Learning

Learning

Controlling Chaos?

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Scott Leslie comments on the recent release of the CETIS Vocabulary Project, which includes two reports and a series of recommendations [my emphasis added]:

But the 121 pages that comprise the first two survey reports, the Pedagogical Vocabularies Review and the Vocabulary Management Technologies Review, seem hardly to justify the tepid 7 page ‘Recommendations’ document that follows. Study study study, disseminate, more study, pilot a bit, repeat. Sorry guys, I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this; I want to take succour in the belief we can control the growing chaos, find sense through old patterns and methods, but you know what, I can’t do it anymore, I have seen the light, and this is not it.

I’m not an expert on ontologies, the semantic web, metadata or controlled vocabularies, but I’ve had enough conversations with enough experts to know that more control will not address our information management needs. Recent conversations with people smarter than me have me concluding that Smart Search is (will be) an excellent tool and that the RDF standard seems to be quite useful with its minimalist approach. From the CETIS Report (MS Word Doc, page 23):

What really sets RDF apart from XML and other things is that RDF is designed to represent knowledge in a distributed world. This means RDF is particularly concerned with meaning. Everything at all mentioned in RDF means something, whether a reference to something concrete in the world, an abstract concept, or a fact. Standards built on RDF describe logical inferences between facts and how to search for facts in a large database of RDF knowledge.”

I recently asked if metadata was dead and received some good advice:

  • From Anol: "Problems with folders and metadata – that’s a closed system, somebody else define the taxonomy. Theory of entropy proves itself when the closed system of folders and metadata goes into a complete chaotic mode."
  • and from Keith, "Maybe metadata structures are dying, but there’s a distinct difference between metadata and metadata structures. If you’re going to ask, "Is metadata dead?" why not also ask, "Is tagging [with METADATA!] dead?"

After perusing the 121 pages of the two CETIS reports [I didn’t read every item], I came away with the feeling that trying to control chaos is a losing game. Instead of asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, it’s time for the learning industry as a whole to shift its effort to more pragmatic solutions, because the answers from CETIS et al are not very clear. Having watched the enormous efforts ($$$) that the military, academia and corporations have put into metadata and controlled learning structures, without any measurable improvements in learning or performance outcomes, I have to ask if this is worth the time and money. My suggestions:

  • like Lego, use the simplest of basic structures (RDF?)
  • build better search into online learning applications
  • only build taxonomies, ontologies & controlled vocabularies based on a specific user need, not "just-in-case"
  • give learners and facilitators more tools to manage their information (tags, tagclouds, smart search, etc)
  • focus on tools to surf the chaos, not control it

nonscholae.org Launches

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It’s still very new with not much content, but James Farmer has one more website to his credit – nonscholae.org. The premise is:

nonscholae.org is a site devoted to the responsible use of blogs, instant messaging and other social software in schools.
Non scholae sed vitae discimus
We learn, not for school, but for life – Seneca, Epistulae
We believe that these tools and resources should not be blocked or banned from schools. As educators, we should be familiarising learners with these technologies, supporting and facilitating their responsible use and equipping our students with the skills to keep them safe and savvy in the online world.
However, at the moment, many schools are simply closing their eyes, banning these technologies and doing their learners a disservice in the process.

Seneca’s words ring true for me, and I’m glad to see that James has taken this initiative. Enough of what educators want, let’s focus on what learners need, because Seneca was right.

Wikibooks

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Dave Cormier is proposing more work be done on the concept of textbook wikis, or wikibooks. According to Dave:

I would see a well funded wikibook project as a viable alternative to the current publisher textbook hegemony. With the work done at wikimedia as a backbone, the right input, enthusiasm and knowhow, a full wikibook science program could be up within a year. The key to the success of such a project would be getting ‘everyone’ involved. Not just science people and curriculum designers, but teachers, science institutions and students as well. A solid organizational structure, a place for debate and disagreement, as well as areas for student input. It has all the potential for being a real turning point for education.

Most of us have used wikipedia, or at least heard of it in the popular press, and the wikibook is another open source model for education using the power of community built web pages. Dave goes through some of the pros and cons including the question of validity, or  "How do we know that the information in the textbook is ‘true’?". In this world of information abundance I don’t believe that it’s necesssary to prove that something is true. Once posted, facts can easily be cross-checked, and a strong community will make sure that the information is fact-based. Learners and educators have to be media savvy and understand how they can check the verity of an information source. Truth is what we believe and we need to understand why we believe something.
I remember a course in third year on Canadian historiography (the wikipedia definition is number one on Google) that covered three textbooks, one English Canadian, one French Canadian and one American. Which one of these university textbooks contained the "truth"? In many courses, only one of these texts would have been required reading or required to purchase. A more open wikibook, transparent to all and open to debate, is a much better system, and cheaper, than an unchanging textbook.

