Ed Design :: Feeds

Power-law distribution and openess - Be brave take the jump.

Have you heard of the 'Power-law distribution' law, it asserts that 80 percent of productivity within an organisation or company will be done by 20 percent of employees, or in other edu-blogging terms 80 percent of edu-blogging within an educational organisation will be done by 20 percent of edu-bloggers and that's being incredibly optimistic (80% itself could be quite low output!) Hold that thought.

‘You’ve got to be crazy if you want to start a wiki operation from scratch you have got to have a sustainable community’
Wayne Macintosh Wikieducator

As before with the LMS software, many educational organisations look to invest time and money into in-house systemisation of technology with the vision of staff collaborating and sharing information and creating learning resources with colleagues within the organisation, for example through an in-house installation of a technology such as media-wiki or wordpress blog on their own server.

Fair enough, but is this sustainable? Probably not based on ‘Power-law distribution’.

Why bother with in house software installs? Some valid reasons to...

• Enable closed environments for privacy
• Provide storage space
• Enable protection of IP
• Protection of staff from the open internet
• Market courses and service
• Aggregate staff as part of a learning group
• Have control off the content and who views it...

As Wayne Mactintosh of Wiki educator alludes in his above statement the reality is it's hard work, costly and difficult to achieve sustainable community interactions which continually motivate contributions from members.

No matter what technological solution the organisation invests it's time and money into as per the 'Power-law distribution' law they will still be reliant on a limited pool of enthusiastic innovators to develop skills and expertise and share with the rest of the organisation.

Whereby 20% of staff (If your're lucky) will do the edu-blogging work in addition they will probably want to forgoe the carefully executed in house system and do their own thing using whatever technology they choose to keep up with the ever changing e-learning market. This is a good thing for organisation innovation.

So where is the sustainable profitiable and quality educational solution to the 80:20 problem for the progressive education organisation looking to implement edu-blogging and networked learning systems for their staff?

Support for any of the open learning mediawiki systems such as http://wikipedia.org/ that have an active community base, contributors and flow of vistors look set to provide a sustainable and business solution for organisation's that recognise the benefits of taking the road less travelled and systematically going open.

For example, it's early days but the business oppportunities are out there for the early adopters of http://wikieducator.org/ which has:

• 4000 visitors per week and rising (Sep 07)- great organisational branding and marketing opportunities
• An active communtiy of techies fruther developing the wiki educator platform for free
• Free hosting of content
• Anything you add to wiki educator you actually own the copyright, wiki educator doesn’t own the copyright you still retain the copyright and your intellectual property rights
• Uses Creative Commons Share Alike licence. Which is a good thing because you get to leverage outside contributors innovations within your organisation saving time and money...

In terms of cost effectivess and achieving business objectives systemisating the use of open teaching and learning technologies such as wikipedia and wikieducator for accessing, marketing and developing your organisation's educational resources under creative commons is a sound business and educational decision.

'Its all about numbers'
Leigh Blackall - 'Otago Polytechic

I recommend listening to this recording of Wayne Macintosh's visit to Otago Polytechnic to discuss all things wiki educator for educational organisations.

Wikieducator and Otago Polytechnic

Currently the Illawarra Institute and Otago Polytechic is looking to implement a trial project with the Tourism and Hospitality Faculty to implement a business and education model using wiki educator (More to follow).

So why bother with time an money on house systems? Obviousily closed in house systems make sense in terms of protecting senstive information, managing aspects of child protection, managing assessment results, creating group learning environments...

From a business point of view will organisations with in house investment in edu-blogging technology enable co-creation co-sharing and co-collaboration on educational resource work in a cost effective profitable AND sustainable manner over a number of years? Maybe if the community members personal relationships are good... but probably not.

If the the vision is for sustainable collaboration and sharing of information within an organisation the future is open and networked using tools such as wiki educator and wikipedia and creative commons licencing networking with the other 20% of innovative edu bloggers from other organisations. Be brave and take the jump to openess.

