Harold Jarche

The $100 Laptop

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The idea behind MIT’s $100 laptop initiative is to have one laptop per child, individually owned and cared for. The lime green laptop, which sports a handcrank and a swivel screen debuted in Tunis this week. The official word is that these laptops will be produced in huge quantities (5-10 million) with governments or donors purchasing them in bulk for distribution to students. Jon Husband forwards an additional twist on this initiative that is a bit more grassroots:

"How about offering a commercial version that costs twice as much? Do it in a different semi-florescent color and those who would buy them would be buying one for kid some where."  … Well .. why not ? I’d buy one at $200 if I knew some child or woman in an underdeveloped part of the world were going to receive a laptop they could use.

Given that most of the students in most of our schools do not have their own laptop, I think that a higher-priced version for students in more wealthy countries would not be a bad idea (my previous comments on laptops in schools – One Reason for Laptops & The Laptop Furor).
Like Jon, I would gladly pay about $(CA)300 to purchase one for my children and another for someone else. If this happens, would there be any pressure on governments to not allow a commercial version of this laptop in order to appease the oligopolies?

Guilt-free music online

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I don’t listen to music online, as the extent of my downloading is EdTech Talk and IT Conversations. However, our boys are starting to share their MP3’s and I was getting concerned that they didn’t understand the nasty forces out there that would do anything to maintain their oligopoly. Therefore, I introduced them to the Creative Commons search feature for media that is free to share. I also showed them Magnatune which features royalty free music. There are a number of single tracks that you can listen to and download for free in order to try before you buy.
What really impressed me about Magnatune is that artists receive 50% of the purchase price of an album (you decide on the price, starting at $5.00) as well as the fact that the artists keep all rights to the music. If this business model catches on, then the major labels have something very serious to worry about, and I have one less thing to worry about.

Is Intellectual Property an Oxymoron?

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No answers here, but as I continue to examine this issue I’m drawing some conclusions, and getting scared at the same time.

Some online sources that I’ve looked at:

Here is a quote from a 1999 article, Intellectual Property, Information and the Common Good:

The fundamental problem with intellectual property as an ethical category is that it is purely individualistic. It focuses on the creator/developer of the intellectual work and what he or she is entitled to. There is truth in this, but not the whole truth. It ignores the social role of the creator and of the work itself, thus overlooking their ethically significant relationships with the rest of society. The balance is lost.

Ideas as property will be more and more of an issue for our connected society and especially for those in the learning profession. I believe that locking-up ideas will not foster innovation or cultural growth.

A counter to multinational corporations claiming ever longer and more restrictive copyright protection are movemments like Creative Commons (CC). Through CC or Google’s advanced search (use the “Usage Rights” drop down menu) you can find audio, images, text, video, and other formats that are free to share online. You can also use a CC Licence to make your work easier to share, while retaining some rights.

Update:

I just had to add this quote from Michael Geist. Makes me proud to be Canadian:

It has been apparent now for several years but it bears repeating about the Supreme Court of Canada — no high court in the world better understands that the right balance in intellectual property law depends as much on the laws’ limits as its protections.

Teachers’ Roles in Learning & Problem-solving

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Stephen Downes recently referred to a paper written by Kelvin Tan and Cynthia Lim Ai Ming, entitled No Subjects, No teachers, No Schools, No Peers – Just problems: Arguments for a minimalist approach for maximising the scope of problem-based learning (PDF). This paper is a good review of why the process of learning, especially problem solving, should be separated from subject-based curricula, teacher-assessors and peer pressure in education.

My only criticism is that the authors have not referred to the excellent work conducted by Dave Jonassen, author of Learning to Solve problems: An Instructional Design Guide. One of Dave’s remarks that has stuck with me is that as adults, most people are paid to do only one thing – solve problems. Neither our school systems nor most of our training programs prepare people to solve problems.

Tan and Lim Ai Ming make some very strong comments in favour of the separation of content (subject & disciplines) and process (learning & problem solving). They begin by stating that, “The authors of this paper suggest that the retention of subjects or disciplines in PBL is an unnecessary obstacle to students’ learning”. The paper is then structured around these premises:

  • Learning should be based on problems, not subjects.
  • Subjects stress content rather than process
  • Individual learning is authentic [and group work may hinder this learning]
  • When the teacher is also the assessor, then the power to fail students may be detrimental to self-directed learning
  • Teachers as content experts (such as at a university) may be detrimental to self-directed learning.
  • Scheduled class times, as in any regulated school, are not supportive of problem-based learning.

