Digital literacy 5: Making an impression

If all the world is a stage, I demand better lighting! I also want someone to prompt me when I forget my lines. Some better costumes would be nice. Oh, and more exotic scenery? And while we're at it, how about a better script - one that more accurately reflects my true feelings....

When William Shakespeare wrote those immortal lines ... (the ones about all of life being a stage and the people being the actors on it ... not all the other stuff above. That was just me sounding off) he was implying that not only is life transitory, but that each of us performs several roles throughout our lives. It also implies an audience of some kind. I infer from this that each of us also plays some roles reluctantly, possibly because we are constrained to act in ways that sometimes do not accurately represent the real 'me'. But what is the real 'me'? Sometimes that changes with context doesn't it? Or how I'm feeling today? Or perhaps it changes depending on my relationships with the people who are in close proximity to me while I am acting out that particular role?

The social anthropologist Erving Goffman tried to address these questions when he proposed his 'dramaturgy' model of sociology - his interpretation of the presentation of self in every day life. For Goffman, human behaviour is very much dependent on time, space and audience. By audience, he meant those who are observing the actor, or with whom s/he interacts with. In essence, Goffman argued that the way each of us present ourselves to others is carefully managed around the cultural values, norms, and expectations that are commonly held by actor and audience. Watch how a comedian, stage actor or pop singer manipulates their audience and you will see how much they desire to be liked, accepted and paid attention to. According to Goffman, the way each of us respresents ourselves to others involves some kind of role playing (self representation) and can also involve scripts (speech patterns) props and costumes, just like an actor does for a stage performance. Such management of impression is common to all humans and is used to form connections and gain influence with others.

The rapid emergence of digital media and the phenomenal growth in popularity of self broadcasting and publishing through social media, asks some new questions about how people represent themselves in virtual spaces. Sherry Turkle was one of the first people to conduct detailed studies into 'Life on Screen' by observing behaviour in multiple user domains (MUDs). Published in 1995, at the early edge of the Web, Turkle showed how many people employ multiple identities in virtual worlds, and that in some case these become as real to them as their identity in 'real life'. Her studies led Sherry Turkle to propose that new forms of personal identity are emerging as a result of prolonged interaction with others through technology - that our identities are increasingly multiple and decentred.

I won't go into details here, but there is further evidence to suggest that people portray themselves differently depending on the social media platform they use - and through text and other media. This may mean the same person using different avatars (images or animated characters used to represent real objects), usernames and forms of interaction, to suit the different norms and social expectations of the communities that frequent those various environments. In the context of my initial metaphor, some social media have better 'lighting' and 'scenery' than others. The audiences change, some more friendly than others. But how much does the actor actually change, and to what extent do they manage their impressions to suit the expectations of their audiences? And how much should each of us pay attention to the way we manage our online impression - our digital identity? Cue the opening music - positions, please.... Next week: Content creation.

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Making an impression by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital literacy 4: Watch your back!

I'm always asking myself the question - what do my students need to know to be able to use the web effectively? One of the important skills I identified in a previous post on digital literacies is how people manage and protect their privacy. This is aligned to e-safety, which is about protecting people online. Indeed, each of us is vulnerable because there is a huge potential for our privacy to be breached in any online environment. You would certainly be very angry if someone came snooping around your house and rifled through your personal belongings, wouldn't you? And yet many of us can be careless about the way we handle our personal data when we go online. And the extent to which many of us are now electronically connected to others is astounding.

This begs the question - can any of us protect our privacy on the web? Social media seem increasingly pervasive, and many millions of people put up details of their private lives every day - contact details, personal photographs, dates of birth etc - details they would never dream of giving to a stranger. Oh look, there's someone I haven't met before. Hellooo. I'm going to go up to them and give them my phone number and address, some photos of me on holiday in my swimwear, a list of my best friends and my date of birth! Oh, and they can have my credit card details too while I'm at it! Would anyone do that, even if they were very extremely attracted? It would be bizarre behaviour. And yet people do exactly that every day online. I'm amazed at the photos some students put up on social network sites. It's not just pictures of them falling out of a pub at 3 o'clock in the morning, it may also be pics of their friends too. With their permission or not? I wonder if they will still be happy about those photos in a few year's time when they apply for a job, and their potential employer Googles them to see who they are.