TAFENSW wiki forums RSS - Yahoo Pipes [Flickr]

Steven Parker posted a photo:

I have mashed up the RSS feeds from the TAFE NSW wikispaces Home forum pages using pipes.yahoo.com into a single RSS feed as I would like to be able to be able to participate in Cross Institute eLearning Forums.

pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=puSLwrN13RGfDRE8A046Cw...

Recommend ustlising the forums by changing the wiki settings in ManageSpace/permissions/Discussion Permissions to 'Allow message posts from non-members'.

Cheers

Steven

Wikispaces - Staff Support Network eLearning Forum. [Flickr]

Steven Parker posted a photo:

See the "Wikispaces - Staff Support Network eLearning Forum." video

Subscribing to the Illawarra Institute Staff Support Network eLearning Forum in http://learnspace.iiwiki.edu.au


This video was originally shared on blip.tv by sparker with a No license (All rights reserved) license.

FLNW06 - Professional Development Space of the Future [Flickr]

Steven Parker posted a photo:

See the "FLNW06 - Professional Development Space of the Future" video




This video was originally shared on blip.tv by sparker with a No license (All rights reserved) license.

FLNW #4 Web 2.0 and Networking with Business [Flickr]

Steven Parker posted a photo:

See the "FLNW #4 Web 2.0 and Networking with Business" video

Tired with little sleep, but still inspired with the conversations and people I have met. I had a great day here's a video of me tired and cranky at the end of a busy successful day evangelising Web 2.0 and networked learning, meeting some people from the Dunedin Business community, 28days training for the Real Estate Industy and http://silkbody.co.nz. I've be looking for an alternative to text blogging and using the built in apple isight on my laptop to blog, it's more honest and spontaneous. I like the way this post reflects my body language and how tired I am (sleep was lacking for the past few days), it's me evolving to more real communication. This form of video blogging will start to become more common, especially when PC laptops get web cams and video with mobile devices becomes more cost effective. Having a threaded conversation of video posts could be the breakthrough in looking to engaging the greater majority with the networked model i.e. those who are perhaps not
comfortable with the work time and nature of text blogging .


This video was originally shared on blip.tv by sparker with a Creative Commons Attribution license.

FLNW #3 The conference is on the money [Flickr]

Steven Parker posted a photo:

See the "FLNW #3 The conference is on the money" video

Some observations from the journey over to New Zealand on what is going on in the mainstream press with Web 2.0 and social software, how it is affecting organisations and the way they work...the FLNW conference is on the money...http://flnw.wikispaces.com


This video was originally shared on blip.tv by sparker with a Creative Commons Attribution license.

People Learning Management: Learnscope 07 postcard

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A 'People Learning Management System' utilises a variety of Web 2.0 communication tools and real life meet-ups to aggregate people to come together around a particular subject, task, problem. A PLMS emphasizes the idea of the person as a learning object rather than the traditional LMS model where of the value in passive consumption of learning object resources.

• This active ad hoc hands on communicative approach to professional development and learning in general requires top down management and teaching that enables rather than controls the activities of staff and students.


• A structured framework of scheduled AND informal activities mapped against the curriulum and individuals learing plans. This to form a student's and teacher's e-portfolio of their learning within the organization.


• A People learning system is flexible and has both chaotic and organized communication using a flexible variety of ad-hoc tools agreeable to the community of individuals and their learning plans. The common denominator for ALL activity is the curriculum around which activity sheets can be developed for other community member to follow.

The screencast video is a prototype example of how we âre using an ad-hoc variety of Web 2.0 tools and processes to achieve this purpose based on some of the ideas from the Learnscope 2006 teacherConnect project see below.

Other underpinning links:

• Innovation in the Professional Development Process


• The importance of activity sheets (The glue that binds the network?)


• I am a Learning Object - Empowerment through each other


• Networked learning mind map

Summary

• Focus on authoring activity sheets within organisations.


• This is where the valuable IP and services are to be offered. Focus on linking to and authoring resources using free online tools on the open internet.


• This is where the valuable cost savings, quality, concurrency and professional connections with others and business will be made.
  
