Download Video: Posted by cshively at TeacherTube.com.

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First off we have courtesy of TED a talk by Alan Kay. In this talk he reminds us that “the world is not what it seems,” (there a great slide about table sizes – you’ll know it when you see it). He then continues to show how “good programming can sharpen our picture”. The emphasis is on letting students (in this case children) learn by doing and by creating lessons themselves.

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One: Increased use of collaborative & dialogical technologies. This year will see the continued rise of the wiki with regards to educational use but also for institutional level management (drafting policies etc.). Of course this is not new and indeed corporate use has risen steadily while publicly available wikis already exist. HE use however still tends to be sporadic whereas in the school sector wikis are enjoying continued growth with many wikis pushing the boundaries particularly with regards to the manner in which they are used (I’m thinking of the sheer level of freedom some students are given) and the subjects and goals for which they are tasked with. There’s a lot of exciting stuff happening there (for example the Discovery Utopia Project http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/). In terms of the HE context I can see wikis being used at 2 levels: one as placement support (for diaries, communal knowledge bases) and second as collaborative exercises in which the students develop the subject content and in doing gain a level of expertise and deeper connection or ownership of the topic.

Two: Merging of blogs and wiki concepts. I’m not talking about blikis but of greater use of both tools in support of each other. There’s way too much attention being paid to the use of either one or the other when in fact a teaching strategy utilising both could provide the student with sufficient autonomy to develop subject expertise and the confidence to put forward and defend opinions (through blogging). In turn their opinions can then be used to scaffold further ideas and generate knowledge in collaboration and competition with peers (the wiki bit). More and more I’m seeing this happen at school level and I expect this to filter into HE as early wiki and blog pioneers move on to explore the benefits of using both. They curriculum intensive however but as a learning journey invaluable.

Three: Who’s the student, who’s the tutor? We should start to see more classroom inversion. Not a new concept by any means. What we’re talking about is students learning through content creation. In other words the students are the content providers. And the tutor? What role would they play? Correcting the students as they progress I guess. So would this mean that the tutor becomes the A mentor? Or a fellow learner? Again this is another instance in which wikis have proved effective. For example the Critical Analysis Of Media course at the University of Toronto has given responsibility for creating the study notes, together with FAQs and the like, to the students (Critical Analysis of Media Wiki). Another example is the ‘Youbric’ created ot the Discovery Utopia Project (another school wiki) in which the students themselves make the decision on not only whether their efforts should be assessed but also how they should be assessed (and in doing so decide what is appropriate content / action). Class blog and wiki scribing, similar activities, should also come to the fore, (see Scribe Posts).

Four: Linky MLEs. The rise of social networking amongst the student community (really quite obvious since Facebook was originally created for students) has caused some educators to moot the possibility of relying upon these networks to induce learning and support learning rather than the institutional MLE solution. True current incarnations of the MLE tend to be monolithic but this wont always be the case. What we’ll see is the further progression towards MLEs being more social with resources and contacts being delivered to a user on the basis of what they are studying, what they are interested in, where they have been in the system and what they have done within the system. Basically using similar personalisation technology approaches to that of the Amazon recommends system. The idea is that the MLE more and more reflects and changes according to the user needs and hopefully goes some way towards adaptive tutoring. But it’s also about connecting. Connecting the student not only with content but with the content’s creator. Students will have the opportunity to form or be a part of hubs – networking within their own university, and possibly with others, reaching and sharing with fellow learners whom they might normally never reach. The flow of information from the module to the student will still exist but there will be additional information incoming from the students network of friends and from the student out into the university community.

Five: We will ignore good things. I feel guilty because I have had to ignore a lot of great learning resources I’ve had sent to me or found over the last year. The manner in which I discover new material has changed gradually over a 3 stage process. Stage 1 : searching the internet using standard engines, judging returns and bookmarking items; Stage 2 : plugging into blog communities in areas related to my own aims and sifting information and finally Stage 3 where through subscription software I no longer spend time searching and sifting but the information comes direct to me. By stage 3 I realised I have now subscribed to those information outlets (blogs, websites, newsfeeds) which produce valuable information. As such its like being at a great conference, every day, all the time, as new, insightful and relevant information comes streaming to me. It’s getting too much and so try as I might I find myself having to ignore certain items over others. As an indication click here to see what sites I’m subscribed to (currently 94). I don’t keep count of the amount of information delivered to me through the subscriptions. Most of the time I gloss over the title and save anything of interest for future investigation. But as an indication of how much material I have yet to sift through – I currently have 454 items pending further study. Will I ever get through it all? Yes but there will always be more items. So I’ll never come out on top. But I don’t care, (the trick is to simply enjoy the journey…).

