Learning with 'e's

An audience with...

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Sun, 12 May 2013 21:28:00 +0000

We learn best when we are fully involved in the process. John Dewey advocated 'learning by doing' and Seymour Papert called it 'learning by making'. These are theories that guide many educators today. Mindful of these theories, I have recently been working alongside students to encourage them to write for an audience. Nothing new in that, you may think. Normally, in higher education, students write for an audience of one. They write essays, projects and dissertations that will be read only by their tutor or marker. What would happen, I wondered, if I gave my students an audience of hundreds or even thousands? I did some early studies into the effects of this when I implemented a programme wide use of wikis in 2006. I published the results of the study in 2009, revealing that when they were aware of an audience, students raised their game. They improved their academic writing skills by concentrating on better sentence construction, grammatical accuracy, critical articulation of theory, ensuring that their referencing was accurate and the avoidance of plagiarism.

Earlier, in a 2008 article 'The Good, the Bad and the Wiki', my colleagues and I had reported that students became very protective over 'their content' in collaborative spaces such as wikis and took pride in presenting their ideas to a wider public audience. Subsequent implementation of blogging across whole classes revealed that students could find new ways of expressing their knowledge, and that audience dialogue was important for their development of further academic skills such as making arguments, engaging critically with theory and defending their position against attack. Clearly these are all very desirable graduate attributes, and needless to say, wikis and blogs now feature as essential 'learning by doing' tools in many of my undergraduate programmes.

I decided to take this concept a step further. Following the submission of some high quality third year degree projects, I approached students who had been graded at 80 per cent or higher, and encouraged them to develop their assignments for publication. I worked alongside them and we soon had our first success, when one of my BA students, Dan Kennedy was successful in publishing his work in an online open access journal called The Student Educator. The journal had been previously set up as a showcase for the best student writing in Plymouth University. Dan's piece was a well written, insightful article on the future of virtual learning environments and is well worth a read.

The next step was to push the idea further and encourage students to present their work in front of large live audiences such as conferences and symposia. The feedback and questions from audiences often add an extra dimension to the learning experience, because they highlight questions and issues the presenter may not previously have considered. I invited Dan to co-present with me at the ALT-C Conference in Manchester in 2009. He presented in front of almost 100 people, by far the largest audience he had spoken in front of at that time. I believe it was a transformational experience for him. It was at that point I decided I needed to find ways of encouraging more students to do similar things. I received some funding from a European project which enabled me to take students on overseas trips to work with our partner university students in Germany, Poland and Ireland. Over the three years of the Atlantis Project, 12 of my B.Ed students took part in presenting at research seminars in Darmstadt, Warsaw and Cork. Subsequently, each of them presented their work at the Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conferences in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

With the encouragement of my colleagues Peter Yeomans, Oliver Quinlan and myself, students also presented at a variety of Teachmeets, both in the South West, and further afield at large events such as the BETT Show in London. At Pelecon 2013 five more students presented their work. Two of those students - Becky Harcombe and Lucy Kitching - are currently working with me to prepare their assignments for submission to peer reviewed academic journals, with me acting as their second author. Lucy has also been successful in having her paper on Games Based Learning accepted for presentation at the EDEN Conference in Oslo, this coming June. I plan to support other students to achieve successful publication and conference presentations in the coming years.

You can imagine what such exposure can do to build students' confidence and how it can raise their professional profiles. Being able to include peer reviewed publications and international conference presentations on your CV when you apply for your first teaching job has to be a real advantage. Being able to evidence critical thinking, academic engagement at the highest level looks impressive on anyone's resume. It is also superb preparation for anyone who is about to embark on a career in education.

Photo by ClintJCL

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Just how far can they go?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:06:00 +0000

Some while ago, I wrote a post entitled 'Lurking and Loafing' about students who are on the peripheral of learning, and whose activity is often to 'lurk' without appearing to directly or productively participate. If you are involved in education you will know exactly what I mean. The silent student who sits in the corner, watching, but not overtly involved. Ask them a question and they stare back at you blankly, shrug, or declare that they don't know. It looks as though they really don't want to be there. Students who are on the periphery can also be an annoyance to their peers, especially where collaborative work is required, and they don't appear to pull their weight. In the wider world, this is referred to as social loafing. It occurs especially where there is a large number of people present, and where a diffusion of responsibility is easy to accept.

In my post, I discussed the challenge this presents to teachers, especially where it can be less noticeable in online environments. I particularly highlighted the concerns teachers have about students who don't seem to engage, and often appear to be socially loafing, when other students are working hard. Yet not everyone views it as problematic. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger argued that some forms of peripheral activity can actually be legitimate participation, and can lead to deeper involvement within the core membership of the community over time. Through such legitimate peripheral participation they suggest, newcomers hold station in low risk and low profile positions on the edge, while they learn about the tasks, social rules and practices of their community, and eventually are drawn into the centre as productive members. But what if that doesn't happen? What if the students continue to lurk, fail to commit, and offer nothing of real substance, while their peers are working hard? Is this a problem? If so, how can it be resolved?

We know intuitively that people learn best when they really want to. Motivation is essential for the deepest and most engaged learning. Sometimes this motivation comes from outside (extrinsic) but more often than not it is intrinsic, an internal desire to better ourselves, gain more understanding, solve a problem, learn a new skill. The engagement of learning triangle below has several sources, but in its current presentation, I have added my own perspective around the use of digital media.

The Engagement Pyramid

(Adapted from Altimeter Group)

The pinnacle of engagement is clearly the ability to generate one's own content and then add value to it for others. Teaching others cannot be underestimated as a powerful motivator for many, and it is also essential that those who teach really know their field of expertise and have engaged deeply and critically with it. We learn by teaching, and if learners know they have to present something in front of their peers and tutors, they are prompted to prepare well and research widely. Encouraging students to share their content (videos, podcasts, blogs, etc) online for a potential global audience is a sobering but exciting challenge for them. Asking them to curate the content of others and add value to it can be even more challenging, but in doing so, they will usually read more widely, and are then in a position to assimilate multiple perspectives.

Engaging students through social media and mobile technology taps into an area that many are knowledgeable. Their familiarity with using these tools can often be just the spur they need to engage more deeply in their learning.

Photo by Brian Auer

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Self organised learning spaces

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:02:00 +0000

"I never teach my students. I only provide them with the conditions in which they can learn." - Albert Einstein

The social web is replete with self-organising spaces. Take Wikipedia for example. It is now the largest single repository of knowledge on the planet and continues to grow with over 4.2 million articles in English, and many more in other languages. Currently, 750 new pages are added each day on just about every topic known to humanity. It's the first port of call for many web users when they wish to check a fact or statistic. Who creates and maintains this huge, ever expanding repository of knowledge? We do. You and I. Us and an army of similar minded volunteers who love learning, and want to share their knowledge. All Wikipedia has done to promote the vast ever expanding storehouse of knowledge, is to provide the environment within which it all takes place. And that should give all of use some clues as to how to facilitate self-organising learning spaces.

Self organised learning - where learners control their own pace and space or learning, and often decide on what content they wish to consume - is a growing force in education. From individual students learning informally by browsing on their handhelds, to small flipped classrooms, to vast groups of learners following a programme of study on massive online open courses (MOOCs), education is changing to become learner driven. Yet many academics and teachers struggle with the concept of self-organised learning. Often this is because it is something of an alien concept to them. When they were in school, college or university, they were probably required to attend lectures and classroom teaching sessions where they were expected to 'receive knowledge' and then go away and attempt to make sense of it in an essay, project or examination. Clearly, the temptation is to perpetuate this kind of didactic pedagogy approach when one is expected to teach. Many however, are breaking out of this mould, and are launching into new kinds of pedagogy which enable learners to take control, and where teachers are another resource to be called upon when needed.

Wikipedia facilitates knowledge generation, sharing, remixing and repurposing because it is an open, accessible space where everyone can participate. It may be error ridden, but these errors are usually addressed and content revised, deleted or extended accordingly, and often within a short space of time. Yes, there will be disputes, just as there are 'edit wars' within Wikipedia, but hopefully, learners will also learn from this how to gain confidence in their own abilities, how to defend their positions and how to think critically. If this kind of learning occurs within a psychologically safe environment which is blame free, success can be achieved. Self-organised learning spaces should be similarly founded on psychologically safe principles, where if errors are made, those who made them can learn and adjust as they discover the 'correct approach' or the 'right answer'.

