Stewart :: Feeds

Connectivism: Networked Learner

Over the last 12 weeks, Stephen Downes and I have facilitated a course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. The final “project” for enrolled participants is to reflect on the quality of their own learning networks. Wendy Drexler has posted a video of her final project that is (deservedly) getting significant attention: Connectivism: Networked Learner (also available on YouTube)

Definition of Emerging Technologies for Learning

I received an email recently asking for my definition of emerging technologies for learning. To enlarge the conversation, I asked the question on Twitter. The following are responses:

Eduinnovation: “Those technologies that allow learners to connect, collaborate, and create with other learnes, mind-to-mind, anywhere & anytime”

prawsthorne: “an innovation that captures attention, engages and deepens learning so the learner/teacher can self-measure the improvement.”

MarkMilliron: “any technology YOU don’t quite understand that you’ve heard might improve teaching and learning”

UNMVCTLC: “using technology TOOLS to improve the learning process while enhancing the instructional environment” and “using those tools that are not fully explored to reach new frontiers in methodology, experiences and concepts”

jdwilliams: “I think emerging (web) technologies are just sites/apps my district hasn’t found to block (yet)”

Darren Draper: “Emerging technologies for teaching and learning consist of all hardware, software, concepts, and ideas that can be employed to advance social, connective, and educational processes”

davecormier: “usually defined as - stuff George likes - I believe”

bengrey: “A body of knowledge or innovation not yet widely adapted or fully actualized which holds educational implications”

StonyRiver: “New Direction Learning Technologies”

How do you define emerging technologies for learning (or is the attempt to provide a definition sooo web 1.0?)?

Social Computing

Dave Snowden is well-known in the knowledge management field. He has been kind enough in the past to present to online conferences that we have hosted at University of Manitoba (most recently, our Future of Education conference). Over the last few years, his writings/presentations have taken a turn that very much fits in with concepts presented in this forum and in CCK08. Dave started blogging about two years ago, but I’ve been following his work through his publications and contributions to ACT-KM. I could be imagining things, but his shift to blogging seems to coincide with his increased attention to the fragmentary nature of information. Distributed conversations, not packaged as they have been in the past through frameworks such as articles and books, in blogs provide an interesting experience in personal sensemaking. In a recent presentation (.pdf of slides - why not slideshare?…podcast is here), Dave details seven principles of KM, including: “Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success.”

Visualizing Data

OECD has been learning from Hans Rosling and Gapminder. In order to make their data more accessible, they’ve created (or had someone create) an application for visualizing data. I personally prefer gapminder’s interface, but OECD’s contribution is appreciated. If data is made more accessible it will be used more often as a guide for decision making (he says in his most idealistic voice).

Microsoft’s Personal Reboot: Web-Centric, But Beyond “The Cloud”

Microsoft has been a favorite source of mockery for all the cool web 2.0′ers. Microsoft is seen as too closed, too confined to the desktop, too late to search, and too out of touch with how people want to compute. In the face of this criticism, Microsoft continues to attempt a transformation -Personal Reboot: Web-Centric, But Beyond “The Cloud”: “Cloud computing may be trendy, but Ozzie says MSFT’s best course moving forward is a hybrid desktop/Web-based strategy…future success hinges on new products that win over the masses instantly.”