For me it's all a matter of choice. How many of your personal details you make available on the web is really up to you. Your privacy settings may help you to protect stuff. but even if you know how to choose the correct settings (and many students don't) how can you be really certain that your content is fully protected from prying eyes? Posting up your home address and telephone number, and then posting in your timeline that you are going on holiday next week, might be asking for trouble. How do you know who has access to your timeline? How do you know how many people read your Twitter feed or your updates?

You also leave a trail behind you wherever you go on the Internet. Google and other search engines maintain a record of all the sites you visit during your time online. Many sites send cookies to your pc when you enter them. Some of these can be malicious, allowing other people to gain access to your pc memory, and if spyware has been used, to also record your keystrokes when you pay for something on Amazon using your credit card. Although it's still quite rare for this to happen, this kind of criminal activity is on the increase, and without appropriate Internet Security software, you run the risk of being one of the victims. Have you thought about the amount of personal detail you hold about yourself and your friends on your mobile phone? If you use public wifi networks or open your mobile to bluetooth connectivity, you may also be opening up the entire content of your mobile for intruders to capture and use. This useful report from the BBC Click team reveals that although malware for mobile phones is on the increase, it is still simple user naivety that is responsible for the majority of problems of this kind.

For me, raising the awareness of students and other web users to the dangers of the Internet will always include the problem of maintaining privacy. The golden rules are: Be careful what sites you visit (your security software should alert you to any unsafe sites), be careful what you post up online that may have personal information in it (this is just common sense) and watch your back - protect your identity, because you never know who may be looking over your shoulder. On Monday: Managing digital identities.

Watch your back by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital literacy 3: Crossing the divide

Transliteracy can be defined as being literate across a number of platforms. In essence, it is the ability to be able to create content, organise, share and communicate across, and through, a variety of social media, discussion groups, mobile tools and other services that are commonly available. This assumes that we communicate differently depending on the tool we use. When I give a co-present presentation (face to face), it is qualitatively different for me and my audience to a remote presentation I give through Elluminate or Adobe Connect. It's not just the experience - I also behave differently, and manage my impression in a different way. I have argued in previous blogposts that the way we represent ourselves (using avatars, user names etc) varies for many depending on what medium we are using. I represent myself differently in Second Life to the way I represent myself on Facebook, because each environment prompts a different response from me. In LinkedIn, I manage a professional version of my online persona, which evaporates when I'm on Facebook. On Twitter I am a bit of a mixture. Sometimes I like to have a bit of fun, and at other times, I'm deadly serious. I have also discussed the idea that each tool has its own particular set of affordances which enable or constrain particular ways of using it. In many ways, however, although these tools are different, they all have a common purpose. Thomas et al (2007) put it very well:

"From early signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV and film to networked digital media, the concept of transliteracy calls for a change of perspective away from the battles over print versus digital, and a move instead towards a unifying ecology not just of media, but of all literacies relevant to reading, writing, interaction and culture, both past and present. It is, we hope, an opportunity to cross some very obstructive divides."

So for Thomas et al, the argument over whether media are different - for example whether digital will replace paper - is spurious. It's more important for us to recognise the significance of each tool, and how they can be used effectively in all their variations, and also in combinations. Ultimately, transliteracy should be about using whatever media and communication tools that are at our disposal, and also being able to discern which tools will be the most effective and appropiate in any given context. Do we learn better watching a Youtube video or reading a text? Are we better at presenting our ideas in pictures or as a podcast? I know my answer to that, and it may be different to your answer - we all learn differently.