  

Create digital stories using Photostory 3

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Links for 2007-07-24 [del.icio.us]

• HBS Cases: How Wikipedia Works (or Doesn't) — HBS Working Knowledge
  HBS professor Andy McAfee had his doubts about Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia created and maintained by volunteers. "I just didn't think it could yield a good outcome or a good encyclopedia. But I started consulting it and reading the entries, and I s

Links for 2007-07-12 [del.icio.us]

• Implement environmental policies and procedures
  Au useful resource for the environet.wikispaces.com project

I am a Learning Object - Empowerment through each other

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Links for 2007-07-11 [del.icio.us]

• Implement environmental policies and procedures
  Au useful resource for the environet.wikispaces.com project

Links for 2007-06-21 [del.icio.us]

• Australia Gives More Children in Developing Countries a Better Education
• http://ceparralearnscope.wordpress.com/

Links for 2007-06-20 [del.icio.us]

• Savv-e [home]
• Learning Dynamics - Welcome

Links for 2007-04-23 [del.icio.us]

• Community Guidelines - NSW Learnscope Wiki

Madness -The price of property in Sydney - April 2007

The Sydney Morning Herald Magazine cover story was 'What does 400K get you within Sydney'. 400k+ gets you a two bedroom apartment, if you're lucky, that's 400k + for a two bedroom apartment! Ridiculous!

Here's a great of spitting image political satire from 1989, the time of the last major UK housing correction.



This guy talks about the factors leading to a property crash, very informative. :-( Aspirational home ownership for first home buyers has never felt so frustrating.

The importance of activity sheets (The glue that binds the network?)

I'm appreciatively following the implementation of Learnscope's new wiki and Leigh Blackall's participation in the Tectonic Shift Think Tank in Vancouver.

Am also looking forward to the education.au seminar 'Challenging how knowledge is created' with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.
It seems Media wiki is set to become an embedded piece of software across the education sector (Fingers crossed).

MediaWiki (free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia) is a great solution as a central node for connecting educators within an education organisation.

I've worked previousily on using wikispaces to connect teachers as part of a central organistion node for networking ; The idea: link a profile to a network to a network , no boundaries...this had some degree of success, but little uptake and sustainability... now consider the importance of activity sheets for this aim.

I think media wiki has potential at a basic level as the central node for knowledge sharing; we're now looking to raise the value and advocate the publishing of activity sheets within an organisation node.

In particular through teachers using media wiki for authoring Activity sheets that achieve stated outcomes and link to resources from the open internet, a la, google docs , wikipedia, wiki university, wiki, educator, wikispaces…using any number of tools and resource freely available on the internet.

The reasoning:

• Activity sheets provide the context and direction and importantly the process to participate in activities, link to resources and free media utilising a variety of media and publishing tools.
• Activity sheets can be mapped against learning outcomes and performance criteria and recontextualised by other teachers
• The language of education is about activity sheets, session plans and curriculum.
• The activity sheet does not have to be about a technology, it can be about any process, any learning outcome with or without technology a la the capability life based learning approach, (the media wiki being the central node and SIMPLE publishing tool for all, I think we have to divorce the value is in the utilisation of technology, it’s only means to an end).
• Provide simple standard activity sheet and session plan guidelines for your organisation staff. These can be utilised within hands on professional development for groups and individuals.
• Ideally all organisations publishing activity sheets should be advocated as policy on a central node with a searchable backend that links to curriculum documentation. Curriculum being a common denominator to connect all organisation staff.

Hands on activities are the glue that binds curriculum, people and their, application of technology and capability development processes. People using any number of tools, all linked to and authored from a central node, in this case mediawiki.

Innovations can occur as others continualy refine and improve the processes outlined within activity sheets on a central wiki.

Focus on authoring activity sheets within organisations. This is where the valuable IP and services are to be offered.

Focus on linking to and authoring resources using free online tools on the open internet.

This is where the valuable cost savings, quality, concurrency and professional connections with others and business will be made.

