Last December, we (Steve Yurkiw and I) started offering some short courses on technology and learning. We ran a series of four sessions, and paused to evaluate the process. We have now done so, and will be initiating two workshops during July and August.
July's session(starts July 5): Functioning in Distributed Teams
Overview: Participants will explore dynamics of functioning as part of an online team, and select technologies required to achieve intended corporate and learning-based objectives.
Augusts' session (starts August 2): Elearning and Instructional Design
Overview: This course will explore various traditional instructional design models relevant for effective elearning design. Participants will customize an instructional design model for implementation in their work environment.
If you are interested in registering for either workshop, please let me know (registration will be limited).
I've posted a podcast on The changing nature of knowledge. I provide a simple working definition of knowledge (as if that can be defined - attempts to define knowledge are extremely frustrating)...and suggest 10 key ways in which knowledge itself has changed over the last several decades.
Stephen has posted an article in response to my recent assertion that certain elements are in themselves objective: Networks - Revisiting Objective/Subjective... "But, in opposition, I would say that seeing something as a network is a way of seeing something. That something may be seen as a network in the same way that it may be seen as a pebble."
While there is a very slim chance that either of us will change our minds on this (there is simply too much "behind the scenes" thinking that has to go on before we can really get to agreement - in a sense, and I often find this in high level, abstract discussions, we need to agree on thousands of small points, before we can come to a final, complete understanding - assuming of course, that this is even possible). I will post a reply to Stephen shortly (life's a bit busy this week), but for now, I will simply state (wisdom from coffee conversation with Steve Yurkiw), that a book itself does not cease to be a book because we are looking at a single page. In a similar sense, an entity does not cease to be whole simply because we acknowledge it's nuances. Regardless, I enjoy dialogue and challenge to my thinking - more learning happens here than in most anything I do.
Yesterday, Clarence linked to a video presentation on creativity in education. Today, Odeo posted a variety of TED Talks Podcasts...
OpenCourseWare Consortium: "An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware."
A key challenge I (well, actually any educator) encounter when teaching in a classroom or online, is how to create an environment in which the learners will meaningfully interact with the content and conversation. Engagement happens on many levels - learners to learners, learner with content, learner with instructor, learner with self (i.e. "sitting in a corner and thinking"), etc. Relationship-based engagement: "It is people who engage - or don’t. The foundation of any type of engagement is trust, which comes from developing a good relationship with the other party. We believe in trusted sources of information; we will listen and respond to options if we believe they are put forward in good faith; and we will only collaborate if we have confidence that the other party will deliver on their promises."
I've tried various webconferencing (or virtual classroom) platforms (Breeze, elluminate, ivocalize, wimba, centra, webex). The biggest drawback: price. Several years ago, when researching a virtual classroom tool for RRC, I was stunned by the prices (the people who I was hoping would fund the classrooms didn't have to hesitate much before saying no :)). Recently, some products (like ivocalize) provided much lower prices. Still, for most people, it's tough to justify the cost for personal or educational use. I encountered Vyew today - which describes itself as: " browser-based conferencing and always-on collaboration platform that provides instant visual communication without the need for client downloads or installations." The voice is handled via phone, but the tool itself has a nice whiteboard, text chat, and invited user list (see the comparison chart of different platforms). For presentations, I imagine Vyew with Skype could work (though there may be some breaks in audio during large slide transfers). I'm doing some skypecasts over the next while as well to play around with that platform. It's still an emerging field (after 7 years :)), but has much promise.
Mind the Gap: "That's because there's a yawning void in most organizations between idea generation and actual implementation". If this gap exists in businesses, it's certainly worse in academic environments. Not all ideas can be implemented - resources, time, expertise, willingness, and how well the idea is connected to leadership impact the likelihood for success. I genuinely feel that our current problems with education are not due to lack of ideas. The missing element: lack of compelling vision. Most instructors are doing the best they can within the constraints of their work. What is generally needed is the structure of effective functioning (i.e. the ideals to which we aspire as education). If educators have a voice in the creation of those principles, the ensuing change is much more personal and intentional.
Think education - The bottom line is not the bottom line: "As networks shrink the world, business priorities change. Efficient production used to call the shots. Make lots of stuff, gain economies of scale, and sell, sell, sell, even if what you were selling wasn’t quite what your customers were asking for. But now customers can buy whatever they want from anywhere in the world, whenever they want to."
