Learning

Learning

Literacies in Learning Landscapes (NML_UPEI)

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Currently sitting and listening to Will Richardson’s keynote address at UPEI for the New Media Literacies in Learning Landscapes conference. You can follow live at EdTechTalk and I’ve added some photos (more to follow).

Will touched on themes such as “the web as classroom” and “who are the role models for using MySpace and Facebook”. He also asked the educators in attendance if anyone was teaching reading and writing in in hyper-linked environments. Not many hands were raised. Also check out the Flat Classroom Project that Will mentioned.

Over lunch Dave Cormier described his experiences in working with the OpenSim project, which shows great promise.

Update: Will Richardson neatly summarizes the conference.

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Photo: Cynthia Dunsford and Dave Cormier discussing something very important, while I snap a quick picture with my computer webcam.

Heading back from BH Conference (IIL07)

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I’m just getting ready to catch my early morning flight back to the East Coast, with an overall positive impression from my experiences at the Brandon Hall Conference this past week. I’ll have some time to reflect and will post my notes in the next few days. In the meantime. take a look at the Hitchhikr site that Janet Clarey set up for the conference. I’d recommend this aggregation tool for any conference (that’s a hint, Dave).

New Media Literacies in Learning Landscapes Institute (NML_UPEI)

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Edublogger Dave Cormier is behind the New Media Literacies in Learning Landscapes Institute, a participatory learning event for professionals, which starts this coming Saturday morning at 9:30 am in the Wanda Wyatt Hall on the University of PEI campus.

Will Richardson will be the keynote speaker. Both the Saturday session of the Institute and the online only Sunday session will be streamed live by Jeff Lebow.

There’s still room for further registrations but register by Thursday, September 27th. The registration table will open at the Wanda Wyatt Hall at 9 am Saturday: the $20 fee (can’t beat that) gets you a lunch ticket as well as entry into the prize draw.

Informal Learning with Tomoye (IIL07)

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Eric Sauvé, of Tomoye, presented on informal learning in the enterprise. Tomoye’s clients include the US Army. Initial questions from the audience were:

  1. How do you prove that informal learning has value?
  2. How do get management’s buy-in?
  3. How do you ensure accuracy of content?
  4. How do you track legal issues & HR units/credits?

Eric views informal learning as something that adds value or augments formal learning in an organisation (I would say the opposite, but I’m just a learning radical). He also discussed the notion of employing workers/learners as a primary source of learning content; or the “YouTube-ification” of content. Other advice for implementation of Tomoye’s system, which looks like a blog/discussion forum mix for your Intranet, is to keep you tools simple . This follows the Web’s small pieces loosely joined design philosophy. Other points were to add a mechanism for positive reinforcement of good content and to use informal environments to validate the formal training that has been conducted.

Eric closed with a short discussion on collective intelligence or the wisdom of crowds. Overall this session was quite practical advice with some examples of one way to facilitate some aspects of informal learning.

e-Learning 2.0 with Stephen Downes (IIL07)

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Stephen is addressing the conference with his opening keynote this morning. I’m sitting way back in the audience of about 500 people:

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This conference is an excellent mix of presenters, vendors and participants. I’ve found the level of conversation more in-depth than larger conferences I’ve attended. Stephen has set up a back channel with an ad hoc chat he’s set up on his web site. We’re starting to get several comments coming up on the dual screens. I think that the back channel is very new to many in the audience and there’s some confusion with multiple sensory inputs. Of course, it’s normal for anyone doing collaborative learning on the web.

Life in Beta and learning as flow, are my own recurring themes here. Stephen is talking about connectivism and network learning (as well as unworkshops, unconferences, messiness, etc.). Good themes to launch this conference.

Innovations in Learning Conference (IIL07)

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I’m in Santa Clara for the Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Conference. Last night we went to Santa Cruz for seafood on the pier, with the sound of sea lions around us. It was too dark to get a photo of these interesting animals, but I thought this sign was kind of neat. We did not feed the birds.

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Janet and I will be presenting our workshop tomorrow. For pictures, go to the Flickr group, and if you’re attending, please post and share.

