New models for living, working and learning

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This week I’ve noticed that everything seems to come back to our artificially created systems. If I’m waiting for a decision it’s because of poor information flow at some bottleneck in a hierarchy. If I’m not able to take action on an idea that would help many people it’s due to some artificial construct called a regulation or policy. No one is responsible; it’s the system. I feel blocked at every turn and I’m not alone. Mark Federman sums it up best with his thesis pitch:

I make the observation that almost all organizations that we have in our world – be they business corporations, non-profits, volunteer organizations, sewing circles, soccer clubs, schools, religious organizations – they all look like factories. By this I mean that they are Bureaucratic, Administratively controlled and Hierarchical – in other words, BAH! I suggest that this is not because it is human nature to be BAH, but rather this is an artefact of the Industrial Age that was mechanistic (with roots in the Gutenberg Press), industrial, fragmented, and functionally oriented. Now, as I look around, I observe that we are no longer in the Industrial Age. Rather, we are living in a world in which everyone is, or soon will be, connected to everyone else – an age of ubiquitous connectivity. This brings about the effect of being immediately next to, or proximate to, everyone else – in other words, pervasive proximity. I therefore ask the question, what form of organization is consistent with the ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate world of today, rather than with the 19th century?

We are in desperate need of new models for living, working and learning. Rob Paterson has been discussing the messy world that we now live in and how modern armies cannot win against insurgents or stabilize failed states. Dave Pollard & Jon Husband recently talked about the value of leadership. Leaders may be required in hierarchies but are they necessary in wirearchies?

The great work of our time is to design, build and test new organizational models that reflect our democratic values and can function in an inter-connected world. Failure by our generation to do so will leave the next one to deal with the reactionary forces of corporatism; something our children are already facing.

Difficult, unpleasant, messy, but necessary

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I listened to the EdTechTalk Weekly webcast last night; something I’ve missed for several months. The Weekly highlights things of interest to the educational technology community. I noted UNESCO’s listing of free and open source courseware tools as well as a directory of free web and mobile applications (I like free).

There was also a discussion, or perhaps a brouhaha, around James Farmer’s criticisms of EduCon 2.0:

… the real, overarching issue I have with all of this is that it’s humming to the choir and ignoring the difficult, unpleasant, messy and sometimes just darn impossible questions that make up the reality of successful teaching and learning in any different context …

I think that we need more critical discussions in our field and be open to criticism from within. If your friends can’t give call you to task, who can?

Teaching & Testing

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Ismael at ICTlogy covers a presentation by Graham Attwell on The Future of Schooling. There are some interesting (and confirming) comments that Google is much more the virtual learning environment of choice than any learning management system. Ismael also asks some questions and then raises this point:

Raquel Xalabarder reads my mind and states that, outside of the educational system, you maybe need some assessment to give guarantees to an employer, to a customer  e.g. a physicist’s patient.

A: Not that assessment is a thing to avoid, but it should be taken outside the learning process. On the other hand, self-assessment is reflection and thus becomes part of the learning process.

I agree that teaching and testing should be separate activities, as testing puts the teacher in a position of power and control, beyond what is healthy for learning. My suggestions from two years ago, still stand:

  • Anyone who teaches is not allowed to test.
  • Those who design the tests are answerable to those who learn and those who teach.
  • Those who teach are only responsible to those who learn and are subjected to tests.

Instructional Design Needs More Agility

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A few years back, while working on the Pan-Canadian Online Learning Portal definition project, my colleague Grigori Melnik introduced me to Agile Programming. The Future of Software Development discusses some of the major differences between agile programming and the earlier, less flexible Waterfall Model. You see, at one time, software engineers assumed that they could design a program and then build it based on those specifications. However, the world changes and we never really have a clear picture of all the necessary factors at any given time. My read of the article had me asking if instructional design [or ISD or ADDIE] is also arrogant:

“The problem was that the Waterfall Model was arrogant. The arrogance came from the fact that we believed that we could always engineer the perfect system on the first try. The second problem with it was that in nature, dynamic systems are not engineered, they evolve. It is the evolutionary idea that led to the development of agile methods.”