I've been happily collecting neuroscience resources in my bloglines account. Here are some that I've found most useful:
Redwood Centre Symposium (video lectures)
Online Neuroscience Lectures (I think I've linked to this before)
Caltech Neuroscience Lectures
Mind and Brain Portal (wikipedia)
BrainTutor - highly recommended! (a free download educational program on the human brain)
Cognitive science video interviews
Neuroscience podcasts
The Neuroscience of Leadership
Cognitive science podcasts
Stephen links to a great introductory resource on personal learning environments
News, music, TV, (media as a whole) are all experiencing the same crises of openness: Web Users Open the Gates - "Containers in which news had been packaged broke apart because the Internet could deliver content without the wrapping...The basic idea of what defines a news "consumer" morphs when consumers gain access to producers' tools, and can float between being a reader and an editor."
As I've stated (numerous times) before, educators need to watch what's happening in those industries that are facing the first impact of decentralization and shifted end-user control. Learners want to be more than learners - they want to co-create, engage, and teach - a blurring of the functional lines we have artificially created to enable "knowledge transfer". How these trends will impact our learning spaces and structures should be a key concern (or, at minimum, the subject of research - which so far is dismally lacking) for corporate trainers and public educators.
Mirror Neuron Research: Implications for Education: "Every so often, there arises a topic which grabs the imagination, not so much for its current implementation in educational practice, but rather by virtue of the exciting possibilities it seems to present. Mirror neuron research is one of these, having finally accumulated a critical mass sufficient to support a degree of popular currency in the mass media - people are at last asking, not simply ' What are mirror neurons?', but also 'How does this knowledge fit with current educational practice?' and 'What new educational strategies are suggested by trends in neuroscience?""
A lesson for educators to learn (i.e. not one, but many approaches, allowing each to live/die on their own merits) Creating Strategy in an Unkowable Universe: "Strategy as a portfolio of experiments"
In reading the most recent BusinessWeek, I encountered some intriguing statistics:
I've uploaded my presentation to Microlearning conference in Austria: Learning and Knowledge (.ppt).
If educational games are on your horizon, this wiki - Teaching Educational Games - is an excellent place to start. A list of readings, software tools, multimedia materials, etc. are included.
Roger Stack brought a recent post on curriculum as connectivism to my attention. He explores how Ken Wilber's (a name that comes up quite frequently when I speak on connectivism) integral theory of AQAL relates to connectivism as a curriculum metaphor. After reviewing various dimensions of curriculum (as content/subject, discrete tasks, experience, cultural reproduction, currere, and intended outcomes), Roger states that the notion of connectivism "is potentially a richer way of seeing curriculum provision and I'm now interested to see how this metaphor might inform our discussion of how students choose their learning, what structures we might put in place to provide learning ecologies and how we can support students to make the necessary connections."
A belated review (is there any other kind??) of Stephen's presentation last week during the Microlearning conference. I had the pleasure of meeting many individuals from diverse backgrounds and interests (see speaker list). Stephen delivered an excellent keynote on the second day of the conference: elearning 2.0: Platform, not Medium (.ppt). His message centered on how the internet has created a fundamentally different mode of organization for not only organizations and individuals, but for knowledge itself. He presented eight different principles to consider in designing for this new environment...roughly paraphrased, these principles specify how networks differ from traditional learning…these shouldn’t only inform your decision when designing, but when planning for technology – use these principles to evaluate whether something is a good technology. He then provided an exploration of informal tools with potential use for learning (the capabilities of the tools themselves are becoming known as "personal learning environment). Stephen did some of his best work in the Q & A session of the presentation - responding to and interacting with audience members...displaying his background in logic and philosophy. His talk was very well received (one presenter later in the day felt that Stephen's eight principles were sufficiently strong to validate work he was doing in developing a new elearning tool (as the presenter put it "now I have proof that I'm on the right track"))
As with any conference, some of the best learning happened outside of the formal sessions (there was very serious talk about a Bob and Doug McKenzie elearning tour :)). Sebasien Fielder had extended an invite to present to the Centre for Social Innovation in Vienna (the invitation came a few days after I had booked my flight, so I wasn't able to attend). Stephen did attend, and presented on Learning Networks and Personal Learning Environment (.ppt)
I've never been a huge fan of the concept of convergence. It's one of those words that has been absolutely killed with hype and overuse. Yet, it's hard to deny that there is a "coming together" of many different concepts - advertising, open source, technology trends, traditional media, educaton - all of these fields are experiencing similar change-pressures. What's happening in media has application in education...what happens in open source has application in business. It's not convergence...it's more about lessons in one domain being transferable to others (shall we call this transvergence?). strategy+business has an article on The Future of Media is Now. A critical point for educators to consider is the changed relationship that learners have with content: "After a decade of denial, both mainstream media companies and major marketers are now accepting the facts: The methods by which consumers absorb information and entertainment — and the ways they perceive, retain, and engage with brands and brand messages — have changed irrevocably."
