The Woz Wows Sackville

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Steve Wozniak, author of iWoz, gave a superb performance at Mount Allison University this evening. The Woz is a very open and friendly person who freely gives of his time in the spirit of learning and collaboration. His presentation this evening covered much that it in his book, but in person you get to feel the passion. People came from all over the region to listen to his inspirational speech, as witnessed by the capacity audience.

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Our son, Nicholas, is reading the book and he found the presentation very interesting. Being able to hold the attention of a 14-year old, using almost no computer-generated effects is no small feat. Steve Wozniak spoke as if he was on fire, and some people felt that they could barely keep up listening to his fast-paced speech. At the end of the presentation, my friend next to me said, “now that is a very nice man”.

I really liked the part when Woz talked about his time working at Texas Instruments and how he got a job designing calculators because he had the skills and therefore didn’t need the formal certifications. He definitely believes in informal learning and taking charge of your life and your learning.

Afterwards, Nick got his book signed and Dad got the picture.

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LCD Projector Rentals

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I’m conducting a workshop on informal learning in Ottawa on January 30th and there seems to be some difficulty in finding a decent price for an LCD projector rental. I can probably borrow one and pack it with me but I’m heading to Las Vegas right after the workshop and that means lugging it around and getting through Customs and back.

Does anyone know of a company in Ottawa that rents LCD projectors for less than $400 per day and might even be willing to deliver it to the hotel?

Update: we found one – thanks for all the help :-)

On professionalism and creativity

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I’m reading David Shaffer’s “How Computer Games Help Children Learn” and will be writing a detailed review once I finish the book, which is excellent so far. I can also say that this book is not just about how children learn, as it’s applicable to learners of all ages.

In the section on professionalism, I found a connection between informal learning and professionalism. To quote Shaffer:

Creativity is a conversation – a tension – between individuals working on individual problems and the professional communities they belong to.

This reflects much of what is happening between the bloggers in the informally-bounded educational technology community. We are discussing our individual concerns and issues with the larger community of “professionals”:

A professional is anyone who does work that cannot be standardized easily and who continuously welcomes challenges at the cutting edge of his or her expertise.

Shaffer goes on to discuss Vigotsky’s zone of proximal development [the gap between a learner’s current development level and the learner’s potential level of development]. I believe that professionals immersed in communities of practice or continuously pushing their informal learning opportunities can have a larger zone of proximal development. They are more open to learning and to expanding their knowledge. I have had a huge growth in my professional network since I started blogging. These professional conversations are not possible off-line when you live outside a major urban centre, as I do. Today, active involvement in informal learning, particularly through web-based communities, is key to remaining professional and creative in a field.

To paraphrase Jay, informal learning is more about your network than your knowledge. This seems obvious when you use Shaffer’s definitions of creativity and professionalism. You need the network to engage in the problem-solving conversations at the edge of your expertise.

Court understands what teachers’ college should already know

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An Ontario Superior Court has directed the Ontario College of Teachers to find an alternate method to evaluate an Iranian refugee teacher’s qualifications without “official” documentation.

To teach in Ontario’s publicly funded schools, a teacher must have a Certificate of Qualification from the college, which was created in 1996. Officials there deemed her few documents insufficient to judge her abilities to teach and refused her requests for a personal interview or to develop alternate means to evaluate her abilities.

Will this first crack open the floodgates of competency-based testing for professionals? Too many professional associations have used the premise that only official documentation from a recognised and accredited institution is acceptable to show competence in a field. This is a load of hogwash, but it has helped to create entire industries around training, certification and accreditation. Some of these industries have transformed into oligopolies and monopolies, such as for the healthcare professions.

The Court has recognised that there is more than one way to exhibit competence in a field. I would go farther and say that a formal training or education program has less correlation to actual competence in a field than a well-designed performance based evaluation. How you become competent in a field should not matter. What matters is actual performance. However, such an approach would put many training and education programs out of business.

Perhaps this decision is an indication of changes to come. Formal training already accounts for very little in the IT or Web media sectors. Most employers want to see actual products or code, and don’t really care what credentials the worker has, as long as he or she can produce the goods.

