The popularity of resources such as Flickr and YouTube confirm a new level of human engagement with images and these applications seem to accommodate our need, for example, to view, tag, and share images. This engagement with images is further encouraged by the inclusion of cameras on hand-held devices such as mobile phones. The general trend towards user generated content (UGC) on the web means that the SILVER team must think carefully about how to create a learning model that is less hierarchical than traditional top down learning models.
The current challenge for the SILVER team is to build an application for the delivery of learning activities on the subject of sustainability, a cross-curricula subject that is especially relevant to KS3 and KS4 Geography. SILVER is fortunate to have access to a wealth of relevant images from the Bridgeman archive; content that is well suited to the teaching of the principles of environmental sustainability. The second part of the module involves students generating their own content, perhaps from their neighbourhood or even from their own homes.
To be involved in future SILVER focus group sessions please contact the SILVER Interactive Learning Specialist Susa Rodriguez-Garrido: susa.rodriguezgarrido@bridgemanart.co.uk
In the 1940s, the Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan put forward the prognostic view that developments in technology would dethrone the visual from the top of the sensory hierarchy. On the evidence of research carried out by the SILVER consortium it is clear that McLuhan was wrong. The image is, more than ever, the dominant player in the act of information gathering, and in this digital epoch, the potential to evolve new forms of visualised learning seems endless.
by Brian Kavanagh
