Frances Bell :: Blog

http://francesbell.com/2008/11/19/education-futures-in-an-open

How can education change in a connected world?

This blog post was in answer to a question on the CCK08 forum, but I enjoyed writing it so much, I thought that I would post it here as well.

Illich identified three purposes of a good education system:

1. “it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives;


2. empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them;


3. and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.” http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/chap6.html

I thought that I would examine those by exploring some current ‘free’ and ‘open’ models related to software and web services to relate to a possible future scenario for education.

What is the best model for providing access to available resources sustainably throughout the future?  At face value, a distributed ‘web’ model, where multiple copies of resources are available seems attractive.  This approach can protect us against us failure at a central point but raises the problem of knowing which version we are looking at. Let’s compare that with Open Source Software where multiple forks exist all over the place but there is likely to be a version-controlled store at the OSS web site - hmmm! sounds like a library. A big incentive for the investment of resource involved in the management of this configuration-managed code library must be the possibility for the volunteers in OSS communities to make money on their day jobs, offering paid-for professional services (training, hosting, consultancy) associated with the OSS.

(Semi-)’Free’ services like flickr offer structured and more imaginative ways of finding and managing content but how sustainable are they?  A future where the plug was pulled on a service like flickr is not inconceivable.  I have backups of all my flickr images but what about the links to others, dialogue, etc.  Alternative approaches to the quasi-commercial and commercial described above have been public service organisations like libraries and non-commercial organisations (e.g. BBC) that become ‘institutions’.

Now let’s look at “those who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them“.  To me they sound like people who become some of the best teachers.  So for fun and delight, they could do this on open online forums, but how do they eat and buy the baby a new pair of shoes?  In the OSS model, they could make their ‘content’ freely available but offer add-on services for payment.  What are the consequences of this for the availability of high-quality learning support across society?  There is a (compelling) theory that the middle classes create structures for education (often with the most respectable of motives) from which their offspring derive the maximum benefit.  The ruling elite are not constrained by these structures but know how to get a very effective education for their own, networking being an essential component.

It’s easy to see the problems with schools, but somewhat more challenging to replace them with social organisations that can still address underserved communities and disadvantaged individuals without acquiring some of the undesirable attributes of institutions. Open source/content teachers may or may not become more effective outside do of ’school’ as we know it now.  The question is  how do we find out if and how to make those changes?

Our last challenge (should we choose to accept it) is to “furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.”  An education systems that wishes to do this can certainly take advantage of the affordances of the web in making public the ideas of a wider range of people.  Unfortunately, this does not guarantee an increase in influence, and the reality of making your challenge known may be much more to with pre-existing power relations.  Herring et al’s findings would suggest we should not be too sanguone about the democratising effects of blogs and other ‘read/write web’ tools and services with regard to public discourse.

“The observation that men are more likely than women and teens to create filter blogs provides a key: It is filter blogs that are privileged, consistent with the notion that the activities of educated, adult males are viewed by society as more interesting and important than those of other demographic groups. ” http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html

I remain an optimist who believes that a ‘good’ education can offer the chance of empowering individuals to influence the power relations within which they may struggle, as well as  expanding their knowledge networks.

http://francesbell.com/2008/11/19/a-networked-conversation/

Stephen Downes posted a reply to my blog post http://francesbell.com/2008/11/09/cck08-is-connectivism-a-learning-network/ at http://connect.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=44375.  I tried to reply there but my comment was not accepted so I am posting it here, hoping it gets picked up automatically.

I was very grateful for Stephen’s comments, as there is plenty still be ironed out (from my persective at least).  I found it interesting that he said that the application of networks to the social domain is not a metaphor. Presumably it is not a ‘literal truth’.  I can imagine that there could be some links between the social behaviour of individuals in a group or network and their brain activity relating to it, but I don’t know that this has been researched and presented.   It is seductive to think that principles from networks in neural science apply in social networks, actor-networks and connectivist learning networks but I think that we would need some evidence (from neural studies and/or rich case studies of human and non-human behaviours).

I am not holding out on Stephen - but rather still studying this from reading about connectivism and actor-network theory. 

I was interested that Stephen claim a clear distinction between social action and learning theory.  One of the things that has slightly surprised me on CCK08 has been the boldness and desire for radical change, informed by connectivism.  When cast in this light, connectivism seems as much about social action as about learning (though of course the two are intertwined).

I hope that my modest critique can contribute but what I really hope to see are empirical studies (case studies, action research, etc.) that apply ANT and connectivism to educational change and processes (radical and otherwise).  That will really move things forward, I think.  Mine is a developmental critique - not a complaint.

http://francesbell.com/2008/11/09/cck08-is-connectivism-a-lear

CCK08

Connectivism is presented as a theory of learning for the network age, where learning is something that takes place within networks of humans and non-humans, including objects, and connections mediated by digital networks and devices.  The growth of the Internet, connected digital media are seen as the backdrop for the development of a new theory of learning.  In this blog post, I am questioning how connectivism itself stands up as a learning network.