Education needs to be pulled into the 21st century

Short rant. Articles like - Education needs to be pulled into the 21st century - cause many educators to smile and nod in agreement. The report broadly splashes all the latest and coolest terms that cause sensible educators to viciously agree: “In an increasingly complex and competitive world, teachers must understand technology and connect coursework to the global economy, curricula should eliminate less relevant material and incorporate modern skills such as global awareness, technology and media literacy, and standardized tests must include these new subjects”.
Ok. That’s very nice. We are then treated with the typical mis-focused comment: “I hope to encourage policymakers to better equip our graduates for today’s and tomorrow’s jobs”. Education isn’t only about creating employees. It’s about assisting individuals to develop into the types of people that can tackle and handle the continual gyrations of a complex world. I don’t buy into the “education must prepare people for jobs that don’t yet exist” view. Education - as it always has - must prepare people for an unknown future. This isn’t new. When I was going to school, the particular job that I have today did not exist. How should we prepare people for, let’s say, the current financial crisis? By training people to be stockbrokers? No. You can’t prepare people for black swans. People must be capable of handling uncertainty, but also adapting as environments shift and change. At it’s most basic, education must move from epistemology to ontology. Getting back to the report: give us something useful. Statements as broad as those provided in the article (i.e. “develop new programs, standards, partnerships and assessment measures”) are hardly a basis for action. Perhaps it’s time that we stop focusing on what our curriculum is and start focusing on how we actually do curriculum in the first place.

Systems for Supportive Open Teaching

We’ve experienced this in CCK08: Systems for Supportive Open Teaching: “I think it more valuable to think about how openness changes the basic praxis of teaching from an essentially individual activity to a shared activity.”
But, as we’ve discovered, openness may produced shared activity at some levels (students helping each other, taking on leadership roles, connecting to others outside of the course, etc). Open teaching is really best seen as open learning. When we learn in transparent ways, we become teachers. But not everyone wants to learn in open ways. In CCK08, we had numerous participants who did not contribute by posting or commenting. Instead, they observed/lurked. They did not contribute in the way we would have expected. Lack of direct participation does not mean they didn’t learn - at least that’s what some participants have expressed here. Open teaching, therefore, means also rethinking our expectations of engagement. We simply can’t control students the way we have done in classroom environments. Open teaching will become a rather shallow concept if we bring too much of closed-classrooms to the process.

Online learning requirements

Grassroots activities in incorporating technology into teaching and learning goes a long way. Due to the current design of the education system, grassroots activities keep bumping up against barriers. However, initiatives like this one in Minnesota will become more common: “To expand access, increase technology skills, provide exciting and inspiring course content, and maximize efficiency and use of taxpayer resources, Governor Tim Pawlenty and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) Board of Trustees Chair David Olson today announced a goal to have 25 percent of all MnSCU credits earned through online courses by 2015.”
It’s a start. I’d like to hear more about how they’re planning to develop the faculty to actually teach the online courses…and how they’re redesigning the existing education system to ensure that they aren’t only transferring content online, but that they are actually transforming the learning experience to utilize the affordances of the medium.

Google’s experimenting with new search features

Google is experimenting with search. Basic idea: when you’re signed in to your Google account, you’ll see the option of voting results up/down and to add comments to results. This doesn’t (yet) impact the results others see. It’s supposed to help personalize search. Results are mixed. Some hate it. Others question it. Others love it.

Need help.

I often hear educators talking about “education needs to change” (I do it too). This is the case for the K-12, higher education, and corporate training/education markets. 

As a small research project, I’d like to ask people to answer the following questions (on their blog, in YouTube, Seesmic, or wherever - please post a link in the comments section below):

1. Does education need to change?
2. Why or why not?
3. If it should change, what should it become? How should education (k-12, higher, or corporate) look like in the future?

E-Learn 2008

I don’t like powerpoint a whole lot. We don’t really have a good alternative for presentations. I’ve been experimenting with different approaches. Most recent is PersonalBrain, which I used for my presentation at E-Learn 2008 in Vegas today. The presentation is here.

Moving to neutral tools and applications

Common Craft has produced a short explanatory video on Microsoft Live. The internet is starting to look like the desktop in the 80’s - numerous companies trying to mainstream new applications through a new centre. Microsoft integrated a variety of tools into its Office suite, making it possible for many new users to try tools that had each been unique. Working in a spreadsheet or word document became more seemless than when working with two different vendors. Now, the web is moving in that direction, with Google, Microsoft, and MySpace/Facebook all trying to do to the web what Microsoft did to the desktop. I’d like to see a world where any content works on any device…but I wonder if it will mature before someone has managed to lock in a good portion of the web in one application (or cloud).

