Tomorrow's Professor linked to an interesting resource by Beloit College called the Mindset List. The list explores the different experiences today's students have/have not had compared to previous generations. While it's futile to extend the list by suggesting it could inform how we teach (I'm thinking back to the digital native/immigrant discussion from earlier in the week), it does reveal the enormous differences in mindsets between faculty and students. But not knowing about the Berlin Wall, or not having lived without mobile phones, hardly provides an indication that generations are significantly different from each other in how they learn. I, for example, recall days without mobile phones. But I also recall the last 15 years with one. Technology enters society at a date, not at any particular generation. I've been using the internet (and facebook, blogging) longer than most students I encounter. Many educators/trainers I speak with fit a similar profile.
Short article expressing fairly basic stuff we've all heard before - Researchers question school in high-tech age: "Dentists, doctors and other professionals asleep for 100 years would awake, he says, to a world where they would not recognize their jobs, much less perform them. But in education, a teacher could walk into a classroom after a century and get busy."
Of greater interest for me is the conversation that emerges in the discussion. I had to chuckle at this response: "Auto workers, engineers and film-makers asleep for 100 years would awake today to a world where they could not recognize their jobs - now done extensively by or through robots or computers - and yet in child care, a parent from a century ago could still walk right into a nursery today and change a diaper and feed a baby - - And soooo... therefore... human babies should be fed and cared for by computerized robots..."
Regardless of how one views the use of technology in teaching, the comments reveal a very deep divide between those advocating for change (pedogical and technological) and those resisting.
Over the last few weeks, I've done less blogging at my LTC blog at University of Manitoba, and have decided to do weekly podcasts instead (my blog identity is too scattered). This week's podcast: "In the 17th and 18th centuries, much of the learning and dialogue in society occurred in salons, coffeehouses, and taverns. Formal structures like the Royal Society (1660) conducted more focused explorations of knowledge and dialogue. But coffeehouses and other informal gatherings were important spaces for learning (even being called “penny universities” - a penny being the cost of entry). Then, as media and publication formalized, we lost our individual voices in the dialogue. We were - to misquote Kant - in a position of self-incurred silence where we permitted others to speak on our behalf. The self-incurred silence is found in the media of this last century: newspapers, radio, TV. Today, we are at a point of REenlightenment, where we are beginning to reclaim our voices in public dialogue. This reawakening has important considerations for education…"
Trebor Scholz has made his course syllabus available for Social Media. The presentation is subtitled "web 2.0, what went wrong". It's tough to get a sense of what the author thinks went wrong from only slides. I don't think anything has gone wrong yet with web 2.0 (except the term...and as I've posted before, its impact on open source use at an educator level). It's still a young movement bridging two parallel trends: social/conceptual innovation (open source, democracy, two-way information flow) and tool-based innovation (blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, blah, blah, blah). The reading list for the course is excellent - the most complete compilation of articles I've seen on the social and technological space in which these changes are occurring.
I don't like the terms "digital immigrant" and "digital native". They misrepresent the true nature of learners and learning today. Unfortunately, they are also adopted by numerous trainers, teachers, and academics. While false, the immigrant/native distinction is one that can be readily understood and embraced by most people. It's a simple framework with which we can think, organize, and partially understand huge changes. As educators, we see that our students are different than we were/are (an experience that every generation in history has encountered). The distinction of immigrant/native may be accurate (i.e. that my children have grown up with digital tools and therefore cannot think of a time when they were without them, whereas I recall a time before email and laptops). What is wrong is the implications drawn from this distinction. And the age distinction is perhaps the most discriminatory. Yes, stats show that younger learners do different things with technology, that they use it more than previous generations, and so on. What is missing is an analysis of the depth of their understanding of technology. Most younger learners have a utilitarian understanding of technology. They know how to download, instant message, and participate in facebook. That is the focus of their current use of technology as a tool. Nothing wrong with it. But the distinction is one of interest and use, not age. Anyway, Henry Jenkins posts some thoughts on natives/immigrants: "...these terms also distort many aspects of the phenomenon that they seek to describe...There are at least three major distortions involved:
1. The terms are ahistorical
2. It collapses all young people into a so-called digital generation.
3. It ignores the degree that what's really powerful about most of the new forms of participatory culture of fans, bloggers, and gamers is that such affinity spaces allow young people and adults to interact with each other in new terms."