I've encountered this article from a diverse group of individuals (starting with Thomas Vander Wal at Microlearning 2006...more on that conference once I get a reliable internet connection to upload my presentation and provide commmentary on Stephen Downes' presentation). Agree or disagree with the main tenets of the author's argument, he presents a contrary view to the mad rush to collectivism that we need to seriously consider DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism: "The problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force."
Important note - I don't think the collective is all-wise...especially when it over-writes the thoughts of others (as does wikipedia. Those who assume wikipedia is a "wisdom of the crowds" tool don't understand either concept). Wikis over-write the ideas of others with the most recent opinions of the last commenter. Blogs (when aggregated are "wisdom of the crowds"). I enjoy wikis for collaborative work...but the chance of "group-think" is strong in the medium.
Unsettling title, good point - Killing the puppy: "“Learning is about failing, repeated failing.” It is uncomfortable being in a state either of complete ignorance or having the awkward feeling of partial knowledge, it is ego deflating when initial stabs produce less than satisfactory results, and to the extent that learning is viewed by students as a competitive sport, it also raises the fear that the others are progressing along so nicely and it is only this particular student who is not getting it, so he is falling behind."
Several weeks ago, I presented the joys of connectivism at EDUCAUSE...My presentation can be found here. Presentations by Diana Oblinger, Chris Dede, and Matthew Szulik (Red Hat) are available.
This report on online trends reveals some interesting information about who posts content online: contributions go up (slightly) with education and income, but decreases dramatically with age. Our generation found it natural (perhaps obvious is better) to go to the library to learn, younger generations find it natural to contribute to the information spaces in which they exist.
Stephen is currently on a speaking tour. He has posted two recent presentations:
What Do You See When You Look Through a Computer? (.ppt) - focused on the role of "self" in the learning process (learning-centered), a unique affordance of learning technologies that shift control to the end-user, and are starting to blur online/face-to-face realities.
How I became (blog) literate (.ppt)...focusing on a new kind of literacy (indirectly expressed via blogs...as Stephen says, literacy happened "in the process of doing other things". This presentation is a bit limited in information on slides...I assume the bulk of the "good stuff" happened during the discussion/presentation.
I haven't had the opportunity to engage in dialogue with Leigh Blackall (though I've often encountered his work). We are both involved in the Global Summit in Australia in October...and I'm looking forward to spending some time exploring his ideas. In many levels, we are walking a parallel path in our joint emphasis on learning as a network-creation process. Leigh is more forceful in his opinions on LMS' than I am (he would have them perish, where I see them as a part of an overall learning ecology). He has posted a wiki-presentation worth exploring: Teaching is dead, long live learning.
I'm currently in Austria for the Microlearning 2006 conference. I've had some time over the last few days to visit local attractions and get a sense for the culture (I've included some photos on flickr). I'm generally able to get along fairly well in communicating with others (due to their English skills, not my German). My wife Karen is traveling with me as well (this is part presentation, part relaxation)...and we had a wonderful dinner at an Italian restaurant. The owner didn't understand any English (or much German for that matter). Language is but one vehicle of communication, and with an interesting dance of repetition, mispronunciation, charades-type actions, we were able to order our dinner (I heard prosciutto, scampi, tiramisu, and espresso...just said yes to each :)).
Thinking about how people can communicate and achieve intended means outside of language, brings me back to my favorite topic of abuse: courses. Courses may be desired vehicles for learning (much like language for communication). Formal learning has often been quoted as comprising less than 20% of the actual learning process. Language (in interpersonal communication) has also been ranked as low as 7% of meaning communication (the balance comes from tone of voice and body language). I find that many Europeans are more comfortable than I am with others who do not speak their language (communicating in alternative means appears to be a skill (or tolerance) they have acquired. I am used to English and French (which I regretably do not speak, in spite of several junior high years of classes). As I do not have the diverse language experiences of Europeans (which requires they shift to alternate means of making requests), I resort to language as a primary means of communicating my requests. I think the same holds true for many with formal learning. People do not acknowledge or value the incredible richness of informal learning...and as a result perceive informal learning as ineffective. The experience with learning drives the selected path. Bloggers and technologists have relied on informal (networked) means of learning for years. It feels intuitive...and in most cases it works better than formal learning.
My internet connection is hit and miss (it's been cloudy since we arrived, so the front desk agent has explained that the weather is the problem). I've come to expect quality internet connections in the same vein that I expect running water!
Personal Learning Environments: "The idea of a Personal Learning Environment recognises that learning is continuing and seeks to provide tools to support that learning. It also recognises the role of the individual in organising their own learning. Moreover, the pressures for a PLE are based on the idea that learning will take place in different contexts and situations and will not be provided by a single learning provider. Linked to this is an increasing recognition of the importance of informal learning."