Work is learning. Learning is the work.
The Université de Moncton’s technology-based learning group has received $2.9M from the Atlantic Innovation Fund to further develop its Synergic3 technology. Synergic3 is designed to reduce large-scale elearning production and development costs [disclosure: I was involved in the initial business and marketing analysis for this product].
The university has partnered with Desire2Learn and the National Research Council for this project which is estimated to cost $5.5M.
I’m in Calgary doing some client work where I also met with Camille Jensen, a fellow Informl Unworkshop participant and Editor of the Alberta Distance Education & Training Asssociation’s newsletter, The Distance. Camille gave me a quick tour of downtown Calgary, including these supposedly wind-reducing statues:
As free-agents in the same field, we discussed all kinds of topics, ranging from schooling to instructional design to what is the best descriptor for our chosen professions; all in the warm Alberta sun :-)
Camille has put together an excellent newsletter at ADETA (not just because I have an article in it) including a description of Connectivism by George Siemens. Camille’s overview of web 2.0 technologies for learning is perfect for anyone who needs a primer on this changing field. The other Informl Unworkshop participants who wrote articles for this edition include Dave Ferguson (Job Aids), Dave Lee (Pitfalls of web 2.0 apps) and Jay Cross (on the semantics of all this *2.0 stuff).
The newsletter (PDF) is available on the ADETA website.
Via Jon Husband, one of the creators, is a new website called Constellation W. This bilingual, interactive information site looks at three threads of development – Technology, Economy, Society – that are currently entering new eras. The site lets you follow deeper explanatory links to examine the data, understand the past thirty years, and see what to watch for today. One of the aims of the site is to provide, “A space for citizens to reflect on our collective future.”
The site includes many diagrams and pictures and allows you to add comments in certain areas. This got me to thinking about the wiki textbook project at Education Bridges, and the desire to create useful educational resources where others can add to a knowledge base and let it grow organically. Constellation W is not all that interactive but I don’t think that it would take a lot of additional programming to open it up. I also find that the layout and navigation of Constellation W is more appealing than your average wiki. I’d encourage anyone in the Education Bridges community to check this out (that’s you, Dave).
Anyway, it looks very interesting and I intend to explore it some more. Constellation W could be an excellent web exploration site for students as well.
As all bloggers know, permalinks are the permanent universal resource identifiers used as addresses for blog posts. One post, one permalink. The permalink doesn’t change so that people can link and refer to it over time and it can easily be found.
Well, I guess I’ve commited permalink sacrilege because I changed the settings of my permalinks from the default in WordPress to one with the name of the post attached to the domain name (e.g. jarche.com/permalink-woes/). Unfortunately that created a whole bunch of routing errors, on top of the redirects from previous Drupal (my last content management system) permalinks such as – jarche.com/node/123. I am now back to the default permalink style for WordPress (jarche.com/?p=123) and will not change it again.
I also discovered that all older links were renamed as well, so that what should be jarche.com/?p=123 was for a short period renamed jarche.com/OLD123 , and that style of naming no longer works.
My apologies to anyone who has unsuccessfully tried to follow an old permalink. My stats show that there are many of these each day. All that I can suggest is that you search, in the search box on the top right, for the title or some keyword. Sorry :-(
Life is different from school in one significant way – in real life you get the test first and the lesson follows. I often say that we learn best from our mistakes, so I’ve definitely learned something this week.
One of my clients recently went into receivership. This is different from bankruptcy, as the Receiver informed me today, because as an unsecured creditor I’m not entitled to any compensation for my completed work. The only secured creditor is the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), “a financial institution wholly owned by the government of Canada” (kind of makes me a minor shareholder). The bank gets 100% of what’s left, which equates to about one third of its investment, so the bank suffers a significant loss but the rest of us get nothing.
What have I learned from this?
For additional learning, here are some definitions from the Canadian Bankruptcy Dictionary [link removed by request of BankruptcyCanada.com – see below for text of request]:
Debenture:
Security instrument evidencing a debt due from one party to another, payable on demand or otherwise, which can be a fixed and/or floating charge on assets and which can grant the lender broad powers to recover the amount due upon default, including the appointment of a receiver or receiver-manager.Receiver:
A person or corporation appointed by a person who holds a debenture or other security agreement, giving that person authority to take possession of and sell the asset(s) specified in the debenture. A Receiver cannot manage or operate a company for more than 14 days.Receiving Order (Bankruptcy Order):
An Order handed down by the Court following the successful petition to have a person or company placed into bankruptcy. In an amendment dated December 15, 2004 this term was changed to Bankruptcy Order.
email received 2 Jan 2014:
Hi. My name is Gordon Sands. I am a principal of BankruptcyCanada.com.