Instead of factory-style production teams, agile programming uses far fewer, but better, programmers. The principles of communicating, focusing on simplicity, releasing often and testing often are all applicable to developing good instructional programs.

 

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Software development has embraced the iterative and flexible Agile model, but not without a major re-education program. It is up to industry to educate customers so that requests for proposals don’t force vendors into using an older and outdated model. I still see educational and training RFP’s that leave little choice but a quick analysis (if any), little design time (and only at the front end) and then get into production based on a specification whose premises were never tested and cannot be questioned later.

It’s time that the training industry develop its own agile approach or risk becoming redundant.

Blog Action Day – Helping Nature Help You

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I have been volunteering as the Director of Education at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute (AWI) for the past five years. What keeps me motivated is that AWI is focused on addressing causes, not symptoms. We could take in every single injured and orphaned animal in Eastern Canada and be no further ahead. Instead, we take a sampling of animals, about 300 a year, in order to understand causes of displacement, such as toxicity in the environment, disease or human infringement on habitat.

We share this information with researchers at universities, colleges and government agencies, and then we develop educational programming that helps people become stewards themselves. The few of us cannot make a large impact but we can be catalysts for change.

AWI is 12 years old and continues to use a scientific approach in helping people better understand their environment and the species they share it with. If you are looking for a national charity that puts its effort into programs, not advertising, then check us out and consider donating.

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Learners as hackers

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My son sent me this link to The Hacker Manifesto (1986):

This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.

There is also a reference to the definition of a hacker. I like this one:

One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.

Those who have chosen the red pill already see the absurdity of many of our hierarchies and structures. As parents and educators, we should help all learners become good hackers.

Are the systems starting to crack?

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It wasn’t that long ago that politicians and some scientists were saying that global warming was only a half-baked theory. We now know that we’re going to be completely baked, and Al Gore’s Nobel Prize shows that the world understands.

Dave Pollard created this graphic showing the vicious circle of our industrial/corporate systems and how a more natural approach to work, education and communities is achievable, though difficult.

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One of the major causes of global warming is corporatism, or the drive to keep making and selling more stuff, no matter what the cost to the world. Our communities (commuting in cars) and our schools (no critical thought allowed) reinforce corporatism. I believe that there is a true desire to get away from work as indentured servitude, education as propaganda and communities as holding pens. We just don’t know how to do it.

I commented on Dave’s post that some change at the local level has already started:

I see it in the small things, but there is a hunger for a more natural way of life. For example, a young couple recently bought a small farm here, with the idea that in several years it could help spark a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement. They presented this idea to a few families and within a month our Sackville CSA was born, with 20 families enrolled. The operators were amazed at their success and next year we will have 60 families.

We should look to the younger generation for the energy and then help them surmount the barriers with our business experience.

Is the industrial economy starting to crack and are we ready with alternative models and a shared vision?

There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

Leonard Cohen

Ruby Wednesday

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Bruce Tate gave an energetic presentation today to about 100 people who packed in to the NRC’s conference room in Moncton. The presentation was on the development platform Ruby on Rails and obviously there was a lot of interest. For instance, one of the sponsors, Spheric, is looking to hire at least 20 more developers.

Bruce’s presentation was just at the right level for a non-programmer like me. He calls Ruby the perfect platform for “clean database-backed Web apps”. He also showed how a lot of development steps required in Java are no longer necessary with the Ruby on Rails framework. What really struck me as a business advantage though, was the fact that the programmer can write the high level logic in plain language and this can be reviewed by the business lead before any code is written. I’m sure that this can save a lot of time and frustration.

Ruby on Rails is relatively new and the community is not as large as it is for more established languages. Developing skills in this rapid development platform could become a competitive advantage for NB organisations and is worth checking out. Given our small population, we need to develop asymetrical skills to take on new markets.

Please check out Bruce’s charity site, Changing the Present, because they granted him the time to come from Texas to New Brunswick.

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Photo: Dan Martell, President of Spheric Technologies with presenter Bruce Tate