With Students Flocking Online, Will Faculty Follow?

It really doesn’t have to be said, but I’ll do it anyway: we are in a climate of uncertainty. Awareness of economic issues (cost-cutting, layoffs) is high. Online learning has the potential to play a significant role in this climate. Trends indicate a growing move to online teaching and learning. This article asks: With Students Flocking Online, Will Faculty Follow?: “As online courses’ popularity continues to rise, many administrators are struggling with a steep learning curve, one whose ultimate end point is far from being determined. Questions such as how such courses should be taught (by adjuncts or full-time faculty?) often depend on institutions’ missions (expand access or generate extra revenue?) and can lead to clashes and tensions between proponents of online learning and those who remain wedded to the traditional classroom.”

My question is directed at institutions: Are our institutions (and systems) of education ready to embrace online learning strategically and more than an add-on?

Homeschooling goes mainstream

Education is being enlarged. More choices, more options. F2F, augmented, blended, online learning, etc are enlarging options for learners and educators to deal with individual, personal needs and contexts. Much like content is fragemented from large holding structures (newspapers, books, courses), the entire education system itself is breaking into muliple specialized choices. For example - homeschooling goes mainstream: “Home education is now being done by so many different kinds of people for so many different reasons that it no longer makes much sense to speak of it as a political movement.”

High-Speed Internet Coming to Africa

I’ve been suffering connection issues (see my post here). Earlier this year, I was in Accra for Elearning Africa. The connection issues were significant there as well. Participants at the conference knew the importance of connectivity in advancing African economies. Yet the problem was/is huge. Many areas don’t have electricity, never mind internet connectivity. Still, news like this - High-Speed Internet Coming to Africa - is encouraging. While foreign aid and development work are critical for Africa, the long term challenge is one of providing individuals with the tools and opportunities to shape their own future.

If only we had something other than content on which to base education…

The hype around open educational resources (OERs) is growing to the level that web 2.0 inhabited several years ago (I recently posted a short overview of openness in education). The problem with OERs is that they are too often focused on content. More recently, a few educators have been pushing the concept of openness through open teaching and open accreditation. But, as Brian Lamb notes, “if we live in an era of information abundance, why is the primary drive around OERs the publication of more content? And what other activities around the open education movement might be an effective use of our energies? What other needs have to be met?”

Personal Learning Environments

Learning happens constantly. The formal education component receives more respect than informal learning. As content and conversations fragment, I doubt existing systems of education will retain their shape. The real opportunity lies in how institutions think about “tying together” the multiple learnings across our daily lives. Canadian Council on Learning introduces the multiple learning domains as “limitless dimensions of learning”. Two approaches are possible to serve as the glue to pull learning together in a manner that can be accredited or evaluated by traditional educational models: eportfolios and personal learning environments. Eportfolios have great potential, but little uptake. Personal learning environments have similar potential, but the concept is a bit difficult for educators to grasp. I would have loved to sit in on a recent session by three individuals who know what they’re talking about…here’s their commentary on the workshop: Jared Stein, Chris Lott, and Scott Leslie. This PLE thing will yet take root :).

Higher Ed: Next Bloated Industry to Go?

With the financial world in turmoil, it’s logical for people to turn attention to other fields that are in need of change. Nothing like a crisis to force introspection that should likely be ongoing. Higher Education is often criticized for its bureaucracy. Now that governments and businesses are in “belt tightening” mode, we’ll see pressure on higher ed as well: Higher Ed: Next Bloated Industry to Go?: “Like so many of our great industries and social sectors, higher education has grown huge, bureaucratic, and in many cases bloated (think 24-hour coffee shops in dorms). The ongoing trends of globalization, technology, and innovation continue to pressure societies and economies and America’s world leading system of higher education is going to have to respond just like other great institutions.”

While it is unsettling to be staring into an uncertain future, times of change offer opportunities for transformation. I’m optimistic that the catalyst needed to foster innovation in education can be found in the current crisis.