We are contacting you to respectively request that you remove or mark as “NoFollow” the link(s) you have to BankruptcyCanada.com from https://jarche.com/ because the links are not in the same niche as our site.
Kindly advise us when you have either removed or marked the links “NoFollow” so we do not send you a follow-up email.
Regretfully we will be forced to submit, websites not complying with our request, to Google using their Link Disavow procedure. This may have an adverse effect on your site.
Yours truly,
Gordon Sands
Gordon@BankruptcyCanada.com
Update: More information on how the golden era of spam comments has ended, and what likely prompted the email “request” above.
One of my first posts when I started this blog was a number of Book Reviews. Later that year, I listed some Books I would like to read, but I never got around to reading a single one of these. I did read several others, and wrote about this as Worthwhile Reading at the end of that year.
Here is an updated list of books I’ve read and would recommend:
Seeing What’s Next by Christensen et al – if you haven’t read the innovator’s Dilemma or The Innovators Solution, you can jump right in to this book. It’s an excellent strategic perspective for start-up businesses.
The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. This is the bible if you are starting any kind of new enterprise, for profit or not.
Nine Shift by William Draves & Julie Coates. A look at the parallels between the beginning of the last century and this one. A fascinating read on what could happen as we transition to the Internet Age.
Solving Tough Problems by Adam Kahane. Short but powerful book on working with complex issues.
The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford. Economics for average folks. A fun read with plenty of insights on “why the rich are rich, the poor are poor – and why you can never buy a decent used care”.A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink. Definitely one to read if you haven’t picked this one up yet. Pink’s book shows the importance of creativity and empathy as critical skills for future success in life. It may have you reconsider your child’s higher education options.
I’m currently reading Ideas, based on the CBC radio program and have just ordered read The Wealth of Networks [The most comprehensive analysis on our change to a networked digital economy. This is not light reading, but is a required resource for anyone seriously considering the implications of the internet age on our economy, our governance and our society.]
Update 2007
The Upside of Down by Thomas Homer-Dixon. Much of the book is dedicated to an explanation of the five tectonic stresses that we face as a civilization – population; energy; environmental; climate and economic. The main message of the book is that in times of crisis and destruction come opportunities for regeneration. This requires a “prospective mind” that can anticipate crises and prepare for them. Homer-Dixon encourages building resilience into our communities and economies, so that we are not dependent on tightly coupled global supply chains.
Informal Learning by Jay Cross. Even though I read several of the manuscripts, the book is much better. It’s synthesized, flows and has great graphics. I am a huge proponent of the importance of informal learning for our society and Jay covers a lot of ground in his book. This is a book that you can use as an introduction to the subject or as a reference. Highly recommended.
Getting to Maybe by Westley, Zimmerman & Patton. This is a book about social innovation in complex environments (our world). It covers the stories of many social innovators and discusses the various parts of a common path that many take. This is a path with no map and no destination. Getting to maybe, or “if only …”, starts with the first step of realising that here and now is the best and only place to start. A chapter is dedicated to each identified step, but these are more like checkpoints than actual steps in a process. There are no answers in this book but I think that it may be an inspiration for many who are on the journey of social innovation and need to know that they are not alone.
How Computer Games Help Children Learn by David Williamson Shaffer. This is an excellent book for anyone interested in learning and education, but the title is a bit misleading. It’s more about the theory and practice of authentic learning experiences than specific computer games. Many of games mentioned in the book, like the debating game, are not computer-based, but could be computer enhanced. Shaffer’s book is really about epistemic games, or games that are fundamentally about learning to think in innovative ways.
As I mentioned, we are moving ahead with the idea of The Tantramar Commons, and the next step is to develop a business plan. Guy Kawasaki’s Zen of business plans, is a perspective that suits me well. I’ve used his short pitch format for business models before and find it’s a good way to focus, not just for investors, but for funders of non-profits.
My aim is to develop a plan for the longer term viability of The Commons. If we are economically sustainable, then we have a good chance for government investment in the necessary physical capital. This is a different perspective than that of a business start-up that has to show a return on investment on its capital. It’s more like the rationale to build interstate highways 80 years ago. We are creating some common ground for knowledge-based organisations that are not focused on short-term profits. One of our aims is to have a culturally, environmentally and economically viable community. Our Commons will be an investment in a garden plot, and members will decide what they plant and care for. The exciting aspect will be the opportunities for cross-pollination. Fiftyty independent organisations, all generating wealth in some way, stand a better chance of survival than one company employing 50 people. The commons is about productive living, not jobs.
Of course, we have to make money and pay the bills. However, The Queen Street Commons is evidence that a work commons can function. Our cultural commons needs to provide the kind of infrastructure that will support early-stage artists and crafts people and help them develop into viable enterprises. Perhaps some form of common teaching and learning space would do it. The environmental commons already has some potential renters but it may also need common space for shared activities. Access to free highspeed Internet seems to be a desirable common good for anyone who visits or stays at the commons, as our connectedness to the rest of the world is essential for our prosperity. Anyway, there are lots of ideas.