Working within self-organised communities enables a vast amount of learning to take place, but it also allows for individual differences and personalities to flourish. Teachers who adopt the approach of facilitating self organised learning must be willing to allow learners to take their own directions and find their own levels. Exploration, experimentation, taking risks, asking 'what if?' questions and making errors, are all essential elements of self-organised learning. However, probably the most important component is the ability of the learners themselves to direct their own learning, and to be able to call upon the resources they need, when they need them. We can learn a lot from Wikipedia, and not just from the knowledge it contains.

Photo from Fotopedia by William Murphy

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Twitter and the death of distance

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Tue, 07 May 2013 21:24:00 +0000

It's something we already know, or at least have suspected for a long time. Social media sites such as Twitter span huge distances to connect people around the world. My own father, now 84 years old, started a Facebook account so he could keep in touch with distant relatives in such places as New Zealand and Australia. He's having a whale of a time. There are many stories of people developing and sustaining friendship, or even romance and eventual marriage, after 'meeting' on a social media site. I have co-authored several books with colleagues whom I have never met, where social media tools were used to co-create the content across the distance. The stories go on and on.

Many of us regularly communicate with multiple Twitter and Facebook friends and acquaintances instantaneously even though they may be in another country. Sometimes those friends can be several time zones away. It doesn't seem to matter that much any more where people are located. It's hard to believe that not so long ago, (pre-internet, pre-World Wide Web), this would have been nigh on impossible. We now take it for granted that we can upload and share photos and videos, text chat in real time, see and hear each other, or play games together in the same online social space, across vast distances.

Distance does not seem to be an issue any more, and research is unearthing evidence for what was already common knowledge. A recent study from the University of Illinois reports on the use of the tweets sent by 70 million Twitter users found that on average, tweets and retweets were sent by people located more than 750 miles away from the message originators. This study, published in open access online journal First Monday is intriguingly titled: Mapping the Global Twitter Heartbeat: The Geography of Twitter. Here is the abstract:

In just under seven years, Twitter has grown to count nearly three percent of the entire global population among its active users who have sent more than 170 billion 140–character messages. Today the service plays such a significant role in American culture that the Library of Congress has assembled a permanent archive of the site back to its first tweet, updated daily. With its open API, Twitter has become one of the most popular data sources for social research, yet the majority of the literature has focused on it as a text or network graph source, with only limited efforts to date focusing exclusively on the geography of Twitter, assessing the various sources of geographic information on the service and their accuracy. More than three percent of all tweets are found to have native location information available, while a naive geocoder based on a simple major cities gazetteer and relying on the user–provided Location and Profile fields is able to geolocate more than a third of all tweets with high accuracy when measured against the GPS–based baseline. Geographic proximity is found to play a minimal role both in who users communicate with and what they communicate about, providing evidence that social media is shifting the communicative landscape.

One of the key findings of the research is that Twitter is transforming our conceptions of communication at a global level. The study also confirms at least two other things: Not only are we now a virtual, distributed society, we are also increasingly comfortable with the fact that content, especially knowledge, can be disseminated around the world, via huge networks of users, in seconds. I suspect that the 'ripple effect', where content is spread and amplified through sub-groups across networks, is only just beginning to gather pace and will continue to exponentially grow as more and more people start social media accounts, and then begin to connect with others across the globe. What this will do for massive online courses and other forms of distance education remains to be seen.

Photo by Artemis Crow

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Follow you, follow me

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Mon, 06 May 2013 11:23:00 +0000

A recent longitudinal study may provide clues about why some have more Twitter followers than others. The study, entitled A Longitudinal Study of Follow Predictors on Twitter analysed the social behaviour and message content against follower growth for more than 500 Twitter users over a 15 month period. The research concludes that if you want to attract more followers, your content has to be good quality, and how you say it also matters.

Here's a breakdown of the three main findings: Firstly, message content significantly impacts audience growth. It was found that negative sentiments (comments and content) were less likely to attract more followers than positive sentiment (this result is probably a 'no brainer', but it's useful to see the statistics). The authors speculated that this was probably because Twitter exhibits weaker social ties than other social networks such as Facebook, and therefore many Twitter users are less likely to want to connect with relative strangers who transmit negativity.

Secondly, social behaviour choices can dramatically affect network growth.Who a user follows and the profile cues they make available (Twitter identity, personal details disclosed and avatar) could increase or decrease their social capital. If you stay an egg all your Twitter life, don't expect too many followers.

Thirdly, variables related to network structure are useful predictors of audience growth. Connecting ties must exist between users and their audience, so if you want others to follow you, you may need to follow a few back to keep their interest. However, this finding should not be privileged above the first two findings, the authors say.

One area the authors also briefly discuss, as an exception to the above findings, is the celebrity effect. Many people will follow their favourite celebrities regardless of the content that is presented. It seems that all it takes to gain a huge following is to be a popular film star, rock musician or author. For the rest of us, content, connection and presentation style are everything, it seems.

The study is worth reading if you have any interest in how Twitter works at a more dynamic, macro level.

Image by AJ Cann

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Are you a meerkat or an ostrich?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:28:00 +0000

Are you a meerkat or an ostrich? Why am I asking you this strange question? Read on...

Etienne Wenger recently declared: 'If any institutions are going to help learners with the real challenges they face...(they) will have to shift their focus from imparting curriculum to supporting the negotiation of productive identities through landscapes of practice' (Wenger, 2010).

We live in uncertain times, where we cannot be sure how the economy is going to perform today, let alone predict what kind of jobs there will be for students when they graduate in a few years time. How can we prepare students for a world of work that doesn't yet exist? How can we help learners to ready themselves for employment that is shifting like the sand, and where many of the jobs they will be applying for when they leave university probably don't exist yet? It's a conundrum many faculty and lecturers are wrestling with, and one which many others are ignoring in the hope that the problem will simply go away. Whether we are meerkats, looking out and anticipating the challenges, or ostriches burying our heads in the sand, the challenge remains, and it is growing stronger.

Wenger may have given us clues to what we should do. Stop emphasising the teaching of curriculum subjects, and spend less time transmitting knowledge, facts and structured content that can often go quickly out of date. It means breaking down the traditional silos of division and opening up classrooms and lecture halls to other possibilities beyond passive reception of content. It requires that we should begin to break down the false boundaries between subjects, developing lifelong learners who will be able to adapt quickly and flexibly to changing contexts, unfamiliar problems and new challenges as they arise. This means creating environments in which students can learn to problem solve, negotiate meaning, develop their digital identities, and practice new communication methods through a variety of different platforms and media. It means exposing them to experiences where they can practice creating and sharing their own content, remixing existing content, reflecting on their practice, thinking and arguing critically.

All of these are skills and competencies graduates will need if they are to face a brave new world where nothing is yet clearly defined and where everything is up for negotiation. Such flexible, learner centred activities will be key to meeting any possible number of futures that may be out there. MOOCs and flipped classrooms are just the start of the movement to create this shift in education. They will not be the only methods employed. We can only begin to guess at what will happen next as education begins to evolve to its next level. Will you be looking out to see what is on the horizon, or will you hide your head in the sand?

Reference
Wenger, E. (2010) Knowledgeability in Landscape Practice, in S. de Freitas and J. Jameson (eds.) The eLearning Reader.

Photo by Ray Morris

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Digital me, digital you

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:29:00 +0000

Increasingly many of us are spending more of our time online, creating, repurposing and sharing content, searching and consuming content and communicating with others. All of these activities leave behind a trail, a digital footprint, a record of where we have been and what we have done. More significantly, in psychological terms, we are developing our personal digital presences, and modifying our digital profiles. These are some of the essential elements that constitute an individual's digital identity - who we are in a variety of contexts in digital environments - how we present ourselves and manage our impressions in our digital lives. A useful model that can be applied as a framework to aid our understanding of the interaction between individuals, tools and technologies, other people and the wider learning ecosystem, is the model developed by Engestrom and his colleagues (building on the work of Leont'ev, Rubinstein and other social constructivist theorists) which we now know as Activity Theory. My version of the model, which I have used to describe the essential elements and actions that help to build a digital identity are shown in the image above, overlaid against the original model.