Linux; best for your average home user

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You know the TV commercial with the hip Apple computer talking to the nerdy Windows PC? Well, it’s not just Macs that can work right out of the box. Today, Linux is simple and easy enough for the mainstream.

This morning I went downtown and bought a new hard drive for my +3 year old Dell Inspiron 8500, as the old one was shot. I inserted the backup installation CD (Win Professional SP 1) and went through the install process. It took about an hour to get the Windows desktop up and running. I then tried to connect to my broadband but could not, so I next installed the network drivers from the backup Dell utilities CD, but still was not able to connect.

During the installation process I used the option to partition the hard drive and only used 50 GB of the available 80 GB for Windows. The rest remained unformatted.

I turned off the computer and then booted from the CD (F12) and inserted an Ubuntu Linux CD that I had previously downloaded (for free of course). On boot-up from the CD I clicked on the “Install Ubuntu” icon on the Ubuntu desktop (very obvious to see). I followed the half dozen instructions and installed Ubuntu on the unformatted portion of the hard drive. This took about 10 minutes.

On re-booting, I selected the main Ubuntu option and was soon looking at the Ubuntu desktop. I did not change any settings and I did not install any other programs. I just opened the Firefox browser (a clearly marked icon) and was on the Web – immediately.

It’s a few hours later and my son is still playing with Windows and trying to connect to the Net.

Update: 24 hours later and we haven’t been able to get Windows connected to the Net. Linux is still working fine.

Update 2: Three days later and still cannot get Windows drivers working to connect to the Net. Linux working like a charm.
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Informal Learning Unworkshop #4

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Jay Cross, Judy Brown and I will be conducting our fourth online Informal Learning Unworkshop starting on February 6th, 2007. In a nutshell, this is what “Learning with Blogs, Wikis and the Web”, will be about:

  • Learn to use blogs, wikis, and other web tools to improve organizational learning
  • Four weeks of online webinars, hands-on exercises, and groupwork to build foundation knowledge
  • One year of professional network and resources to continue learning

Come and join this worldwide community of interest/practice.

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Art Show in Toronto

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A good friend, Donna Rawlins Sharpe, who lives here in Sackville, is heading to Toronto to exhibit her art. If you happen to be in the big city then check out Donna’s work at the Rosedale Church Gallery on 159 Roxborough Drive, Toronto, Ontario (phone 416-924-0725). The exhibition will be from January 18th to February 26th.

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Donna’s work is influenced by the many years she spent in Japan:

In Japan, it is the little things that are cherished for their beauty. A colourful flower, a simple bowl, a sunlit corner of a tatami-matted room or a ripe piece of fruit help to provide peace of mind and serenity from the frantic pace of everyday living. At present, I am interested in combining elements of both Japanese and Western art, particularly in still life – looking carefully at composition and colour in appreciation of the small but beautiful things that we may see everyday but take for granted. My works are assemblages, either of drawings or prints (linocuts or woodcuts), or a combination of the two, with a wide variety of techniques and types of paper.

One objective of our Commons is to provide a venue for artists who are moving between phases in their artistic life. The Commons can be a communal space for artists and entrepreneurs who need something more than the kitchen table but are not yet ready for their own studio. More established artists like Donna could be teachers and mentors and the Commons would provide the physical space for learning together. Hopefully, 2007 will be the year that we start building.

School’s Out

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This morning we woke up to the message:

Mon Jan 08 2007 06:08 AM: ALL schools in District 2 will be closed today due to weather conditions.

For me, it’s a regular work day, though I’ll try to get a bike ride in between first light and the first snow flake. My wife’s workshop is in the house, so it’s a regular day for her too. If we were home-schooling (an option we’re considering), it would be a regular day all over. No cancellation or re-arranging of schedules would be necessary. We would be two free-agent parents with two free-agent learners. In 2001, Dan Pink, author of “A Whole New Mind” and “Free Agent Nation”, wrote:

“Home schooling,” though, is a bit of a misnomer. Parents don’t re-create the classroom in the living room any more than free agents re-create the cubicle in their basement offices. Instead, home schooling makes it easier for children to pursue their own interests in their own way — a My Size Fits Me approach to learning. In part for this reason, some adherents — particularly those who have opted out of traditional schools for reasons other than religion — prefer the term “unschooling.”