The best predictions to make are those that are already occurring. Vint Cerf, aka the godfather of the net, predicts the end of TV as we know it: "Dr Cerf predicted ...that we would soon be watching the majority of our television through the internet - a revolution that could herald the death of the traditional broadcast TV channel in favour of new interactive services."
The big point here is that it's not so much the death of television, but the death of others control of when we watch television. We are already well conditioned to expect our news, music, and information when we want it. The same impact will be felt by television. And I guess there's a lesson in there somewhere for educators and our view of students attending classes on our terms...
An industry in crisis cannot care for itself. It inevitably becomes the object of interest for outsiders. Sometimes it's in the form of government regulation. Other times from related industry who have a vested interest. We have something unusual occurring in the education field. Corporations increasingly lack confidence in education to continue to meet their needs. Last year, I presented during an EDUCAUSE online conference with Mathew Szulik (Red Hat). He made a statement to the effect: "When you [education] are done with students, we have to re-train them to compete in today's world". I haven't quite been able to shake that statement. Perhaps because of the many assumptions it expresses - like that the primary role of education is to prepare people for work. Work preparation is obviously a large aspect of education, but I'm not comfortable with a purely utilitarian approach. Education plays more roles than purely work-based: preparation for living, becoming a contributing member of society, advancing knowledge, etc. Plus, why is it that corporations assume they understand learning and education? Reminds me of many, many days ago when I was in the restaurant industry. I saw many restaurants fail because individuals didn't respect the complex nuanced nature of the field. "My mother makes a good meatloaf" or "My husband bar-b-ques awesome ribs" was a good enough reason to open a restaurant. End result? Colossal failure. Education is supposed to be tough...and complex. Yes, we can eliminate the complexity by reducing it to skills and metrics, but that's not education anymore. Then it's merely skill development. It might meet a corporation's bottom line, but it doesn't advance a society. Education is quickly veering into the domains of religion and politics for adherents and debate.
All of this to say, FastCompany has an article on Microsoft (and other corporations) school involvement
Twitter - a great tool for which my personality has limited use - is gaining a fair bit of serious thinking from people like Nancy White: Thinking about Twitter Part 1 and Part 2. Twitter is also being used in reporting, business, education (see also Doug Belshaw's post), and so on.
Lifestreaming (yay, another buzzword!) is based largely on the continuous expression of our activities, including my all time favorite illustration that natural selection doesn't always work: Justin.tv (with a concept called lifecasting).
I've been peripherally following reactions to wikiscanner. Wikiscanner reviews who (by IP address) has made changes to wikipedia. It's an interesting experiment, but not much more. After all, is anyone really surprised that Iran has made changes? Or CIA? Or the government of Australia? The real story here is not that certain organizations have made changes to wikipedia - that should be assumed. The story instead is about how our digital activities leave trails that can be explored years down the road.
We - Learning Technologies Centre, University of Manitoba, are hosting an online symposium on September 24: Copyright/Copyleft: Issues for Education Symposium. No fee for attendance, but registration is required. We have Michael Geist and Marcus Bornfreund (of Creative Commons Canada) presenting. While our presenters will be discussing copyright within the Canadian context, the discussion forums will explore concerns as defined by participants (which basically means, if you're not from Canada, I think you'll still get value from the presentations and discussions).
I've posted an entry on my connectivism blog on Networks, Ecologies, and Curatorial Teaching. The addition of curator to the more nebulous functions of free roaming learning and exploration clears up several concerns I have with the direction of discussions on learning in decentralized environments. Would love to hear what others think...