Students today use a variety of tools to create and share content, and it's vital that they are able to do so in a seamless manner. It's important that students spend more time thinking about what they are learning and less time thinking about how to navigate around a website, or how to save a file. This is one reason why many students are more at ease using an external wiki than they are using an institutional Learning Management System. It's also the reason they choose to use Facebook rather than the institutional e-mail system when they want to send each other messages. But students do use all of these tools, and the trick is to ensure that they are comfortable with each, and have the requisite skills to exploit each tool to its optimum value. This is why transliteracy is becoming increasingly important as a digital literacy. It will assume even more significance, as more of us become our own broadcasters, publishers and directors.

Reference: Thomas, S., Joseph, C., Lacetti, J., Mason, B., Mills, S., Perril, S. and Pullinger, K. (2007) Transliteracy: Crossing Divides. First Monday, 12 (12), 3 December 2007.

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Crossing the divide by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital literacy 2: Reach out and connect

One of the digital literacies I identified in yesterday's blogpost was effective social networking. So what's the big deal about this? We all do it these days don't we? Most of us have a Facebook account, and maybe a LinkedIn account too. Lots of us use Twitter, and some of those out on the periphery may still be using Myspace or Bebo. What else do we need to learn about social networking that can help us or our students to learn better? In this series I'm going to examine digital literacies. I use the term not to describe skills, but more as an alignment to the argument that as we engage with our own specific culture we acquire and develop more than skills. If I am illiterate (in the sense of reading and writing), I cannot read the signs or engage with text - I am not able to fully participate within my culture. And if I miss the meaning of something because of that illiteracy, I won't know what I don't know. Literacy allows us to develop a self awareness of not only the symbolic nature of our world but also the processes of personal learning - or meta-cognition - and in so doing we build what Bourdieu has termed 'cultural capital'. Wendy Earle's 2005 discussion on the nature of literacies is a useful starting point.

So what are the essential components of social networking as a digital literacy? Firstly, I believe we need to network more smartly, particularly in a manner that helps us to learn more effectively in both formal and informal contexts. Jonathan Rose has some interesting things to say about how social networking helps his off-line (for this read 'real life') world. In his blogpost What's so social about social media? he outlines three functions: supplementing, sifting and sustaining, all of which have a social dimension. Sifting for example, in Jonathan's view, helps to combat the media atomisation that has occurred due to the availability of hundreds of TV channels. Once we could all sit down for coffee and talk about what we had watched on TV last night. It's rare we are able to do this now, with so many choices. Watching TV is no longer a distributed communal activity. What we can do though, with the aid of social media, is to find out what our commonalities and communities are through the filtering tools (such as hashtags) on Twitter and other timeline tools.

Social networking also helps us to find content we need, when we need it. In some of my previous slide presentations and blog posts I have quoted Karen Stephenson, who believes we now 'store our knowledge in our friends'. By this she means a distributed intelligence is emerging which allows that it doesn't matter how much we can store and retrieve from our own personal memories. Today, it's not what we know, but who we know that is most important. We now live in an increasingly connected world where we have 24/7 access to our friends and colleagues. Selecting the right tools that will enable each of us to connect into and plunder the collective intelligence of the most relevant communities of practice is one of the new digital literacies professionals and students will need to draw upon.

Finally, social networking skills will require each user to also be adept at connecting with new friends and fellow community members. But how will we know who to connect with and who to ignore? It's not as if we are in a large room at a party, deciding who looks or sounds like the most interesting person to make a bee-line for. No, it's actually more complex and information rich than that. We now have the ability to tap into all sorts of information about the bewildering number of people we encounter on social media every day. We can see by their avatar and username (sometimes) what kind of person they might be, and whether it would be interesting to connect with them or not. Profiles and follow/follower information are also useful sources of detail about a person's interests and background. What they tweet or post gives us advance information about whether we would find connecting with someone useful or not.