Six: HE (over?) reaction to social networks Although web 2.0 does carry the promise of fostering enhanced knowledge sharing, generation and collaboration among students there is a darker side. Social networks such as Facebook as well as media sharing sites (Flickr, YouTube) and virtual worlds (World of Warcraft, Second Life) have come under heavy fire from the school sector with regards to resource bandwidth use, time wasting, cyberbullying, personal data protection and exposing students to adult related content. As HE staff increasingly investigate the use of social networking to facilitate teaching (this is particularly prevalent within those institutions who do not possess an MLE) we may start to see similar fears being voiced from senior institution management, (indeed some of our associate colleges have difficulty accessing YouTube). Additional concerns relate to the storage of student data on such systems, their exposure to spam and advertising, ownership and copyright of teaching or student generated material or data. Currently, across the sector, I’m not seeing much in the way of a dialogue to resolve these issues but I expect this will start in the forthcoming year as senior management realise the implications of their use in a teaching context.

And finally.

Seven: What’s the cost? Previous years have seen an explosion in the various web 2.0 tools available, in which user empowerment in terms of creating and editing together with the ability to immediately share the results through richly connected communities are the norm. This year I am hoping to see a settling out / evaluation period in which greater emphasis is paid, by tutors and learning technologists, to making sense of these technologies in terms of using them TOGETHER and in recognizing their resource cost with regards to service provision and curriculum design. So a time out period is needed to evaluate and extrapolate principles to enable us to leap frog from web 2.0 to the next big thing. If we stop and smell the roses we may find that we have more than enough tools to do the job already…

Contact Martina at m.a.doolan@herts.ac.uk

The report is produced through collaboration of the New Media Consortium (NMC), which is an international not-for-profit consortium of nearly 250 learning-focused organizations “dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies.”, (for more info click here) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, which is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology., (for more info click here).

The report lists the key emerging e-learning technologies. Conveniently it groups the technologies in terms of their arrival within the education arena using three categories: less one year, two to three years and four to five years.

Six emergent technologies are listed together with the critical challenges currently facing educational institutions. Briefly the technologies are:

Grassroots video: anyone can capture, edit, and share video clips, using commonly available equipment such as a mobile phones. Specialised knowledge or servers are no longer required. The outcome is that learners are increasingly empowered in terms of being able to create their own content.

Collaboration webs: as with video, collaboration no longer requires expensive equipment or services. Web users simply open their browsers and edit group documents, hold online meetings, swap information and data, and collaborate in any number of ways without ever leaving their desks. Not only that but increasingly many programming interfaces are allowing users to create their own plug in applications and so further tailor the environment to their needs.

Mobile broadband:. Each year, more than a billion new mobile devices are manufactured1 pushing forward innovation at an unprecedented pace. Capabilities are increasing as prices fall. Social networking on the go is already happening and is looking to be endemic in the near future as learners will be equipped to send, receive and interact with content as part of a fluid, connected, peer-based, mobile network.

Data mashups: the concept is not new. Mashups are combinations of data from different sources “mashed up” to create a new interpretation of that data (usually a website whose information is based on data from multiple separate sources. Nevertheless this convergence of data is occurring at the same time as open programming increasingly allows users to deign and create their own mashups. As the report points out this “will transform the way we understand and represent information”.

Collective intelligence: This my favourite. Again not new as we have seen this already with wikis, group blogs, community tagged resource sites and blog comments. Horizon speculates however that new sites will also include data based on people patterns such as search patterns, cell phone locations over time, geocoded digital photographs, and other data that are passively obtained. This combination of active and passive derived data will enrich and expand current knowledge pools.

Social operating systems: Another fundamental change in concept and one that will influence future MLE development. Basically the next generation social networking systems will be based around people rather than around content. We’re talking the development of systems in which the leaner is not only connected with content but with the person that created that content.

Each technology is covered in detail including an overview, the relevance to learning and teaching, examples and further reading.