I don't usually collect testimonials and such based on writing, work, or presentations. However, I've been requested to provide a series of testimonials for a conference later this year. If you have something to say about me or a comment on a presentation I've delivered that you've attended, I'd appreciate a short testimonial (with your title/organization/name - while I'm asking for assistance, I might as well make it annoying :)). Email to: gsiemens@elearnspace.org. Thanks.
Microsoft has released a new search service - Tafiti (well, the search is still the same as previous, but the interface is built with Silverlight). I first encountered Silverlight when playing around with Popfly. It's quite nice - loads quickly, adds great additional functionality/interactivity to sites. After a few minutes with Tafiti - saving and tagging searches - all sorts of ideas pop up/options/uses pop up. Clicking on the tree view gives a visual representation of key areas...and the user can drag the slide bar to "seedling" or "full tree" size. And then happily watch as the tree rotates (it's really a rather special tree). I'm impressed.
Google has turned it's focus from the popular Google Earth program to...the sky. Perfect for those nights when walking all the way outside seems like too much of a challenge :).
Much like Google earth provided an important tool for educators, Google Sky will be welcomed by many teachers. Simple tools like this are important for extending the scientific knowledge of a society. The ability to overlay Hubble images and gain additional information on certain formations or the use of the planet layer to observe planetary orbits are very useful. Why aren't educators coming up with tools of this nature with potential for broad public use? Sure, I know the argument - schools and universities don't have the money required. But that's not true. The real problem is a vision for making education and learning tools broadly (and simply) available for anyone. We can spend huge amounts of public funds building learning management or repository systems...which then end up barely used. Why not create something people actually use? Something that arouses instills the wonder of learning in the broader population?
Our Intranet, the Wiki: Case Study of a Wiki changing an Enterprise: "In 2006, Janssen-Cilag completely replaced our simple, static HTML intranet with a Wiki solution. Over the 16 months since launch, it has dramatically transformed our internal communication and continues to increase in both visits and content contributions each month."
Wikis are becoming more of a platform for sites than simply a tool for collaboration. I haven't spent much time over the last year or so maintaining elearnspace's pages - some sections are a bit outdated. I've been considering using a wiki as a base for the site - so much easier to make changes, add resources, or even invite others to participate. It's those spammers that cause me to be reluctant...
Complicity is an online journal focused on complexity and education. I was invited to contribute an article to their most recent edition. The article - Connecting - was an attempt to detail how the fields of learning and research need to move away from linearity to embrace less-deterministic and more systemic approaches. Reading the article now, I don't think I managed to quite achieve what I had hoped (partly due to space limitations). Leaving that aside, the journal offers several provocative articles to challenge traditional conceptions of education. Complexity and systems views will continue to grow in prominence. When you think about it, it's a bit silly to assume that learners will actually learn what we plan by writing our learning outcomes. Sometimes the only measure that they have met our targets is that our evaluations are so closely tied to the outcomes that we basically measure a thin sliver of knowledge rather than a more complex understanding formed through greater diversity.
How's this for stirring the pot? A call for a textbook purchasing moratorium: "We need a moratorium on textbook purchasing in this nation, and we need to utilize those funds instead to purchase laptop computers and digital curriculum materials for students and teachers."
I can see the motivation behind Wesley Fryer's statements - in spite of the prevalence of technology, very little has changed at the classroom level (though there are certainly significant activities by educators like Vicki Davis and Clarence Fisher that are challenging status quo). Fryer suggests that technology needs to replace pen and paper because "Education cannot and will not change in the basic, fundamental ways we need and should want it to change in the twenty-first century as long as textbooks, paper, and pencils continue to be the predominant technologies". This requires a far more in-depth discussion of what should change and why it should (a topic I won't get into here). I'm not convinced that technology is deterministic - i.e. that we must inexorably trudge the path down which it leads. The real call is one of systemic change - what needs to change to better prepare our students for tomorrow's world? Technology will no doubt play a part, but I'm not convinced that it must correspondingly be the tool through which the change is enacted. There is growing interest (school 2.0, college 2.0, even enterprise 2.0), but the conversation is generally more focused on what we want to move away from than what we want to move toward. And, once we've decided what we want to become, we're largely unclear on the tools and process that will enable us to become that vision. While I like blogs, wikis, and podcasts, they by themselves will not completely alter education.