I thought it useful to apply some statements by leading theorists to a few of the pathways/relationships within the model. For example, Marshall McLuhan made specific reference to the relationship between people and technology when he declared 'we shape our tools, and thereafter, our tools shape us.' The symbolic Interactionist theorist Charles Cooley saw the impact of community upon the behaviour of individuals when he wrote 'We see ourselves reflected in the eyes of others'. Clearly, digital identity is a complex proposition to talk about. The relationships between the elements in the Activity model are not as clear cut as the diagram might make us believe. The slideshow below, which was presented today at a research seminar at the University of Reading might shed some more light on the question of how we formulate, maintain and modify our digital identities, but there is much research still to do before we can better understand who we really are when we venture online.

Presentation of self in digital life from Steve Wheeler

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Turning over a new leaf

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:55:00 +0000

When the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development invited me to speak at their annual HRD event at London's Olympia I was delighted. I wasn't so keen when they asked me to supply my slides many weeks in advance. The organisers wanted them so they could produce delegate packs that included paper versions of my slide show. I could understand their eagerness, but I hesitated. I don't normally send my slides too far in advance of a presentation for three reasons - firstly I don't think it's a good use of resources to produce paper based slides and secondly, it's not good pedagogical practice because looking down at a paper rendition of slides you are about to see can be distracting for delegates when they should be engaging with the front-of-house presentation. It's even more confusing if the slides don't match the presentation.

Which brings me to my third point - my slide decks change almost by the day. Learning technology is a fast moving topic. It changes by rapidly, and there are always new things that can be added. So I sent a provisional set of slides to the organisers about 2 weeks before the event, with the warning to them that these would not be the final production. I duly arrived on the day with a drastically updated set, as I had anticipated I would. Even in the middle of my presentation (during a brief break in the workshop) I was still tinkering, adding an extra few slides which I had seen on Jane Hart's blog that morning that were very relevant to my presentation (such as the chart above). She talks about the five key ways knowledge workers like to learn today. You can see the slide set below, with Jane's research report included in the middle, and I would also encourage you go to her blog to read the full report.

Learning Futures: Introducing eLearning into your Company from Steve Wheeler

The message I definitely had to include from Jane's work based research study is that when implementing elearning into any company, one of the most important things to avoid is simply 'shovelling across content' from traditional classroom based learning into a digital medium. Electronic page-turning, she argues, just isn't enough, and of course, she is right. And yet the practice still persists, either because managers consider it to be cost effective, or they don't know that there are better, more effective ways to present digital learning. Page turning approaches may be cheap, but they are actually false economy, because they simply turn employees off. The result is that employees fail to learn what the company has paid for them to learn. This kind of thinking was voiced during the session. Someone mentioned that they thought elearning would be attractive to many companies because it would 'save money'. The ensuing discussion quickly demolished this notion - it is rare indeed that a company actually save money by implementing elearning, and surpringly, cost saving should not be a consideration when elearning is being implemented. More important reasons for implementing elearning are that it provides learning opportunities for employees who would otherwise not have a chance to learn, and it offers flexibility of pace and style. As Jane Hart argues in her report, one of the things most knowledge workers desire is to be able to learn flexibly, whilst remaining within the flow of their work, and preferably without leaving the work space to do so.

We had a good time during the session at Olympia. I guess though that some of the delegates were a little confused that the slides they had in their pack were not identical to the ones they saw on the screen. They were engaged in their own version of page turning, and perhaps some of them benefited, because I saw them scribbling notes on the slide images. Yet there are much better ways of presenting learning than simply sequencing content in a linear manner. I am sure that most were more engaged with the discussion we enjoyed during the session than they were with the linear content provided as slide handouts. The same principle applies to elearning. I think it's about time organisations and managers began to wake up and realise that digital learning is different to traditional learning. It's about time they all turned over a new leaf.

Image courtesy of Jane Hart

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Freedom to imagine

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:47:00 +0000

Sir Ken Robinson has a lot to say about creativity and learning. The two are, or should be, inextricably linked. One of his remarks is that imagination needs to emerge as creativity, as a natural process. He goes on to argue that traditional school systems constrain or even negate this process. He argues that this is largely due to the mechanistic, industrialised approach schools have taken for many years. Other constraints are the logistical problems such as lack of time or space for play, exploration and discovery that are familiar in many schools. All children have great imaginative power, but gradually this ability to imagine can be eroded as they are processed through formal education systems. In short, Robinson believes school is killing creativity. But this may all be about to change. The teacher led nature of traditional education is being challenged, not only ideologically, but also as a result of the pervasiveness of new technologies.

One question that is often asked within this discourse, is whether technology can actually improve education by providing learners with opportunities to be creative.

For me, the answer is yes, in certain circumstances.

Give a child a games console and he will play a game on it. He will have great fun, but will he learn anything significant? Will he be creative? It depends of course on what the game is, whether it is linked to authentic learning, and what specialised support is on offer from trained educators. It also depends on whether he feels he is in an environment where he can take risks, and express himself freely. The same applies to any technology withing any formal learning context. In informal contexts, children are very expressive and creative through their technology.

For formalised learning, students require scaffolding, but the scaffolding does not necessarily have to take the form of a 'knowledgeable other person' as Vygotsky suggested. Today, technology, particularly technology that is personal and portable, can provide similar forms of scaffolding for learning. Increasingly, teachers are adopting roles as support for learning, and as facilitators of learning spaces. For creativity to be maximised, learners need to be free to imagine, discover, explore and play in spaces where they are psychologically safe. If they make mistakes, they will be able to learn from these, rather than being punished for 'getting it wrong'.

Give a child a camera and she will be creative.... especially if she knows what she is aiming at.

Photo by Steve Wheeler

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A hard act to Swallow

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 14:11:00 +0000

The case of Santiago Swallow is intriguing. Swallow was born in Mexico, took up residence in the USA, and rapidly rose to prominence as a respected and influential guru in the world of social media. Now 42, Swallow is a veteran of the TED and SXSW conference circuit, and regularly tweets out his wisdom and insight to more than 76,000 Twitter followers. His recent nuggets have included: 'The first cloud computer was us' and 'to write is to live endlessly'. Swallow's eagerly awaited book - entitled Imaginary Identities in the Age of the Internet - has been predicted to have such impact potential that it will define an entire generation. Indeed, Swallow has been hailed by some commentators as 'one of the greatest thinkers of the Millennial Generation'.

So just who is Santiago Swallow?

The answer, surprisingly for his many followers, is that Santiago Swallow doesn't actually exist - he is in fact a fictional character. Swallow is the alter ego of Kevin Ashton, a British technology pioneer who is famous for coining the phrase 'the Internet of Things.' If you search on Wikipedia for Santiago Swallow right now, you will be redirected to Ashton's page. The whole Swallow charade was concocted as a social experiment, a way of exploring how many people online create their own legends, often by buying Twitter followers, creating false email accounts and generally masquerading as someone else. It was easy to create the legend of Santiago Swallow, Ashton says in his blogpost 'How to Become Internet Famous for $68'. He first created a new gmail account, and then a Twitter account.The next stage was to acquire 90,000 Twitter followers for a small sum of about £33. A Wikipedia page was created, and the final step was to construct a Swallow website with its own domain name for another £12. Others soon noticed Swallow's presence and started to follow, assuming that he was indeed who he said he was. This fascinating social online experiment has revealed how easy it is to fake an identity, or in this case, simply create a new one from nothing but a germ of an idea.

Reputation can be bought it seems. But is one's reputation dependent upon online presence only? How many more people would have been fooled by the Santiago Swallow personality if Ashton had not himself exposed the ruse? How long could the experiment have continued if Ashton had stayed silent? How many of us still take content and personalities at face value when we encounter them online? These and many other questions about online identity, reputation, provenance and trust are still to be answered. My own rudimentaty manipulation of identity with my @timbuckteeth account and more recently the activation of my @stevewheeler sleeper account have given me some clues about the above questions. I have written about this in two posts, Double Agent and Double or Quits, where I explain some of my own thinking about online presence and digital identity. I would be very interested to hear from others about their views on these and other online identity experiments. What are the implications for us personally, socially and culturally?