Jay Cross on Informal Learning

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Jay Cross has posted a Breeze presentation that you can watch and listen to online. It’s a review of his research over the past year that informed his in-press book on informal learning.

There’s a lot here and worth the time (35 minutes) to sit back and learn. Jay and I share perspectives on many things, including the importance of performance & the power of networks. In this presentation Jay gives a lot of food for thought on the important role of informal learning.

His statement that only 0.4% of behaviour change is attributable to formal learning should make training organisations and educational institutions shake in their boots, but of course it won’t (until it’s too late).

Those who teach will not test

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First post of the new year – best wishes to all – after a somewhat fallow period since the holidays began and the boys have been at home and family arrived, etc.

I haven’t created a ‘best of’ for 2005, and will not make any predictions for 2006. I know that life in perpetual beta will continue for me and I’m feeling fairly optimistic in spite of the large challenges facing human kind.

I’ve had many discussions these past weeks on the failings of our education systems (public, private, higher, government-sanctioned). Like many others I see global changes on the horizon that will affect our economic and political systems. However, in one short conversation, I believed that we hit upon a small incremental change that could have some really positive results. That is to remove teaching from assessment:

  • Anyone who teaches is not allowed to test.
  • Those who design the tests are answerable to those who learn and those who teach.
  • Those who teach are only responsible to those who learn and are subjected to tests.

Whether it be in public school or higher education, teachers should be there to help the learners. Others, who design and administer the tests must show how these tests are valid and reliable and be able to publicly defend the principles upon which they are based. When, or if, learners are tested, teachers are advocates not judges.

By removing the role of assessor, I think that we can do a lot to advance learning. I know that there are many other challenges in our education systems but this one change could be the start. I also know that this will not be a panacea, but it could give a new sense of purpose to many teachers. It does not require a wholesale dismantling of the system (not that it’s a bad idea) but is a pragmatic start while the hierarchies come to the realisation that the world is changing faster than they can even conceive of adapting.

The mantra can be – Those who teach will not test, period.

Connecting formal & informal learning

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Dave Tosh, co-creator of Elgg, has a model in progress of “how to facilitate the social interaction of learners and resources within the current architecture most institutions employ.” His two-layer model is similar to what Mancomm has developed for a healthcare institutional setting:

Layer 2 Personal Learning Landscape

e.g. Elgg

 Informal

Learner defined

Social
Layer 1 Course Management System

e.g. Moodle

 Formal

Institution defined

Task based

By using Elgg linked to a more formal system like Moodle you can provide traditional training & education, focused on specific tasks while encouraging emergent and informal learning in the less structured elgg learning landscape.

In a later post, Dave links to a concept map being developed by Andrew Chambers. This map shows the wide variety of tools currently available for informal learning, in order to organise, connect, create and share. These really are “small pieces loosely joined” for informal learning.

The trick will be in linking informal & formal systems so that the learner can easily move from one environment to another. This is probably the biggest challenge for institutions and their IT departments. If they aren’t linked, then learners may find less use for them. That’s why I continue to recommend the Elgg and Moodle communities because they are actively working on integrating these two layers.

Learning Objects as Activities

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Here is an example of the power of the Internet, blogs and asynchronous communication in the development of ideas. It starts with Teemu Leinonen’s post on the "Urinal as learning object". Not as strange as it sounds (just read the whole post) but the point is that objects aren’t learning objects until they’re used for learning. The post is picked up by Stephen Downes, which of course means that it’s beamed all over the world. Albert Ip then posts on the comments that have been made and adds his perspective, which, in my mind, puts it all together. The result of this conversation can now be shown as:

object + learning context = learning opportunity; and
learning opportunity + appropriate learning activity = learning

This makes me think about a previous post on teachers’ roles in learning & problem solving.  The key is to focus teachers, instructional designers, etc. on finding and facilitating "appropriate learning activities". These formulae indicate that educators should concentrate on stimulating action. Educational technologies based on these premises could actually enhance learning. Sure beats this model:

digital content + short-term memory testing = e-learning

Public Education (K-12) Resources

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A friend of mine is going to be starting a very interesting & unique job in the educational sector; working for a private corporation (that’s all I can say for now, but hope to be able to tell more in the new year). We were discussing various sources of information and community nodes in this field so I thought I’d put down my references in one spot.
Here is my annotated webliography.