The similarities to free agency — having an “unjob” — are many. Free agents are independent workers; home-schoolers are independent learners. Free agents maintain robust networks and tight connections through informal groups and professional associations; home-schoolers have assembled powerful groups — like the 3,000-family Family Unschoolers Network — to share teaching strategies and materials and to offer advice and support. Free agents often challenge the idea of separating work and family; home-schoolers take the same approach to the boundary between school and family.

The number of free-agents has increased in this country, especially with corporate outsourcing and ubiquitous access to the Internet. We’re still the minority, but this continuing economic/demographic shift is bound to have its effects on school, work, taxation, leisure time and everything else. I believe that the magic number is 20%. Once 20% of people are doing something, it seems that everyone is doing it, and then the pace quickens.

Why schools need to adopt open source software – Now

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David Thornburg provides a very good explanation on how proprietary software is crippling our ability to use information and communications technologies effectively for education. My own experience with the DRM not letting me play a legally rented movie shows the absurdity of our present commercial situation. It’s why I’ve switched from Microsoft and Dell crippleware to the open source VLC Player.

Thornburg shows how proprietary software vendors are treating all of their customers like criminals and making, “NO, you cannot do what you want to do, even if it is legal”, as the default use mode:

How much of our energy is spent overcoming obstacles instead of enjoying or building creative works? There is little doubt that vendors of “protected” software must hate their customers. They want to look at our computers remotely, make surprise visits for license checks, and otherwise treat us as people who should be marched away in shackles. And, tragically, we buy into this nonsense by spending money with the very people who treat us like dirt.

Enter Linux and OSS. Imagine a software world where the answer is YES, not NO. Yes, you CAN give a copy of your presentation software to a child who wants to finish a project at home. Yes, you CAN play DVD’s from any region in the world on your computer. Yes, you CAN tweak a program to add a new feature, or even fix a bug yourself. Yes, you CAN use an operating system that takes less than a class period to boot up. Yes, you CAN have all your software updated automatically for free. Yes, you CAN make older computers behave like energetic teens by eliminating the software bloat associated with Windows. Yes, you CAN save enough money to bring even more technology into the hands of children. Yes, you CAN be part of a global community of educators who see technology as a tool of empowerment for ALL children, rich or poor.

Check out the many options at Make the Move or Software for Starving Students. I just installed Linux Ubuntu on one of our computers and it worked like a charm. There is a bit of a learning curve on the different model that Linux uses, such as the Package Manager, but if you have a teenager in the house it shouldn’t take long to figure it out ;-)

It’s the system, stupid

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Research has shown that if a good person is put in an unethical environment, the environment will dominate over the individual.

This quote, from Peter Dean, sums up the need for system change to make lasting change – addressing causes not just symptoms.

Gary Stager, in The Pulse, discusses the well-known Milgram Experiments, conducted in the 1960’s to see how far people would go in administering electric shocks to learners. These experiments were recently replicated by ABC News and Stager picks up the direct link to public education [please read the whole article]:

One of the subjects in the television program was a 7th grade teacher who explained that she didn’t stop shocking the learner because as a teacher she had learned when a student’s complaints were phony. I thought to myself, “Has she electrocuted many students?”

The teacher asked the researcher, “There isn’t going to be any lawsuit from this medical facility, right?” When told that the teacher was not liable, she replied, “That’s what I needed to know.” It is however worth noting that this was after she induced the maximum shock and the learner demanded that the experiment be terminated.

This is why we need to change the entire system – constraining curriculum; compulsory testing; useless homework; irrelevant subjects; classrooms cut off from the world; systemic bullying; etc. More or better teachers won’t help; we need to change the system.