So social networking, and the ability to use it effectively is a key skill for the scholar to acquire right now. If used properly, social media can provide rich social and intellectual rewards. Those who fail to network effectively may struggle to succeed in a pressurised education world.

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Reach out and connect by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital literacy 1: What digital literacies?

In June this year I presented a keynote speech at Middlesex University entitled Digital Tribes and the Social Web. One of the themes I developed during my speech was around the concept of new digital literacies. My argument is that new media and new opportunities for learning through digital technologies require new literacies. This is not just my view - it reflects the views of many other commentators including Lea & Jones (2011 in press), Beetham et al (2009) and Lankshear & Knobel (2006). Essentially, the literacies that have dominated higher education in the past are thought to be inadequate in the face of social network services, mobile technologies and pervasive computing.

Below are the digital literacies I have identified. They may not be exhaustive, and they may not be fully defined yet. But for me they constitute a kind of road map which enables me to develop themes and topics within the modules I teach to help students to maximise their learning potential using new and emerging technologies. I will try to develop my commentary around each of these in future blog posts.

Social networking skills

Transliteracy skills

Maintaining Privacy

Managing Identity

Creating content

Organising and sharing content

Reusing/repurposing content

Filtering and selecting content

Self broadcasting

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What digital literacies? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

A most fundamental human right

In 2005 I accompanied a group of students and staff from the University of Plymouth on a two week study tour of South Africa. We spent most of our time in and around Cape Town, visiting schools in the city and in the townships. We also took the motorboat out to Robben Island - the notorious former penal colony throughout South Africa's apartheid regime. It is infamous because it was the 'home' for many years of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and many other prominent political prisoners. One of the first things that strikes you about Robben Island as soon as you arrive on the quayside is that it is incredibly exposed to the elements. In the summer it is an oven, with the sun reflecting intensely off the stones and sand, while in the winter it is icy cold as the southern Antarctic winds whip across it mercilessly.

We were escorted around by one of the official guides on the island - a contemporary of Nelson Mandela, and fellow former prisoner - Lionel Davis (pictured with me above). Lionel talked to us about the harsh conditions in the prison, and the fact that all the prisoners had to work in the quarry breaking stones for hours each day with no shelter, and without sunglasses to shield their eyes from the glare of the sun. Some went on to develop cataracts. The prison is a museum now, and also stands as a poignant tribute to the suffering many of the prisoners endured at the hands of brutal guards. Lionel told us of the beatings and other, worse punishments, and showed us the cramped conditions of the cells. I stood outside Nelson Mandela's cell and was appalled at how small it was (pictured below). I asked him why he was still on the island after his own suffering there - why had he not left and never come back? He said to me 'Steve - every time I do this tour - it gets easier for me.' It was cathartic for him - a way of banishing the demons.

The remarkable things about the political prisoners on Robben Island were their resilience, and their positive attitudes to their situation. They really believed in what they were standing up for. During the dying years of Apartheid, when conditions began to improve, many applied for, and were successful in securing time and resources for study. Several enrolled at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and studied at a distance, from their prison cells. Lionel himself was awarded a School Leaver's Certificate through his study in prison, and eventually went on to achieve a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art from the University of Cape Town. I feel very humble when I think of these men and what they achieved. It wasn't just the monumental victory they achieved over oppression. It was their personal triumph too. It truly was learning against all odds - lifelong learning in the truest sense, and in the harshest of environments. We often complain about our education systems and how they should be improved, and that is our right. But we must never forget that in many countries, there are still harsh political regimes that deny many their rights to freedom of speech and that most fundamental human right - a good education.


