Reinforce the margins

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Yesterday, in Miramichi, the conversation came around to economic development and the issues facing New Brunswick, especially the northern part of the province. I was told that a couple of years ago the foresters in the province said that we had about eight years of industrial harvests left and the fishermen felt that there weren’t even that many years left for an industrial fishery. At the same time it seems that governments at all levels are working on the assumption that nothing will change, in spite of certain sustainability task forces.

Rob Paterson has noted that in the province next door, PEI, there are also significant demographic issues:

By 2015, there will be more Islanders over 50 than under. Soon there will be more over 65. Who will do all the work? Who will lead the economy? Who will pay all the taxes to keep all us old folks in retirement homes? PEI will have the least amount of young except Newfoundland. Can we afford to have 65% of them as dependent as the old dears aged 85?

My main deduction from this is that all of our children will have to be net contributers (not just economically) to our society. However, our industrial schools are marginalizing too many children. Meanwhile, Alec Bruce tells us how highly qualified and educated immigrants are barred from fully contributing to our society:

Meet the physician from the Middle East, certified in three crucial specialties. Yet, no hospital in the Atlantic Provinces will touch him because the paper he carries does not convey designations familiar to provincial licensing authorities.

Meet the teacher from Arkansas, a graduate of Harvard and MIT. She works as a nanny in one of New Brunswick’s poorly funded day care centres, where she wipes noses, prepares snacks, and recites Dr. Seuss to pre-schoolers.

Meet the engineer from Hamburg, an expert in bridge and overpass design. He’s a delivery man in Fredericton who deploys his considerable mathematical abilities to reconciling the day’s take with tomorrow’s cash float.

We are facing economic, political and environmental challenges, and we have to fully engage all members of our society, from school-age children to newly arrived immigrants. We cannot afford to marginalize anyone, because it’s from the margins [the edges] that innovation will come.

One indication of the lack of willingness to even contemplate new ways of doing things is the wide condemnation, without an offer of alternatives, of the Post-Secondary Education report. I would say that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. My own effort to develop one way to face the post-industrial future has been the creation of a work & cultural Commons, and it seems that we are finally making some headway (more to follow on this).

So to anyone who is complaining – get off your butt and do something creative. We need everyone to get involved in creating options, because the folks on the margins [historically, the innovators] aren’t being allowed to participate (yet).

Democratic Workplaces

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Mark Dowds recommended WorldBlu to me last week. The organisation supports the creation of more democratic workplaces and publishes a yearly list [I’m not sure why a one-page PDF has to take up 6 MB of space]. Three Canadian companies are on the list, 1-800-GotJunk; Axiom News; and TakingITGlobal.

One consulting company caught my eye, Point B Solutions Group of Seattle, which is described as a model organisation, though not on this year’s list. From the Seattle Times:

Point B has no physical headquarters, no rigid work hours, no formal job titles and, unusual for a consulting firm, little travel. More significant, employees are encouraged — no, required — to have a life outside of work. “My first priority isn’t the firm,” says Jenkins, who works out of a small office near the Edmonds ferry terminal. To illustrate this, Jenkins mentions that right now, at 4:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, he’s just returned from a two-day vacation in the mountains with his family.

It reminds me of wirearchy in action, but these types of organisations still appear to be in the minority [in our society] and I’m not certain that a sea change has begun.

Search for search help

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Over breakfast yesterday I asked our boys if they had ever been shown how to use a search engine. I know that they use Google all the time, but wondered how much they knew about advanced search features, Boolean operators or even vertical search engines. Both answered that they had never been shown how to do a Web search nor had any of their teachers discussed how to use Wikipedia. I see them on Wikipedia for almost every homework assignment, so I’m sure that it’s more widely used than any other reference source.

Let’s face it, search engines aren’t that new. I was using Altavista in 1995 and now, 12 years later, our local teachers are not helping students understand these powerful tools. We are in an age of search and if schools don’t cover these tools, then who will? I know that I will tutor our boys but what about everyone else? Will mentioned this weekend that we need role models for social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. We also need role models for digital information literacy.

Here is my question to the community at large – is there a suite of websites or especially videos that parents can use to help their children master the basic tools of the web? I’m thinking of the excellent Commoncraft videos on RSS, social bookmarks and wikis. Is there something similar for advanced search? So far I’ve found:

Google Advanced Search help page

How to Choose a Search Engine

Google WebSearch for Educators

… but no cool videos yet.