I’ve started to collect online resources and examples of commons and bookmark them. I’d appreciate any other information, especially experiences and similar initiatives. I know that there is a group in Halifax considering the creation of a commons as well. I’m sure that we’re not alone, as almost everyone I speak has realised the limitations of our current economic structures in supporting meaningful and productive work.
Christian Long’s post on the required use of handheld computing devices (PDA’s) for medical students is a good indicator of the changing nature of knowledge in all professions:
Sometimes schools get scared and annoyed, banning Google searches and iPods in the classrooms. Sometimes they go the opposite direction, believing that technology may actually make the world a better place one PDA at a time. Over at Brown University, Providence, RI, the second tact seems to be the case.
As an assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island College of Nursing notes :
“If we had students buy a book, by the time the book hits the bookstore, it’s outdated,” Lauzon Clabo said. “And with using PDAs, they can update their software weekly.”
Learners need up to date information and access to knowledgeable people in their own, as well as other, fields. Textbooks no longer meet that need. Unfortunately for specialists and texbook writers, the digital medium is making many of them redundant. The texbook is no longer the primary source of knowledge; instead it’s the messy, disorganised worldwide web. A similar debate of whether experts and school boards should pre-authorise the content of wiki textbooks went on for a while at Education Bridges.
First it’s the professional schools, soon it will be public schools who reject the textbook and the small circle of experts who write and publish them. I look forward to this democratisation of educational resources. The more the merrier.
Few people would argue that the Internet has changed the way we work and live, even though there are some who may not realize how much life has changed and how great the business implications. If you follow Nine Shift, you’ll know that they predict this epochal change to be complete around 2020, when 75% of our discretionary time is different from pre-2005.
Just as significant a change has happened on the Internet during the past five years. That is the advent of Search. Seth Godin highlights how serach has levelled the playing field, making industry leaders less important:
If there’s no search engine and you need a recipe or a pot, you visit cooking.com and they find you the best match on their site. And it goes beyond web companies. If there’s no search engine and you need to buy coffee, you go to Starbucks.com, right? Leaders in every field had no reason to invent for search… it’s not good for them.
In John Batelle’s book, The Search [a recommended read], he notes that:
Increasingly, search is our mechanism for how we understand ourselves, our world, and our place within it. It’s how we navigate the one infinite resource that drives human culture: knowledge.
Search has levelled the playing field but it has also increased our dependence on it. This makes the issue of who owns and controls the pipes & nodes on the Internet exceptionally important. If large telcos and ISP’s can provide faster speeds for preferred clients or influence search engines in any way, then our access to the knowledge that we need will suffer.
Now that everyone recognizes the power of search, this is becoming a battleground for control by multinational corporations. Keep an eye on this field and please get involved where you can, as this will affect how our children work, learn and create.
Some resources:
Michael Geist’s Internet Law Blog (Canadian)
The Cooperation Commons (a venue for discussions)
Oligopoly Watch (keeping watch on all those mergers & acquisitions)
Open Business (open source business models as an alternative to the above link)
Electronic Frontier Foundation (working to protect your digital rights)
Creative Commons (flexible copyright, so that you can use what you find when you search)
The UK Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) is proposing that there be no national curriculum for students under 16, instead opting for a locally negotiated course of studies based on competences rather than specific subjects.
“We need to give teachers the freedom to inspire youngsters so they want to learn, not just pass tests. We also need pupils to have the space to develop as rounded people, and that includes physically, emotionally, creatively, socially and ethically.”
So reports the Education Guardian, but also quotes opponents to this proposition:
But Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, said yesterday of the ATL’s proposals: “This is disturbing nonsense. The point about testing is that we discovered quite shocking things about how few of our children could handle words and numbers properly at the age of 11. Without that testing we would have assumed that everything was ok.”
I can understand the opposition to this recommendation, in that students may “slip through the cracks”, but Smithers’ remarks are based on a supposition that teachers and the education system know what’s best for students. Here I strongly disagree. The current industrial educational model is inadequate from most perspectives:
The needs of struggling students as well as gifted students are equally ignored by national curricula. Local control means that parents can get involved in discussions about what would work best. As it stands, teachers have no control over the curriculum, and are as helpless as parents and students.
Experts like Smithers do not know what is best for everyone and I question their authority as experts on every learner in their respective countries (see Dave’s post on experts). One cannot possibly set a national curriculum that addresses all the learning needs of every student. I’ve already mentioned how the death of curriculum could mean the rebirth of learning, and perhaps this move by the ATL will open up the debate on the constraints of curriculum.
Further resources on Public Education.