The critical challenges facing education include:

• Significant shifts in scholarship, research, creative expression, and learning have created a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy. Higher education is facing a growing expectation to deliver services, content and media to mobile and personal devices.
• The renewed emphasis on collaborative learning is pushing the educational community to develop new forms of interaction and assessment.
• The academy is faced with a need to provide formal instruction in information, visual, and technological literacy as well as in how to create meaningful content with today’s tools.

The report covers all of these are covered in greater detail.

Finally a number of key trends are identified:

• The growing use of Web 2.0 and social networking, combined with collective intelligence and mass amateurization is gradually but inexorably changing the practice of scholarship.
• The way we work, collaborate, and communicate is evolving as boundaries become more fluid and globalization increases.
• Access to and portability of content is increasing as smaller, more powerful devices are introduced.
• The gap between students’ perception of technology and that of faculty continues to widen.

Good reading and great glimpse of what’s may lie ahead in terms of the changing learning environment (user is king) and of how practice will need to change.

You can download the report from here.

View the list below – some surprising entries.

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Great article on the possible future of eduction in the 21st Century. This fall sin line with what Sir Ken Robinson and Paul Ramsden have been speaking of lately in terms if equipping students with the skills relating to creativity through a curriculum in which the higher order Bloom’s taxonomy of learning (evaluation, synthesis, creativity) are brought into play. Basically learning by doing. You can argue that we already achieve this through placement schemes.

The paper supplies its own definition of Authentic Learning in terms of portable skills: “Students immersed in authentic learning activities cultivate the kinds of “portable skills” that newcomers to any discipline have the most difficulty acquiring on their own:
• The judgment to distinguish reliable from unreliable information
• The patience to follow longer arguments
• The synthetic ability to recognize relevant patterns in unfamiliar contexts
• The flexibility to work across disciplinary and cultural boundaries to generate innovative solutions”.

It goes on to list 10 design elements (why do lists always come in 10? Why not 11?). I wont repeat them here but number 8 is interesting: “Integrated assessment: Assessment is not merely summative in authentic activities but is woven seamlessly into the major task in a manner that reflects real-world evaluation processes.”. This is almost certainly happening here but can anyone provide any examples?

Interestingly the article mentions Polaris created at UT Austin. An e-portfolio system which “uses a “metacognitive” strategy that encourages students to study their own learning patterns in an effort to improve their performance over time. In addition, a feedback cycle allows students to post their individual work electronically, perform intra-group and extra-group reviews, question project assumptions, and learn to critique their peers constructively, as they must do throughout their engineering careers.”.

There’s also a nice reminder that authentic learning is not new: “Authentic learning is not new. It was the primary mode of instruction for apprentices who later took their places within established craft guilds. At one time apprenticeship was the most common form of learning. However, as the numbers of students grew in the 19th century, the logistics and economics of transporting large numbers of students to relevant work sites made large-scale apprenticeship programs impractical.”.

And a reminder of the importance of the communal element towards learning: “However, access to digital archives, databases, instruments, or even haptic devices may not guarantee an authentic learning experience without the most important factor: community participation. In authentic learning situations, tasks are accomplished collaboratively, whether or not distance is involved.”.

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I really enjoyed this article. Although it looks at recasting students as researchers and even fellow teachers (through shifting authority towards them) at its core the article centres upon the learning benefits associated with the student creating the educational content.

“We know much more than our students do. But they also know much more than we do. When we renounce our own exclusive status as erudite experts, placing our students in the role of teachers and ourselves in the role of students, not only do we model for them the benefits of life-long learning, but we allow them to experience firsthand what every seasoned teacher already knows: If you really want to master a subject, teach it. While direct responsiveness to student input might not be practicable or indeed advisable in all teaching situations, instructors can find many ways of granting increased intellectual authority to their students, even in large, highly structured lecture courses.”

The 7 principles are:

1. Relinquish Authority
2. Recast Students as Teachers, Researchers, and Producers of Knowledge
3. Promote Collaborative Relationships
4. Cultivate Multiple Intelligences
5. Foster Critical Creativity
6. Encourage Resilience in the Face of Change
7. Craft Assignments That Look Both Forward and Backwards

I do recommend looking at the paper which describes how they achieve each of the above principles.

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