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

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Learning futures

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 07:21:00 +0000

I have enjoyed my short stay here in Doha, Qatar, where I was an invited speaker at the Technology in Higher Education Conference. Doha is a futuristic, high rise city that didn't exist ten years ago. There is major construction work wherever you look, and the technological infrastructure is impressive.

The conference event (#the2013) was organised by the Qatar Foundation in alliance with a number of overseas universities, based within the Education City network.

Along with other invited speakers, we have been on a 'sand duning' expedition (some of the images of this exhilarating and somewhat terrifying activity are captured in the slideshow below), a visit to the Museum of Islamic Art, and several dinners in wonderfully colourful surroundings.

My presentation was entitled 'Learning Futures: Emerging technologies, pedagogies and contexts', where I explored some of the potential of new technologies to disrupt our current educational practices. During my presentation there was an earthquake in Iran, which we felt in the Gulf area, and although it didn't affect us directly in the conference centre, it did affect several downtown areas, where buildings were evacuated as a precaution. It has certainly been an eventful visit to Qatar.

Learning Futures: Emerging technologies, pedagogies, and contexts from Steve Wheeler

Photos by Steve Wheeler

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Making a play for it

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 07:23:00 +0000

"As astronauts and space travelers children puzzle over the future; as dinosaurs and princesses they unearth the past. As weather reporters and restaurant workers they make sense of reality; as monsters and gremlins they make sense of the unreal."

So says Gretchen Owocki, a US early childhood educator, presumably after many years of observing young children at play. It's a powerful quote that puts play into perspective as one of the most important components of growing up and learning. Children have boundless imagination, and it is witnessed in many ways, but none more openly than when they are at play. Children use their imagination to make sense of the world around them, but their creativity is seen in imaginative acts such as making things, or make believe. A stick can become a Prince's sword or a Wizard's staff, and a cardboard box be magically transformed into a submarine or a castle.

Sir Ken Robinson, undoubtedly one of the most outspoken educational thinkers of the modern age, argues that imagination needs to emerge as creativity, but traditional school systems thwart this process: "All children start their school careers with sparkling imaginations, fertile minds, and a willingness to take risks with what they think," he says. "Most students never get to explore the full range of their abilities and interests ... Education is the system that's supposed to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way in the world. Instead, it is stifling the individual talents and abilities of too many students and killing their motivation to learn." (Source: The Guardian).

How can technology change this and improve the school experience? Games played personal devices such as tablet computers and handheld consoles can and do promote creativity. They immerse the learner in the business of learning, without necessarily betraying the fact that the child is actually learning something. It is learning by stealth. Playing games often involves a temporary suspension of reality, and can also engage learners in speculative, hypothetical thinking about the world. Perhaps most importantly, playing games enables children to understand that through failure they can try and try again, and a realisation that perseverance and persistence being important ingredients in eventual success.

Play is important for learning for all ages. But it is especially important for children. It's what they do naturally, so it is also important that play can continue to be a major part of the school experience. It should be a sustainable and ever present feature in all subjects, across the curriculum. Any school or teacher who fails to include this element is robbing children of their right to experiment, ask the 'what if?' questions, and outwork their imagination in creative acts.

NB: Many more powerful quotes on 'play' can be found on this website

Photo by Steve Wheeler

Making a play for it by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The future of reading

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 03:00:00 +0000

In versions of the 2012 Horizon Report, eBooks were considered by many of the expert panel to be on the 1 year horizon for full adoption into education. It seems they may be right. We may soon be loaning books digitally, following a UK government review into the e-lending capabilities of public libraries. The Sieghart Review recommends that digital versions of books should be loaned to users without charge, and also that loaners should be able to borrow their books using online ordering facilities.

According to The Bookseller (online review of the book publishing industry), some pilot schemes are already on their way in UK libraries, and will be in place by summer. These schemes will be used to ascertain the level of demand from the public, before any large scale implementation is put into place. Are the British general public ready for such an advance in public lending? Mark Taylor, who is the head of CILIP (The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) believes that for e-lending to be successful, librarians and their staff need to be able to support and develop skills for the general public. Get this right, Taylor argues, and we will witness a revolution in the reading behaviour of the general public as they discover a range of materials they previously had no access to. Public libraries will become the means to reconnect an entire generation of digitally able readers into a whole new world of learning.

Photo by GoXunuReviews

The future of reading by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Active learning spaces

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:10:00 +0000

Recently I wrote about collaborative learning spaces, and argued that we are entering unfamiliar territory. The boundaries of informal and formal spaces have blurred significantly, as have the boundaries between the real and the virtual. It appears that it no longer matters where learning occurs, as long as it is meaningful. Some might argue that learning that is situated is the most powerful. It is also important that learning is made to be active and engaging. If any of these components is missing, then clearly learning has not been optimised. When children learn, they do so through interaction with others, through observation and practice, discovery and experimentation and by doing and making. All of these aspects of learning are active. When they enter into formal education, they enter into an artificial environment where learning is managed, directed and organised for them. It is not hard to see how such an artificial transition from active to passive can stifle creativity and demotivate learners.

As a response to the problems of learning in homogenised, regimented environments such as classrooms and lecture halls, Technology Enhanced Active Learning (TEAL) came into being. It is one of several approaches to moving away from tedious and passive learning environments where students are expected to listen, take notes and remember what is being said and presented. TEAL spaces feature several characteristics, including flexible learning spaces where furniture can be moved into many alternative configurations, technology enriched contexts (wireless and untethered, web enabled and personal technologies) and a shift from teacher led lessons to student centred learning, where the learner can take control, and the teacher facilitates. One argument is that simply having access to personalised technologies creates conducive conditions in which active learning can occur. However, the role of the teacher is also paramount in the success of TEAL approaches. Without strategic input from teachers at critical junctures during a lesson, and without some clear goal or set of objectives, students can lose focus, become distracted and go off task.

The idea that students should be able to move freely around the learning space whilst remaining connected is a powerful one. The possibilities of learning through collaboration with other students, and the potential to manage their own pace of learning are also very powerful. Students who can connect to online resources, social spaces and content also have freedom not only to search and discover, but also to create, revise, repurpose and share their own content. A number of psychological and social learning theories can be applied to explain the transformative potential of this approach. These include the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky) which describes how individual learners can extend the amount they learn when they are connected to other more knowledgeable individuals. The theory of scaffolding (Bruner) also applies where students can gain support for their learning from their peers, their tutors and also through their tools. Social modelling (Bandura) and social comparison (Festinger) may also come into play where learners see the success of other learners and modify their own approaches to optimise the best and most active aspects of their own learning.

Photo by JISC Infonet

Active learning spaces by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Let your robots do the marking?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 03:12:00 +0000

A short article appearing in the Independent newspaper on April 6th highlights the tensions brewing because of the use of marking software. Anant Agarwal, president of EdX, (Harvard and MIT's non-profit making arm that runs MOOCs), says that the software will be a boon to learning online in the future, because it will allow students to rewrite and resubmit their essays time and again, to improve their grades. He also argues that instant feedback is what today's students crave. What he doesn't say is that it's an essential part of the management of MOOCs, especially if they are regularly enrolling upwards of 100,000 students for each course. How else are they going to assess and mark all those students' work?

This entire approach is reminiscent of the Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) programs of the 1980s, where students worked their way through a linear course of study, interspersed with quizzes and questions to test what they could remember, and a remedial loop to send them back to 'relearn' if they didn't make the grade. The computer marking of that time was simplistic and mainly used for multiple choice questions. All well and good for the 80s, but is it appropriate for today? And even more importantly, are computer software programs actually capable of marking free form essays?

Many academics believe not, and some have even set up an online petition against the use of marking software, claiming that it computers cannot 'read' student essays, are unable to measure the essentials of human communication. They fail, say the protest group, to cope with detecting accuracy, reasoning and critical thinking, adequacy of evidence, ethical issues and stances, convincing arguments, clarity and veracity. So far, around 2000 academics have signed the petition. What do you think?