In a recent interview on EdTech Talk, David Warlick talks about how the web has greatly increased the amount of available information. No one can master any content field any more. Now we see students having better access to information as well as access to more people than many of their teachers. I am referring to students who may be using IM and VoIP to chat with their friends in Asia, while the teacher is covering Asian social studies in class. The student just checks with the online friend and gets the information in context. Which information is correct – the textbook or the online peer? It doesn’t matter. What really matters, for their lifelong needs, is that students are learning how to learn and how to solve problems. However, mastery of the curriculum (content) is what the school administration assesses.

A similar content focus is seen in corporate e-learning. “Let us put your content online” some vendor may cry. We also have industry shoot-outs; to see who can convert PowerPoint content into e-learning courseware. It’s all about content because it’s easy to build a course based on defined content since there are no messy, individual, radical learners to get in the way. Only a fictional, generalized target population. My experience is that neither the public educational system, higher education nor the corporate training business have made any great achievements in facilitating learning. In many cases learning occurs in spite of the obstacles presented by formal training and education.

A shift in emphasis away from content delivery changes the role of the teacher/trainer. As Tan and Lim Ai Ming note, teacher as assessor and teacher as facilitator may be conflicting roles. The same goes for teacher as expert and teacher as guide. The separation of trainers and assessors is common practice in the Canadian military, where the trainer is responsible for assisting each learner, and a separate group (the Standards Section), confirms that operational standards are met through summative evaluation. When properly implemented, it is a good training system.

Today there is no shortage of information on most subjects. However, many graduates lack critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Facilitating the development of these skills, not mastery of a defined subject area, should be the role of educators and trainers. I believe that this will only happen when they abandon the roles of assessor and expert and become true learning facilitators.

Laptops in Schools – The Maine Experiment

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Via Will Richardson is this post from Dave Weinberger on the State of Maine’s laptop in schools initiative for every student in Grade 7 & 8, as well as this comment about a high school principal:

Robbin Wall, the school’s principal, welcomes us. The school is 5 years old. Every student has a laptop. (Among the speakers today — via video — is Angus King who was governor when Maine gave each student a laptop.) Principal Wall says that this school is focused on training professionals; it offers no extra-curricular activities.

On Will’s post there are comments that this kind of approach to education is too narrow and students will burn out. Thinking a bit more on this, I don’t see this as a critical problem. The schools that I see have already reduced physical education and art to such a lowly state that concerned parents have to supplement them with outside activities anyway. If the school only focuses on one area, that may not be so bad, as I don’t believe that public education can solve all of our problems. I would recommend that you read all of Weinberger’s post and follow the links. Again, there are no easy answers.

Work, Education & Taxes

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David Livingstone, of the Centre for the Study of Education and Work, presented at the CSTD conference on a 2004 study that interviewed 9,000 Canadians. One of the findings that I found most interesting was that Canadians have the highest rates of formal learning in the world. A large percentage of our workers have diplomas and degrees. On the other hand, I heard on the radio this morning that there is a productivity gap in this country, and as the Globe & Mail reports:

No one can pinpoint precisely why Canada has fallen behind to such an alarming extent. The explanations range from relatively low investments in technology and equipment to lagging private-sector research and development and the fact that marginal effective tax rates on capital are high. But Mr. Goodale knows the consequences of such dismal numbers.

The truth is that no one really knows, but many lobbyists and special interest groups use these kinds of statistics to further their own agendas. Universities will say that we need greater access to higher education and conservative think tanks will call for more corporate tax cuts. Well there doesn’t appear to be a direct correlation between education and productivity if we examine our credentialed society and our perceived low productivity. In New Brunswick we have the lowest corporate tax rate in the country and one of the highest rates of unemployment. Recently our unemployment rate went up while it dropped everywhere else. So the answers are not simple, as H.L. Mencken said, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

Personally, I’m tired that our politicians and business leaders revert to pat answers for complex problems, such as “we need to raise personal taxes to pay for our social programs”. Perhaps productivity is the wrong measure. John Ralston Saul, in The Collapse of Globalism, states that since the mid-nineteen nineties, “…two-thirds of American corporations paid no federal income tax.” Many of these corporations have branch offices in Canada – same people, same agenda.

As a society we have to understand what is important and how we can make our communities work. That means understanding the complex forces at play. Lowering taxes or decreasing tuition rates are simple solutions that won’t address the root causes. The same goes for understanding how our organisations and businesses work. There are no pat answers and the flavour of the month won’t solve our problems.

Some of the places I visit to get a better view of these issues:

Drucker on Listening Carefully

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Peter Drucker, one of my inspirations on business and management, passed away on Friday. He was 95 years old. Elliott Masie sent out a few words in an e-mail on Peter Drucker, including this comment:

I had the privilege of meeting Peter Drucker almost fifteen years ago. We had a conversation about the role that "training" could play (or not play) in the development of effective leaders. He challenged me to ask 100 leaders how they became leaders and to listen carefully to their answers. He predicted that I would find that the leaders pointed to strong role models, mentors who were brave enough to tell them the truth and opportunties that allowed them to perform, rather than slickly packaged leadership courses.