The Future of Learning: Ten Years On

Stephen Downes has written an important paper: The Future of Learning: Ten Years On. I need to spend more time reviewing the specifics of future learning, but after an initial read, Stephen has created a valuable document that should serve as a discussion piece for detailing the direction of our field. I suspect this document will be prominent in this week’s CCK08 dicussion on systemic change in education. I’d recommend Stephen arrange a few elluminate sessions in the near future to flesh out his predictions and engage with the online community for feedback (I’d like to see an exploration of data visualization and sensemaking techniques).

Second Life & divorce

Any space in which people can interact (physical and virtual) brings out human nature. Our minds don’t seem to really care if something is real, observed, or imagined (at least this is the suggestion made with the discovery of mirror neurons). Several months ago, I was chatting with an individual who said her location didn’t allow her to see sunrises and sunsets. Instead, she watched them in Second Life while she enjoyed a cup of coffee or tea. The social impact of virtual worlds is not fully understood (especially considering they are still first-generation tools - virtual worlds will continue to get more real, further blurring what we physically experience and what we create online). Second Life & Divorce presents a glimpse of how morals and ethics will be (re)considered online.

Looking for best practices on password recovery

Inevitably, when we discuss “loosely coupled” approaches with educational institutions, the conversation inevitably turns to “security and authentication” issues. But really, often what is meant is “those nasty web 2.0 tools won’t single sign-on to my [monolithic, obscure] campus login system, so what are we to do?”

The last time I was in this conversation, Brian Lamb made the simple but inspired observation that a huge portion of the problems single sign-on “solves” could be more easily handled with just a simple password recovery process, and challenged the educators in the room to think about how easy it was to retrieve a lost password on their current institutionally provisioned systems (any misstatement here is my own, Brian please correct me if I got this wrong). There was widespread murmuring to the effect that he had a point.

But which raised this question - can someone point me to what the best practice is for recovering a password? Asking for username comes with one set of problems, asking for email address another. I’m sure someone’s already looked at this extensively - lazyweb, help me out! - SWL

Tags: authentication, loosely coupled, passwords single sign on

Google and video conferencing?

While it’s not video conferencing, Google has added video functionality to Gmail. Many tools (notably skype) already offer similar (but superior) functionality. I’m interested in where Google will go with this. It would be exciting to have video conferencing options available for educators who are already using Google Docs, gmail, and other services.

Planning to Share versus Just Sharing

(This is a long post, born out of years of frustration with ineffective institutional collaborations. If you only want the highlights, here they are: grow your network by sharing, not planning to share or deciding who to share with; the tech doesn’t determine the sharing - if you want to share, you will; weave your network by sharing what you can, and they will share what they can - people won’t share [without a lot of added incentives] stuff that’s not easy or compelling for them to share. Create virtuous cycles that amplify network effects. Given the right ’set,’ simple tech is all they need to get started.)

I have been asked to participate in many projects over the years that start once a bunch of departments, institutions or organizations notice that they have a lot in common with others and decide that it would be a good idea to collaborate, to share “best practices” or “data” or whatever. It always ’sounds’ like a good idea. I am big on sharing and have benefited much over the years from stuff I’ve shared and stuff shared with me by my peers.

But inevitably, with a very few exceptions, these projects spend an enormous amount of time defining what is to be shared, figuring out how to share it, setting up the mechanisms to share it, and then…not really sharing much. Or sharing once but costing so much time, effort or money that they do not get sustained. Does this sound familiar to anyone else? I don’t feel like this phenomenon is isolated to me or somehow occurs because of my own personal ineptitude, but you never know.

Now I contrast that with the learning networks which I inhabit, and in which every single day I share my learning and have knowledge and learning shared back with me. I know it works. I literally don’t think I could do my job any longer without it - the pace of change is too rapid, the number of developments I need to follow and master too great, and without my network I would drown. But I am not drowning, indeed I feel regularly that I am enjoying surfing these waves and glance over to see other surfers right there beside me, silly grins on all of our faces. So it feels to me like it’s working, like we ARE sharing, and thriving because of it.