OECD offers three broad scenarios for the future structure schooling (via Stephen Downes): status-quo, re-schooling, and de-schooling. When addressing de-schooling, the report presents a very short indication of what I think the model will likely be: "Learning Networks and the Network Society". While the report presents this as largely a function of technology, learning networks are not solely reliant on technology. Learning groups like Toastmasters, self-help groups for treating addiction and anxiety, parenting groups, and so on, all function on a network model. The primacy of the node in an ecology of freedom is what makes networks and learning work. And it scales...small groups dividing and replicating according to needs of members. Contrast that with many classrooms...
We've heard the statement hundreds of times - the human brain is the most complex object in the universe. And due to this complexity, our understanding of the brain is still severely limited. In a recent article, Discover Magazine explored some key areas we don't understand: 10 unsolved mysteries of the brain...including challenging questions like: what is consciousness? How do complex brain systems interact without a coordinating (anatomical) region to manage the convergence? How is information coded? How are memories stored?
The Name of the Game is Work: "If you're thinking that maybe you should hide the video game controller from your kids because they're spending too much time in front of the TV or computer, don't. What you think is slacking may just be preparing them to become productive members of the workforce when they get older."
There is little doubt that games and simulations (not SecondLife, necessarily) will become a significant aspect of training and education. About eight years ago, with a colleague at RRC, we started incorporating simple games into curriculum. Some games were a simple play on Jeopardy, Solitaire, and other common games. Others were more complex and involved. The potential impact with games and learning became apparent when we asked for student involvement in reviewing our games. Without exception, students became much more involved, active, and even excited. I recall one classroom where the game (think it was a Jeopardy-like) where one student started on my laptop in the front of the class, and within a few minutes, almost the whole class was crowded around the computer. Games, for learners, are an invitation to interaction. Unfortunately, most classroom-based learning is not.
Most new courses, classes, or training programs have a significant flaw: the repetition of everything that has already been done, without retaining the value of the learning experiences of others. Clarence Fisher expresses this well - Wikis in the classroom: "...the most valuable things about wikis. They allow students to see what their peers have done over the past years as part of the mandated curriculum. Students make connections with students from the past and also build on their knowledge, seeing each other as legitimate sources of information and learning."
Ewan McIntosh draws our attention to Kevin Kelly's presentation on collective intelligence. Kelly suggests that the current state of the internet - in terms of nodes/neurons is comparable to the human brain. He personifies technology (i.e. technology wants certain things and possesses a deterministic path (and that we have a moral obligation to let technology increase)...as he notes, resistance to a particular technology doesn't typically run past one generation). Two problems with his general message:
- Consciousness, not quantity of nodes, is the defining attribute of complex biological systems (see Is Consciousness Definable? is an intriguing debate by experts on this difficult subject). Having 100 billion nodes or neurons is not necessarily an indicator of consciousness
- The internet, in it's current state, has similar attributes (in node size) to one human brain. But there's more than just a few of us humans on this earth...
We (Learning Technologies Centre, U of Manitoba) have hosted two online conferences this year. Great response from attendees and I imagine we'll do similar sessions in the future. But both were quite involved to organize and get set up. So I've been thinking about the unconference and barcamp model where participation and organization are dispersed from the organizers to potential attendees. To achieve this ideal state, I've set up EduCampOnline 2007 - an online barcamp running from September 24-28, 2007...no established theme - you, as attendees, set agenda and presentation topics. If you're interested, head over to the site to sign up for a presentation, suggest themes you would like to explore, ways to organize the conference, what we can do to make it more engaging, etc. The site is a bit slow...password is c4mp .
