Steve believes that “the read/write Web, or what we are calling Web 2.0, will culturally, socially, intellectually, and politically have a greater impact than the advent of the printing press.” In particular he emphasises as to how difficult it will be to imagine the changes that will take place as a consequence of the flowering of, what he aptly terms, “two-way nature of the Internet”.

He identifies ten trends which he thinks will have particular importance for education and learning and then outlines seven steps which he thinks educators ought to be taking to make a difference.

I’ll outline the trends here which includes some points of my own (remixing as Steve points out in web 2.0 speak) but for detail I recommend visiting his post:

Trend 1: A New Publishing Revolution. The web is no longer a one-way medium where the user passively reads content but rather it offers instant self publication. In other words the web is two-way, it allows the user to create content and in doing so engage in creativity. I think the last aspect is the most important as it doesn’t matter what the outcome as long as the user experiences a level of creativity – educationally web 2.0 enables the process rather than the product.

Trend 2: A Tidal Wave of Information – and no time to act. As with the first trend this has been said before but it is always worth re-stating. As Steve notes for people over a certain age their childhood involved a lot of hard work having to look for and obtain information. Similarly for university education prior to web 2.0. Whereas now there is so much information on the net we have to spend more time sifting and filtering content in order to isolate quality material. And even when we ‘plug’ into trusted information providers, as I do through online subscription, the problem becomes another as we are now in receipt of quality information at great quantity. There’s not enough time to reflect on the information and adapt it or adopt it into working practice as necessary unless you ‘unplug’ yourself for a while and start to deliberately ignore incoming good quality content. It’s like being at a very good conference every day. Information incontinence.

Trend 3: Everything Is Becoming Participative. In other words everyone can get in on the act. Steve’s example is Amazon in which participation is integral to its system of selling books. As with Steve usually my decision to buy a book is based on the comments left by other readers. Another example is the move database IMDB (www.imdb.com) in which I check out the reviews left by joe public and base my viewing preferences / dvd purchasing choices accordingly. In each case generally I skim through the comments/reviews and gain an aggregated sense of the overall feeling for the item. Interestingly for both cases I found that the reviews left by the public can on occasion be more thoughtful and insightful than those left by so called professional critics, (so much so that last year I gave up on my 17 year long subscription to Empire movie magazine – as the content tended to be out of date and the reviews comparatively uninformed).

Steve also notes the tracking ability of Amazon in which the user’s browsing and purchasing patterns are analysed and recommendations are made accordingly. This is both powerful and sophisticated. For example for people who have viewed the same book you are currently viewing Amazon is able to show you the book they actually ended up buying, e.g. 60% of people who viewed book A went on to buy book B. I suspect in the very near future MLEs will be using similar people pattern processes for connecting learner’s to content (and its creator) which they would normally miss, informing module choices and suggesting career options.

Trend 4: The New Pro-sumers. This is in relation to the way in which knowledge is generated though collaboration between the ‘producer’, i.e. the company and the ‘consumer’, i.e. the customer. Steve points out that companies are increasingly eliciting R&D work from a broader public. From an educational point of view this could relate to learners generating content for a course in association with the tutor, particularly where the student is returning from field experience or is a current practitioner in the field.

Trend 5: The Age of the Collaborator. Steve puts this across very well “The era of trusted authority (Time magazine, for instance, when I was young) is giving way to an era of transparent and collaborative scholarship (Wikipedia). The expert is giving way to the collaborator, since 1 + 1 truly equals 3 in this realm..”. And with collaboration we have critiquing, communication and competition as differing views fight it out and merge apart or together.