So I began to wonder, why does one the (institutional-driven/focused) approach continually fail while my personal learning network continues to thrive. Here are some thoughts on why:

We grow our network by sharing, they start their network by setting up inital agreements

We just finished a workshop this week on “Weaving your own PLE.” While part of this was definitely an effort at straight tech training, that in my mind was actually the minor part - the whole reason many of us are so attracted to blogs, microblogs, social media, etc., in the first place is that they are SIMPLE to use and don’t require a lot of training.

No, in my mind, a lot of the message was helping newcomers to get over the hump of “well, I created a blog/joined this service/etc, but how come no one is reading it?” A lot of what we discussed were the practices by which you can grow your connections, and by and large these involve some form of sharing: writing interesting posts (sharing your insight and learning); writing comments (sharing feedback/conversation); publishing work in open spaces (and pointing to it). Your network will grow. It may take a little time, but it will grow. The other thing we emphasized was a line I think I stole from Dave Winer - “It doesn’t matter if there are only 2 people reading your blog as long as they are the right 2 people.” The notion that if you grow your network organically, don’t force it, it will settle, over time, on just what you need.

Contrast this with these formal initiatives to network “organizations.” In my experience, these start with meetings in which people first agree that sharing is a good idea, and then follow up meetings to decide what they might share, then, somewhere way down the line, some sharing might happen. The whole time, some of the parts of a network are already present and could have just started sharing what they have, heck they could have started before ever meeting, even WITHOUT ever meeting, but this never happens. (I say part, because if it’s a network it will grow to include many others not in any intial group.)

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We share what we share, they want to share what they often don’t have (or even really want)

Much of the sharing that happens in my learning network happens through seredipity. People publish a blog post, bookmark a delicious link, etc, as a normal part of their own workflow,and whether through syndication or the “All seeing eye of Google,” it comes my way, as John Krutsch would say, “Right On Time.” Or I ask the network, through my blog or twitter, or sometimes directly, for help with a question or problem: sometimes the answer comes in seconds, because someone’s already worked it out; sometimes in minutes, maybe because a slight twist needs to be given to existing work; sometimes in days or weeks, when it tweaks someone else’s mind as much as mine and they do the work because it seems worhtwhile to them and they can do it; sometimes it comes in months or years, because it’s a big problem. But so far, it’s never not come, eventually. Our sharing is “good enough,” not perfect; optimal, not ideal. We don’t build our entire houses on this single foundation, but it sure helps get a lot of structure built quickly on many an occassion.

Contrast this with the formal approach. In my experience, a ton of time goes into defining ahead of time what is to be shared. Often with little thought to whether it’s actually something that is easy for them to share. And always, because its done ahead of time, with the assumption that it will be value, not because someone is asking for it, right then, with a burning need. Maybe I’m being too harsh, but my experience over a decade consulting and working on these kinds of projects is that I’m not. Someone always thinks that defining these terms ahead of time is a good idea. And my experience is that you then get people not sharing very much, because to do so takes extra effort, and that what does get shared doesn’t actually get used, because despite what they said while they were sitting in the requirements gathering sessions, they didn’t actually know what the compelling need was, it just sounded like a good idea at the time.

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By the way, if my writing is making it seem that I haven’t done this myself, many times, that’s just wrong. For the longest time, it seemed like a good idea to me too.

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We share with people, they share with “Institutions”

I have never spoken to “an institution.” I would be scared if one started to speak to me. But I’ve spoken and shared with many *people* in institutions. Many *people* use stuff I have shared. And usually, in my experience, its people who directly, not through some intermediary, have a need.

The institutional approach, in my experience, is driven by people who will end up not being the ones doing the actual sharing nor producing what is to be shared. They might have the need, but they are acting on behalf of some larger entity. The need ends up getting diffused over all the people involved ultimately in sharing, and the people who go to the meetings, form the relationships, have *the actual network* end up delegating the work to people who are excluded from the network, acting as proxies, instead of forming their *own* network. There is nothing stopping them from doing so except the need being defined at the top of the org but driven to the bottom, instead of the need being defined (differently) at each level of the organization and at each level personal networks being built (and if this were happening, the whole notion of “levels” would no doubt start to get a bit woobly.)