Links for 2007-03-22 [del.icio.us]

• 15 Minutes a Day: A Personal Learning Management Strategy

Making mentoring work across the faculty

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Planning for Learnscope 07

ZOHO Creator - Online databases made easy

To value mind imagination calls

My first post of 2007, I came across this great video 'Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us' by Michael Wesch, it resonates with me. At the end of the video Michael puts foward 'We'll need to rethink a few things'

Where do I want my thinking to go in 2007? I wrote this poem ' Subject Object' as a young man going through the process of figuring things out, how the world was, the teenage sentiment still resonates for me as an adult, in our world now, where perception is purposely influenced with misinformation and fear impacting on our collective understanding of reality and important issues , where education organisations that foster both digital and critical literacy skills have never been more needed.

Retrospectively I would have loved Web 2.0, to have had the opportunity to express myself openly growing up and trying to make sense of the world through a blog, hopefully with guidance and input from others to help in the process. Now as an 'adult' I'd like to know what I was thinking and feeling then when I wrote it, and now be able to look back on my life's progress through my online identity and the network of people who have been a part of my life leading to who who I am today... slightly more cynical perhaps, I reckon I could postively look back on my personal growth.

Subject Object

My abstract mind knows a surreal world
With guns controlling the peace and goodwill
The day has come its going gone
Another life another dawn
It's one for all and all for one
The souls count up but never down
The winners the losers win
Two sides two deaths one all my friend
More blood is spilled but I don't care
Seen it, heard it, cried before.

My abstract mind knows a TV screen
With murder lies and ads between
You'll see it all all to be be seen
But switch it off if it gets obscene
Don't worry now we can worry then
And in the meantime we'll pretend
That we're ok, that we're alright
That we'll sleep well in bed tonight
We're safe and sound if we know our place
But they've got missiles just in case...

My abstract mind knows the money man
Who'll sell the soul to meet demand
It's easy to take a moral stand
But progress fails to follow a plan
I know heaven doesn't exist but I'm going there
Anyway my lord.
But everybody wants to hold you back
Shared experience in day to day lives
After everything you're human an animal
My Time Our Time My Time Our Time My Time PLEASE
YOU ME
YOU ME.


Stephen Hawkings world renowned physicist posted this question to yahoo answers:

How can the human race survive the next hundred years?

In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?

In my mind to address problems, we need to bridge the barriers between human subjective objective perception of their world, my world, your world, our world, en masse not as nations but as informed global citizens, bottom up governance, sharing our emotions, thoughts, and ideas to reveal our commonalities through networks of understanding and common interest, then acting on them. A simple sentiment said many times by many others a la Web 2.0.

In educational organisations working on and incorporating what positively inspires our minds, as outlined by Napolean Hill in his 'Mastermind' principles

• Love
• Opportunities for financial gain
• Recognition for talent, effort
  
• Music
• Friendship
• Alliance between others to achieve shared goals and spiritual advancement

The reponsibility of education

The responsibility lies with education organisations to build open creative education environments for constructive stimuli of the mind that promote the positive aspects to which the mind resonates most freely.

'authentic voices, speaking freely, can engage each other in a democratic society. They can advance social causes such as education and literacy. They can minimize the self-serving agendas of corporate broadcasters, big money, and big power.
They can do all of these things - but doing these things is not why we blog. We blog because what we want is a free and authentic voice. Because we want, at last, the freedom to be ourselves.' - Stephen Downes

Educate people how to from their own personal networks through technology, networks stimulating shared ethusiasm, creative imagination, intense desire to express oneself .

Logically, connecting through technology en masse to achieve these aims will not bring order out of chaos but foster a chaotic bottom up and responsive understanding of the world.

Networked learning and understanding as part of day to day life, a global culture that celebrates what's possible for us collectively as humans in the moment. Communicating through technology, acting on ideas in the moment, collectively, chaotically, inspiring the mind to create a reality that seeks to find solutions locally to global political social and environmental problems in the moment...

Stephen Downes -' How I would organise a conference' hints at the type of space and event that would faciliate these interactions.

