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.

Reading iWoz

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I’m currently reading Steve Wozniak’s autobiography, iWoz. Wozniak was the co-founder of Apple Computers and is an engineer by profession. It’s not my usual reading, but he will be at our local university in two weeks, as part of the Wilford Jonah Lecture Series.

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The other reviews of the book are quite mixed but what I’ve found interesting about his early years is the importance of positive reinforcement and the key roles of a few people at critical times. One or two teachers, as well as his father, provided the right amount of encouragement at the right time. Wozniak went on to become what many claim to be “the inventor” of the personal computer.

As Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

Update:

After reading the book, I find that it is a personal account of how Woz learned about computers, electronics and engineering. The book is partially about Apple Computers, but I would not call this a business book. Woz says he wrote the book to set the record straight on several statements that appear in the press or other published books. He also seems to have written this book as inspiration for young people who may wish to become inventors.

I found the book interesting, but not overly inspirational, but then I’m not a fan of autobiographies. I would recommend it for computer engineers, techies or high school students who may be looking at their options in life.

Informal Learning Workshop – Ottawa

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I’ll be conducting a day-long workshop on informal learning in Ottawa on 30 January 2007. The event is sponsored by CSTD and members get a discount. Please feel free to contact me about the workshop and add any questions or issues that you would like to discuss. I’ll be arriving in Ottawa the afternoon of the 29th if anyone wants to get together before the event, and I’ll probably be staying at the same hotel. Participants also get a copy of Jay’s book on Informal Learning (a great read).

Public Domain Day

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From CopyrightWatch.ca:

Take these examples: Billy Bishop’s Winged warfare : hunting the Huns in the air; Ernest Bilodeau’s Autour du lac Saint-Jean; C.A. Chant’s Our wonderful universe; the Earl of Bessborough’s A week on the Jupiter River, Anticosti Island; Maurice Lalonde’s Notes historiques sur Mont-Laurier, Nominingue et Kiamika; and Mina Benson Hubbard’s A Woman’s Way Through Unknown Labrador are all in the public domain in Canada as of this morning.

Yet a March 15, 1939 letter from Billy Bishop to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King; the papers of Ernest Bilodeau; C.A. Chant’s astronomical notebooks; Lord Bessborough’s letters and documents pertaining to his tenure as Governor-General of Canada; Maurice Lalonde’s political correspondence; and Mina Benson Hubbard’s exploration diaries; will all be protected from unfettered use by Canadians for another 42 years.

Note that through most of our collective history, copyright has been the anomaly and the public domain has been the default.

Wildlife Photograph Archive

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I volunteer as Director of Education at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute (AWI), which is located just outside our town of Sackville:

The AWI is unique among wildlife rescue programs in Atlantic Canada in using rehabilitation to identify and highlight key environmental health issues for public attention and response.

Learning by doing is central to the mission. Wildlife rehabilitation work is a kind of ecological sampling. It helps identify environmental change. Habitat loss, toxicity, and wildlife-borne diseases can all be better understood if we document and study wildlife afflicted by these conditions.

During the past year I started an AWI photo gallery on Flickr as a shared resource of wildlife pictures. We use these photos in our educational programs. I have since created a group photo pool called Atlantic Wildlife Network. Our aim is to have an open database of wildlife pictures that can be used for educational activities. We hope to get pictures of North American animals at different stages of development and from various angles in their natural habitats. We’ll also continue to add pictures of the hundreds of animals that pass through AWI annually.

If you have pictures that you would be willing to share, then please check out the photo pool. Membership is open. I would suggest using a Creative Commons license, such as Public Domain, Attribution-ShareAlike, or Attribution-Non-Commercial. This would make it easy to share and use the pictures without having to check with each copyright holder. Note that Flickr allows you to mark individual photographs with separate licenses.

Please feel free to use those photographs already posted. Thanks & happy new year :-)

And there is now an AWI Photo Blog with more pictures.

Who is Time’s person of the year?

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I’m sure that everyone who hasn’t been in an eggnog-induced coma has heard that Time’s person of the year is – You; or those people who control the information revolution:

And we didn’t just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software.

Before we get too complacent with “our” status as person of the year, here’s the view from someone in the education field- infomancy:

When it comes to “me” as a professional, the place where I spend the majority of my waking hours is rather not “we.” Or, perhaps it is a bit too “we” – but the “we” that schools have created to mean “us in the corner twiddling our thumbs and pretending that the Internet doesn’t exist.” See, for me, Facebook is forbidden. Second Life is shut down. Amazon reviews are avoided. Podcasts are against policy. Blogs are…well…banned just might not be strong enough of a word. The word that springs to mind is demonized. So how, then, could Time possibly have meant “me” when they named “you” as the person of the year?

As I look at Time’s description, I notice that I may not qualify as person of the year either:

  1. Made a Facebook profile? – No
  2. Made a Second Life Avatar? – No
  3. Reviewed books at Amazon? – No
  4. Recorded a podcast? – Does recording a Skypecast count?
  5. Blogged about my candidate losing? – Nope
  6. Wrote a song about getting dumped? Never written a song and happily married.
  7. Camcordered a bombing run? No, I’ve learned to avoid military operations, especially as a civilian
  8. Built open source software? No, I just try to use the stuff.

Oh well, I guess I’ll have to find my 15 minutes of fame some other way. I assume this means that I can’t put a cool person-of-the-year badge on my site; dang!