Trend 6: An Explosion of Innovation. Giving credit to his brother Steve considers as how innovation rarely comes from a single individual but rather through the application of knowledge from one field to another, specifically when collaborators of diverse backgrounds are involved bringing in particular experiences. My thoughts are not necessarily related to this but it did get me thinking about possible future forms of knowledge generation. Future MLEs will, through adopting social networking functionality, encourage the student to create and become part of communities whose membership will be from a variety of backgrounds, life experiences and expertise. As such the student may seek advice, be influenced by and or collaborate with the membership to produce knowledge with a unique spin. I’m not necessarily thinking in terms of traditional assignments but with reference to the CPD, PDP, ePortfolio material.

Trend 7: The World Gets Even Flatter and Faster. Flatter in terms of knowledge being freely available for access and study. For example MIT have released over 1800 open courses and as Steve notes that’s only the start.

Trend 8: Social Learning Moves Toward Center Stage. Steve cites John Seely Brown’s observation in that TRUE (my caps) learning actually takes place in the hallway, through social interaction and discussion, rather than within the lecture itself, (www.johnseelybrown.com). Essentially according to Steve the distinction between the “lecture” room and the “hallway” is diminishing. Interestingly I’ve seen this reported elsewhere particularly within Second Life in which distance based leaner students actually inter mingle and communicate with each other in virtual hallways or lobby outside of the virtual lecture room (and after the lecture has been delivered). As a somewhat obvious caveat some learning does take place within the lecture however but, and if we’re talking about a standard vicarious lecture, deeper understanding is reached only through two-way dialogue and social interaction, i.e. with the student as contributor.

Trend 9: The Long Tail. Basically the end of knowledge creation solely through the specialist. With the advert o user generated content sites such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Flickr there’s a great deal of information sources out there (and obviously there are issues of quality). But likewise the freedom that allows such content to be easily generate and passed on to others means that passionate students can also become involved in knowledge generation and sharing. They now have a space in which they can create content but also through social means air their views, issue and defend challenges. Simply put the student can get connected with the subject and stamp their own authority on it. So it’s not essentially about the academic quality of the output but more about the internal development the student gets from creating the output.

Trend 10: Social Networking Really Opens Up the Party. Blogs and wikis led the way to user-created content but “the party really began when sites that combined several Web 2.0 tools together created the phenomenon of “social networking.”” In other words blogs and wikis although very empowering, and in the case of the wiki inclusive, do not push the information outwards. The reader has to visit the wiki or the blog. However social networking hinges on users getting together with shared interests and goals. As such information created within these networks flows towards and outwards from the users.
The points are above are summaries mixed in with my own observations. For the original post click here

“Teach me to think, to create, to analyse, to evaluate, to apply. Teach me to think”.

Although it drawing both from Michael Wesch’s A Vision of Students Today (here) and the now legendary Karl Fisch’s Shift Happens (here) this video looks at how we might consider using technology to engage with our students. Great video.

It was made by bjnesbitt (more info) who states “This project was created to inspire teachers to use technology in engaging ways to help students develop higher level thinking skills.”

On a negative note. While I do enjoy the notion of information being shared and remixed across the internet I do wish the authors’ would pay attention to citing the source of original content and more importantly where they got their statistics from.

And on a more challenging issue I do wish people would drop the ‘digital learners’ aspect. Really the big picture is all about presenting the students with a learning experience which empowers them. And although the technology is a facilitator it’s not the sole solution towards allowing our students to be creative.

Thoughts anyone?

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.

Via by Lorelle Van Fossen (Edublogs Magazine).

The image suggests that todays educators are interconnected with a variety or resources/ methods. Would you say this represents you? Is it overwhelming or just how it is. Or as Fossen suggests “it opens up a whole world of the possible, finding creative inspiration, support, collaboration, and strength in each connection.”

What does it mean to you? My thoughts: where’s the student in all this? Where’s the relation between tutor and student? Is it implied, on the image, through staff use of social networks or wikis? And would the same interconnection apply them?

Image by Courosa

TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design and is an annual conference held in Monterey, California. It is described as a “group of remarkable people that gather to exchange ideas of incalculable value”. The lectures cover a broad range including science, arts, politics, global issues, architecture, music and also EDUCATION.