  • Good summative post on blogging in education, by Australia’s James Farmer.
  • James also has created free blog spaces for Educators and Students (a safe place to blog)
  • The platform that is, in my opinion, the best for building education communities and providing user-controlled access rights is Elgg.
  • An excellent resource on the science of brain-based learning is the Eide Neurolearning Blog.
  • The ultimate site on blogging in public education is by Will Richardson.
  • Scott Adams offers another perspective on technology in education and distance learning. I really like his Edutrain meme.
  • Albert Ip’s blog on how we should prepare our next generation for life in 2020 is always worth a read.
  • My own list of bookmarks on Public Education issues. I also have a list of online Student Resources, as recommendations for our two school-age boys.

I’m sure that I’ve missed many other good sources of information, so feel free to add your recommendations in the comments. I’ve done some work in the K-12 education sector but it’s not really my specialty.

Ubiquitously Connected & Pervasively Proximate

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Mark Federman has made some interesting observations in a paper that he recently presented. Here’s an excerpt from “Why Johnny And Janey Can’t Read, And Why Mr. And Ms. Smith Can’t Teach: The challenge of multiple media literacies”:

The UCaPP world “ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate” is a world of relationships and connnections. It is a world of entangled, complex processes, not content. It is a world in which the greatest skill is that of making sense and discovering emergent meaning among contexts that are continually in flux. It is a world in which truth, and therefore authority, is never static, never absolute, and not always true.

I presented this observation at the LearnNB quarterly meeting last week and I think that many people are in denial in the training & education field. These people see online learning systems as replications of the industrial classroom. Many don’t understand the premise that “Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy”. The generation that knows only a world with the Internet has a very different perspective on knowledge acquisition, sharing, learning and who’s really in charge.

Learning is Conversation

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This is a remix and update of some previous posts.

Let’s start with the Cluetrain Manifesto (1999), and update it for training & education (my previous post).

We are online learners …

  • We are not seats or audiences or users or target populations, we are human beings and OUR reach exceeds YOUR grasp.
  • Networked learners are beginning to self-organize faster than the companies that have traditionally served them. Thanks to the web, learners are becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most education and training organizations.
  • To traditional educational institutions, networked conversations may appear confused, may even sound confusing. But we, the learners, are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, and no rules to slow us down.

Thesis #1: Learning is conversation.

Stock & Flow

If learning is conversation, then online conversations are the essential component of online learning. Online communication can be divided into two parts (Lee Lefever):

Flows = Timely & Engaging (e.g. radio, speeches, e-mail, blogs)

Stocks = Archived, Organized for Reference (e.g. web site, database, book, voice mail)

One reason that blogs are so engaging is because they allow flow. On the other hand, stock on the Net is everywhere. In the case of digital learning content, fewer people are willing to pay for plain old stock, such as self-paced online courses. Learning content is now a commodity and over time the price of commodities tends to zero.

You need flow to provide real value for learners (remember that they’re becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding), as flow provides the essential element of context. Social interactions help to put it all together for each learner. For instance, MIT’s open courseware initiative makes the stock available for free, but you have to pay to participate in the flow (class membership, MIT degree). Without the stock, there is little to guide the flow, so you need both but stock alone is almost worthless.

Networks Enable Connections

Will Richardson made this statement about the changing needs of learners in a networked world, “ … now that we have access to people and knowledge, learning is ‘network creation’ and we can learn through ‘collaborative meaning making’.” The web enables connections (constant flow) as well as instant access to information (infinite stock).

Because of this connectivity, the Web is an environment more suited to just-in-time learning than the current and all-pervasive course model. Learning on the web is moving from stock to flow, and devaluing all content out there. For web-savvy learners, entering an online course and then losing access to the system, notes and connections after the “course” is seen as ridiculous. These learners are what Mark Federman, Chief Strategist of The McLuhan Institute calls UCaPP:

“The UCaPP world – ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate – is a world of relationships and connections. It is a world of entangled, complex processes, not content. It is a world in which the greatest skill is that of making sense and discovering emergent meaning among contexts that are continually in flux. It is a world in which truth, and therefore authority, is never static, never absolute, and not always true.”

Now that the Web is nearly ubiquitous, we are moving away from a ‘horseless carriage’ metaphor for the web. Online courses and curricula are old metaphors posing on the new medium. Tagging, folksonomies, wikis and social bookmarks are new metaphors designed within the new medium. Tech savvy learners are exploiting the inherent capabilities of the Internet and creating new social tools. Hence the rise of Web 2.0 – the web being built by the digital natives. These same natives are the new, discerning, and well-informed, customers for training & education organisations.