A most fundamental human right by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

eXtending the Web

eXtending the Web - New and Emerging Learning Technologies

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

I was up at stupid o'clock yesterday to present a webinar for the ASCILITE organisation - the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education. The time zone differences meant that my audience, distributed across Australasia, was listening to me in the evening, while I was sat in my office in jeans and a T-shirt at 7 in the morning, armed with copious quantities of caffeine and a box of matchsticks. While I talked, as if by magic, the sun removed itself from Australia and New Zealand and reappeared outside my window. I was actually up an hour earlier at 6 am finalising and uploading my slides onto ASCILITE's Wimba platform, and then making sure the technical details were all in order. But I enjoyed it. The audience were very knowledgeable, and asked some pertinent questions.

My subject was "The eXtended Web - New and Emerging Learning Technologies" - it was essentially a gaze into the future of e-learning where smart mobile technologies create a ubiquitous learning context, and where semantic software predicts your needs even before you ask the computer. It's not too hard to envisage this, including 3D manipulation of virtual objects and natural gesture driven learning, and of course the use of augmented reality for learning and context awareness while on the move. The technology is already here, in both handheld and wearable versions - as I try to depict in my slides above - but it may take some time before everyone who wants access to them can have it. We shall see - it's hazardous predicting the future, especially where technology is concerned, but we can watch the trends and see where the road is leading. We live in exciting and challenging times, and we can expect to see a lot of changes taking place in the next few years in the world of education.


eXtending the Web by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Deeply personal

When you're on holiday, I guess you must have come across people selling 'personalised' souvenirs. Name plates for doors, T-shirts, mugs, keyrings, even baseball caps - with every name under the sun on them (well almost - the only names I haven't seen on any personalised merchandising are 'Adolf' and 'Jezebel'. I'm not sure why...) Such merchandising is 'personalised' because one of those mugs - the one the shopkeeper hopes you're going to buy - has your name on it. But wait. It's not really personalised is it? You didn't make the mug. Someone made it for you - and then put your name on it. And then you buy it and use it. It becomes yours. But is it really that deeply personal?

I was reading Jim Campbell's article on personalisation of learning again today. I referred to it in my last post and promised I would revisit it. He explores Leadbeater's taxonomy of personalisation as it relates to public health care. Leadbeater's 5 levels of personalisation were: 1) providing more customer friendly services 2) giving people more say in how they use the services 3) giving users more say in how money is spent on the services 4) users become co-designers and co-producers of the services, and 5) self organisation of services by individuals, with support provided by professionals.

Ring any bells yet? For me this resonates clearly with the tension between the provision of Content Management Systems (what we commonly call institutional VLEs) and personal learning environments (PLEs). Campbell argues that the first 3 of Leadbeater's levels are shallow forms of personalisation, while the last two are deeper forms of personalisation. So let's apply this to personal learning environments by translating the 5 levels into an education context.

1) Providing learners with more student centred opportunities 2) giving learners more choice in what they learn, how and when and where they learn it 3) giving learners more say on how resources are used 4) learners design and produce their own content 5) learners self organise their own learning with the support of professionals.

It is clear to see that in an educational context, the same kind of personalisation of services could be applied as in public health care. Can we shift from the edubusiness making a product for the institution, and then branding it on their behalf, to the point where the learner can choose and construct the learning environment they want to use, and the personalise it for themselves? The problem is, learners are a little like patients in many ways - they are the consumers of the product, and transforming them into the co-producers of the service they will also consume requires that a) they view themselves as being capable of doing so b) the professionals who have so far provided the service actually trust them and c) there is an infrastructure in place to support the process. The third component is already in place - Web 2.0 tools are available for all learners to choose and use to support their own self organised learning. It's the first two that are the problem if we are ever to get to the point where learning becomes deeply personal for all.

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

Personalised learning

I have been thinking a lot about personalised learning lately. Last night, during a panel discussion for the Plymouth Education Society, I made a statement that the current UK National Curriculum doesn't make a lot of room for personalised learning. I quoted Ken Robinson who has claimed that the current model of school is based on an industrialised or 'factory' model, where children are 'processed in batches' according to their year groups. This model patently doesn't work, because it fails to take into account the variations in performance and ability within year groups. What happens next is that schools try to redress this imbalance by streaming kids - placing them into sets so that the 'brighter ones' get the chance to shine, while the 'less bright ones' are not left behind. That's all very well for the school management, but it can also be very devisive, and stigmatises some children. It may also be premised on faulty assessment methods.