A couple of outstanding examples is the talk by Ken Robinson on why schools are stifling creativity here.

And Blaise Aguera y Arcase on his amazing Photosynth demo (I blogged this late last year) here.

More can be found here. The presentations are well worth looking at. Bionic Learning identify three reasons for checking them out:

1. There are some great talks relating directly to education
2. There are tons of options to pull these videos into class to introduce or enrich any subject you can think of
3. This is a perfect chance to watch some really spectacular presentations and look for ways to use their techniques and style in your delivery.

In fact on the Bionic Learning blog there’s a great comment left by a teacher who after finishing the class early was asked by a student to put up one of the TED lectures for them to watch.

Anyway there’s still time to go – plenty of time to convince your line manager (I wonder if Dave and Peter will split the costs…)

Full details here

* its not enough to simply read blogs while at the same time encouraging students to use them for learning when you do not actually blog yourself. Only when you use this tool do you truly become aware of its power for reflective learning.

One set of instructions consisted of a single paragraph with no numbers of bullets. The second was more user friendly while the third was in the form of a video (see below). Regarding the latter you get an glimpse as to how they use technology in the classroom: “I then told the children to open the laptops they had on their tables and look at the video. I showed it on the SMARTBoard too. I suggested to pause the video as it played so the children could keep up.”.

I wont reveal which set of instructions won but it’s worth reading the blog post simply for the description of a ‘Fold Off’ match between Tom’s class and a rival tutors class.

How To Fold A T-Shirt In 2 Seconds – Explained

Interestingly he also share his (and the class) experiences with the Create a Graph (click here). Basically a nice tool to demonstrate the creation of graphs with a whole class. What appeals to me is however is again the use of technology. In this case the children measured their pulses after a variety of exercises and entered the data on their laptops and finally “once the line graphs were created we exported them as PDF files and talked about them in the plenary of the session using the SMARTBoard”.

A final exercise centered around the development and application of basic word processing skills. This was achieved through creating sets of instructions for a game.

What I like about this post is that it demonstrated seamless integration of technology with class room activity while at the same time providing students with valuable and necessary skills to help them cope with an age in which technology is ever changing.

View full post

Just stumbled across a new blog on e-learning and education. The author is 14 years old and has much to say. I found the blog via Stephen Downes’s blog (OLDaily) who in turn had pointed to a post in Steve Hargadon’s blog, (Infinite Thinking Machine) in which Arthus is mentioned.

Steve Hargadon states “To me, Arthus is not representative of most 14-year-olds, but is representative of the kind of independent, engaged, proactive, and self-directed learner we often think will thrive in the flattened and connected world of the Internet.”

Stephen Downes slightly disgrees “Having read his posts, Arthus seems pretty typical to me, except, I suppose, his choice of topic.”

Both agree that is it enjoyable reading and I do agree – it’s always interesting to hear the student’s take on learning technology – they’re so honest, straight to the point and can be extremely insightful.

Steve listing some key points about Arthus such as :

# He thinks that schools teach students to “fear technology” and to really only use it for limited things and not for deeper conversations.
# He’s interested in education because he is in the education system right now. Feels that when students come to school their (technology) “tentacles” are cut off. He knows that there is bad stuff out there, but the problem is that we are fearing the technology instead of the content.
# If teachers are worried about the use of laptops in class for things that aren’t related to class, then maybe teachers should be thinking about why students wouldn’t be paying attention. Students should have an option of whether they want to pay attention. It’s not a given that students will pay attention if you are not talking about something they care about. This whole technology is really good at bringing out the flaws that might be in the system.

(more here)

Read Arthus’s blog Newly Ancient and his post on podcasting and iPods in the classroom (here).

As an aside this is a good example as to how great ideas / info / content is able to reach you through subscribing to someones blog, who in turn as subscribed to another person’ blog. In this case you have a community in which good ideas spread and bad ones don’t. essentially peer review.