Some excellent advice on making presentations from Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users, one of my favorite bloggers.

However, what I really loved from this post was her link to the TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson.

 

What he says about the problem with our current educational systems is very important, but the man could have a career as a stand-up comic, if he weren't in education. For an educational and amusing 20 minutes (approximately) - watch & listen here. It's really worth your time!

Web 2.0 vs the LMS

Web 2.0 is increasingly making the use of Learning Management Systems anachronistic. Blackboard, which has taken over WebCT has been granted a patent for a whole whack of LMS functions, as Harold Jarche lists in his post quoted from and linked below.

From Harold Jarche's Blog -

I think that it’s important to consider that these kinds of functions can be found not just in LMS but also LCMS and even some non-traditional online learning systems. Is there an online learning system, proprietary or open source, that does not include ANY of these functions?

Update: On reviewing these 44 items, I would say that Elgg Learning Landscape does not use any of these. So, I guess that makes your decision easy. Choose Elgg if you want a lawsuit-free learning system ;-)

Harold Jarche » Blackboard Sues D2L over LMS Patent

Who Needs LMSs?

I believe that this is the corporate system about to topple from its own weight. I teach using an Elgg Community blog and a course wiki. I used to use WebCT. I prefer the blog and wiki as teaching tools; they're simpler to use, much, much cheaper, and students learn how to use software they might encounter again in their futures. The only thing I miss from a LMS is being able to post the students' marks securely, and I assume something that will be developed sometime soon. Till then, I can make do with some old-style approaches.

I challenge the LMS researchers to find out how many of the possibilities available in their systems are actually used by how many teachers. I suspect many courses are shells, easily replacable by community blogs (even on Blogger) and wikis, which can be made private. So only the student mark tracking is missing, and why pay thousands for that?

Elgg Plus

Take a look at the OpenAcademic site, as described by Elgg's Dave Tosh to see a completely different social and economic ethos, where time and effort goes into improving the learning and teacher experience, not into lawsuits.

 

 

 From Stephen Downes - Half an Hour

We are seeing people create more (and better) multimedia. It is easier to create a short audio or video message than it is to type a message, and once storage and delivery cease to be problems (as we are seeing today) there is less of an incentive to create text. True, there will always be a need for text, especially among academics, but much (if not most) popular communication will be audio and video.

The challenge will be to effect a transition between the textual world and the multimedia, to communicate complex ideas in a manner accessible to people using audio and video. Neither medium favours the abstract (and neither do their consumers today) and each medium imposes channel limitations (you can't skim an audio or video file).

It will be necessary, in my view, to evolve a form of language that combines audio, video and text, to in other words combine the subtlety and expressiveness of text with the emotion and immediacy of audio and video.

Half an Hour: mLearning Tools

Yes! Once again Stephen Downes has articulated a vision that I share. Yes, multimedia is getting easier. Anyone who can use a phone can dial into AudioBlogger and post a message on a blog. At a slightly more sophisticated level, you can use the freeware Audacity and/or Apple's GarageBand to create an MP3 and link it to a blog and/or create a podcast.

And webcams and digital video cameras come in all levels of sophistication, with some very cheap and easy. YouTube and OurMedia make sharing video easy. You can even see an example of audio and video and text combined with certain presentation software; for example take half an hour to look at Nigel Paine talking about Podcasting, wikis and blogs at the BBC using datapresenter software. (Ignore the overlong silly Ninja bit, and skip ahead to the content.)

For sure, the rapid development of photosharing sites such as Flickr show how important visuals are to the general population. But I take some issue with Stephen when he says "there will always be a need for text, especially among academics, but much (if not most) popular communication will be audio and video." According to the Pew research, at least 12% of the (North?) American population blogs, and about 39% of us read blogs. If you add in reading books, etc. it's obvious that text is profoundly important. I also believe the act of writing has a different learning and psychological-insight impact that results from speaking and then viewing and/or hearing recordings of it. I think writing helps you move forward in your thinking and understanding in a way that recorded speech and visuals don't.

Maybe what I'm saying is that language is my path. If I stop to think of people I know who aren't as text-oriented as I am, and who are more aurally or visually oriented, then maybe they can learn, think, and understand in a more multimedia environment. Heck, maybe I'm part of the last print generation and the transition. So maybe I don't have an issue with what Stephen says, especially when I re-read the second paragraph in the quotation where he mentions the abstract. As Roseanne Rosanna Danna used to say: "Never Mind ;->"

Once again, Stephen has sparked my thinking through a concept, not simply accepting what is written, and I think that's one of the wonders of what text allows and invites.

From Dave Tosh's Edufilter interview with Stephen Downes, Stephen says -

In my mind, the browser is the LMS, and will continue to be the LMS. This is why I watch developments on the browser side, such as Flock, very closely.

edufilter

(LMS = Learning Management System)

This fall I will be encouraging my students, as I have been encouraging my JNthWEB clients, to use Flock for their Web work. It is the Web 2.0 browser, aimed at the social user, perfect for a variety of communication tasks. In the screenshot above you can see

• both the icon for connecting to a Flickr or Photobucket account and how it can be displayed;
• the address bar's blue circle with an embedded white star which allows you to add a site to your Favorites, and if connected to a social bookmarking account, like my del.icio.us account, to that, all in one click; and
  
• The plume icon for the (WYSIWYG - see the Toolbar!) blogging tool and its window open and in use.