Standardised assessment militates against personalised learning too. Many schools practice assessment of learning using a criterion referenced assessment. While this is an improvement over norm referenced assessment, it still fails students. What schools should be doing is assessing for learning - providing students with personalised feedback on their performance referenced against their own previous personal attainment - what we refer to as ipsative assessment. Thankfully some schools are now adopting this approach through for example, APP - Assessing Pupil Progress, or PLP - Personal Learning Plans. But it's not happening quickly or widely enough.

Today I sat in a seminar led by Professor Jim Campbell, of the University of Warwick. Jim had given us a paper he had published in 2007 to read and critique. It was entitled: Personalised Learning: Ambiguities in Theory and Practice. Reading the paper made me think hard about what we actually mean by personalised learning. In the paper Campbell et al draw upon Leadbeater's model of surface and deep personalisation, where the student steadily progresses from consumer to producer behaviour. There is a great deal of cross over here with personal learning environments (PLEs) of course, particularly in relation to user generated content and sharing within a community of practice. This is an area I intend to explore in more detail in future blog posts.

Reference

Campbell, R. J. et al (2007) Personalised Learning: Ambiguities in Theory and Practice. British Journal of Educational Studies, 55 (2), 135-154.

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Is the conference dead?

Last week we held the first Plymouth eLearning Conference committee meeting to plan the 2011 event. During the meeting some committee members expressed their anxiety about whether conferences were still viable in the current economic climate. There ensued a heated exchange about whether something like the Plymouth eLearning Conference actually had a future. My view is that it does, and in whatever form it takes, I'm determined to carry on promoting PeLC and other face to face events. Here's why I'm willing to take the risk:

Firstly, people need to meet socially. Although live streaming of events and other participatory media are being used increasingly to draw those into conferences who cannot attend physically, what they offer is still a pale imitation of the real thing, and sometimes the technology fails. Content and dialogue can be supported, but can we fully replicate the atmosphere and ambience of a live conference through a computer screen?

Secondly, although attendance at conferences is slacking off noticably (PeLC10 was down a third on the numbers for PeLC09), many conferences are still economically viable. Those present at PeLC10 were generally very positive about the event. I have seen similar events in the last year, including ALT-C, EDEN and Ulearn (pictured above: my keynote to 1800 people during the event) continue to draw numbers in and maintain their impetus. OK, you may say, what about a small conference such as PeLC? Well, another way to look at it must be the Unique Selling Point each conference offers. I can't speak for other small conferences, but I know that PeLC is popular because of at least 8 USPs: 1) it is friendly and open; 2) it is based in an idyllic location; 3) there is plenty of time for social events and networking; 4) the conference dinner is always spectacular; 5) the demonstrations (for example the Immersion Vision Cinema) are impressive and unique; 6) the Devon Cream Tea is not to be missed; 7) our keynote speakers nail it every year; and 8) PeLC is one of the best value for money eLearning events in Europe. (Want another incentive? Keep it quiet, but day 1 is free this year)....I could go on, but I think you catch the drift.

Finally, here's a question: What alternatives are there to the face to face event? OK, there are things against it - travel and accommodation costs will prevent lots of people from attending as many conferences as they would wish in the next year or two. And yes, institutions are cutting back on their conference budgets because of the economic problems. But we should not ignore the pay off in terms of the conference attendance. What would happen if there were no professional conferences? Donald Clark said recently during his ALT-C keynote that he avoided conferences because they were a waste of time. But we would be intellectually and socially poorer without them? Would we still keep up to date? To paraphrase Derek Bok: If you think conference attendance is expensive, try ignorance. What about the valuable contacts and collaborative possibilities that come from events when you least expect them, and which you might not find anywhere else? Should we ditch the conference and all meet through online media? I don't think so. I know some conferences have gone over to this format and have been reasonably successful, but personally I don't subscribe to them.