“At its heart, connectivism is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks.”  http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2007/02/what-connectivism-is.html

Siemens offers eight principles of Connectivism that promote diversity, connection, inclusion of non-human appliances, know how rather than know that, maintenance of and ability to spot connections, currency of knowledge, learning nature of decision-making http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_05/article01.htm

So is connectivism a network in connectivism’s terms?

Connectivism comprises a network of people (such as George Siemens, Stephen Downes and those who have blogged about it ), things such as published papers, blog posts (see previous search), and events such as the recent MOOC CCK08 and the 2007 Connectivism Conference.

Connectivism shows evidence of porosity:

• links with Cormier’s ideas on rhizomatic knowledge (that draws on Deleuze )


• biological models where Downes draws in his (and others’) earlier work on Connectionist knowledge


• inclusion of Chaos Theory


• and other examples

We have also had examples of diversity within connectivism.  George acknowledged the difference between his and Stephens views of Networks and groups in his mid-course reflection, Dave Cormier’s comments at EVOLVE MOOC online event on 3 Nov 2008  .

Early in CCK08, George Siemens seemed to recognize that the MOOC might be a site for critique of connectivism saying:

“I hope we can make progress in this course [on critiquing Connectivism], but I don’t think we’ll achieve the task in only 12 weeks. Exploring, critiquing, extending, and revising a theory is a task of generations.”

http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=808#p4369

If we position connectivism in a historical trajectory of knowledge we can identify research/theories that:

• influence connectivism


• could (or could have) influence connectivism

This can help us identify connectivism’s (potential) contribution to broader networks of knowledge.

Connectivism is clearly an attractive theory for practitioners wishing to change their practice to take advantages of the affordances of digital media, increasingly available at the location where learning can be acquired and put into practice (witness >2300 people signing up to CCK08).  More broadly, there is an appetite for new models of knowledge, challenges to barriers to the spread of knowledge, evident in open publishing and open educational resources.

I am beginning to construct a critique of Connectivism, based on its own principles and informed by my own analysis and experience on CCK08 as at 10 November 2008 - comments most welcome.

I am currently working on a comparison of connectivism and actor-network theory, If connectivism isn’t willing to be mutable knowledge as it extends its network, then it is self-contradictory i.e. not behaving like the knowledge and networks it describes in the theory. There are little or no links between ANT and connectivism.  Observing what has happened when ANT has been mentioned in the MOOC forums (by Ailsa Haxwell, Roy Williams and myself) or in Ailsa Haxwell’s blog, for example, then it has not been taken up by more than few participants, and not by connectivism’s chief protagonists, Stephen Downes and George Siemens.  I joined this course to learn about connectivism, and also to try to understand why two theories that are based on networks of human and non-humans are currently latent links (Hayhtornthwaite 2002).  Can we help turn them into weak links, and then influence connectivism?

My question/statement at the MOOC EVOLVE event was

If connectivism isn’t willing to be mutable knowledge as it extends its network, then it is self-contradictory i.e. not behaving like the knowledge and networks it describes in the theory.

Haythornthwaite, C. (2002). Strong, weak, and latent ties and the impact of new media. Information Society, 18(5), 385-401.

http://francesbell.com/2008/11/06/avoiding-link-rot/

We have all experienced link rot  (even if we don’t call it that).  Webcite is an antidote, explained here in Wikipedia. Initiated by an author or citer, a web page is archived so that the link can be preserved for any article that cites it.

I haven’t used it yet, and would be interested to know how others find it.

The trouble with dead links is it’s often too late to do anything about it, once you discover a link is dead.

http://francesbell.com/2008/11/02/relational-view-of-power-in-

I posted the following as an answer to Ken Anderson in this thread at CCK08 http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1060#p6572

What I meant by seeing power as relational was that:

• rather than describing power relations between A and B (I was thinking people here) as A has power over B


• we could describe these relations by saying how each of A and B affect and are affected by the (power) relations between them

(Health warning; although I was once a secondary school Maths teacher, my experience is a little out of date)

So for example with students and teachers in a hypothetical class

T(eacher) instructs students that Pi = 3.142 when teaching a class on finding the area of a circle.

S(tudent )1 accepts that and uses that value in his calculation. He accepts the knowledge of Pi from the teacher without question

S2 spends a little time researching Pi and discovers that 3.142 is an approximation. In her homework answers, she explains why she has chosen to use a value of Pi to 10 decimal places, whilst still recognising that her answer is still an approximation, but a better one than she would have achieved by using 3.142.