The other major aspect of Flock that I don't use but am recommending to my students and clients is its aggregation tool for blogs and news sites you want to follow easily and regularly (in the icon bar between the photo and blogging icons above). I will continue to use my Bloglines account (second from the left in the tabs under the photo stream) because I am used to it and like its set-up.

Oh, and of course, its Search Field on the upper right which searches a variety of search tools and lets you choose which one you want this time.

Flock has, as you can see, centralized a number of important Web communication aspects all within itself as a browser. For someone just beginning to learn how to use the Web, especially the social aspect of communicating using Web 2.0 tools, Flock is a great browser to introduce both the concepts and the tools.

 

The education is not in the tools, but rather, in the use of the tools

edufilter

If people can learn the concept of what they can do, they are better off learning the open access free tools, such as Flock, than other over-specialized and over-complex systems that have limited uses. IMHO.

Via Will Richardson - http://weblogg-ed.com/2006/more-henry-jenkins/ - quoting Henry Jenkins

In talking media pedagogies, then, we should no longer imagine this as a process where adults teach and children learn. Rather, we should see it as increasingly a space where children teach one another and where, if they would open their eyes, adults could learn a great deal. (Emphasis mine.)

Weblogg-ed » More Henry Jenkins

 

I used to have a page tacked to my bulletin board with a quote from Elliot Eisner - from a Google search, this reference - Elliot Eisner (in Saks (Ed.), 1996, p. 412)

"Working at the edge of incompetence takes courage."

I thought this was true of all teaching, because we never know what our students don't know, and how they can actually 'get' what we want to transmit convey help them learn. I also thought it was true of all teaching because, especially in rhetoric or English lit., my areas, views and rules change.

I also thought it was what made my learning, (and theirs) exciting. When you are at the vygotskian point in your proximal development that you mostly know and can venture into interweaving your own experiences and ideas into what you are getting from the mentor/experts (teachers, books etc.), it is terrifically exciting. Things click, synapses connect, and you are in a wonderful state of flow!

As a teacher, I can sometimes feel the class in this state, and I work to keep that liveliness happening. As a student, I am very good at helping move the class (if the teacher allows it) into a space where this is possible.

Last term I used an Elgg class blog with a 3rd year undergrad course in oral rhetoric, which I've blogged about before - here, and here. I've had trouble writing up a "final report" on my experience for two reasons.

1. I had my students use Elgg and I feel (I think the best description is) shy. (Paranoia - "If they look, they will find it, anywhere on the Web, but they know how much I like Elgg, so they'll know to look there." Well, yes, but it is only my opinion and they are welcome to differ. I guess this is a trace of the Staff Room effect where you can say what you want, get as extreme as you want because you won't be overheard. It's also a bit of a response to the "Rate Your Teacher" effect. Time to get over that.)
2. The Henry Jenkins quotation at the beginning of this post. I feel some ownership of the class, but they own their success. In their blog posts I could see how they began to expose where they needed help, and I could see some of their classmates helping.

Many of the students in the class began the interactive learning that I believe is the most powerful and natural way of learning. I set up the environment, but they taught one another. Those who were active with helping each other learned the most, and learned a pattern of learning that will benefit them the rest of their lives, I believe.

The best part for me, is how much I learned from watching them teach each other. Teaching and/or learning "at the edge of incompetence" is both exciting and valuable. And, with our rapidly changing and developing communication technologies, a necessity.

A response to a post by Judy O'Connell - via Stephen Downes https://heyjude.wordpress.com/2006/08/24/teacher-as-learner-in-web-20/

For Judy -

This is to let you know that dropping out can come before or after the degree.

I was lucky when I went back for my Ph.D. because I was able to do (pause for a big breath before I roll out the phrase) an Autoethnographic Arts-Based Narrative Inquiry, with phenomenological and ethnographic approaches (inhale!) to study my own learning as I moved onto the computer, the Web, and Web 2.0 - under Dr. Pat Diamond (originally from Australia.)

My thesis was on learning to teach communications skills with this wonderful new technology. I had travelled from technophobia to technophilia and OISE/University of Toronto allowed me to write my thesis studying how that happened and its learning impact on me and in my classrooms.

The irony is I was not allowed to use my Ph.D. in the Ontario Community College where I worked because it was in education, which has been ruled "not a discipline". (A further irony, degrees in education are "counted" for administrative positions.) I also found it very difficult to get teaching assignments that used my computer and Web knowledge. I took early retirement, and I now teach part time at UTM in a program that values my degree and my knowledge, and have set up my own consulting & training business, JNthWEB.

I worry that the educational institutions are missing the Web 2.0 boat, and that our students are being poorly served. I still believe the university experience can be a broadening and depthening (I think I've just invented a new word) one and that legacy knowledge is very, very important. I don't think that most areas in most institutions are courageous and fair enough to return the courtesy.