Informl Learning Unworkshop Legacy

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We conducted several “unworkshops” on informal learning on the Web last year and learned a lot. We also met some interesting people, several of whom have continued the conversation around the use of two-way web tools for organisational learning.

Jay has now created The Unworkshop Legacy Page as an information resource and has coupled this with the Internet Time Community where the conversation can continue. Please come and join us.

I think that this open forum has the best potential to scale up, as our unworkshops worked well with web-savvy learners but could be difficult for those not used to adding and tweaking web applications on the fly. Anyone who wants just information can read the legacy page while those who are more communicative can join the community social network.

My own experience has been that face-to-face workshops, where participants have a laptop and Internet access, work best for the mainstream. A little bit of explanation, some concepts and a chance to play in a controlled environment with personal assistance, seems to be a good mix.

What is weighing down learning?

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Two years ago Albert Ip wrote how our schools are failing us. The other day I was reviewing some of my online bookmarks and re-read Albert’s post.

My own criticism of our current school model is that it too closely resembles the industrial economic model of the past and is not suited to our current societal needs. Albert’s post shows that the baggage encumbering our education system goes back much further than the industrial era. It seems that we need to critically question the entire foundation of our education systems as we prepare for an age requiring creativity at every level, in an information-rich world.

Albert refers to the work of William Spady, a somewhat controversial figure in outcomes based learning, but with an interesting take on our current system, which Spady calls an iceberg, weighed down by layers of inertia:

education-iceberg.jpg

The iceberg metaphor shows how much work there is to do below the surface in order to achieve systemic change. I’ve seen this with relatively small changes such as reducing homework in schools. It makes a learner-centric, process-oriented education seem even that much more inaccessible. But then, no one expected the fall of the Berlin Wall. We can change it, but first we have to understand what we’re up against and be ready with an appropriate option when the system cracks.

Business Plans in 2009

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Three years ago, Seth Godin wrote about what the future might hold in 2009 and I wondered how this would change anyone’s business plan. We’re more than half way there, so are these assumptions coming true?

There is no doubt that hard drive space is getting cheaper, and Gmail’s 2.8 GB of free space is a good indication. It sure is getting harder to sell storage space.

Wi-fi connections are not everywhere but many of us wish they were. Some cities are more advanced than others, but my recent travels to the US and larger Canadian cities found it to be expensive, whereas I can get free wi-fi down the street in our small town.

Yes, it seems that everyone has a digital camera or at least one on their cell phone.

Connection speeds have improved (mine have doubled) but it will be a great leap to be 10 to 100 times faster.

I’m not sure about Wal*Mart’s sales but at least the company is going to opt for compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

Compulsory retirement ages seem to be a thing of the past and I think that they will be gone in a few years,. When I was in the military, the compulsory retirement age was 55 and in 2004 it was raised to 60. There is little doubt that this trend will continue.

As for the assumption that our current professions will be gone or totally different, I believe that change will be uneven. In my own area of experience, I think that Instructional Design as a field will all but disappear.

So what does this mean for business plans?

  1. Don’t try to build another #$%* portal, because people have lots of places to put their stuff and they are getting information from a whole bunch of sources. Think small pieces, loosely joined.
  2. Anywhere can be a hotspot so adding wi-fi just might get some interesting people to gather around you and that’s what’s really important.
  3. All of those digital pictures are looking for a place to be shared. They might even improve your organisation’s learning about itself and its environment.
  4. Remember those folks that you thought would leave with all their knowledge? Well, they’re not leaving, or they’re probably interested in a new relationship, so get them while you can.
  5. Job? What’s a job?

Bridging Troubled Waters

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It’s Friday, and if you have some time you may want to watch the keynote speech by Jennifer James, at the BCEd Online Conference. It’s a streamed presentation and is over an hour long but I found it fascinating. James is a cultural anthropologist and discusses how technology and people have been interacting for thousands of years and links this to the role of educational technologists.

Near the end of her presentation, James talks about the stages of human adaptation to major new technologies, such as the Internet.

First the technology concentrates energy and changes our definition of intelligence. For instance, emotional intelligence is becoming more important in an environment of limitless data and information.

Second, the economic system adapts to the technology. This results in population and demographic shifts.

Third, the demographics adapt to the economics.  James – “If you have an international market; you have an international labour pool; you have an international gene pool. And wait and see who your kids and grandkids bring home for dinner.”

… and then there is a long time lag … (this is where we are in relation to the Internet economy/society)

Finally, the culture changes when the old mythologies break.

Take some time, put your feet up and have a listen. Please comment, if you have the urge.

A second age of reason

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Rob Paterson calls Al Gore’s latest book, The Assault on Reason, a manifesto for public media. In reading this excerpt from Time, I was fascinated by the interwoven threads of issues that I’ve been discussing on this forum. First of all is the need for public discourse, not just improving our existing educational systems:

So the remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the re-establishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way—a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response.