Photo by Steve Wheeler

Let your robots do the marking? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Share and share alike

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 08:18:00 +0000

I won't forget the first time one of my articles was translated into another language. It was only the abstract, but it was translated into Spanish, French and German, for inclusion in an edition of the international peer reviewed journal Educational Media International. I don't know who they got to do it, or how long it took, and I can't say with confidence that it was translated completely accurately. I don't know, but I assume it was, because EMI is a professional journal. Just the fact that I was published, and in four different languages, was enough for me. EMI would probably have had to pay several people to translate my article, along with all the other articles that appear in the journal. But now that is all changing.

Since I took the decision to offer all my blogposts and slideshows for free under a Creative Commons License, allowing anyone to freely copy and also repurpose my work, some interesting things have happened. Firstly, I haven't lost any of my work. It still belongs to me, and anyone who decides to use it attributes it to my name. Secondly, my work is being amplified. It is spreading farther afield than I could ever have dreamt it would. It is appearing in other people's work, and it is also being translated into other languages. This slideshow, along with several others, has been translated into Spanish, and now just about the entire Latin American world is awake to my work. How cool is that? And I didn't have to spend a single penny to get it translated. I didn't even have to ask anyone to do it. People simply take it on themselves to translate, and I'm sure they do a very good job. This slideshow was translated by Thomas Ramirez Zumaran, and it has already attracted around 8,000 views in addition to my original slideshow (currently over 58,000 views) on my slide deck collection on Slideshare.

El Futuro del Aprendizaje from Thomas Ramirez

Now people are taking on the task of translating my blog posts too. The image at the top of this post shows one that was recently translated into French by Frédéric Domon. Here's the opening paragraph of 'Is all learning social?'

Presque tous les jours, je me laisse entraîner dans des discussions autour des fondamentaux de l'apprentissage, de la nature de la connaissance et des processus d’éducation. Cela va de pair avec le métier de professeur à l’Université et je m'attends à me retrouver dans cette situation très souvent. Lorsque je ne parle pas d'apprentissage, j’y réfléchis, je lis, fais des recherches ou écris à ce sujet.

Pretty cool eh? Here's the entire blog post in French, including original hyperlinks. Again, I didn't need to ask, and neither did the translator need to ask my permission. It was self evident in the licence I applied from Creative Commons. My blogs and slideshows are now appearing in other languages. I'm very happy that they are, because now language is no longer a barrier to understanding. My ideas are out there for all to read, share and discuss, and that is my reward for offering my work for free under a Creative Commons licence. I think it's about time others woke up to this and did the same. Is your content being translated into other languages, and what are your views on this? My views are already well known: Let's share our content freely and allow repurposing under CC, so that everyone can share and share alike.

Rewired, not fade away by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Long games and grand strategies

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 14:54:00 +0000

Games playing is not always viewed as a serious pedagogical method. Some teachers dismiss it as time wasting, or as a frivolous activity that is best employed at the end of term, when the serious business of teaching has started to wind down. For those teachers, games fulfil a similar function to 'sticking on a video'. It's a convenient time filler, keeps the kids quiet and isn't too taxing on the mind. And yet many teachers are coming to the realisation that playing games is more than a time filler, and actually has many positive benefits for students.

Most games playing in schools is confined to a single classroom, and applied to a single subject. But with a little planning and resourcing, we can go a lot farther than this. We could conceivably apply a grand strategy to games that could play out across entire schools.

I remember an elaborate game we played when I was in school in the 1970s. All of my teachers were involved. The context is important for this story. I was in school on a military base in Holland, and my father was in the armed forces. We were living on a forward base in Western Europe during the height of tensions in the 'Cold War'. At this time, all children and their families lived in a time when nuclear war was a very real possibility. Although the threat hung continually over us and no doubt exercised our parents' minds, most of the time we kids simply got on with our lives.

The school set up a 'long game' which lasted several days, in which all of our British year group, along with the American, Canadian and German sections of the school, were assigned tables to sit at. Each table had a flag and name representing a country, and those of us on each table had to decide who would act as our head of state, foreign and finance ministers, diplomats, armed forces chiefs and so on. During the long game, scenarios were imposed upon us which we had to negotiate, in order to avert hostilities that might otherwise lead to a worldwide nuclear holocaust. It was engaging, thrilling and compelling, and we learnt a lot not only about politics, but also curriculum subjects such as mathematics (economic decisions), languages (negotiation through translation), communication skills, history and geography. We also practised a lot of transferable skills including leadership and teamwork (collaboration and co-operation), problem solving, critical thinking and decision making. This was learning by stealth, and we had a lot of fun during it. Pedagogically, it was a stroke of genius. Oh, and you'll be pleased to hear that between us, we managed to avoid destroying the world in a nuclear war.

One games theorist, - Bernie DeKoven - has something profound to say about games: "... whatever it is that you're playing, there are two things you have to take seriously: being together, and the sheer fun of it all. No game is more important than the experience of being together, being joined, being equal - governed by the same rules, playing for the same purpose. And no purpose is more uniting and freeing than the purpose of being fun with each other."

How often do we apply games on such a grand scale in schools? How often do we tap into the incredibly powerful method of engaging learners? Probably not that often, because it takes a lot of work on the part of the teacher(s) to conceive it, design it and then implement it in real learning contexts. And yet the pay off can be immense. And there are plenty of ready made games and gaming strategies already available for free. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has done work with games across the curriculum at this level. If you have any games for teachers to use freely, then please share the links in the comments box below.

Photo by Nestor Galina

Rewired, not fade away by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Nothing new under the sun

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 08:18:00 +0000

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." - Ecclesiastes 1:9
"In a hunting society, children play with bows and arrows. In an information society, children play with information" - Henry Jenkins
"Good artists borrow, great artists steal." - Pablo Picasso

What do these quotes have in common? They all represent what is happening right here, right now, on the web. According to Kirby Ferguson, 'Everything is a Remix', or in other words (see what I did there?) just about everything you encounter online or in popular culture has either been done before, or it's a synthesis (the social media term is 'mashup') of previously available content. The nature of the Social Web is such that tools are available to repurpose, rip, mash, combine and otherwise manipulate just about any content into any other format you wish. The philosophy and processes behind this movement are compellingly explained and elaborated upon by Ferguson in a series of four short videos, the first of which is embedded below:

Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Part 2 looks at remix techniques in movie making
Part 3 explores how innovation happens
Part 4 covers the legal and ethical implications.

View all four videos and then ask yourself some questions - are current copyright laws adequate enough to cope with the new and emerging practices we see every day on the Web? Are we seeing evidence for the end of creativity, or a new kind of artistry? Is there a derivative nature to creativity as Ferguson claims? What does this mean for originality and for the future of self expression? And what are the implications for education?

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Nothing new under the sun by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Technology won't replace teachers, but...

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:18:00 +0000

"Technology won't replace teachers, but teachers who use technology will probably replace teachers who don't"

This was just one of the contentious and thought provoking statements made at Learning Through Technology this week in Glasgow. #LTT2013 was one of two conferences I was invited to speak at this week. I made my way up to Glasgow after speaking at #LILAC13 in Manchester. The Librarian's Information Literacies Annual Conference was well attended, and just as lively in its dialogue throughout the three days it ran. Both events had several common threads, including the new roles of education professionals, the impact of technology on education and the ways students are appropriating new tools to support their learning.

LILAC was held in the heart of Manchester University, in a well appointed conference centre, where almost 300 library and information professionals gathered for three days to discuss information literacy. As the #lilac13 Twitter stream will reveal, there were lively and protracted debates around the changing nature of library spaces, the nature of knowledge, the future of books and reading, and the impact of digital media. A social event in the spectacular surrounds of the iconic John Rylands Library was a fitting conclusion to Day 1. Day 2 continued with more of the same, and it was refreshing to see so many library and information professionals animatedly discussing their approaches to supporting learning.