Learning Signal

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There’s a new aggregation site that ranks learning-related blogs, called Learning Signal. It has some similarities with Technorati, and I’ve received a couple of e-mails from the company but haven’t followed-up, as I wasn’t sure if I wanted to add to their intelligence gathering (though it seems benign):

Just in case there was any confusion, I had one more thing I wanted to clarify with you…

The posts you’re seeing listed on LearningSignal.com are not random.
We’re actually assigning a score on every post based on a math algorithm.

Learning Signals could be a practical site for someone trying to get the pulse or zeitgeist of the field, but human-driven services such as OLDaily may provide more context.

Reflections

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Last week I headed to the West coast for a conference, all full of energy. A few 16 hour days, some jet lag and a couple of evenings with a couple of glasses of wine, and I was a bit tuckered. Then a quick trip across the Confederation Bridge to PEI and back and now I’m home, having just cleared out my aggregator.

Both conferences were a chance to see people who I was loosely connected to, as well as meet some new friends.  I was ready for a little F2F reinforcement, having spent most of the year as a virtual colleague/friend/associate.  One of the advantages of being a free agent is the ‘luxury’ of reflection. I have had time to read books in depth, think long about my blog posts and follow online discussion threads to their murky depths. The past week showed me that I really don’t want to lose this perspective.

It seems that most of us are in a hurry today, and I meet few people who have had the time to read even a few good books and reflect upon them. Fewer still have taken the time to digest new ideas and discuss their learning with others. There has always been a need to balance action and reflection, but the latter seems to be losing out in many of our workplaces.

Discussions this week centered around new tools, new literacies and perhaps even a new pedagogy, but few (yes, there were some) were demanding more time for reflection. As the digital surround engulfs us, it may become critical to carve out more reflective time and space. One way to help our children is to stop homework, but what is the equivalent for the rest of us in the working world?

Literacies in Learning Landscapes (NML_UPEI)

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Currently sitting and listening to Will Richardson’s keynote address at UPEI for the New Media Literacies in Learning Landscapes conference. You can follow live at EdTechTalk and I’ve added some photos (more to follow).

Will touched on themes such as “the web as classroom” and “who are the role models for using MySpace and Facebook”. He also asked the educators in attendance if anyone was teaching reading and writing in in hyper-linked environments. Not many hands were raised. Also check out the Flat Classroom Project that Will mentioned.

Over lunch Dave Cormier described his experiences in working with the OpenSim project, which shows great promise.

Update: Will Richardson neatly summarizes the conference.

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Photo: Cynthia Dunsford and Dave Cormier discussing something very important, while I snap a quick picture with my computer webcam.

Heading back from BH Conference (IIL07)

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I’m just getting ready to catch my early morning flight back to the East Coast, with an overall positive impression from my experiences at the Brandon Hall Conference this past week. I’ll have some time to reflect and will post my notes in the next few days. In the meantime. take a look at the Hitchhikr site that Janet Clarey set up for the conference. I’d recommend this aggregation tool for any conference (that’s a hint, Dave).

New Media Literacies in Learning Landscapes Institute (NML_UPEI)

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Edublogger Dave Cormier is behind the New Media Literacies in Learning Landscapes Institute, a participatory learning event for professionals, which starts this coming Saturday morning at 9:30 am in the Wanda Wyatt Hall on the University of PEI campus.

Will Richardson will be the keynote speaker. Both the Saturday session of the Institute and the online only Sunday session will be streamed live by Jeff Lebow.

There’s still room for further registrations but register by Thursday, September 27th. The registration table will open at the Wanda Wyatt Hall at 9 am Saturday: the $20 fee (can’t beat that) gets you a lunch ticket as well as entry into the prize draw.

Informal Learning with Tomoye (IIL07)

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Eric Sauvé, of Tomoye, presented on informal learning in the enterprise. Tomoye’s clients include the US Army. Initial questions from the audience were:

  1. How do you prove that informal learning has value?
  2. How do get management’s buy-in?
  3. How do you ensure accuracy of content?
  4. How do you track legal issues & HR units/credits?

Eric views informal learning as something that adds value or augments formal learning in an organisation (I would say the opposite, but I’m just a learning radical). He also discussed the notion of employing workers/learners as a primary source of learning content; or the “YouTube-ification” of content. Other advice for implementation of Tomoye’s system, which looks like a blog/discussion forum mix for your Intranet, is to keep you tools simple . This follows the Web’s small pieces loosely joined design philosophy. Other points were to add a mechanism for positive reinforcement of good content and to use informal environments to validate the formal training that has been conducted.

Eric closed with a short discussion on collective intelligence or the wisdom of crowds. Overall this session was quite practical advice with some examples of one way to facilitate some aspects of informal learning.