An educational crisis?

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Florence Meichel (in French) examines the US/World financial crisis and looks back at Ivan Illich’s criticism of industrial schooling:

Everywhere the hidden curriculum of schooling initiates the citizen to the myth that bureaucracies guided by scientific knowledge are efficient and benevolent. Everywhere this same curriculum instills in the pupil the myth that increased production will provide a better life. And everywhere it develops the habit of self-defeating consumption of services and alienating production, the tolerance for institutional dependence, and the recognition of institutional rankings. The hidden curriculum of school does all this in spite of contrary efforts undertaken by teachers and no matter what ideology prevails.

Critical thinking and an understanding of the frameworks that guide our political and financial institutions would really help the citizenry to understand the complexities of what is happening. It sure beats listening to politicians and pundits in 30 second sound bites. Unfortunately, it’s what many have been conditioned to accept, because they’ve been told that these systems is beyond their understanding.

Is the financial crisis really an educational crisis?

Update:

Will Richardson offers a different perspective and sees all that is happening as one big teachable moment:

I’m sure there are more, but how about these topics, just for a start:

  • How mortgages work
  • What credit is
  • What the tax code is
  • The intricacies of borrowing money
  • Investing in the stock market
  • Balanced budgets
  • What debt, both personal and national, is
  • The political process (or lack thereof) of the two Houses of Congress
  • The electoral college
  • Truth in advertising
  • Vetting of expertise (as in talking heads)
  • The “Global Economy” and our effects on it

Learn the language before you speak to me

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Stuart Henshall says that you should Use the Tools First: Then Talk to Me:

I just walked out of one session where the presenter made a joke about Facebook. I checked; I’m fairly sure he’s not on it. That’s a big problem that exists here. You cannot talk about the impact of wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, tagging, even search unless you actually use them.

I agreed with this as soon as I read it and then wondered why. You don’t ask a doctor to have first suffered a disease before discussing how to treat it. Many academics in business school have never started a company, yet they can talk about the fundamentals of business.

Why is the Web, and especially social media, so different?

I think that one fundamental difference about social media is that they have a strong influence on the user, very much in a McLuhanesque medium/message/massage way. Those who come to web media for the first time are like adults learning a new language. You cannot start with the same advanced mental models and metaphors that you have in your primary language. Furthermore, if you do get to an advanced level in your new language, you may not have noticed it but the language, with its idioms, metaphors and culture, has had a strong influence on how you think in that language.

Social media change the way you communicate. Write a blog for a year or more and your writing (and thinking) will change. Use Twitter for some time and you will get an immersed sense of being connected to many people and understanding them on a different level. Even the ubiquitous Facebook changes how you may think of being apart from friends. Social media can change the way you think.

When you adopt a web social medium you are also starting on the bottom, or at the single node level. You have to make connections with what will become your network, either by connecting to existing relationships or doing something that helps to create new relationships, like writing a post. Starting over again, in each medium, can be daunting, especially for someone in a position of authority who is concerned about image or influence.

Yes, you need to use the tools first. You have to understand what it’s like to be a node in a social network. There is almost nothing like it in the industrial workplace or school system to prepare you for this. Therefore you won’t know what you’re talking about until you learn the new language of online networks. The only way to learn a new language is through practice. Social media are new languages.

PS: I took Stuart’s advice and downloaded the social web browser, Flock, from which I wrote this post.

Selecting Social Network Platforms

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At the Work Literacy course (starts today, with 365 people registered) we’re using Ning as our social networking platform. According to my co-facilitator, Michele Martin, “Online social networks facilitate connections between people based on shared interests, values, membership in particular groups (i.e., friends, professional colleagues), etc. They make it easier for people to find and communicate with individuals who are in their networks using the Web as the interface.” That’s an okay working definition and gives those new to the concept an idea of what I’m talking about.

We chose Ning because it is easy to manage as a completely hosted service. It’s been around long enough to have the major kinks worked out, the company is well funded and all of the facilitators have used it before. We also don’t expect this community to be active for long after the 6 week course is over, though we could be surprised. We didn’t expect to have so many people sign up either. Our initial idea was to use Ning as the connector, while writing on our own blogs, or the Work Literacy blog. For communities that are going to be around for a longer period of time, a different platform could be more suitable.

I came across Grou.ps recently and set up a demo community. I like the interface and the various options for modules. Grou.ps also includes a wiki module. Like Ning, it is not open source, but the company says that an OS version is coming. Grou.ps has already donated a fair bit of code back to open source projects. I prefer using open source based platforms for any community site that has the potential to scale. With open source you keep the option of migrating the platform to your own servers where you can maintain better control of service.