LTT2013 took place at the Glasgow Hilton Hotel, and although somewhat smaller, still managed to maintain the relentless pace of dialogue I had already experienced at LILAC. If anything, LTT2013 was even more academic and challenging, thanks largely to the conference chair Mark Stephen, who managed to strike the fine balance between the roles of congenial host and forensic questioner. Those who presented raised questions around the digital divide, the changing shape of schools, the impact of information and communication technology on learning gain, the ongoing debate about whether schools should filter social media sites, and the use of new and emerging technologies in education. The final session, which culminated in my own keynote, was entitled 'Inspiration and Openness' and featured a live video link to a Scottish school with contributions from the children themselves on science education and technology use. It was truly inspirational to see so many young people engaged and excited with learning science.

One of the main conclusions to emerge from both the Glasgow and Manchester events was that all of us, as learning professionals, need to be able to at least appreciate the potential of technology to transform the learning experience. Most teachers use some technology in the classroom, but how many use it beyond the walls of the classroom? We are not talking about teachers taking technology home for personal use (that should be something most are doing anyway). We are instead alluding to the potential of technology to transcend the boundaries, roles and philosophies of traditional education, and to extend, enrich and enliven learning for all, from the very young, through to lifelong learners.

Another conclusion was that the technology wave is not slowing, and won't go away. Educational institutions need to choose wisely when they are procuring technology, to ensure that they are meeting challenges, not merely buying technology to jump on the bandwagon. One question raised during LTT2013 was whether tablets were going to end up as the latest pile of classroom junk, purchased for the sake of it, without any defined objectives or problems to solve. At the Glasgow event, the Bellshill Academy students did a lot to answer this question, presenting some excellent uses of iPads in their personal and group research. Another question raised at both conferences was around how institutions in all sectors are managing the sudden influx of bring your own technology/device (BYOT or BYOD). If BYOD is implemented, who manages updates, interoperablity and other implementation strategies?

Some very useful examples of technology to solve problems were presented at both conferences, and there were discussions around digital literacy, gamification, mobile learning and digital pedagogical strategies. Much discussion surrounded whether schools should filter content, or make it available for all, with the caveat that teachers and students would have ongoing dialogue about safe and responsible use of the web.

I don't know how many train miles I have travelled this last week, but on reflection, I feel it was worth it. And as for teachers who don't use technology.... well, you have to ask yourself the question. If you were a headteacher, interviewing new teachers, and there were two candidates of equal standing, but one was digitally literate and the other was not ... who would you appoint?

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (modified)

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Rewired, not fade away

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:01:00 +0000

A lot of nonsense is still being talked about how technology is damaging our lives, and how the Internet is 'rewiring our brains'. From Nicholas Carr's dystopian scaremongering in The Shallows, to Andrew Keen's bitter rhetoric in Cult of the Amateur, the literature is replete with those who wish to persuade us to repent from our reliance on technology and put on our analogue sackcloth and ashes. There is a never ending supply of doom merchants who are ready to emerge from the shadows into the literary spotlight to peddle their bad news, and once they have done so, exeunt stage left with a nice royalty paycheck.

Their arguments are diverse, but essentially boil down to this: The way technology is currently being used is dangerous because it dumbs down knowledge, trivialises relationships, and ultimately, over a period of time, turns us into its slaves. A recent article in the Telegraph asks 'Is the digital age rewiring us?' The article then goes on to cite a range of scientific studies that support an affirmative answer to the question. It lists a litany of negative outcomes of our habituated use and reliance on the Web, including a loss of social contact, computer addiction, memory deterioration, loss of empathy, increase in rudeness, loss of privacy, and the introduction of a new word - cyberchondria - which describes a rise in hyperchondriac incidence in GP surgeries, and a supposed link to greater access to information about health issues. There is very little of a positive nature in the article, and with the exception of reports that technology 'can keep us sharper for longer' and that video games can teach us new skills (strange that, when elsewhere it claims that our skills are being blunted), one would come away with the impression that we are all doomed, and that technology is the ultimate nemesis of all humanity.

Let's stop one moment and rationally examine the evidence, and also the premise behind the article. The author makes his first mistake right at the start of the piece when he distinguishes between digital natives and immigrants. This is contentious, not least because there has never been anything other than anecdotal evidence to suggest that older people and younger people perceive, or use technology any differently. Marc Prensky's digital natives theory has been misappropriated anyway. Moreover, there are much more relevant and appropriate theories that describe this generation's use of technology, and even Prensky's revised and updated theory of digital wisdom would be better applied, as would Le Cornu and White's theory around context - digital residents and visitors.

One of the biggest and most persistent claims of the Telegraph article is that technology is rewiring our brains. Several neurological studies are cited (but conveniently with no directly checkable sources) that suggest technology permanently alters the structure of the brain, and in so doing changes our behaviour more or less permanently. All well and good, but there is a fundamental flaw in this argument. Read farther afield than the narrow chain of references in the article and you will discover that just about everything we do - drinking, eating, arguing, reading, sex, playing sport, driving, hobbies, also alters the wiring of the brain. In the world of education we call this 'learning', and it stands to reason that using technology will also rewire the brain. The scientific terms for this is neuroplasticity, meaning the brain is in a constant state of fluid change. It has even been reported to occur after brain damage where the brain then 'heals itself' by rewiring previously damaged areas (See for example this article by Dancause et al, 2005). This is not a new finding, so we must be very careful that we don't fall into the trap of condemning technology as the only culprit, and laying all of the ills of society upon it when in fact life is far more complex than one single causal factor. You can see why I'm very suspicious when pseudo-scientists use very narrow terms of reference to argue their points.

What about the argument that this generation is 'hooked on the web'? Just like the previous generation was hooked on drugs? Or the generation before that was hooked on Rock and Roll? It is a great error to assume that technology is addictive or has the power to addict. Any addiction, as many psychiatrists will agree, has its explanation more in the personality of the individual than it is to any inherent quality of the substance or item they are interacting with. Read, for example, this piece by Mason (2009) on the addictive personality, and you will see that such seemingly clear cut arguments are in reality far from straightforward. Consider instead that people who are addicted to Facebook might be addicted because they have chosen to use Facebook excessively, not because Facebook is inherently addictive?

Finally, we should all be highly sceptical of any article that generalises to such an extent as the Telegraph article has. Not everyone who answers their mobile whilst in a conversation is 'anti-social', not every young person prefers to txt their friends rather than meet with them personally, and not everyone relies on their mobile phones to recall their telephone numbers for them. And even those who do these things - does this mean they are lesser people as a result? Or are these simply the signs of a new, emerging cultural norm? Did those running the 'cyberchondria' study actually consider that instead of negatively and pejoratively labelling people who are concerned over their health as 'hyperchondriacs', perhaps they should be applauding them for becoming more proactive and aware of health issues in general? That's what tools such as Wikipedia do, you see. They democratise knowledge.

My final thought: An important rule of research is - don't make assumptions, or in other words don't be biased. If you are, you'll become very selective in the data you use, and end up with conclusions that don't bear any resemblance to reality.

As ever, I welcome your comments.

Photo by Tom Swift

Rewired, not fade away by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

False frontiers

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:25:00 +0000

Collaboration is where two or more people work together to achieve a common objective. In education, the common objective is usually to learn specific content, skills or competencies within defined areas. Ostensibly, learning is an individual goal, and each student does tend to learn in their own way, using their own favoured approaches and tools. We refer to this as personalised learning (a video explains). However, as we become increasingly connected to each other through technology, and our social ties strengthen, so there is greater scope for students to learn together, sharing their resources and ideas, and approaching their study collaboratively. Collaborative learning does not undermine or contradict personalised learning. It simply amplifies it.

When it comes to learning with others, space is usually required. There is plenty to say about collaborative spaces. I can think of at least three kinds. There are the formal, classroom based collaborative spaces and there are the informal, non classroom spaces where we learn most of what we know in interaction with others. Then there are the virtual, online spaces where many of us are increasingly spending our time collaborating, conversing and sharing with our personal learning networks. I guess I could represent these three kinds of space in a simple Venn diagram below, which would then indicate that there is a lot of crossover, fuzziness, and boundary incursion between the three. You could see where we might place formal learning using a VLE, or where students might meet to chat using Facebook, for example. But it's far from perfect. Ultimately such a diagram serves one purpose - it reveals that where there were once very real boundaries, now they are many false frontiers.

