Thursday 25 April 2013

Open Classroom; Open Data; Open World!

From time to time, often during a lesson where I've asked the children to respond to a question in a creative way, I find myself going to see a child with their hand up (the normal way to attract a teacher's attention here). When I reach them, expecting to help them with something to do with their work, I discover that they are handling the challenges they've been set and are answering questions showing an understanding of the concepts. I ask them what's wrong only to be greeted with:
"Miss, they're copying me!"

I start to think. Should the offending child be punished for plagiarism? Should they be made to rewrite the work? Should I move them to a seat with nobody to copy? 

The simple answer is no. As long as it isn't a test situation, I'm aware of the act and the child copying is gaining something from the process, I don't mind! I encourage the original writer or creator of the work to take pride in sharing their ideas - the other child clearly thinks they are worth copying! I ask the child who is borrowing the ideas to share why and to try to find a way to improve it. Often the work that is achieved by two children working together is far better, due to the varied skills and perspectives of multiple minds.

These moments are, I hope, the start of children learning the value of collaboration - one of the key parts of the Space Apps Challenge and, in my opinion, the true importance of open data. If we keep our thoughts, data and resources locked away, refusing to share them, we will never know their full potential for doing good.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a simple story to answer a question with one child in mind. By sharing that story, it has become so much more and the potential benefits are still something I can't quite get my head around! I was lucky enough to find myself as part of a team at the weekend, who provided fantastic ideas, created things (I was sure were going to be impossible; I'm clearly an IT novice,) and endless enthusiasm. They have pushed the story towards its limits, improving it no-end.

The simple story now exists in 12 languages with more being written, it is being made into an animated explorable digital picture book and there are plans to turn it into the starting point for a free-to-access global interactive website for schools. The website will encourage children to interpret or respond to the story in a way that makes sense to them. The different approaches could teach children about cultural differences while allowing them to connect with similar interests. More details will be posted soon as the idea is further refined. People may well be copying me, but I'm privileged that they are - the story is no longer mine, it's ours!

The story is released under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA license.

Tuesday 23 April 2013

Making the story available to a wider audience

It was clear that the story I'd written had limits. It was written in English, and while this is understood by many worldwide, there are lots of people who won't have had an opportunity to learn English. I didn't want the story to only be available for a select group with a privileged background, they already have access to lots of amazing STEM inspiring material. Could this story become something that offered something for every young child, no matter where they happened to be born?

The starting point was to get the story written again, this time in lots of different languages. We tried to find translators who were native speakers so that the flow of the language felt natural for the children who were reading. It's really difficult to read something that hasn't quite been written fluently so online translation sites, while being useful for individual words if there's no bilingual dictionary available, weren't the right option.

Luckily, Space Apps happens around the world, all on the same weekend. There might be people who would be willing to spend a few minutes translating a story to give their brains a break from writing code or piecing together hardware. We might as well ask! We also put out requests on social media sites to get even more people involved.

The explorable story inbox (whyweexplore2013@gmail.com) began to fill up with translations from all sorts of languages. We've got 12 languages so far, but that's not enough. If you know somebody who speaks reasonable English (or one of the other languages we already have,) and could write a version of their own in a different language, please do get in touch. You can find the story in English here along with a description of how to get involved:

All translators are given the option of dedicating their version of the story to a child they know; an idea dreamed up by the children in the team as a way to say thank you for their contribution.

Since the weekend, there has been another exciting idea to use the story to engage a slightly older group of children too and to connect children around the world. But I'll save that for another blog!

Languages covered so far:
Assamese, British Sign Language, Danish, Estonian, English (UK), French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Latin, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Slovenian and Welsh.

The Aim of the Story

The story of the little girl searching for her unicorn was written with the International Space Apps Challenge's Why We Explore challenge in mind. Participants were asked to find a way to express the answer to the question in the form of a presentation, video or infographic of two minutes or less.

The question "Why?" is asked most often (aloud) by young children. So we aimed to make a story which not only answered the question of why humans explore, but also gave them a way to explore the different types of exploration for themselves. We are working on translating the story into as many languages as possible in order to reach out across the planet with fiction.

The story may be simple, but it aims to inspire a new global generation interested in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) education.

Too much to say, too little time!

It's been an exciting weekend at Space Apps. The team are currently trying to catch up with blog writing but keep being distracted by the potential applications of storytelling! Oh and we've all returned to our real life jobs / school study. Sleep can wait though!
There will be something more substantial written here very soon. I promise!
But for the time being: are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...

The explorable story, (in not-yet-explorable form)

Once there was a stubborn little girl whose favourite animal was the unicorn. She knew they existed because she’d seen a unicorn horn hanging on a museum wall when she was 3.

As she grew, she started to look for unicorns wherever she went, taking pictures and recording the other things she found along the way. She looked high and low but couldn’t find any in her garden. So she looked further afield. And further, but still found no evidence of the beautiful creatures of which she dreamed.

When she was older, she became a scientist and despite being excellent at her job, this was a cover story because, deep down, all she wanted was to find her unicorn.


She travelled as far as she could on land and crossed the frozen seas to investigate more, but still to no avail.

She looked under the waves, where she found their cousins. But that wasn’t good enough, she already knew narwhals existed!

After searching the atmosphere, she realised she had been wrong all along. Not believing in unicorns, but in the places she had been searching.So she worked harder than she had ever worked before and pushed her body to extremes. Until one day she strapped herself into a rocket and flew to the moon. Only to find that there were no unicorns there either!

She bounced back to her craft, wondering what to do. She sat, while minutes became hours and hours became days. Then looked out into the darkness and she remembered the twinkling specks of hope that filled the night skies back on Earth. She couldn’t give up. So on she went, drifting through the vacuum.

She travelled beyond the reaches of the Earth’s technologies, so we will never know if she found evidence of her unicorns.

Perhaps her quest was misinformed, but she went anyway; finding some truly inspirational things along the way. We will never know what is out there until we go. This is, and always has been, the reason we explore: exploration is not simply to find one thing, but to see all that is there for ourselves.

What’s your unicorn?