There is also the issue of Net Neutrality, which Gore shows as critical to the future of The Republic:

We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.

The extract reminds me of John McKnight’s thoughts on de Tocqueville’s 19th Century visit to America, and how my own work to create a Commons is part of an effort to re-create spaces for rational public discourse:

The book, Democracy in America, is, I think, the most useful book I know to help understand who we are. And he says, if I can summarize him in a rather gross form, that he came here and he found a society whose definitions and solutions were not created by nobility, by professionals, by experts or managers, but by what he identified as little groups of people, self-appointed, common men and women who came together and took three powers: the power to decide there was a problem, the power to decide how to solve the problem – that is, the expert’s power – and then the power to solve the problem. These little groups of people weren’t elected and they weren’t appointed and they were everyplace, and they were, he said, the heart of the new society – they were the American community as distinct from the European community. And he named these little groups “associations”. Association is the collective for citizens, an association of citizens. And so we think of our community as being the social space in which citizens in association do the work of problem-solving, celebration, consolation, and creation – that community, that space, in contrast to the space of the system with the box at the top and lots of little boxes at the bottom. And I think it is still the case that the hope for our time is in those associations.

Perhaps these local spaces, linked through online communities, will be the seeds of a second age of reason. One can hope.

And then, 24 hours later, Rob follows up with this post, identifying variants of a new model for our age:

In Software, it is called Open Source. In banking it is called Microcredit. In business it is called eBay, or Google, or Southwest or Starbucks. In gaming it is called Second Life or World of Warcraft. In academia it may soon be called Wikipedia. In politics it was the Dean Campaign. On the web it is called Blogging or Web 2.0 or Social Software. In office design it is called the Commons.

Five Goals – One More Meme

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At Karyn’s request, I’ll add my two cents to the 5 goal meme. Here are five goals, some realistic and some quite far off:

  1. To watch our boys become adults and be able to follow their passions.
  2. To take an extended family visit to a foreign country, preferably in conjunction with a work project so that it can last a while and we can afford it.
  3. To complete our Commons project.
  4. To build our own greenhouse.
  5. To write a book some day.

goal.jpg
Photo of “Goal” Italia ’90 by Smeerch

Elgg powers business and academic community

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Emerald Publishing has started an online community based on the open source Elgg platform. The news release compares the community with MySpace and Facebook:

Amanda Briggs, Head of Research and Development at Emerald, says, “InTouch was developed with our research and contributor communities in mind. Online technologies have had a dramatic effect on the educational and learning environment and students regularly use informal social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook to communicate with their classmates. Now, Emerald authors and editors can take advantage of these technologies in a space that is designed specifically for the academic and business community – InTouch. Users can create online communities based around journals or research interests, share ideas and expertise with (and learn from) their peers. This service supports our commitment to building and facilitating communities around key management research areas.”

This is great to see, but most of that functionality comes from Elgg, which only gets a quick mention. You would think that they could have at least put a hyperlink to Elgg in their news release, n’est-ce pas?

Blogging for teachers

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Just finished the blogging in education session with some teachers at TRHS where we were a bit challenged with the recent IT system shutdown but we managed to have some good discussions anyway. The question came up about the use of blogs in math and science and I didn’t have access to my bookmarks, so here are two recommendations [feel free to add more]:

Darren Kuropatwa (scroll down on the right side for current and dormant class blogs)

Dan Meyer (click on “lessons only” to see specific examples)

For those who attended, or wanted to attend but were afraid of the pending snowstorm, just add your questions in the comment section.

And today, Edublogs posted these How-To Videos to make it easier to start blogging.

Office 2007 Overkill for Schools

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Via Stephen Downes and Dave Warlick is a previous report I filed away in January. It seems that the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) doesn’t see much value in adopting MS Office 2007 for schools:

A Becta review of Office 2007 identified more than 170 new features, but considered many of them to be of more use in a business environment than an educational one.

A detailed analysis of the new functionality again found that none of the new features was a “must have” for schools and colleges.

Becta said, “As the costs of deployment of Office 2007 would be significant, Becta has not identified any convincing justification for the early adoption of Office 2007.”

I’ve already said why I won’t use Vista and I don’t feel any pressure to start with Office 2007 either.

Using Wndows Vista is Torture

Stop homework in Sackville

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I read Amanda Cockshutt’s letter to our local newspaper last week, and now Sara Bennett at Stop Homework has posted it in its entirety. The pressure that Amanda, and others, have put on school authorities has had some effect on one school:

In the winter, Amanda persuaded the principal of her children’s elementary school to have two separate one-week trial periods without homework. When it was over, the school did not abolish homework, but it did institute some homework policy changes, including no homework the nights of major events and two weeks per year where there would be no homework other than reading.

We’re still seeing too much homework, for all the wrong reasons, at the higher grades though. Once again, I have to reiterate that homework is not an effective method to promote learning, or even get better test performance, and it robs students of their personal time.