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We develop multiple (informal) channels while they focus on a single official mechanism

I blog. I use twitter. I use delicious. I use flickr. I use facebook (when I have to.) I use drop.io. I use slideshare. I use scribd. I use google docs. I use… the list goes on and on. Many of the ones above are ones that have persisted in my practice for some time now, while there are others that come and go. The point is, though, I have yet to come across a situation where someone in my network asked for help (through any of these channels, or indeed simply through email) and I (or someone in the network) did not find SOME way to share what they needed with them. More often than not, we’d shared it ahead of time and it’s Google finding it, and typically always things are shared in a way that allowed everyone else simply to benefit from that act of sharing. The technology is NOT the problem. Given a compelling need to connect, people will find a way, be it through smoke signals, Morse code or Usenet news groups.

Contrast this with these formal initiatives to network “organizations” - in my experience, much time goes into finding the right single “platform” to collaborate in (and somehow it always ends up to blame - too clunky, too this, too that.) And because typically the needs for the platform have been defined by the collective’s/collaboration’s needs, and not each of the individual users/institutions, what results is a central “bucket” that people are reluctant to contribute to, that is secondary to their ‘normal’ workflow, and that results in at least some of the motivation (of getting some credit, because even those of us who give things away still like to enjoy some recognition) being diminshed. And again, in my experience, in not a whole lot of sharing going on.

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What to do if you are stuck having to facilitate sharing amongst a large group of institutions?

So hopefully it’s clear at this point that I am a big believer in everyone, no matter what their role in an organization, developing their own personal learning network/environment. But the reality is, you and I are going to get asked for years to come to help groups who say they want to share. So what do we do. Well, if you can, my advice is to provision as little tech as possible and urge an approach that focuses on the sharing and the network creation first. But if you must provide a single “platform,” my advice is to focus on providing one with these three simple pieces:

• a simple way to find out who else is out there (profile, even just a directory)
• some simple channels to communicate: email lists/addresses, threaded discussions
• a simple way to publish content

That’s it. Maybe a synchronous tool. If the need and desire to share is real, these basic means (which really, they already have access to, but sometimes you need to build them a new one, after all we all like to feel special sometimes) are ALL THEY NEED TO SHARE. You see, at the end of the day, that’s all any of us, who started building our personal learning networks with, say, blogs, actually had. And it worked. It works every day. - SWL

Tags: diffusion of responsability, ineffectiveness, institution, network learning, non collaborating collaborations, personal learning environment, personal learning network sharing

Emerging Technologies Course

Final week to register for the first course in University of Manitoba’s is offering a Certificate in Emerging Technologies for Learning: Introduction to Emerging Technologies (starts November 17). I’m co-facilitating the course with Dave Cormier…so I’m looking forward to a great course!
From the course description (.pdf): “New technologies offer new opportunities for educators to increase learner engagement and improve the overall value of the learning experience. The last five years have resulted in the introduction of numerous new tools and approaches: blogs, wikis, podcasts, social bookmarking, virtual worlds, and social networking services. This course will explore the development of different technologies and suggest their potential impact on teaching and learning. Focus will be placed on tools
that increase learner control over content, interaction, and the formation of learning networks with peers and experts outside of classrooms.”

Creating Knowledge: Network Structure and Innovation

When organizations begin planning new ways for employees to share knowledge, the focus is often misplaced on the explicit act of sharing knowledge itself. We cannot meaningfully “force” people to share. At best, we can create situations/conditions/ecologies in which exchange of ideas will occur. Or, more succinctly: “Promoting knowledge sharing is a matter of (a) creating the relational conditions that facilitate interpersonal transfers, and (b) creating the structural conditions that facilitate diffusion.”