For 2007 I want to facilitate group learning processes, large groups collaborating together, connecting with each other, sharing ideas, and in our own ways feeding the machine...empowerment through each other, 'The Machine is Us/ing Us', and I'm happy with that...

Alumini graduate with insight for students and teachers

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George Siemens - The role of management in facilitating change within a learning organisation

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Professional Development - The Usability and Empowerment Divide, Unconferences and the Role of Management

The Usability and Empowerment Divide is worrying in the context of the many thousands of teachers in organisations who may be currently being left behind in terms of the opportunities to develop skills and knowledge for today's knowledge economy.

Recently I was lucky enough to have attended a number of professional development events in New Zealand as part of the Future of Learning in a Networked World tour where the potentialities of unstructured professional group learning were revealed, that is the unstructured conversational - ad hoc tell me what I want to know - talk to me about what I'm interested in - nature of the unconference format.

'An unconference event begins with face to face schedule making which allows for emerging developments in the rapidly moving technology field to be covered. The opening includes time for attendees to introduce themselves and orient to the whole group. Participants are invited to write their name and session topic on an 8.511 piece of paper. They announce the title of their session to the whole room and then post it on a schedule on the wall. Once all the sessions have been posted, the community can stand in front of the schedule wall and decide which sessions they would like to attend. Sessions are about an hour long with 15 min breaks. Lunch lasts for about an hour. The day closes with all the participants gathering in a circle in one room and sharing for 2030 min the highlights of the day.'

Check out the feedback from participants from Auckland on the unconference format.

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Consider the following similar learning environment for smaller groups, in particular the use of open space for clusters of conversational activity for all levels of learning.

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I asked Jana Holly of http://mindesign.co.nz/ how she felt about her sense of participation.

• Me - So you're part of the circus called FLNW and you feel like a participating audience member?


• Jana - When I walked into this room I realised here where rings of activity going on, it was all very entertaining and exciting and I want to participate but I'm also more in an audience role.


• Me - Would you say you are participating in the style that Leigh is explaining to you (relaxed conversational show and tell)


• Jana - It feels to me like my very presence here contributes to the process even if my fingers don't touch the keyboard.


• Steven - Would you be able to take what Leigh has just shown you and use it yourself?


• Jana -I think with practice yes, I'll have to go to the circus summer school.


• Leigh - I think it's important thinking there that just by being here you are contributing alot of people even in our group feel like 'what am I here for?' because they are not very vocal, but just being here is enough.
  

The Usability and Empowerment Divide

For an explantation of the problem of the Usability and Empowerment Divide read Jakob Nielsens Digital Divide: The Three Stages , a very revealing paper on the barriers to the on the use of technology and lack of digital literacy skills across learning organisations. Ken Burgin of Profitable Hospitality neatly summarises the issues raised.

'There is:

• An Economic Divide - who can and can't afford a computer (and I would add, fast broadband). Less of an issue in Australia with el-cheapo PCs and $2 ph internet cafes.


• A Usability Divide - problems related to lower literacy and for difficulties in understanding for seniors.


• An Empowerment Divide - inability to use search, access to good software or participation in useful social networks.'

What role does management play within an organisation in addressing this?

Consider Don Perrin's assertions from his paper 'The New Knowledge Society and Higher Education' from 1996, ten years ago!

'Drucker, in his "Theory of the Business" published in the Harvard Business Review, postulates that for an organization to be effective there must be a balance between environment, in this case the students, employers, and extended community; the university mission should reflect client needs and expectations, and competencies, in this case relevant professional and teaching skills of faculty. The academy as we know it is being challenged in all three areas, and to the extent that these three areas are out of balance, effectiveness is reduced.'

'The luxury of having thousands of teachers researching and producing their own courses, many of which are essentially similar, is grossly inefficient. Students will be empowered to explore, inquire, and learn cooperatively and interactively, and undertake more creative tasks. They will have access to great teachers in a spectrum of learning styles and a variety of media. Consortia of institutions will share their best teachers through quality lesson materials for their virtual classrooms as well as for on-campus courses.'