In tribute to Peter Drucker, and his incisive mind, let’s continue to ask the tough questions. Is there a direct link between training and performance? Is there a direct link in the specific case that you are involved with?

Tactics, Strategy & Humanity

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The opening session at the CSTD Knowledge Exchange in Toronto this week was by Dana Gaines Robinson on the subject of Strategic Business Partnering. This is a new term for me and at the end of the session my impression was that SBP is a new buzz-word for human performance technology, but with an emphasis on strategy. The words strategy and tactics were liberally sprinkled through her session.

This  reminded me of my +20 years in the military when strategy and tactics were my main work disciplines and got me to wondering why many in the learning field use military terms to describe their work. Gaines Robinson used another term that did not sit well with me – it is that one should “own the client relationship”. When I think of a relationship, the last thing that comes to mind is ownership. Does this kind of terminology frame the discussion in a certain way? Does it influence how we think about our profession? Anyway, it was good for me to listen to a presentation that raised these issues.

The strategic, or high level, theme was a thread throughout the conference. Larry Murphy, an attendee and past colleague, described our field as having two kinds of people, forest people and tree people. Some can see the forest and some have to focus on each individual tree. In Strategic Business Partnering I think that we’re focusing on too small of a forest. In SBP, the performance consultant is supposed to partner with the client and look at the next 1-5 years from the client’s perspective.

I prefer Roger Kaufman’s organisational elements model where he urges us to look at the Mega (societal) the Macro (organisational) and Micro (individual & group) levels in strategic planning. A focus on the Mega means taking an ethical, moral and value-based stand. This is the really big picture, not just the business microcosm. A Mega perspective to me means that you don’t try to maximize value for your clients’ profits if they are acting like Enron execs. This thought stayed in my mind through the day, but by Tuesday evening there were some answers, and more questions.

performance analysis process mega and macro

Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, presented the post-dinner speech. In his articulate and engaging way he laid out the enormous humanitarian disaster that is attacking 70 million people today. He described in case after case the spread of the disease and its effects, especially on women. After moving many in the audience to tears, Mr Lewis described what we could do. With his global  vision, he proposed that individuals and groups of learning professionals in Canada could go to Africa and help to retrain a population that has almost no teachers or trainers.

The need is great and even one person training a small group on basic skills, that we take for granted, would have an impact. When the head of a household is only 8 years old (because all of the adults are dead) there are a lot of skills and knowledge that he or she will need to succeed in life. The suggestion was that the training & development community here could start a real knowledge transfer to Africa.

The next morning, the CSTD board created a committee to begin a process of working with the Stephen Lewis Foundation in order to determine how CSTD can help an orphaned generation in Africa to learn essential skills. Stephen Lewis has shown how the strategic and the tactical levels can be aligned, but within a much larger humanitarian (mega) vision. More information on this initiative will be made available on the CSTD website.

Education’s Three Conflicting Pillars

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I participated in the EdTech Talk today that featured Jay Cross and George Siemens. The conversation flowed and the chat room stayed active with Stephen Downes and many others adding additional perspectives. The initial conversation centered on Connectivism and Informal Learning but meandered to many other corners of the learning field.

Some of George’s comments about learning and education and the conflict around what a good education should be, got me thinking about the work of Kieran Egan. His book, The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape our Understanding, begins with the statement that Western education is based on three conflicting premises which compete for dominance. These three premises are:

  • education as socialization
  • education as a quest for truth (Plato)
  • education as the realization of individual potential (Rousseau)

Since no one premise can dominate without precluding the others, we continue to have conflict in our education system. Our public education system was created to give equal access to all (a good thing) and to prepare workers for industrial jobs (a self-serving thing for the corporations). Public education was embraced by reformers as well as factory owners.

The problem is that education has become all things to all people, and this conflict is clear in Egan’s book. You cannot socialize, seek the truth and realize individual potential all at the same time — within a single, enclosed system.

This lack of agreement on what our education system should be, is also muddying the waters in our discussions about learning. My experience is that few people disagree with any one of these premises on its own. So which one is the primary premise? Should there even be a primary premise? Without one, we keep bouncing around like pinballs, addressing symptoms but not root causes.

When reduced to the basic process, I believe that learning is an individual and personal activity. Learning has social aspects and can be helped or hindered in many ways. How we build systems to nurture, support or coerce it, are the issues that we can address as a community. First though, we have to have a common understanding of what we’re trying to achieve.