How Wiki Software is Changing Communication: "Now the technology [wikis] is increasingly spreading outside the world of tech geeks and into the mainstream, being adopted by workplaces, corporations and even governments." (via Will Richardson)
We use wikis extensively in our department - for collaborating, brainstorming, writing, and capturing and sharing resources. But the democratic nature of wikis can be a drawback. In spite of numerous links to colleagues to a wiki page ("hey, let's flesh this out in a wiki"), the uptake is quite low. We revert back to email. There is something personal (a sense of ownership? identity?) about knowledge that is not always reflected in wikis. Open, collaborative platforms, after all, force a tremendous shift in power and dialogue.
Some mixed reactions on this announcement from Google: "We'll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question."
The idea of giving readers a voice is the driving theme behind the read/write web. The drawback to this announcement is that the "voice" is given only to people directly involved in the story. Another interesting aspect relates to content hosting - obviously Google News aggregates content, so comments made by those involved in the article will only be seen through the eyes of Google News readers...not the actual article. PR companies must like this new option...
Most of my conference presentations over the last two months have focused on information visualization (see this recording from a session I did for elluminate). Visualizing information and data is a key resource to dealing with information overload. When technology manages and displays the relationships between data (does the cognitive grunt work for us), we ramp up to pattern recognition and reflection of implications. Here are a few additional resources I've recently come across:
Gallery of Data visualization
Modern approaches to data visualization
16 awesome data visualization tools
Debunking Third world myths with the best stats you've ever seen (Hans Rosling - amazing!)
New insights into poverty and life around the world (also Hans Rosling, and also amazing).
I downloaded two of Rosling's programs for use during my keynote in Lisbon in July: Dollar Street and World Health Chart...both very addictive tools, great for exploring complex data sets most people would typically walk. Rosling's company - Gapminder - has since been purchased by Google.
David Maister on self-publishing: "Ask any business author who has published a book what the experience was like: for the vast majority, the horror stories are endless.
Basically, publishers don’t actually add any value. Yes, they can edit a manuscript and get a book typeset, but both of those things are freely available as stand-alone services to anyone" (via Ross Dawson).
I've discussed University of Manitoba's Virtual Learning Commons in this forum previously - at it's heart, it is an attempt to engage learners in the manner in which they prefer to be engaged. We've had a few things "fail" (i.e. who knew tag clouds were so confusing?) which has provided great learning experiences as the VLC is refined. We have created a Facebook application (if you can't beat them, join them) allowing learners to pull feeds into their FB profile...and are revising how information is presented to learners - in the spirit of linear "what has happened recently" used by social networking sites.
Building a Virtual Learning Commons: What do YOU want to do? (.pdf) is an exploration of our experience with VLC presented from the perspective of U of M Libraries and international students. Universities, colleges, corporations, need to understand the value of social networks...and need to begin experimenting with how they are to be used organizationally. For example, if a university wants to provide academic or social support for learners, I don't think it's feasible anymore to house those as centralized functions. Offload parts of it to the network. If a business wants to train and develop employees, again, I think exclusive centralization works well. Use communities of practice and networks - get people involved in the things that will impact them. Co-creators of learning and support, not solely consumers, is the substantial shift here.
Networks - while they've always been there (as Barabasi says: "Networks are present everywhere. All we need is an eye for them") - are growing in prominence in disciplines such as economics (Beinhocker), education, business (Verna Allee's work with value networks), politics, etc. Obviously, network theory has long been prominent (in concept, if not in name) in biology, sociology, and physics. Many outside of those fields are now beginning to see the underlying network architecture in their own discipline...and in the case of business in particular, are starting to use "network thinking" to market their products and conduct research. To broaden my own conception of network applicability, I've been following an interesting blog by Jay Deragon on the relationship economy - looking at the business and personal implications of networks.