The boundaries are blurring between formal and informal learning. Increasingly, traditional educational spaces are being revised, replacing rigid rows of seats with 'group friendly' clusters or simply enabling all room furniture to be moved and reconfigured in whatever way users see fit. The aim is that reconfigured collaborative spaces allow free flow of all room occupants so that any amount of engagement between individuals is possible during formal learning. Learning can then occur in any part of the space, not just in the area where students are sat. You can read more on collaborative learning space design approaches in this article.

With the increasing popularity of such movements as the Flipped Classroom, and Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), other more radical formal learning space configurations are taking place. Students are increasingly learning through formal activities outside the classroom, usually on the move, using their mobile and handheld devices. They are preparing for in-class sessions by watching videos, discussing ideas online, creating their own content such as blogs and podcasts, and learning much of the stuff outside their classrooms that they would traditionally have learnt inside the classroom. This, according the Flipped Classroom theory, frees up a lot more time for discussion, specialist tutor input and collaborative work around the subject being studied. The Flipped approach ensures that the classroom is no longer the only space where formal learning can take place. There are other spaces to use.

MOOCs take learning even farther away from the classroom. Where the Flipped Classroom still maintains some role for the traditional classroom, MOOCs replace them completely. The general premise of the original MOOC programmes was to assume that all participants mediate their learning through technology, and learn in an open, collaborative and personalised manner. In the loosest sense, the MOOC promoted the community more than the curriculum, and privileged context over content. This kind of space has no boundaries, and every frontier then opens up. Learning is learning. It doesn't matter whether it takes place in a pub or a university lecture hall. What matters now is that each learner finds their own space, is comfortable within it, and uses it to its optimum.

Image source

False frontiers by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Things to come...

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:12:00 +0000

Yes, things to look forward to.... We are now less than a month away from the start of the 8th Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference. Those who have previously attended will know that Pelecon is a friendly, stimulating and lively Spring gathering in the beautiful South West of England for those who want to discover and explore more of the world of technology supported learning. This year's line-up of invited speakers will contribute significantly to that. Here below is a sample of some of the keynotes presentations that will be on offer at the event between April 10-12 this year.

Strangely, we'll start at the end. Our closing keynote Donald H. Taylor - chair of the Learning and Performance Institute and a veteran of the fields of skills, productivity and work based learning - will address the title: 'Does Learning and Development have a future?' In his talk, Don will ask: "Learners are doing it for themselves. Both at work and in tertiary education they are increasingly able to find the information they need, the performance support tools and the skills training they need directly. What’s driving these changes and how should learning professionals respond?" Donald will also examine the reasons for these changes, the technologies associated with them, and the likely implications. Whatever else happens, he will argue, standing still is not an option for Learning and Development practitioners. If we continue as we are, we face irrelevance. Join him to explore:

• Change? It’s the economics, stupid – oh, and the technology

• How globalization affects us all

• Does the L&D profession have a future?

• The skills L&D needs to thrive in the 21st Century

• What immediate trends can we expect in the next 12 months?

Two days earlier, one of the country's leading head teachers - Karine George - will give the opening keynote when she tackles the subject of 'Off the beaten track: teaching for the Third Millennium. Karine's school is one of those schools that is held in high esteem as a place where learning is in the hands of the children. One of the projects her school is acclaimed for is the S'cool Radio project, where children take it in turns each day to take the roles of interviewers, journalists and news reporters, bringing their classmates the news and views of the day. Hampshire's Westfield Junior School is well and truly on the map, continues to receive plaudits from many, and was awarded an Outstanding rating from a recent Ofsted visit. We look forwarded to hearing Karine's unique perspectives on what it takes to create an outstanding school where technology is fully embedded into daily activities.

One of the brightest, rising stars of the e-Learning world, Dr Doug Belshaw, will give a keynote on Day 2 of Pelecon. Formerly at JISC, and now working for the Mozilla Foundation, Doug's title 'The history of Open Badges through the medium of animated GIFs' is intriguing. Doug says: "Last month the non-profit Mozilla Foundation launched v1.0 of the Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI). In this presentation we will look at Mozilla's motivation in developing the OBI, the ways individuals and organisations can use Open Badges, and how Mozilla plans to use them in relation to a new, open learning standard for Web Literacy". Doug will address this topic in his own inimitable way, whilst no doubt reflecting on his recent successfully completed doctoral studies into digital literacies.

Another of our invited speakers, Derek Robertson, is known by many for his crusading into how video games can be used in education. Derek is National advisor for Emerging Technologies and Learning for the Scottish Government, and anyone who has heard him speak will agree that he is entertaining and challenging in equal measures. Much of the recent past of Derek Robertson's career has been involved in exploring, researching and sharing the benefits to learning of game based learning. He was an instrumental figure in the creation of Education Scotland's Consolarium initiative and it may be argued that his research and the many partnerships with educators who joined him in exploring the grounded application of COTS games to support learning and teaching has helped to change the discourse around the use of games for learning. In this talk Derek will share examples and insights from his work in this field and with a focus on recent research into Signature Pedagogies with Nintendogs in the Early Years he will argue that the deep learning that we are seeing and, the effective methodologies employed by teachers to enable this, should make us give serious thought to ditching the title game based learning because what we are seeing is so much more than game based learning.

The other speakers in our exciting keynote line-up are Professor Grainne Conole, Professor Steven Warburton, Learning without Frontiers founder Graham Brown-Martin, and all the way from down-under, Joyce Seitzinger.

It's going to be a great event, in a long line of great events. We don't want you to miss out on the fun. So book your tickets now while they are still ... yes still... at the early bird rate. Here's the conference website. This offer will finish on 29th March. See you at Pelecon!

Images from various sources, used with permission

Things to come... by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Minimally invasive education

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:37:00 +0000

The following is an exclusive interview that was organised by EDEN and is mirrored from the EDEN homepage. It was conducted in the run up to the EDEN Annual Conference which will take place in Oslo, Norway on 12-15 June, 2013.

The media and education worlds have been buzzing for the last few weeks over the ground breaking work of a quiet, unassuming Indian-born professor. Born in Calcutta in 1952, Sugata Mitra started his academic career in computational and molecular science. His later research also encompassed biological science and energy storage systems. Mitra has also researched diversely into areas such as medicine (Alzheimer’s disease and memory research) and psychology (perception in hypermedia environments) and he received a PhD in Physics for his studies into organic semi-conductors. It is not hard to see why some have hailed him as a polymath and even ‘something of a genius’. Most recently, Professor Mitra won the prestigious TED prize of US$ 1 million in acknowledgement of his work setting up computer kiosks in developing rural areas, and for his studies into ‘minimally invasive education’. He has pledged to use the money to fund his 'School in the Cloud' project in India. He is now Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, in the North East of England. I managed to catch up with him to interrupt his busy schedule for a brief interview ahead of his keynote at the EDEN 2013 Oslo Conference.

Steve: Sugata, thank you for taking some time out from your busy schedule to speak to me, and congratulations on your recent TED prize. You have been an inspiration to many through your research, but what is it that inspires you the most in your work?

Sugata: When the numbers from measurements come together I look for strong correlations - black and white with zero probability of error. Like in a Physics experiment. Sometimes I get results like that and I think, 'I guessed that one right'.

Steve: A lot of your recent work has been around the use of technology in education. What benefits do you believe technology is offering to learners, and what evidence is there that it is making a difference?

Sugata: At this link you will find several examples, including children teaching themselves to use the Internet on street side computers, and doing it well enough to pass a government examination on computers. Children in Kuppam teaching themselves biotechnology 10 years ahead of their time and children in Uruguay whose reading comprehension in Spanish has jumped several levels because of their access to computers.

There are many other published results. Anecdotally, a student from a village in Maharashtra, India, is doing a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology with a scholarship to Yale. He says he got there because he used to read New Scientist from a hole in the wall computer in his village. A child from a slum in Hyderabad, India, is studying medicine with a scholarship in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He got there with encouragement, advice and support from a 'Skype Granny' from England.

Steve: These are certainly remarkable results, leading me to think that education is in need of change. What do you think are the main constraints preventing any significant reforms of education? And what might be done to overcome them?