Scenario A

T gives slightly higher mark to S1 than S2. S1 and S2 compare notes, and both decide that T has missed an opportunity to share something interesting with the class. T goes down in estimation of S1 and S2, who are getting confirmed in their view that school maths is pretty boring. S2 thinks that she won’t bother to research around the subject in future but use her internet skills for learning about stuff within her control.

Scenario B

T gives top marks to S1 and S2, and uses the opportunity to highlight S2’s research to the class, going on to talk about the provisional nature of knowledge, the value of estimation (depending on context of problem) and the opportunity for students to challenge working assumptions. All students have opportunity to extend on basic knowledge from instruction, they see resourceful behaviour being recognised, and S2’s work is validate by T, as well as being enjoyable in its own right. T is seen (by some students at least) as someone who recognises that knowledge is open to question, and is not threatened by challenges from students.

A relational view of power would go beyond the question:

In which scenario does T have more power over the students?

The question wouldn’t really make sense. A better question might be:

In which scenario do students have more effective agency? If student goals were passing standard tests, the answer might be Scenario A. If student goals were learning and having fun, then maybe B.

It’s pretty complicated thinking about knowledge, power, agency and context, and for these scenarios the important power relations may go way beyond the classroom context - institution, parents, government, etc.

http://francesbell.com/2008/10/24/cck08-networks-entities-and-

CCK08

In this, only my second reflective blog post in 7 weeks, I want to draw out some threads from the information I have absorbed, the discussion in which I have engaged on CCK08, Moodle forums and others’ blogs. It was always going to be well-nigh impossible, particularly at this very busy period of the academic year,  to keep track of the readings and personal contribution, and so my engagement has been a combination of targeted reading and serendipitous finding of pearls, and the irritant grains of sand that may yet become pearls.

Pearls!

Originally uploaded by tuija

Entities

The use of learning as a verb rather than as a noun has already been noted http://www.situativity.org/archives/000141.html  and http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wiki/Situating_Connectivism.  It has struck me that in discussion on the CCK08 forums, the word network is usually a noun, casting network as an entity rather than an activity.  I found the discussion on Groups and networks to be quite frustrating.  In Stephen Downes’ talk http://www.downes.ca/post/42521, groups and networks are presented as a dualism (either/or)  with value-laden attributes to each.  If we were thinking about behaviours (group behaviour and networking) we could think about a duality of practice (think participation and reification in Wenger).  Some of the discussion in this thread made me recall my thoughts on the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ nature of this terminology - a term like group was interpreted very differently by participants in CCK08. To me the term group is fairly generic term (having meaning in contrast to ‘individual’) that operates as a gateway to the various ways that individuals organise themselves- institutions, clubs, networks, etc.  The overarching term ‘group’ is  quite as hard to pin down as that other ‘fluffy’ term community.  Interestingly, a difference that I had observed between Stephen Downes’ and George Siemens’ views of groups and networks in particular, and epistemology of knowledge in general, was confirmed in George’s mid course review video.

This got me thinking about an excellent chapter I read in a book called ‘Data and Reality’ many years ago.

“So, at bottom, we come to this duality. In an absolute sense, there is no singular objective reality. But we can share a common enough view of it for most of our working purposes, so that reality does appear to be objective and stable.

But the chances of achieving such a shared view become poorer when we try to encompass broader purposes, and to involve more people. This is precisely why the question is becoming more relevant today: the thrust of technology is to foster interaction among greater numbers of people, and to integrate processes into monoliths serving wider and wider purposes. It is in this environment that discrepancies in fundamental assumptions will become increasingly exposed.” http://www.bkent.net/Doc/darxrp.htm#Chapter12

These ideas are relevant to CCK08.  Although participants share a common interest in connectivism, they have wide range of fundamental assumptions.  The discrepancies in these assumptions are exposed on the forums and it can be hard work to achieve dialogue where participants are open to changes in thinking.

Practices

A more productive way forward than thinking about networks as entities may be to examine the practices of people within their own networks.  It could be argued that this privileges human nodes over non-human nodes but I am more interested in learners than objects (oops my social constructivism is showing).  Looking at a learner’s own network, we would see them navigate and traverse between network-as-entities.  In this perspective the learner’s and others’  interpretation of the quality of nodes and connections becomes as or more important than the general frequency of connections.

http://francesbell.com/2008/09/14/week-1-of-cck08/

Trying to participate in the Connectivism extravaganza along side attendance at ALT-C 2008 was a bit manic.  I have dodged about, skimming. occasionally diving into the Moodle discussion, missing the synchronous events, doing the readings late.