Another new player that I’ve only looked at quickly is Buddy Press, a social networking framework built on WordPress MU (multi-user). An example of WordPressMU used for education is edublogs. Since I’m already using WordPress and wordpress.org has always been open source, I’m quite excited about this new set of tools. BuddyPress is in Beta at this time, so it may not be best for your first company-launched community. Let the geeks test it out first.

Finally, an older player in the open source community space is Elgg. The free Eduspaces service offers Elgg as a hosted service, which you can test out and connect with the educational technology community.

There are several options to test out social networking online as well as some open source platforms that won’t break the bank and will allow you to tinker with what’s under the hood. As far as the technology is concerned, there are few excuses not to try out social networking for work or learning. Notice that I didn’t have to mention the really big social networking platforms that are getting all the mainstream media attention?

Launch and Learn

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Jay Cross is currently focusing on the ROI of organisational learning initiatives and debunking some of the myths and metrics. His notes from the CLO Symposium include this:

Jayne Johnson, director of Leader Development for GE at Crotonville, delivered the final keynote presentation. Someone asked how she measured the on-going effectiveness of Crotonville; she doesn’t. As for cost-justification in advance, no, GE believes in “launch and learn.” Experiment a lot, and keep what works.

The notion of launch and learn reminds me of the cynefin approach to complex environments:

The cynefin framework looks at five domains (the 5th is Disorder) and it shows how our reliance on backward-looking tools, such as best practices, is not a suitable strategy for complex environments:

Complex, in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe – Sense – Respond and we can sense emergent practice.

Probe-Sense-Respond (P-S-R) is similar to GE’s Launch-Learn approach. When no one can understand the vagaries of your situation in a changing, complex environment then the only thing to do is try out new things based on your best judgement then watch, learn and keep trying new things out. Effective organisational practices will emerge by doing things.

This is the big challenge for Web 2.0 for learning professionals as well. There are no best practices or even good practices. There are things that work for some people, some of the time. As learning professionals, our job is to understand our organisation or client’s situation and look outside to see what others are doing. We have to try things out and see how they work. If we wait for the best practices, we will be too late. This is life in continual Beta (change) and the natural world provides some good examples.

Best open source social networking platform

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I’ve been a fan of Elgg, the open source social networking platform, since I first saw it. Not only do I like the technology but also its underlying framework of user-centricty (which also means learner-centric). I came across Elgg while working on a project to support several professional communities of practice working in a health care region. We had tried some wikis and CMS’s but when we found Elgg (version 0.2 I believe) we finally had something that met most of our needs.

Advance four years and here’s what R/WW has to say in an interview with Dave Tosh, one of Elgg’s founders:

To that end, Elgg can help form the basis of a new generation of social networks. But their platform goes beyond just delivering a solution for the next web 2.0 hangout or social site, although that it a popular use for their software. The Enterprise 2.0 movement is also aided by Elgg as companies wanting to build and customize their own intranet-based social networks have begun to adopt the platform as well.

Dave explains why someone should consider Elgg:

I think there are three main reasons: simplicity, extensibility and openness. The basic version of Elgg is deliberately very simple and clean. Our architecture allows you to easily extend Elgg’s functionality to meet your specific requirements. [and for geeks] Lastly, we fully embrace open standards such as OpenDD, FOAF, RSS, Open Social and OpenID, allowing you to interact with other applications.

I’m very happy to see Elgg mature and continue to remain open in order to provide us with tools that don’t lock us in. As good as a service like Ning may be, you’re locked into their platform.

Work Literacy and a Storm of New Information

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We announced the WL – Web 2.0 for learning professionals online course yesterday and now have over 100 people signed up after one day. This is a six week (or is that six step?) program, covering the basics of Web 2.0 tools and methods, with room for the more experienced to join in and add their expertise to the mix. I’m pretty excited to have all these interesting folks decide to join us. Perhaps it was the price tag? (FREE)

As I was preparing for this online stint, I looked for an image that might convey what we’re trying to achieve. I came across Dave Gray’s sketch, Rain on the landscape of the mind,  on Flickr and thought it was perfect for our endeavour [thanks to Dave for letting me share it]:

A storm of new information passes over the mind – a flurry of activity can bring chaos, excitement, energy, and create the conditions for new ideas – new life – to come into being.