Jane Hart asked members of the edtech community to post their favorite learning tools (I submitted my list, but don't see it on the site - perhaps my list was too basic...I did, after all, include pen and paper as my top learning tool). The resulting list provides valuable insight into how other professionals manage their own learning.
CommonCraft has posted various short videos explaining new technologies. To date, they've done the following in their "Plain English" series:
Spock - a people search engine - is now available in beta. The site is (very) slow, but some of the results are interesting. Looks like Spock uses a variety of social networking sites to collect information...so if you're active online, don't be surprised to see your b-day and age listed, sites you're involved with, etc. But, I must confess, I don't think I'll use it. In order to find the person you're looking for, you need to already know about the person - i.e. the numerous returns with different names requires that I sort of know the person's age, location, and so on. I'd find more information about a person using Google than Spock. But, perhaps as Spock improves, it will become more useful.
The new economics of media make charging for content nearly impossible because there is always someone else producing similar content for free — even if the free content isn’t “as good as” the paid content by some meaningful metric, it doesn’t matter because there’s so much content of at least proximate quality that the paid content provider has virtually no pricing power.
To date, I haven't been bitten by the Second Life bug. My avatar is very neglected. In a recent trip with my teenage daughter, I had to chuckle at her reaction to internet access. When I lack email access for several hours, I develop a psychological condition known as connectitus, defined as: "some part of the world has changed in the last five minutes, and I must find out RIGHT NOW what it was". My daughter has a different view: she wants to know what happened in her virtual world...most recently, that her horses needed to be fed (don't think it's a function of age, but of interests). She laughs at me when I need my information fix, I laugh at her when her digital horses require food. It's the same digital disorder, it just manifests itself differently! Techcrcunch has a short article summarizing different virtual world services (just to inform the world that even though Second Life is the de facto conference theme these days, many more options exist).
Freakonomics blog has a discussion on the value of Second Life.
We hit a point somewhere in the mid-18th century where we started doing what we think of technology today and it started changing things for us, changing society. Since World War II it's going literally exponential and what we are experiencing now is the real vertigo of that - we have no idea at all now where we are going.
Over the last several years, calls for rethinking literacy have grown in prominence - ALA released a report in 2000 on information literacy skills (.pdf), NCEE released a report on how to change the education system, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills is dedicated to "infusing" (their word) these missing elements into education, and so on. I recently came across a report (.pdf) by the Association of American Colleges and Universities which addresses the skills higher education needs to cultivate in learners. I imagine most educators and corporate training departments know that we need to develop different skills in learners - from primary, secondary, post-secondary education, and into the corporate market. Lacking in the discussion is the structural elements of the system to be tasked with achieving the education of these learners. The NCEE report tinkers with salary increases, better recruitment, standards, etc. Structurally, education could continue to exist as it does under that model. I'm interested in what education should look like. What structural changes are required? We know the problem, we have a vision for the content of our needed educational models, but we lack (public, private, and corporate education) the structural model that will provide the backbone of learning. I'm working on an article on this subject, so if you have ideas, feel free to comment.
The problem, simply put: we have limits to processing information but information, as yet, doesn't appear to have limits in growth. And that causes much angst. We'll start to see gurus appearing with greater prominence in the next several years who will teach us how to handle this abundance (hmm, perhaps I should do the roving conference series on "how to handle info overload"). Anyway, short article on the one of the first such gurus: Seeing through the data smog: "You have to control your own attention, not let it be controlled by technology". Yeah, ok. We also have to create world peace. The problem here isn't in defining the problem. It's in enacting a manageable solution.
Some stats on the growth of social networking software. Valleywag has a nice visual on prominent social network tools in different parts of the world.
I received my invite to Google Mashups yesterday. Will play around with it once time permits. It's in line with Microsoft's Popfly (which I quite enjoyed, but am always amazed at MS' ability to make a tool confusing rather than intuitive) or Yahoo's Pipes. So, IBM's tutorial on mashups seems like an appropriate resource to share. See also Brian Lamb's EDUCAUSE article Dr. Mashup for an education-slant to mashups.