Sugata: There is a powerful belief that schooling should be done the way it is. All we need to do is improve classrooms, make teachers better and review the curriculum every five years. This is thinking from another century, so powerfully reinforced that we find it impossible to think any other way. Schooling does not need improvement, it needs to be reinvented. Every aspect of it - curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and certification. Some brave Government, somewhere, will have to take a plunge....

Let me give you an example. Here is one of today’s examination questions: How long will it take a 5 Kg mass to fall to the ground if dropped from a height of 20 metres? (Do not use computers, calculators or any other aids. Do not talk)

This could easily be changed to: Use the Internet to find out how long it will take a 5 Kg mass to fall to the ground if dropped from a height of 20 metres. Discuss the answer with your colleagues and report the results of the discussion. Justify why you think the answer is right.

Steve: That would certainly bring more relevance to learning, especially for children who have grown up with technology all around them. Let’s talk about your recent work. You are known worldwide for your groundbreaking work in minimally invasive education. Can you explain what this is and why you think it is so important?

Sugata: There are places on the planet where good teachers cannot or do not go. We have tried to level the playing field for a thousand years, unsuccessfully. We need an alternative. Children, given technology and left alone, seem to be able to level the playing field by themselves, probably because Computers and the Internet work the same way in the swamps of the Sunderbans as in Washington DC. Teachers don't work the same way, neither do parents. So, if there was a way of learning that had minimum dependence on parents and teachers, children everywhere would have a better chance. This is Minimally Invasive Education.

Steve: You seem to have attracted the nickname of the 'Slumdog Professor' in regards to the influence your research had on the making of the Slum Dog Millionaire movie. Is this something you are happy with?

Sugata: I am happy that Vikas Swarup was inspired by my early work. I am not happy that self taught children should aspire to win game shows. They should do a Ph.D. instead, as, at least, one child from a hole in the wall computer has done. I love the name though!

Steve: You tell stories about your contact with learners in remote or under privileged areas of society, many of which are inspirational. Which story (or stories) inspires you the most from your many travels?

Sugata: There are far too many stories to tell, all of them incredibly inspiring. One incident came to my mind as I said the last sentence:

'You Sir, have crossed all limits of human decency!' said a child to another in a self organised learning session without teachers. The teacher and I giggled from the corridor for a long time. I don't know why I find this inspiring, but I like laughing.

Steve: Following on from your hole in the wall projects in their various contexts, you developed the idea of remote mentors, popularly called the 'Granny Cloud'. Can you explain how this works and why it is important?

Sugata: As I previously said, there are places on the planet where good teachers cannot or do not go. But they can, using Skype. There are retired teachers who miss children. Grannies can accelerate self organised learning. Put it all together and you get the Granny Cloud. You can get further details about this idea from this link.

Steve: Can you talk a little about your latest research interests?

Sugata: There are several research questions I’m currently pursuing. For example, can a facility for children be operated remotely over the Internet? What will it take to build one? How can we get Key Stage 4 (14-16 year old) reading comprehension in children of age six? Is there a math (formula) that will explain how learning works?

Steve: Those are quite ambitious research questions, and we will be very interested to hear of your results. I had dinner with Nicholas Negroponte recently and your name came up. He told me you have been involved with MIT, working with him and his colleagues such as Vijay Kumar in the Media Lab. Could you talk a little about your involvement there? Did your work there for example relate to Negroponte's one laptop per child movement?

Sugata: I was there as a visiting professor for a year. I am not now. My work with Nicholas was on whether children can learn to read by themselves. We don't quite know yet. Nicholas framed a question for me, 'is knowing obsolete?' It is my biggest take away from the Media Lab.

Steve: What is your vision for education in the next 10 years? What do you think needs to be done next?

Sugata: We need to rethink the curriculum, rethink assessment and rethink certification in an age where 'knowing' may be obsolete. Homo Sapiens will transition to Homo Deus in the next 50 years. Our preoccupation will be with meaning and creation. Knowing will not be our main interest - creating will. In order to create we will need to know things.

When we need to know something we will have the means and the capacity to do so in minutes. A page of erudite text may take an educated person an hour to understand. A century ago it would have taken a month. A thousand years ago, a year or more. We could extrapolate to a time when it will take us a minute to understand. A generation or two later, one second.

The human brain is evolving faster than anything has, ever before.

Steve: Sugata, thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Photo by UOC

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Who's afraid of the big bad MOOC?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 17:11:00 +0000

After apparently stalling for a short time, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) seem to be gaining ground again. First there were the cMOOCs, free and open online courses that focused more on learning than they did on accreditation. Learning was fun and informal, and learning was often self or peer assessed. With the potential for thousands of students to enrol together on MOOCs, learning through connection to this large network of learners became the foundation and the cornerstone. Next came the institutional versions, the xMOOCs, which borrowed the 'free at the point of delivery' open and online model but emphasised formal assessment and accreditation (which is clearly where the money is). Quasi versions of open online learning already existed, such as the incredibly popular video based Khan Academy content.

Inevitably, some surveyed the huge scalability and openness of massive open courses and saw they were ripe for exploitation. Up popped a number of edu-businesses such as Coursera, Udacity and EdX, all of which promised dynamic and scalable platforms from which any university could launch its MOOC, and gain huge numbers of students overnight. xMOOCs have been around for only a short while in their current form, but have already attracted criticism and received some bad press. Coursera for example came under fire for its problematic approach to peer assessment, whilst others were criticised for dumbing down learning through for example their use of automated assessment and delivery of homogenised content. Regardless of these detractions, several universities have bought into the vision and have launched their own versions. Yet many universities remain sceptical about the sustainability and relevancy of MOOCs. Others are standing on the sidelines watching to see what will happen next.

Writing in the Thursday March 7 edition of the International Herald Tribune, Thomas Friedman issues a stark warning to all traditional universities about MOOCs, focused on improving pedagogy. Universities must change, he says, from a 'time served' model to a 'stuff learned' model. He reasons that 'increasingly the world does not care what you know. Everything is on Google. The world only cares, and will only pay for, what you can do with what you know'. Friedman points out, quite rightly, that the world of work is now competency based, and respects less and less the academic qualifications job candidates place on their CVs. He pours further fuel on the fire by pointing out that the world of MOOCs is 'creating a competition that will force every professor to improve his or her pedagogy or face an online competitor.' Whilst this would be a good thing for universities (why would anyone not want to improve their professional practice?) many are less convinced that MOOCs will provoke such a dichotomy of educational choice. Clearly Friedman has a point, but many remain sceptical, asking questions such as: How many courses can actually be fully and convincingly delivered in MOOC format, with no denigration of quality of learning experience? How in the long term can quality be assured in the delivery of MOOCs? What about authenticity (are the learners who they say they are?) and what about assessment of such a large number of students - how can this be achieved reliably (remember the Coursera fiasco). And how many universities are actually threatened by MOOCs anyway?

Photo by Steve Wheeler

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Learner power

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Wheeler) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:18:00 +0000

Students' minds are occupied by many challenges, such as how they are going to be able to afford their tuition fees or how they will achieve the highest grades. The first concern is beyond the influence and reach of most students, whilst the second is usually down to good, hard work. Perhaps a little farther down their agendas students are concerned about finding good learning spaces, concerns over the environment, and keeping themselves fit and healthy. Wouldn't it be great if all of these concerns could be met at the same time? Well, they have been, at one Belgian university, but more of that in a moment.

I visited the University of Hasselt this week and was shown around some of its learning spaces. 70 kilometres east of Brussels, Hasselt is a small university, but it has some big ideas. Universiteit Hasselt takes some innovative approaches to education including its refurbishment of an old prison to create a bright and airy new learning space for its law faculty students. The old cells are now 'study cells', where students can find space to focus on their projects.

But back to the question about student concerns. One particular innovation really grabbed my attention. In one of the common areas, I saw this study plinth and simply had to capture this image to share it. It's such a simple, yet elegantly useful idea. Students sit at the plinth, plug in their laptops or tablets, and then generate electrical power by turning the pedals underneath. While they are generating the power, they are simultaneously improving their fitness levels. Pedal power - saving the university money and providing students opportunities to keep fit while they are learning. Like it? Do you have any other useful ideas that could transform the learning spaces at your institute?

Photo by Steve Wheeler

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