I’m looking forward to Monday …

Free Work Literacy Online Workshop

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On Monday, September 29, Michele Martin, Tony Karrer and I will be hosting a free 6-week learning event on social media for learning professionals. This “course” (kind of like an unworkshop) is sponsored by Work Literacy and the eLearning Guild, in part as a run-up to  DevLearn 2008. All are welcome.

This is an asynchronous (no time-scheduled activities) program and each week we’ll identify activities for all levels of skills and interest.

Here’s the program:

Date Title
09/29/2008 Introduction to Social Networks
10/06/2008 Free your Favorites / Bookmarks
10/13/2008 Blogs
10/20/2008
Aggregators
10/27/2008 Wikis
11/03/2008 Implications / Summary

Please spread the word, especially to your less connected friends and colleagues. This may be the introduction they need.

We suggest that you sign up on the Ning network that we’ve set up. It has more information and will be updated as we go along. If you’re having some some difficulties, e-mail me and I’ll see what I can do to help.

We’re also looking for your thoughts on how to get the information out to people who are not online; any ideas?

Being Local

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I spent the weekend helping out with a few community events. We had our Fall Fair, with some great entertainers and also had a farm field day that saw over 5,000 visitors, followed by an environmental trade show on the street – Green4Generations. The latter included a free showing of Who Killed the Electric Car, with David Swan, one of the engineers on the original GM project. David brought along a Toyota RAV4 electric car:

On Sunday I remembered what Lester Brown had said the night before – that there will be a trend toward local energy and local food. We already have our own solar energy specialists in the area, at Ener-green Coop:

We are also supporting local farmers through the Sackville CSA:

Being local doesn’t mean being out of touch with the Web and the global community. You may have noticed that I’ve used WordPress to set up a few of our local websites, keeping costs to a minimum at only $15 per year for a domain name. Our local sustainability initiatives include communicating what we are doing to anyone who may be interested and learning from others. All of this was started by a local outdoor shop, Wanderlust Outfitters. The idea of Community Supported Agriculture is not ours, but we’ve adapted it for local conditions. As Lester Brown wrote in my copy of his book, “Let’s do it!”.

“Climate change is the result of a massive market failure” —LB

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If you want to address climate change, then the best thing you can do is get politically active, according to Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, speaking here in Sackville on Saturday evening.

Some highlights of his presentation:

  • How many failing states do we need before we have a failing civilization?
  • It is possible to cut carbon emissions by over 80%; we just lack the political will (and Brown has the numbers to prove it).
  • We may be reaching a tipping point in our willingness to do something about climate change but the major obstacles are at the political level.
  • New thinking is happening today and even the oil companies are starting to focus on renewable energy.
  • The trend is toward localisation, for both energy and food. Our food choices will decrease and we’ll move back to seasonal products.
  • We are in a race between tipping points — natural and political. If we can tip the political will, then we can stop the natural tipping points, such as the meltdown of the Greenland ice cap, which will increase sea levels by 23 feet.
  • Based on the advice of prominent scientists and economists around the world, the best way to significantly reduce our carbon emissions are 1) reduce individual income taxes, while 2) increasing carbon taxes.

I picked up a copy of Lester Brown’s latest book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization and look forward to reading it.

Finally, some memorable advice:

Saving civilization is not a spectator sport.

Tools of the Trade

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I’ve been deep into making my technology work this week. One issue was web conferencing and we used Dimdim, which I’ve mentioned before. Dimdim is very simple to use, doesn’t require a plugin, is free for 20 users at a time and is open source. I really liked it but found the audio a bit weak and couldn’t get the video to work (probably a stupid-user issue). I also never figured out how to find a recording of the session (other than the chat text). That said, at least it worked with my Mac, as opposed to HP Virtual Rooms, which I could not even launch. And yes, I know that there are always many variables and perhaps the gerbils on my end were too slow. I also went back and checked out Vyew again, which has improved since I last used it and is still free. It’s a good option for web conferencing but the beta Voice/Webcam didn’t work with my Mac. I guess I’m now a member of visible minority on the Web.

For the online work I was doing this week, my MacBook has a definite advantage. I automatically get dual monitors when I plug in an external monitor. With several windows open – skype, web conferencing and reference documents, the LMS evaluations went quite smoothly; from my end anyway. If I only want to use the external monitor, I just close the lid on my MacBook and keep working. It doesn’t shut down as a Windows machine would.

I also re-learned several lessons about presentations, but that’s for another day.