Found this today, through Futurelab’s ‘Learner voice‘ report, which focuses on how to get children’s involvement and participation in the development of education practices. It’s interesting to see these concepts, which for me have so long been the talk of brands and marketing, to be located in conversations about things that matter, like how future generations learn.

For the commercial world, some of the tools the report talks about – mobile, wikis, online communities, gaming etc – are hardly new, but I imagine they are pretty radical and maybe not that well understood in the education sector.

The idea that really interests me at the moment is how these “tools” are not seen as “tools” by the children. They’re just things they use. They come natural to them. And more than anything else, they’re not associated with school or the school environment. For today’s generation familiar with the likes of Club Penguin and Nintendo DS, these concepts belong to the world of entertainment. The world outside school. So when they do get introduced in schools, it doesn’t feel like a chore. I love the stories about children using their DS in maths classes and carrying on at home doing the same thing, not even thinking it’s homework. That’s how learning should be. With no separation between “this is where you learn” and “this is where you play” .

Bringing together school and the world outside school is what one of the projects we’re working on tries to do (yet to be introduced), and it feels like a really interesting area. I don’t know if this is quite right yet, but if school felt like home and home felt like school, would lifelong learning be much embedded and more natural for our children?

Anyway, I digress. I only started this post to share this – I understand it’s an evolved version of Arnstein’s ladder of citizen particiaption, basically showing types and levels of engagement if projects are shared. I can see how it’s easy to adapt to a number of different situations, from talking about your consumers, to your users, to citizens, so I thought I’d share. Enjoy.