The end of content-centric business models

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Fewer people believe that “content is king” in the online learning world. However, many e-learning business models are built on some aspect of content creation. Community and context are the two critical factors in developing e-learning environments. For example:

  • Courses online; Community = your cohort; Context = a relevant (to you) credential
  • Performance support; Community = your peers; Context = current need
  • Knowledge Management (especially PKM) ; Community = those with shared interests; Context = Maslow’s higher needs of esteem and self-actualization.

These thoughts were triggered by Rob Paterson’s post that Getting paid for content is over:

All business models must be based on something that is legitimately scarce. Today, no matter how expensive it is to make, content will become freely available quickly. So much music is free that you cannot legitimately charge much for a song. So much film is free that you cannot charge much for a move. So much information is free, that you cannot charge much for it (Britannica). This is a reality – so you have to get over it and find another area that is legitimately scarce where you can find value. So where is it?

What happens to e-learning business models when content declines in value? Will it be more profitable to a have a learning content management system or a people connecting (e.g. Facebook) system? If the best lectures & videos are available online for free, why build mediocre substitutes? What will happen to custom content development?

I’m not saying that these changes will happen immediately, but there does seem to be a trend toward free and ubiquitous digital media. Isn’t it just a matter of time before it hits the e-learning field?

e-Learning Bootcamp Next Week

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Join Me at The Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Conference Community!

This is my “quick connect card” for the Innovations in Learning Conference. One week from today, Janet Clarey and I will be conducting a workshop [a.k.a. Bootcamp] on e-learning. We’ve had a chance to talk to some of the participants and the final outline is shaping up. We’re planning on using a flexible framework and hope to run it more like an unconference.

Themes so far include e-learning today & tomorrow,  case studies, networks & informal learning and personal learning environments. There are still a few places left if you’re interested in this pre-conference workshop on 24 September in Santa Clara, California.

Web tools for critical thinking

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A few years back, Dave Pollard wrote a post on critical thinking and it’s one that I’ve referred to a few times since. I think that real critical thinking is a key survival skill in our global, digital surround.

What I think really needs to be taught is critical thinking as a defensive skill. We all think logically, but we can be fooled. Inadvertently or maliciously. If I were to design a Critical Thinking course it would quickly cover the basic cognitive skills, and provide some exercises for students to get these muscles working, and would then focus entirely on learning to challenge intellectual deception.

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Almost every interest group in the world is now on an information & marketing offensive. It’s what Seth Godin calls a Marketing War, and if every corporate, government and special interest group masters it, we had all better watch out. To fight this war, we now have a few new tools at our disposal to help us question assumptions, including our own.

Looking at several web tools from the perspective of critical thinking, and the processes described by Dave, shows something similar to a personal learning environment (PLE). You could call it a PLE with an attitude, or PKM, and educators can start with the book, “Teaching Defiance“.

PLE’s et al

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“But it’s alright now, I’ve learned my lesson well.
“You see, you can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself” Ricky Nelson

I’ve been getting some questions about personal learning environments and of course hearing and reading lots about them in the past few months. If I thought about the PLE, it was a concept around the use of tools and processes to be a better learner. The PLE was akin to the process of personal knowledge management (PKM), in that it was a sense-making effort.

Some of the discussions around PLE’s seem to be going in the direction of PLE-as-platform, like a learning management system (LMS).  Having a “PLE in a box” might please everyone, but learners have to please themselves.

Tom Haskins has been adding excellent insight into this conversation, first with The LMS vs PLE Debate and then  Growing PLE’s from Seed and now PLE’s come in sizes :

When we think of Personal Learning Environments as things, we are on the same page as construction workers, factory stewards and warehouse operators. We are dealing with the components to assemble a PLE. We describe the PLE as “what we’ve got in it” like Web 2.0 tools and archives of our own creations.

When we think of PLE’s as processes, we’re on the same page as designers of architecture, software interfaces and customer experiences. We’re dealing with what components do, how they function, what purpose they serve, and which difference they make. These intangible qualities are more difficult to visualize.

It’s like electricity, which can be thought of as particles or as a current. PLE’s, in their current free-form, are what individuals are putting together because the tools are cheap and available. The processes are drawn from many fields – knowledge management, cognitive science, information architecture, etc. These processes, with newer tools every day, are fairly ill-defined.

Who knows where the PLE will go, but let’s give it a chance to grow first. Seeing how various artists use some kind of PLE would be fascinating and much more informative for our field than any standard PLE format selected by company ABC for all of its employees.