'It is important to identify new markets and ways to market and deliver educational programs.'

The biggest untapped market for education is the non-traditional learner.'

Some schools are responding accordingly for example...

Click To Play

Make the best of your organisation's assets - The teachers

Assertion: In Professional Development Make the best of your organisations assets, teacher's collective skills knowledge talents and energy enmasse?

Many educational technologists including myself are making the obvious assertion that the latent knowledge talents and skills needed that need to overcome the Usability and Empowerment Divide already exist within educational organisations. Innovators and Mentors can be harnessed to support educators with basic to intermediate skills working with them in groups, both online and face to face.

• Learning from each other in short intense bursts of group activity


• Discussing what technologies teaching practices and relevant to them and off intertest


• Connecting together using technology


• Using show and tell in the context of their teaching


• Asking questions off each other continually over time.

In his paper Jakob Neilsen asserts 'Almost 40% of the population has lower literacy skills'. If this is the case in educational organisations then what is needed is the awarenesss and will of management to strategically identify mentors and innovators and enable those with low level digital literacy skills to get together enmasse when needed. (in terms of raising awareness in this context the concept and ideas of the unconference seems appropriate).

Group learning events will will not solve the vast digital divide immediately they can energise and can catalyse the interest and awareness of those people who wish to become informed with the implicit aim that attendees start to ask question each other, become familiar with group learning and support each other in developing their skill development and shared knowledge OVER TIME!!!!

To enable this what is needed is management support and strategic programming of regular organisational professional development events in day to day activities that enable group learning and communication between teachers and that are driven by the learning needs of teachers.

In this context Management's role and responsibility is to enable teachers the time and resources to autonomousily organise PD events. For example helping motivated teachers to get the numbers and attract interest from peers to make an unconference PD event economically viable.

Why not?

• Fund short professional development events which enable interested teacher's of all skill levels (basic to advanced) to physically and freely come together in large groups for a few hours, to gain skills, freely communicate with each other ask questions and figure things out together in an ad hoc manner as part of day to day business.


• Identify existing Mentors and support and enable them to show their peers how to communicate and connect with each other online


• For those with lower literacy skills Mentors can demonstrate what's possible. The group supporting each other and instilling confidence in those who lack confidence individually.

The Teachers responsibility following PD

The individuals responsibility is to connect their resultant work with their students, learning group and peers after the PD event so that others can learn from their activity over time.

Teacher's with lower level literacy skills can also seek more focused structured professional development if required. It is the Educational technologist's responsibilty to enable people of all skill levels to access open professional development and be able to connect and ask questions of each other.

This is all nothing new but the reality is it's very difficult to sustainability implement these ideas within an organization without Management continuing to promote teachers ongoing participation in day to day teaching

Conclusion - Top down support for bottom up networking of teachers enmasse.

Top Down support for bottom up networking of teachers is required to bring about organisational Change.

Managers and Head Teachers need to drive and facilitate this change change in order to begin to address the the problem of the Usability and Empowerment Divide. Participation can't obviousily be enforced from all teachers, however a culture of networked innovation in day-to-day activities will promote participation and sharing practices as part of a wider sustainable professional development model. More research has to occur into processes to achieve the following outcomes:

• Sustainability - Follow through with the support of the implementation of mentor networks at an organisational level through PD- Professional Development.
• Adaptability Be flexible and responsive to the emergent needs of the Teacher Innovation Network. Eg: Recognising the time and equipment needed to adopt new innovative practices that work.
• Enablement - Give teachers ability to self regulate what gets filtered through firewall, and take on the development through to the students and Teacher Network.

As the pace of change ramps up in the knowledge economy many teachers will be unable to remain informed and keep up. Without innovative professional development action enmasse it appears the Usability and Empowerment Divide in relation to technology and new teaching practices may become so difficult to overcome that many people, teachers, students and management alike will fail to relate to each other's professional working world thus impacting on the business of the 'educational' organisation.

Creative Commons - Wanna Work Together

Great video
explaining the reasoning behind Creating Sharing and Adapting content openly in education using the creative commons licence...