So what can I do in this blog post?  A partial reflection on my very partial participation, looking at three fairly random ideas

1. How to choose

Describing my participation as ‘partial’ is apt.  Confronted with the torrent of (mainly) words, I have adopted a grazing approach to reading and contributing.  That means my participation is partial in that I only look at part of what’s there, and partial in that I use my preferences/prejudices/chance to choose what I look at (someone I know, someone who looks ‘interesting’, what George and Stephen have to say).

2. Noise and Style

The Introductions thread started in a very friendly fashion, with international contributions, civility and charm.  I really felt that an inclusive yet challenging atmosphere was developing. In the Moodle forums, people started to engage in exploring their understandings of connectivism.  Then Catherine Fitzpatrick’s posts began to pop up with increasing frequency.  From what I can gather Catherine (Prokofy in SL) has been the centre of controversy elsewhere e.g. Linden Blogs.  Her posts were very interesting in that they expressed her views articulately and with force.  She attracted many responses, even a blog post from Stephen Downes.  What interested me was the impact of her dialogic style on her contribution to the discussion.  She was certainly critiquing connectivism (which I welcome) but her tendency to label (”techno-communism”) and misinterpret others really got in the way of any critical engagement with ideas.  For example (and there are many), Catherine made the statement “You act as if the university needs radical change” in the comment thread of Stephen Downes post (see link above).  I wondered who the ‘you’ was and how Catherine formed this view.  I didn’t spend long wondering this, though.   I quickly formed the resolution to avoid responding to her.

I do wonder what impact she is having on the participation of others.  It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

3. Visibility of networks

This quote from Bill Kerr’s critique caught my eye “Network based learning theories might be more visible because the network is more visible”.  I am not quite sure what it means but the visibility of knowledge networks is certainly something that I hope we look at in the coming weeks.  My initial thoughts are that the visibility of a network of knowledge might make it more useful (just as the visibility of a social network makes it more useful to more people) in that it focuses our attention on it.  On the other hand, this may privilege visible (usually online) networks at the expense of other, valuable yet less visible networks (e.g. ideas expressed in books not yet online).  This may be an argument for digitising but what do we do in the mean time?

http://francesbell.com/2008/09/12/alt-c-2008-digital-divide-sl

I am going to post later about the conference but I wanted to get out the word that you still have time to vote on our Digital Divide.  Not surprisingly, and despite our best efforts the activity was limited to those associated with ALT-C 2008 (but including some who submitted ahead of the workshop).  Having said that,  serious fun was had by all.

Even if you missed it, you can still participate (up until midnight 14 September) by viewing the Slams and voting on your favourite http://digdivslam.wetpaint.com/page/View+Slams+and+vote+for+your+favourite (you might need to register, but it’s worth it as we’ll send out notifications of winners on Monday).

Currently in the lead is Digital Divide = Digital Boxes.

You can catch a flavour of it by looking at some of the video clips. My favourite clips are of the groups working – people happily engaged in thinking, talking, creating about the Digital Divide http://digdivslam.wetpaint.com/page/At+the+ALT-C+2008+workshop.

The picture (courtesy of Sam Easterby Smith) is of the workshop winners, James Clay and the Slam Virgins getting their digital dishcloth (knitted by my own fair hands). Overall winners get global recognition and a badge they can put on their web sites.

 I like to think that, even as I write this, James is cleaning his kitchen with that functional, meaningful and somehow beautiful artefact, the black and white hand-knitted dishcloth.

http://francesbell.com/2008/09/02/slamming-at-alt-c-2008-from-

Have you got something to say about the Digital Divide? Now is your chance.

We would like to invite participation in a Digital Divide Slam in association with a workshop at ALT-C 2008.

If you aren’t attending the conference, you are welcome to participate as an individual or small group.  Can you produce a message about the Digital Divide (even better if it’s from your own experience) that can be viewed online in a few minutes (or less)?  Check out how you can do this at our wiki at http://digdivslam.wetpaint.com/  Deadline for submissions is Wednesday 10 September.

If you are attending the conference, you can come to the workshop and create your slams there. Those attending a similar workshop last year had great fun.  You might like to check out the wiki anyway.

 From Thursday 11 - Sunday 14 September, you can vote.  Why not register with the wiki at http://digdivslam.wetpaint.com/, and we’ll send you a reminder?

http://francesbell.com/2008/09/01/silly-season-camping-in-the-

I don’t usually post stuff like this but here goes.  My adult sons returned from a camping trip today, and I was directed to their photos.  This one really made laugh. Relaxing after a trip to the pub, watching film on ipod (propped up against the Good Pub Guide), large nightcap and mobile phone at the ready.   Then upload the photos to Facebook.

Now that’s what I call 21st C camping.