We aim to make PeLC11 one of the best events of the year. We have several great features next year, including a Teachmeet, free practical workshops and 3 excellent keynote speakers. I'm really hoping you will join us to prove that the conference is still alive and kicking.

Is the conference dead? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

A shift in time

History suggests that Lord Kelvin, the famous physicist, once boldly proclaimed there was nothing left that was to be discovered in physics. The only thing we could do he stated, was to measure more effectively. Famous last words. Just five years later, Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity, which challenged the 'rules' of force and motion that had been used for over 200 years. It was time for a change, and time for a paradigm shift - something which would make the entire scientific community sit up, take notice, and then reluctantly change their collective mind on what the universe was really all about.



If you look up the word paradigm you will probably discover a definition that is something like: mould, standard, idea, model. In other words, a paradigm is something we use as a set of rules. The world of education is full of rules. And it's been a long time since anyone broke the mould. Schools are very conservative organisations, where those in charge have been around for a while, and 'know what works'. They don't tend to change very much. Some schools are changing, but many will stay just the way they are. According to Sir Ken Robinson, we need a paradigm shift (I would even say we need a paradigm break) to change the way education is conducted across the entire sector. We need a shift he says, because education is broken. It doesn't work the way it is, because it is based on an old model which is no longer relevant to the needs of today's society. Education is failing society, and failing children, by preparing them for the past instead of for the future. In a very powerful animated video to accompany his 'breaking paradigms' speech, we are taken on a grand tour of his ideas about why the education system needs to change. I shared a link to the video on Twitter and Facebook and had a huge positive response. The video speaks to everyone. So, if you have any interest at all in education, watch the video, and see why the current education paradigm needs to be broken.


A shift in time by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Open educational practices

I made a video recording for Core Ed while I was at the Ulearn conference in New Zealand last month. They sat me in front of two cameras, and asked me to talk off the cuff, no script, about something that I was passionate about. It didn't take me long to think up what I wanted to say and I'm pleased that I did it in one take (Core Ed were pleased too, because minimal studio time and editing were needed!). I spoke about Open Educational Practices, (including Open Educational Resources and Open Scholarship) a subject which I am learning more about all the time as the movement grows and gains traction. You see, the idea behind open practices is that anyone can gain access for free, at any time and in any place - courses, software, ideas, knowledge, people... OEP requires everything to be open - for access, scrutiny and repurposing. So whether it's licensing agreements such as Copyleft or Creative Commons, or open access journals, or even massively online open courses, the open educational practices are gaining ground and influence in the academic world.



It's not going to be easy to change a model where knowledge has become a commodity though. Too many powerful people and organisations stand to lose a lot if everything becomes 'free' and open. But things are changing slowly. The publishing houses who once had a strangle hold on academic journals are beginning to lose their grip. Some are having to change their business models. Google Reader and Google Books for example, are giving us all more than a glimpse of the pages of just about every book that has ever been published. And open access journals are opening up knowledge for all without payment. So when a student comes up against a paywall - what will they do? They will go elsewhere of course - to the free versions that are out there on the web. I know many colleagues who now refuse to publish their research in traditional journals - only open access will do for them. Traditional journals can be slow to publish, there is often a backlog of journals articles and too few issues to put them in, and citation frequency from open access journals can be more rewarding. These refusnik colleagues are growing in numbers too, and so are the open access journals to accommodate them. Is this the start of the end for traditional academic publishing? Watch the video and then tell me whether you think I'm on the right track about OEP, or whether I'm barking up the wrong tree. After all, that's exactly what open scholarship is all about....


Open educational practices by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.